Did Not Say Anything About My Feelings - Chapter 34. Fallen Apart

After they finished eating, all the trainees got on the bus that brought them towards the shopping mall on the island. They only had two hours to shop and the six people in each hostel room split up into two groups and went off.

Lin Ye’s group was in charge of buying wallpaper and stickers. The three of them headed towards the home deco part of the mall. When they walked past the snacks area on the way there, Xia Dongchan stopped and dragged them off to take a look at the snack shelves.

Their other roommate had similar tastes to Xia Dongchan and the two of them stood in front of the snacks shelves, excitedly discussing what brand of potato chips are tasty. The cameraman stopped near the two of them and focused on them, recording their conversation completely.

Lin Ye and the other person slowly walked forward, glancing at the different kinds of products on the two shelves. Only when he walked to the fridge that had ice cream did he remember to turn back to take a look.

The people walking behind him were trainees from other hostel rooms. Xia Dongchan and the other person had not followed them. Lin Ye walked back in the same direction he came from but saw that there was no one in front of the potato chip shelves anymore. His two roommates and the cameraman were both no longer there.

Lin Ye walked back to the refrigerated portion. When he walked past shelves in the middle, he would take a look into the aisle. However, he did not know where those two went. Instead, he met Jiang Lian and Ming Rang, as well as the cameraman that was following them.

He walked over and originally wanted to ask the two if they had seen Xia Dongchan. But Ming Rang managed to see his figure approaching from the reflection in the clear glass door before Lin Ye could open his mouth.

Ming Rang had one hand resting on the glass as he turned his head around and smiled, “Let me take a look, which didi is this?”

(T/N: I think I’ve mentioned this a few times, but didi is little brother, it’s kind of like a more affectionate way of referring to younger guys that people sometimes use)

The cameraman’s camera turned over to Lin Ye when he heard Ming Rang’s words. Lin Ye could feel that the camera was focused on the name on his waist before moving it upwards from his waist, focusing on his face.

Lin Ye did not purposely turn his head to look at the camera and instead, put on a perfect smile.

Jiang Lian turned his head back when he heard those words and glanced at Lin Ye, before saying, “Come over.”

Lin Ye’s smile turned to one with an appropriate amount of confusion, walking closer to them and asking, “What’s the matter?”

Jiang Lian did not say anything before, reached out to hook his arm around Lin Ye’s neck as the camera filmed them. His other hand lightly swept across the different flavors of Haagen-Dazs on the shelf, “Which flavor do you like?”

Lin Ye was truly stunned and his mind was blank for a moment, unable to react.

The arm that Jiang Lian rested around Lin Ye’s neck lifted slightly, scratching Lin Ye’s chin as if reminding him before he asked again mildly, “What flavor do you like?”

Lin Ye finally returned to his senses and realized that the other was purposely interacting with him and showing how close they were in front of the camera. He quickly adjusted his expression and asked back, “Why? Are you going to buy me ice cream?”

Jiang Lian laughed and let go of his neck, slowly asking, “Do you want to eat ice cream?”

Ming Rang leaned against the refrigerator next to them and slowly cut in, “Jiang Lian, I’m standing right here. Are you going to use our shared money to buy ice cream for another didi right in front of me?”

He realized that Ming Rang was changing the topic and Lin Ye finally remembered what he was here for, “Did you guys see Xia Dongchan? I got separated from him.”

Jiang Lian said, “I didn’t see him.”

When Ming Rang heard it, his smile became brighter, “We picked up a lost didi,” He decided on his own, “I’ll announce right now that you’ve been inducted into our group temporarily.”

After he said that, he did not give Lin Ye a chance to answer and directly pushed the shopping cart to him, “The new didi needs to be good and help his gege do the hard work. You’re in charge of pushing the shopping cart for us.”

(T/N: gege means big brother)

Lin Ye felt that it would not be a bad idea to follow them and get some screentime. Lin Ye reached out to take a hold of the shopping cart and Ming Rang led the way to walk to the snacks section behind them. He casually took a lot of snacks and threw them into the shopping cart. When they walked past the chocolate aisle, Jiang Lian took some boxes of imported chocolate as well.

Lin Ye lowered his head and glanced at the things in the cart that had nothing to do with hostel decoration, “Is this considered misappropriation of public funds?”

Ming Rang said uncaringly, “Anyway, the prize for this sort of competition is nothing good.”

When Lin Ye heard that, he nodded, he felt that way too.

However, what the two of them did not expect was that the prize given by the production team at the end was truly something quite good.

Two hours later, Lin Ye met up with his teammates at the cashier. While his teammates were queuing up to pay for the things they bought, he walked to the exit of the store to wait for them.

Jiang Lian and Ming Rang were further in front of the queue and finished paying faster than his roommates. They were holding three bags of things in total, Ming Rang was holding one and Jiang Lian was holding two bags.

Lin Ye looked over from where he was sitting a short distance away. He could clearly see that the two bags in Jiang Lian’s hands were not full of groceries. The items in the two bags could obviously be placed in a single bag, but he had them split up into two.

He found it strange but did not ask. All he did was wave his hand as a greeting when the two of them walked past.

However, Jiang Lian stopped in front of him and stuffed one of the shopping bags into Lin Ye’s arms. Lin Ye instinctively turned his head to look for the cameraman but did not see anything.

He sat on the stool and raised his hand to move the bag in his arms. He raised his head to look at the other, his dark eyes not turning elsewhere. His tone was half-joking and half-serious, “Has my job as your laborer not ended yet?”

“It’s already ended,” Jiang Lian lowered his head to meet Lin Ye’s gaze and smiled slightly, “This is your reward.”

Lin Ye was stunned for a moment and could not help but lower his head to take a look. The bag in his arms had the boxes of chocolate that Jiang Lian had taken previously.

When they returned to their hostels, time was given to the trainees to decorate their hostel room. Lin Ye’s roommates had decided on a game theme. They stuck game-themed wallpaper on their walls and those that knew how to draw climbed up and down and vandalized the light-colored wallpaper. The wall that was near the balcony was left empty so that everyone could sign their names there.

Lin Ye and Xia Dongchan installed a small hanging hoop on the wall next to the entrance of the room, with a miniature basketball.

Qi Huan and Cheng Chi placed a small table and two stools on the balcony, with two old gaming setups placed on the table, these had been brought by the two of them in their luggage.

There were two large drawers on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The left box was full of chewing gum, the right one was a lucky draw.

At exactly seven, the trainees’ hostels were opened to the public. Everyone queued up to visit each other’s hostels. There were all kinds of methods being used to attract votes. Some rooms gave out snacks, some gave out fruits. There were even hostel rooms that prepared a small performance with guitar and singing.

Lin Ye’s room had the most number of people standing in front of it. The six of them had revamped the room entirely into a gaming room. The trainees entered in groups of two and first did a basketball challenge at the door before they went to the window to play a Tetris competition. Finally, they went to the sofa to see who could make a bubble with the chewing gum first.

The game portion was best of three, the winner could get a chance to participate in a lucky draw. There were ‘thank you for participating’ prizes and snacks.

In the end, in the anonymous voting portion, their hostel room succeeded in getting first. The six of them had thought that the prize was snacks, but did not hear the staff members mention anything.

It was only the next day when they were sitting in the recording classroom that they realized that the prize had something to do with the second public performance.

Qi Huan described it as ‘originally thinking their pocket only had five bucks, but when they reached out to touch, they realized they had five hundred bucks’.

The staff members gave every trainee a similar paper, asking everyone to write down their name on it as well as the trainee they wanted to work together with in the second performance.

Five minutes later, everyone’s survey forms were collected.

Shen-PD announced the task for the second public performance, “There are ten songs to perform, and for seven songs, there will be eight people in each group. In the remaining three, there will be ten people per group. All the songs are a secret, and each person’s choice is also a secret.”

Then, someone raised a hand and asked, “How will we be choosing the song then? By random?”

Shen-PD said, “It’ll only be kept a secret from the trainees that have yet to choose their song. If you walk out from this classroom now, you’ll be able to see a series of classroom doors with different song names pasted on them. You can choose the song you like and enter the room. There’s a limit to the number of people in each room. When the room is full, a staff member will paste a sign that says ‘group full, do not enter’.

“Thus, this time,” Shen-PD’s smile was sly, “If you guys want to be grouped with the trainee of your choice, it’ll depend on your luck.”

Then, someone asked, “Is the order that we choose based on our previous ranking?”

“That’s right,” Shen-PD nodded at him, but suddenly added, “But, there are some exceptions today. The room with the highest number of votes yesterday in the hostel decoration contest, all the trainees in the room have priority today.”

There was an uproar among the trainees.

No one had expected that there had truly been a mystery grand prize. Lin Ye and his roommates were all shocked.

Cheng Chi and Qi Huan were already scheming. They would choose a vocal song as their first choice after they went out, but if there was more than one vocal song, they would choose the song with the shortest name.

Lin Ye sat at the side, instinctively turning his head to look towards Jiang Lian, who was sitting behind him. He was not sure if he could choose the same song as Jiang Lian.

Feeling Lin Ye’s gaze, Jiang Lian lowered his eyes and looked back at him, as if knowing what he wanted to say. However, his expression was normal as he changed the topic, “Have you played CS before?”

Lin Ye was stunned and answered after a moment, “Nope.”

Jiang Lian’s expression was not surprised. He simply raised his eyebrows and slowly said, “Amongst all the maps in CS, the map I like the most is the jungle map.

Before they started to choose their song, there was a small interactive portion. The staff members had already finished sorting out the survey forms. Shen-PD wanted to announce the trainee that the most people wanted to work with.

The PD purposely placed all the survey forms of the Class A people at the bottom and started from the other trainees. Aside from the seven Class A members, the remaining trainees often wrote higher-ranked trainees as the trainee they wished to be teamed up with. Some wrote close friends.

It was like a mess of CPs. Some were the one-sided arrow in a love triangle while some had chosen people that chose them back.

Lin Ye and Xia Dongchan’s survey forms were stacked up together. Shen-PD read out the forms one after another. Both of them had written Jiang Lian’s names, and neither of them was very shocked about that.

Jiang Lian, who was steadily seated in the center position of the show was undoubtedly the most popular choice in this survey.

When there were only the seven people from Class A left to announce, everyone was feeling very curious. Among the seven people, the sixth and the seventh chose each other, while the three trainees in the same hostel room, the fifth-place trainee was stuck in a triangle with the fourth place and another trainee.

The remaining Ming Rang and Qiu Yi had not hesitated as they chose Jiang Lian. When they read out Ming Rang’s choice, the trainees that were seated were full of emotion.

All the trainees had witnessed Jiang Lian and Ming Rang’s relationship and talent. However, the two of them were unable to work together in the first performance, and they had not been able to see the anticipated strong-strong combination. This caused quite a few people to feel that it was a pity.

They had been unable to work together in the first performance because of the competition rules. For the second public performance, they did not have the same restrictions, and the chances of the two of them working together increased greatly.

Some trainees excitedly whispered to their roommates, “Is Kong Jiang Yue Ming going to be a strong CP?”

(T/N: Kong Jiang Yue Ming is like four words from a poem (not very sure about the poem’s meaning), but basically, all that you need to know here is the Jiang is Jiang Lian’s Jiang, and the Ming is Ming Rang’s Ming. It’s like a ship name)

His roommate looked at him from the corner of his eye, “You’ve been going on the Internet behind my back?”

The trainee smiled guiltily and stopped speaking.

Everyone’s gaze was trained on the last questionnaire in Shen-PD’s hand. Everyone was thinking in their heart that the name that Jiang Lian wrote down, with his position as the center, was the most suspenseful thing for a lot of the trainees. However, Jiang Lian was not tense at all.

Under the watchful gaze of everyone, Shen-PD looked towards the paper in their hand. After a second, Shen-PD made a surprised sound.

All the trainees lifted their faces.

“It looks like no one managed to guess who our center chose,” Shen-PD laughed, tone teasing, “Let’s congratulate trainee Lin Ye, getting honored with the title of the trainee that Jiang Lian wants to work with the most!”

Everyone was so shocked they were speechless, their gazes landing on Lin Ye.

The trainee that first brought up the Ming Rang and Jiang Lian CP was full of shock and his roommate next to him opened his mouth to joke, “Your CP has fallen apart.”