First-Person Notes on Observing a Dating Reality Show

Gossip-addicted queen of cheesy jokes × miserable entertainment-industry wage slave

Fu Chunxing is an obscure actress, barely known even as an eighteenth-tier star, when she’s invited to appear on a dating show.

The male guests are members of a boy band that’s been shelved for years.

She comes in hoping to do a good job, drum up a ship, and make it big, but is left speechless by the intense, ambiguous flirting between the other guests.

So everyone works this hard when they go on a show?

She can’t help thinking that no wonder everyone else is raking in the money while she’s stuck as an eighteenth-tier star. They’ve earned it.

Only later does she learn that on this dating show, everyone except her is...

Two real sisters-in-law.

One biological younger sister.

One sugar daddy.

And her? A hapless “civilian” brought along to make up the numbers.

She goes over to the team captain, quietly eating instant noodles in a corner, and whispers in his ear, “Hey, why didn’t you bring your partner on the show?”

The captain looks at her, his expression complicated. “...”

Netizens: Come ship our Hanlin-Fu CP! The divorced-couple vibes are off the charts. They don’t even interact, but their peripheral vision is always fixed on each other. That cool, restrained understanding has to mean they secretly got married behind our backs!

Fu Chunxing: Can we ship something real for once?

A-Star, a boy band so obscure they’ve vanished off the face of the earth. Shelved as soon as they debuted, with a disastrous start. Their official account has a million followers, 997,000 of them bots. The remaining 3,000 have already moved on.

After eight years fighting in the entertainment industry, they’re still nobodies. Now they’re giving it everything they’ve got, just to make one last payday before changing careers.

Lin Hanhai: I check the contract eight hundred times a day. I’m diligent and careful, walking on eggshells for one reason only: so I don’t have to pay a breach-of-contract fee. Heaven rewards persistence. After years of holding back, I’m finally about to get what I want. Just one more month... When the contract ends, I’ll unleash all the talent I’ve been building up and amaze everyone! The company will be begging me to come back!

Fu Chunxing: Maybe read fewer web novels.

Come for the laughs. There are no real-life inspirations, so don’t drag this into reality. This is just a completely made-up, tailor-made comedy.

A note about my upcoming and concurrently updated novels:

The Dichotomy: Biopunk, genetic business cards, mechanical gods, humans and animals living side by side, Classic of Mountains and Seas.

Adults, Good for Nothing: Another-world adventure, supernatural powers, road trip, fairy tales.

Theme: Hearing is not believing, seeing is believing.