Did Not Say Anything About My Feelings - Chapter 45. Unfinished Building

He had not used a phone in a long time and for a moment, Lin Ye did not know what he should do with a phone.

He had originally thought about playing a few rounds of games for Jiang Lian, but after considering the fact that his skills were lacking, worried that he would cause Jiang Lian to lose rank points and that Jiang Lian would come for him later and cause trouble for him, he gave up on that idea.

Two minutes later, he opened Jiang Lian’s Weibo. In the room, the background music that they were using for filming was playing. He wanted to see what the fans of the show thought of him.

He was not the kind of person that would fear and worry about what the public thought about him. Instead, he had always had the confidence that he would not feel hurt by those random comments online.

Jiang Lian’s Weibo was a verified one with a million followers. Lin Ye exited Jiang Lian’s Weibo page and went to the account choosing page, managing to find the other’s private account.

He logged onto Jiang Lian’s completely clean private account. He typed his own name in the search bar and right before the search results appeared, Lin Ye had already mentally prepared himself for the possibility that no one would mention him.

Afterall, his screen time was so short in the first two episodes.

Unexpectedly, the whole screen was filled with clips from ‘Fox Spirit’. Lin Ye clicked into the original Weibo poster to take a look, and realized that there had already been more than ten thousand reposts.

The profile picture of the Weibo user was dark, and the last Weibo update from the user was from the days they published the video.

He clicked on the thousands of comments to take a look.

There were three different groups of people in the comments. One group was scolding the original user for calling themselves a Kongjiang Mingyue CP fan, pretending to like Kongjiang Mingyue but using the popularity of the Kongjiang Mingyue CP to popularise a new CP. The person was truly putting up a false front.

(T/N: Ship names~)

That group of people were probably solo stans of Jiang Lian, scolding the poster for trying to leech of Jiang Lian’s popularity.

The large majority of the people remaining were asking about Lin Ye’s information, excitedly saying, “I like this new CP! Let this new CP get popular!”

There were commenters that were being wet blankets and saying, “There’s no need to hope for it to get popular. It won’t. A one-sided arrow cannot be considered a CP, that’s just a leech.”

The girl that made the original comment felt like lightning had struck her, “Come over here, let’s talk about it properly. Why is it a one-sided arrow?”

That person replied, “Don’t you know that Jiangsi Banli is a double sided arrow? Take a look at @Guahua Planting Base”

(T/N: Jiangsi Banli is basically ginger and chestnut, as for Guahua, it would translate to melon flower, but I left it like that because gua has another meaning, there’s this saying in Chinese that directly translates to eat melon, which is basically the same kind of meaning as when we joke about getting popcorn to watch a drama unfold in real life..)

Lin Ye searched for “Kongjiang Mingyue” and “Jiangsi Banli” before he found out that the former was the CP name for Jiang Lian and Ming Rang, while the latter was the CP name for Jiang Lian and Li Yuan.

He returned to the first Weibo post and looked at the Weibo user that that user had talked about.

What he saw was a very popular Weibo post.

“@Guahua Planting Base: News about the choosing of group mates. The production team asked the trainees to write down the names of who they wanted to collaborate with the most. MR wrote JL, JL write LY.

The popular comments below went as such:

“@shdjdh: Ming Rang wrote Jiang Lian, Jiang Lian wrote Li Yuan?”

“@**bjkj: It’s just like what I said previously, that the childhood friends CP wouldn’t be able to continue hahaha!”

“@bnhhe: There are so few leaks, of course, we need to properly share them with my pretty girls!”

“@oapsk: Jiangsi Banli is real!!! The Jiangsi fans are celebrating today!!!”

“@etuioioo: Is this news reliable??? It’s the first day our Jiangzhi Yenai started to have posts about them and it’s already over???”

(T/N: Jiangzhi Yenai literally translates to ginger drink, coconut milk)

“@dtuuey: Sigh, these are all CPs, but the neighbouring CP fans stay in a villa with a sea view, while our house is just a barely standing rotten one. The difference is too stark.”

There was one very tiny voice: “Did no one notice that Li Yuan and Lin Ye’s initials are both LY?”

Of course, no one noticed and the only reply was trying to convince her to not be delusional, “Please wake up, Jiang Lian has already collaborated with Lin Ye once but not with Li Yuan. Please use your brain to think and you’ll know that it’s definitely not Lin Ye.”

As someone involved, Lin Ye did not really understand, but he had a feeling he knew what “Jiangzhi Yenai” meant. However, he still left that Weibo page and searched up Jiangzhi Yenai.

A few seconds later, as expected, he saw posts from the CP fans of him and Jiang Lian. There were two posts that were more popular. One was the video of ‘Fox Spirit’, the fans were all commenting below, saying that they were now fans of this pair.

The second was a short story called ‘Ginger juice meets coconut milk’. Lin Ye had thought that it was the name of a milk tea or a dessert. Not thinking too much about it, Lin Ye opened that picture and started to look through it.

(T/N: I translated it as ‘meets’ here, but taking out the Chinese word that was used, the literal translation would be ‘knock into’, but I guess it’s also used as ‘thrust’ in certain contexts…)

A moment later, Lin Ye’s expression was strange as he closed the short story. His body was completely covered under the blanket seemed to heat up uncontrollably. His skin seemed to emit heat, and the bedsheets that were against his skin seemed to heat up slightly.

Lin Ye was so hot that his mouth was dry. He even wanted to directly pull off the blankets that were on him and sit up to take in some air. He had just thought about it when the blanket was pulled off by someone.

Lin Ye instantly climbed up from the bed, looking around the hostel room that was now empty and quiet. He was still in a daze, “Everyone left?”

Jiang Lian nodded, “They left.” After he said that, his gaze slid across Lin Ye’s face, which had turned red under the blankets. Then, his gaze landed on the phone in Lin Ye’s hand, an interested look in his eyes, “What were you hiding under the blanket and looking at? Why is your face so red?”

Lin Ye opened his mouth to deny it, “I wasn’t looking at anything?”

The phone in his hand was taken away by Jiang Lian, who was standing by the door. The other clicked out of the photograph Lin Ye was looking at, his expression calm as he scrolled down. After that, he turned away from the phone and looked at the space between Lin Ye’s legs.

Lin Ye pressed his legs together, narrowing his eyes cautiously, “What are you looking at?”

“I’m trying to see if you’ve spoilt the bedsheets,” Jiang Lian answered, raising his eyebrow, “If you spoilt it, you’ll need to wash the bedsheets for me.”

Lin Ye was speechless.

He put on his clothes and got off the bed when he heard Jiang Lian say, “If you return to your hostel room now, you might manage to make it in time to show your face in front of the camera.”

Lin Ye shook his head without thinking, “I won’t be going, I’ll go back when they leave.”

The box of plasters Ming Rang found was placed on the table. Lin Ye walked over and took one, opening it. Then, he looked in the full-length mirror and pasted it properly, asking, “Did Ming Rang go out again?”

He was not done speaking when he heard the sound of the door closing. Ming Rang’s sly voice sounded, “What’s the matter? Did you miss me?”

Lin Ye turned around to look at Ming Rang, his expression complicated, “Did you really spend two hours buying cigarettes?”

Ming Rang gave a long sigh, “I spent half-an-hour buying cigarettes and two hours in your hostel room as a guest.”

Lin Ye’s face turned hot and he instinctively turned away, changing the topic quickly.

More than an hour later, Lin Ye returned to the hostel room, his roommates all asked him where he went, saying that he missed a chance to get more screentime.

Someone asked him, “Did you go to someone else’s bathroom and fall asleep?”

Qi Huan was even more dramatic. He directly said, “Did you go to Beijing to shower? Why did you only come back now?”

Lin Ye smiled, his expression not changing as he explained, “After I showered, I took a trip to the supermarket. When I returned, I went to someone else’s hostel room to chat.”

“Whose room?” Xia Dongchan lazily said, “Jiang Lian’s room?”

Lin Ye nodded his head in response.

Xia Dongchan turned around on the bed, laying on the bed and looking at Lin Ye, “I’ve realized that Jiang Lian and Ming Rang both like you very much.”

“Of course,” Qi Huan, who was once their teammate had an all-knowing expression on his face, “Our Lin Ye is Jiang Lian’s public pick for ‘the trainee he wants to work with the most’. But speaking of that,” He scrunched up his face, his gaze showing envy, “We’ve both been Jiang Lian’s teammate before, why don’t I have that honor? I’m envious.”

The others added, “Me too.”

Lin Ye smiled casually, “So what if I got publicly acknowledged by the center position? It’s not like it can help my ranking rise.”

When they started to talk about the unhappy topic of ranking, the people in the room that did not have a very high rank started to sigh.

Lin Ye went to the balcony to hang his towel out to dry. When he walked past Xia Dongchan, Xia Dongchan’s eyes were sharp and he noticed the plaster on the back of Lin Ye’s neck, asking him, “What happened to your neck?”

Lin Ye froze, his heart clenching. However, his expression was calm as he turned around. He raised his hand to touch the back of his neck, slowly opening his mouth, “The plaster? I was scratched by a nail on the supermarket wall.”

Xia Dongchan did not seem to doubt his words. He nodded and curved his lips, “How did you get scratched by a nail just from going to the supermarket?”

His roommate that was sleeping on the lower bunk opposite him instantly said, “I was scratched by a nail on the window when I was young. Even till now, there is still a mild scar.”

Xia Dongchan and everyone else’s attention was instantly on the other and they moved on from the matter of Lin Ye getting scratched.

The next morning, all the trainees were wearing their white sweaters, and baseball caps that were black or white. They were carrying their backpacks that they had brought with them onto the island, getting on the bus to head towards Huan Shan Park.

Although the park was on the mountain, the road leading up to the park was wide enough that the trainees did not need to climb the mountain themselves. They could simply take the bus all the way to the top of the mountain.

They had seated themselves according to their hostel rooms on the bus. Lin Ye and Xia Dongchan were sitting in the same row. The weather happened to be quite good that day. When the bus left the base, the golden-yellow rays of sunlight shone in through the windows of the bus.

Lin Ye, who was sitting closer to the window, pulled at the curtains that were next to him before leaning on the back of his seat and taking a nap. When he opened his eyes again, the bus was already on the path up the mountain.

Because of safety issues, the bus driver slowed down. Lin Ye pulled the curtains open and looked out the window. He saw that there were a lot of girls with cameras around their necks climbing the mountain. When the girls noticed that the curtains on the bus had been pulled open, they raised their heads. Before they managed to see who was looking out the window, they had already started to smile and wave at him.

Lin Ye’s expression was strange as he turned his head, “Didn’t they say that they were closing the park to the public today?”

When Xia Dongchan heard Lin Ye’s words, he straightened up, looking past Lin Ye and glancing outside. He smiled his signature pretty smile as he responded to the girls through the bus window. Then, he moved his lips slightly and said, “They’re fans, it’s probably the production team that let them in.”

Fifteen minutes later, the three buses from the production team stopped at the entrance of the park. The security guards at the park put up the barriers first, separating the fans from the path before the drivers opened the doors to let the trainees out of the buses.

The moment they got off the bus, the screams and shouts of the fans started. Everyone was stuck outside the barriers, the owners of fansites raised their cameras, not willing to miss a single chance to take photos. The fans were raising their banners and shouting their support, hoping that the trainees would be able to hear their support.

In the beginning, the trainees were looking around, curiously looking for their own fans in the crowd. But after a while, they did not bother continuing to watch the fans. Instead, they were hurriedly trying to find their teammates among the eighty trainees.

Jiang Lian and Ming Rang were both outstanding in terms of looks and aura. They were easily distinguishable among the trainees.

Lin Ye spotted the two of them in the crowd instantly.

As he headed towards them, walking through the crowd, he noticed from the corner of his eyes that his other teammates were also heading over from all directions. It was obvious that everyone had spotted Jiang Lian and Ming Rang instantly as well.

The eight people from ‘Jungle Moonlight’ were quickly gathered. The staff members requested for everyone to go through the ticketing gate at the same time. The eight of them could only stand at their original spot and wait.

Qiu Yi looked around at the fans. Then, he raised his eyebrows in confusion, “Why are some fans holding more than one banner in their hands?”

Lin Ye asked, “Which fans?”

Qiu Yi raised his chin, indicating to the others the direction of the fans he was talking about.

One of their teammates saw and said, “Double fans.”

Qiu Yi scrunched his brows in confusion, “What’s that?”

His teammate explained, “It means double pick.”

(T/N: Sorry for this part, I didn’t know how to translate it without some long explanation + translate the first one in a way that was not understandable. But the word ‘pick’ was used in the original text. In this kind of show when you ‘pick’ someone to vote for, to ‘double pick’ means that you vote for two people.)

Ming Rang interrupted him, touching his chin as he said, very confident of his answer, “Those aren’t double fans, they are CP fans.”

“I know what that is,” Qiu Yi smiled widely, “Whose CP fans are those? There are so many.”

Ming Rang was a little confused, muttering to himself, “That’s not right. What CP would have more fans than mine and Jiang Lian’s CP?”

He took a step forward and squinted, casually glancing at the area that had the CP fans. A moment later, Ming Rang stepped back to stand with the rest. His expression was even more confused. He turned his head to look at Jiang Lian, “If I’m recalling correctly, you’ve never interacted with Li Yuan in the show, why do you two suddenly have so many CP fans?”

Jiang Lian was expressionless, as if he did not care about this matter, “How would I know the answer?”

Lin Ye, who felt like he was probably the only one who knew the situation quietly stood by the side, pretending to not know a thing.

A few minutes later, the staff members arranged for the trainees to queue up to enter the garden.

Because it was too noisy, the staff members had tried their best to raise their voices and shout. However, there were still some people that could not hear and they could only ask the higher-ranking trainees to help control the noise levels.

The fans quickly quietened down when they saw the trainees signaling for them to be quiet. The whole place became quiet and orderly and the staff members instantly let out a breath of relief as they raised their hands to ask the trainees to queue up.

At that moment, there was a shout from one of the fans, her voice cracking, “Lin Ye baby!!! Are you wearing Jiang Lian’s hat!!!”