16 The end of the season
"Yanyan, check the messages in the group."
Zheng Xiyan climbed out of bed, washed up, and picked up her phone to check the messages that kept popping up on the screen.
It was already the end of June, and summer vacation was about to begin. The students' minds had long since flown from the teaching building to the free world outside. The small group she and a few of her co-workers were in became increasingly lively, with people occasionally forwarding some star-chasing messages.
Today happened to be the weekend, and the group became lively early in the morning. Zheng Xiyan saw a private message from her good friend. She clicked on the message of 99+ in the group chat with a confused look on her face, and began to climb the stairs with great effort.
Is there any news about the talent show group they are following? They have debuted for more than two years and are on the verge of disbanding. How can there be any good news? Could it be that the shit company finally behaved like a human being and announced the news of disbanding concert in advance?
She slid her finger across the screen for a long time before she found the source of the excitement in the group. Someone had forwarded a picture in the middle of the night. Zheng Xiyan clicked on the large picture, took a closer look, and exclaimed in surprise.
Yuanxin is forming a boy band? When did it start? And they also sent out invitations for performances and recordings? It looks like they have been developing it for a while.
Are they going to organize their own talent show? As expected of Yuanxin, they are rich and powerful.
These show fans are so numerous that they know all the major domestic entertainment companies by heart. And among the few large companies in the entertainment industry that have barely escaped from being makeshift teams, only Yuanxin has never developed idol business.
Nowadays, when talent shows are in full swing, most companies, regardless of whether they are really serious about training, will always sign a few trainees to appear in talent shows. What if they become popular? That would be a lucrative business. Only Yuan Xin is untainted by the mud. Apart from Yuan Xiao, the eldest daughter who came to experience life, she can be said to be pure and untainted.
Zheng Xiyan didn’t know much about Yuanxin. None of the celebrities she had pursued signed with Yuanxin, so she only knew about this company.
She messaged her friend, "What group is this? I don't think it was explained clearly in the group."
The person on the other end responded very quickly, and it was obvious that he was staring at his phone. "I don't know. We've been discussing this in the group for so long but haven't come to any conclusion. I don't know what Yuanxin is doing mysteriously. There's no material on the Internet. I only know that they seem to be all trainees."
Trainee?
Zheng Xiyan stopped brushing her teeth and looked at herself in the mirror. As a senior fan of the show, she loves the beauty of the trainee period before her debut and the period when she just debuted, when she was passionate, energetic and full of emotion for the stage.
The message dinged again, "Go sign up now, there is a deadline. There is a web link on the picture. Aren't you in Beijing?"
"It's a free performance, you'd be wasting your time if you don't watch it."
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Compared with the anxious trainees, Yuan Xiao looked refreshed.
After more than two months of hard work, everything was ready. The trainees were busy preparing for the final assessment, but Yuan Xiao had some free time and could finally have a good rest for a few days.
The weather in Beijing had started to get hot at the end of June, so Yuan Xiao asked someone to convert the remaining room on the 16th floor into a bathroom, so that trainees who did not stay overnight and needed to go home could take a shower and go out refreshed without catching a cold from the wind.
The practice room on the 14th floor was always lit, so Yuan Xiao had to double the salary of the company's security guards and hire more people. Even if the staff members of the election management team emphasized the need to get enough sleep a hundred times, there would still be kids who would sneak back to the practice room in groups before the assessment and sweat until dawn.
In the dim morning light of the imperial capital, some people figured out what they really wanted.
The quarterly evaluation that determines the stay or departure of the eighty-eight trainees is still held in the large practice room. Not only the selection and management team, but also the leaders of other groups of the entire project team are all present. The chairs moved from the conference room are not enough, and those who come late can only sit on the floor of the practice room.
No one had ever competed with Yuan Xiao for her position. When she came from the office, she was only wearing a simple white shirt and wide-leg jeans, with her hair loosely tied behind her and a tablet in her hand. She looked very different from when she was an idol before. Her black fans might not be able to recognize her when they saw her current appearance.
She has been too busy and hasn't had much time to go shopping for clothes recently. Fortunately, she has had a lot of meetings with the makeup team recently, which is a good opportunity for her to grab a few suitable designer pieces from the stylist to enrich her wardrobe.
It was originally a team that her mother had formed for her, so it was easy for her to match clothes for the boss.
"Let's start." The trainees were a little afraid of her, so Yuan Xiao simply didn't come early. After everyone was present, she walked straight into the middle seat in the practice room, sat down, opened the tablet, nodded slightly, and signaled that the first group could start their report and presentation.
During this period, the results of each trainee were counted in the form of a chart on her computer, so it was clear who was on top and who was off. The daily training results were a foregone conclusion, and this evaluation would be the trainees' last chance to leave an impression in Yuan Xiao's mind.
There are ten people in a group, singing and dancing three songs in a row. On average, each person can only have a dozen seconds of lyrics in each song. There is no chance for solo. Who can enter the debut group depends entirely on their performance in the group.
Yuan Xiao never chooses solo idols.
When Yuan Xiao looked at the list Yang Cheng sent her, she could tell that when they were assigning the candidates, they intentionally divided several trainees who were recognized to be stronger into different groups. Although the groups were randomly shuffled and rearranged for each small test, this was the first time that the selection committee had directly intervened.
Yuan Xiao originally thought that they were afraid that the strong trainees would stick together and the gap between the groups would appear too big, but she didn't expect Yang Cheng to explain that this was the trainees' own request. Pei Zijin brought Jin Zeyu, Su Chen and others to her and took the initiative to request to break up the groups.
"'This way we can also help friends who don't want to be eliminated and practice with them,' this is what Pei Zijin said." Yang Cheng also said to Yuan Xiao last week, "As the oldest trainee, he is quite like a brother."
"Really?" Yuan Xiao heard the hidden meaning in her words, "Do you think Xiao Pei is suitable to be the captain?"
"I know his dancing skills are a bit of a hindrance..." Facing Yuan Xiao, who is several years younger than her, Yang Cheng is always a bit nervous for some reason. She also knows that as the staff closest to the trainees, they should not have obvious preferences, but people always have their own ideas. Yuan Xiao did not deny it, but looked at her with encouraging eyes, which gave Yang Cheng some confidence to speak her mind. "But Pei Zijin does have the best overall view among this batch of trainees. He knows how to use his brain when practicing, and he has a good relationship with other trainees."
Pei Zijin, Yuan Xiao was very impressed with him. This guy was a talent she picked up from a club performance and she had always been paying attention to him.
This attention is not because of any special expectations for him, but it's just that this guy was too much of a corporate slave in the beginning. He came to the company just for the internship certificate. Coming to the company for practice every day is no different from punching in and out at get off work. I don't know how this guy can look so old at such a young age.
Yuan Xiao saw it all, but there was nothing she could do. Everyone has their own aspirations. Even if Yuan Xiao wanted to be in charge of creation, she couldn't force someone to choose this path.
She thought Pei Zijin would keep doing this until he automatically got an internship certificate three months later, but after two small tests, he suddenly stood up, and his grades shot up from then on. Yuan Xiao didn't quite understand the reason, but she heard from the staff of the selection and management team that it might be because of friendship or something and he suddenly thought it through.
Yuan Xiao: ...That’s fine.
Anyway, ever since Pei Zijin stopped slacking off, he has been like a pearl that has shed its dust. Just as Yang Cheng commented, he is a very smart trainee who knows how to use his brain, learns things quickly, and is very popular among the trainees. If Yuan Xiao asked the trainees to choose who they want to debut with in the end, most likely Pei would be one of them.
Yuan Xiao did not give Yang Cheng any definite answer. Pei Zijin was indeed a very suitable candidate for the boy group, but he was not the only one. If this guy could not overcome his difficulties in dancing by the end, Yuan Xiao would have no choice but to give up and kick him out of the group candidates.
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As they went through the groups one by one, Yuan Xiao would usually watch from the beginning until the last group was finished, and then replay it and give comments.
The songs selected by each group are the same, but the trainees are allowed to express themselves freely in singing and dance choreography. However, it is not certain whether these expressions will add color or just cause chaos. There have been cases in the past where trainees made random changes and were criticized by Yuan Xiao. After all, Yuan Xiao always feels that for an excellent idol, the strength may not meet the requirements temporarily, but the aesthetic sense must be there. Without the former, they can continue to practice, but without the latter, they may never pass the passing line in their lifetime.
After each group performed three songs, the trainees looked as if they had been rinsed with water. In such an important assessment, they naturally had to give their 100% effort to the 120th point. Yuan Xiao saw it and nodded imperceptibly.
In fact, there has been great progress.
This was probably the first time in three months that Yuan Xiao's mind wasn't overwhelmed by endless questions while watching a performance, but he was able to truly appreciate a performance. Perhaps these three months of short practice were not enough for the trainees to have the level of strength that a perfect idol should have, and they couldn't contribute qualified stage performances right now, but at this moment in this exam, three months of hard work mixed with the ambition to stay was integrated into every move and every line of lyrics of each trainee, until the end when their clothes were soaked, their voices were hoarse, and the floor was almost stomped to pieces. This youthful and reckless spirit of fighting for what they love is what really touched people in this performance.
Yuan Xiao blinked. Is this the charm of the training system?
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