Rivals or Blind Dates?

XTV is putting together an unprecedented gardening competition show, planning to invite a hundred gardening bloggers to take part in a year-long shoot.

Chuchu has been a gardening blogger for eight years.

She was among the first to enter this little niche.

For eight years, she has diligently tended her own little garden. She has amassed a million followers on one platform, and her videos are fresh, distinctive, and packed with useful tips. Her fans practically revere her, and every update is a grand event in the gardening world.

When she received the invitation, she coolly turned it down.

The production team said she could film without showing her face.

Chuchu pointed out that she had never shown her face in all the time she had been making videos.

The production team said they guaranteed fair voting throughout the show and were willing to sign a contract guaranteeing she would place in the top three.

Chuchu said that making such a guarantee proved the contest wasn't fair.

What a joke. Who did they think she was? Why would she lower herself by competing against a bunch of novice gardening bloggers with only tens of thousands of followers?

Wait, the prize was a lifetime supply of unlimited fertilizer and potting soil from an international brand?

Chuchu immediately announced that she was in.

She was even willing to show her face.

Chuchu is fiercely competitive.

She absolutely wasn't going to go easy on these rookies.

She would trample every competitor underfoot, take first place, and win a lifetime's worth of free gardening supplies.

Then came the first group competition. She looked to her left at a thirst-trap gym-bro dad showing off his abs, to her right at a young influencer with heavy makeup, and ahead at an idol riding the show's buzz by claiming to love gardening, with twice her following...

This industry really was too complicated...

The only competitor who seemed relatively normal was Lin Si. He was clean-cut and low-key, barely making his presence felt. Since joining the show, he'd only greeted her once. But when she had someone look into him, she discovered that he was a leading researcher at the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and had entered the contest purely to write a research paper.

Then this seemingly unremarkable contestant took first place in their group.

What happened to professional contestants being out of their element on a show like this?

Whether anyone else was convinced or not,

Chuchu wasn't convinced at all.

She didn't think she was any worse than him.

From then on, she regarded him as her one and only rival. She frantically gathered information about him, searching for weaknesses so she could beat him in the second stage, the summer group competition.

Instead, they unexpectedly ran into each other at a blind date.

A proud peacock who's always trying to win, without knowing what she's trying to win at x A meek research-paper nerd dragged in by the production team to take the fall, repeatedly set up to place first, and somehow earning the hatred of his secret crush

Theme: Learning to accept defeat