Ji Shi is great in many way, except when he’s being small-minded. Though I’ve often get fooled by his good features and the cute smile he always wore until I forget about this part of him.

I have an Weibo alt¹ to trample on his grooves sometimes. Like for example, after a LOTUS concert, I’d probably post something like:

MULILI: Failing to reach either the high or low notes, then tried to cover it up by putting up a cute face, how is he a lead singer

God knows how he found my alt, a day after posting that I received his text inviting me to a hotel. I was already exhausted after dance practice, but as a yet-to-debut young artist that has a super star as sugar daddy, I has to do my part by obeying my sugar daddy’s orders and booking the room. I’ve even made myself white and clean for him, before texting him the room number.

“Good boy², wash up and wait for me in bed” Ji Shi replied.

And so I lay down on the bed, and started fighting with my closing eyelids. When I opened my eyes the next time, it’s already bright and sunny outside. I was still lying on the bed with an abominable pose, alone.

I sit up straight, not good, I thought to myself. I must have offended him somehow.

As a yet-to-debut newcomer, how would I even afford a 5 star hotel? Even so I couldn’t bring myself to ask him why he stood me up. Sitting on the bed, I tried my best to recall all my past actions. Outside of the Weibo alt, I’ve always kept my many complaints of him bottled up inside, so he couldn’t have known. Then there’s only one possibility left, he must have found my alt account, and likely has been following it for some time, although I still don’t understand how he did it.

Checking out from the hotel was like someone has torn my kidney apart.

My suspicion was confirmed when I’m in the taxi, as Ji Shi has just texted me:

Don't be angry, Bao Bei. I've transferred you the money. You shoulda let me know the next time you go, I can give you tix to the Rock zone. I'll even spray water at you~~ 😘

He even included a kissing emoji at the end of such an obscene message. I leaned my forehead on the front seat after. How could I be angry? It’s more of anxious than anything..

The taxi passed by Freedom Shopping Plaza and a humongous LOTUS rockband lightbox advertisement appeared overhead. The LOTUS band are the ambassadors for a certain local fashion brand. The five of them are spread out in the ad, with Ji Shi naturally standing at the center, looking cold and charming, with a Photoshop’ed face looking over all beings. Why the emphasize on Photoshop’ed you ask? This is because despite having a handsome face, there’s actually two acne scars on his left cheek, likely resulted from not properly handling the acnes. While this doesn’t affect his handsomeness in the slightest, when it’s magnified hundreds of times like this, it’s still quite unsightly and challenges the minds of those who chance upon it, especially so for the staffs responsible for putting up the ads.

He wore a dark blue jeans with black letter print in the ads, paired with a large sleeveless black V-neck T-shirt. There’s a flower tattoo below his collarbone and “—ptember” on his shoulder. Why did he has the “September” tattoo anyway? I thought about it objectively, no, his birthday isn’t in September, then I thought about it narcissistically, nope, not mine as well… I tiled my head as I admired the tattoo, and then it hit me. The letters S, T and B just so happened to be on the bulging part of his arm muscles. I don’t believe it’s merely a coincidence, it must be meticulously designed that way by him just to highlight his pitiful ripple-like muscle definiton.

Okay, fine. It’s not as pitiful as I made it out to be. If his muscle definition are ripples, then mine would be the splashes of a coin in a puddle. Neither of us are any better so lets leave it at that.

The taxi is leaving the plaza so I took one last look at it. And then I found out that he sneakily revealed glimpse of his underwear at the waist band of the jean! What the f- Unforgivable! He’s getting out of control!

Ji Shi is twenty-six this year, four years older than me, and he’s still considered fresh meat in the industry. His career is in full swing in this superficial world that judges others by one’s looks.

The radio’s playing LOTUS new song. Listening to the embarrassing lyrics written by him, I covered my face and begged the driver to change the channel.

“No can do” The young driver replied in high spirit.

I rushed my way to the agency next day, thankfully I still managed to arrive on time. The agency intends to form an idol group called JUST with me and four other newcomers. And it’s now the final sprint before our big debut. To keep us in check at all times, as well as remind us the burden of being idols, every day there’s always someone who would suddenly jump out from god knows where and yell at us:

“XXX DAYS UNTIL DEBUT!! FIGHTING!!”

Like trained Pavlov’s dogs, we would raise our fists and respond loudly: “FIGHTING” Sometimes I wondered if I’m in a MLM group. To be fair though, it is effective. My teammate got rid of his habit of nose picking due to this, and we even joked that we’d be able to control our farts if we continued on like this.

Among the members, I’m close with the team captain KK. He’s a year older than me and both of us joined early on while the other three came in later at the same time. The most attractive among us is Bi An, while the best dancer is Adam. As you can see, our stage names are mixed with Chinese and English names. I was fortunate enough to have kept my real name Xiao Tong, while some are less so. The cute one in our team is called Gary Shang…

With 99 days left until our big debut, we all tightened up as if there’s only 99 seconds until the ugly spouse is to meet the parents. But as soon as I returned to my apartment and lay exhausted in bed, I felt that 99 days is still so far away. If I were to continue burning my adrenaline like this, I don’t know if I can hold on until then.

I don’t know if I’m the only one feeling this way. From KK to Gary Shang, everyone entered the business to realize their dreams, while I entered entirely by accident. I’ve always love drawing since I was young, and for some time I was obsessed with attending art academy. But one day, I found out that my sister is better at painting than me and is more talented at it. My family can only afford for one of us to attend the art academy, it’s either that or no one goes. We’d be forced to attend normal schools, technical schools or just start working, doing manual labours. After some thinking, I decided to give my sister the chance, while I become the breadmaker for her. If she can go further and become successful in this field, then I’ll also be credited for her success. It’s enough for me if she can fulfill my dream for me as I’ll always be the one who kickstarted her career.

It’s never easy to give up on your dream, but I’ve made peace with it. This is because I realized that despite not going to the art academy, I can still continue to draw, so there’s nothing tragic and sad. When I was scouted to be interviewed by the agency, I brought a few of my artworks as requested. My looks and talents might not have made any deep impressions, but my paintings definitely did.

And so I was successfully signed by the agency. My agent told me that it’s due to my temperament. You mean the temperament of my art right.

Speaking of that, when it comes to being a star, other than my slightly-above-average looks in recognizeability, and accidentally getting signed by an agency, I don’t think I have any other talent worth noting. After some devilish trainings, my dancing skills only scored like 70… out of 150. My singing is not as good as KK either, with his excellent vocals and musical sense. Speaking of singing, I really have to thank Mr. Ji Shi, the lead vocal of LOTUS. If someone with horrid vocals like him can become the lead singer of a chart-topping band, why should I be afraid of simply getting by in a simple idol group? (Thank you my senior for allowing me to regain my confidence, kindly accept these bows)

Let’s come back to the present, shall we. After a day of practice, the five of us decided to have a dinner together to celebrate the countdown to our debut going from three digits to two. KK proposed for us to go for steamboat, I agreed, as steamboats are lively. Gary Shang and Adam also agreed. But Bi An said no, as he couldn’t handle spicy food. No worries, I said, as we can order non-spicy steamboat. He looked at me and smiled, saying that it’s fine, and asked us to enjoy ourselves.

“No way, the five of us must go together, how about you propose a place?” I said.

Bi An proposed a restaurant and the rest of us were dumbfounded. That’s a high class Japanese restaurant with unimaginably high prices! We wouldn’t dare to even think about it any other day. We were just about to debut, who knows what will happen… What if we break up over some natural disasters, or the agency went bankrupt or there some crack down from the country et-cetera et-cetera… Fine fine, they were simply excuses. The only reason is that we’re POOR. But I don’t remember Bi An being that well off either, he sure is willing to give it up for food.

“I’m craving for some Japanese food too” said Adam as he changed his tune suddenly, looking very excited.

I wanted to argue that it’s too much for us, but KK gave me a knock on the back and said “Okay then, let’s go”

And so we went to the Japanese restaurant that we couldn’t even pronounce properly.

This meal was uncomfortable to say the least. Everyone was sitting in a row at the front, watching the chef prepare our orders on the spot. Every time a dish is served, the waiter would give lengthy explanations on it. This made us unable to have fun chats with each other. The elegant display of each dish is very pleasing to the eyes, but even so it couldn’t conceal the fact that the food amount is too little. After consuming them, they felt like a drop in the ocean floor. What’s worse is my cude tongue can’t differentiate how these sea urchin sushi, tuna rolls are any different that those from the streets. Given the choice, I’ll still prefer livelier places like streetside foods and steamboats. Oh well, so long as we achieved our goal in the end, that’s all that matters.

I went to the washroom halfway through and found out that it’s unexpectedly stylish. The out-of-frame mirror and the warm lighting made me look extra handsome, if I do say so myself. I couldn’t help taking a selfie and posting it on my Weibo alt.

MULILI: Aren't I handsome?

Then I replied to the post myself:

Sooo handsome!!

The washroom was especially quiet, I groaned for a bit, and remembered that Ji Shi would occasionally smack me from behind while I’m at the urinal. His head would then come up over my shoulder and ask “Peed your pants?”

One time I actually did peed on my pants, I was soo pissed! But he’s my sugar daddy so it wouldn’t be right for me to scold him, so I can only stand there watching him laugh out loud. Trust me, I was soo close to pee all over him, but still I quietly wiped up my pants, intending go back to change later. Ji Shi thought I’d be wasting his precious time if I do that, so he went and bought a new pair for me.

While I was annoyed by his pranks, I was admittedly quite happy when he bought me the pants. The brand labels were gone, and they’re well-fitted with particularly comfortable materials too. Excitedly, I figured that this must be some major brands. As a human, even I have appreciation for vanity sometimes. Pants bought by a super stars, it must be LEE-branded at the very least.

For a time, this pair of jeans became my favorite, and I wore it every other day to work. Later, someone told me that they recognized the logo of the jeans from somewhere abroad! I hurridly asked for more details. That night, I received a text after washing and drying the pants on the balcony:

I remembered now, it's a children clothing brand from Australia! Here's their website!

…I can already hear his laughter from all over here.

What’daya know, I found an exact pair at a kids clothing store at Freedom Plaza the next day. The store has clothes for kids of three to fourteen years old. I suppose a fourteen year old can indeed reach my height with enough overgrowing.

Aish, what a bother.

Thanks for Reading!
This is a prequel of sort to Soul Vibration! If anyone’s interested in picking up this novella, do let me know! You can contact me at this email