Wake Up, This is Not a Dating Show! Chapter 17.1

Chapter 17 “I’ll help you win it back next time.”… part 1

No one had expected that in such a relaxed entertainment setting, Yi Xingzhi would suddenly say such a thing so formally.

For a moment, everyone was at a loss for how to respond. The host stepped in right on time to smooth things over: “Xingzhi is truly a very serious person. He plays games with such principles, and yet he still managed to survive to the end and win. That’s quite the showing of true skill.”

Yi Xingzhi didn’t explain further, remaining silent with a faint expression.

Ye Nai pondered his words. What did “I don’t like this kind of feeling” refer to? The feeling of betraying someone?

He recalled the rumors about Yi Xingzhi betraying the band to go solo. Was it that after doing such a thing and paying the price, he was now unwilling to experience it again, or was there some hidden truth?

After the host delivered his closing remarks, he began announcing the current competition standings: “The winners of this match are Yi Xingzhi, Fu Tingyuan, and Yuan Lei, each scoring 1 point. Adding the points from the previous episode, the current point situation is: Pei Ze 3 points, Yin Tianhan 3 points, Yi Xingzhi 3 points, Fu Tingyuan 3 points, Yuan Lei 2 points, Ye Nai 1 point.”

Caught completely off guard by being dead last, Ye Nai’s attention was instantly pulled back to reality.

He got second to last in the previous episode, and Li Wan had mocked him to that extent. Today, wouldn’t the guy literally do a lion dance to celebrate?

Before that happened, Jiang Kuan’s bombardment would probably arrive first, delivering a one-hour passionate speech on the theme of “I told you not to let it get to your head and bet so big.”

Ye Nai got a headache just thinking about it. As soon as the recording ended, he put his phone on Do Not Disturb mode and automatically ignored the massive pile of messages he had received, strolling out of the venue at a leisurely pace.

As he walked past Yi Xingzhi, their eyes met.

Actually, after hearing the explanation just now, Ye Nai wasn’t really angry anymore. He knew that Yi Xingzhi acted that way for his own reasons, not out of contempt for his opponents or disrespect for the game.

That was enough. He was in no mood to get to the bottom of it either.

“I’m leaving,” Ye Nai took the initiative to toss out a sentence.

“Mhm.” Yi Xingzhi nodded, seeing that his mood had recovered, and handed him an item. “Here.”

Ye Nai took it. It was a box of grapefruit-flavored mints.

“I heard you looking for them this afternoon, and just saw them being sold on the roadside,” Yi Xingzhi explained simply.

Ye Nai paused, not expecting him to have actually noticed such a tiny detail.

An impulse suddenly bubbled up from the bottom of his heart, and he decided to push through and clear the air completely.

“It’s a bit late to say this, but I still want to apologize to you for the misunderstandings during our first two encounters.” Once he started, Ye Nai found it was actually much easier than he had imagined. “I originally wanted to take advantage of being on the same team today to help you win a round. I didn’t expect this kind of outcome, but I guess I did contribute a bit of effort, right? Let’s call it even between us, OK?”

A trace of surprise flashed through Yi Xingzhi’s eyes. It was unclear whether he had no idea at all or if he had already forgotten the previous misunderstandings.

After a moment of silence, he said, “It doesn’t count as even.”

Hiss, this guy was quite hard to please.

“Then what do you want…”

“I’ll help you win it back next time,” Yi Xingzhi continued calmly.

Ye Nai processed this for a second. Did Yi Xingzhi feel that by causing him to lose today, it turned into him owing Ye Nai, so he wanted to help him win it back?

Could buying him candy also be a part of making amends?

This guy was really… interesting.

Of course, Ye Nai didn’t think his loss was Yi Xingzhi’s fault, but since the man had already said it, there was no need to hold a debate competition over who owed who more.

“Alright.” He responded casually, raising the candy in his hand and shaking it. “Thanks.”

Only after getting away from the crowd did Ye Nai finally feel the fatigue. Having recorded a program all day, his bones were about to fall apart. He planned to disregard everything and get some sleep once he got in the car, and face the storm after waking up.

However, as soon as he opened the car door, he saw Jiang Kuan sitting inside, glaring at him with a livid face.

Ye Nai froze. He put down the foot he had just lifted to step into the car and executed a silky-smooth, 180-degree turnaround with a deadpan expression.

“Where else do you think you’re going?” Jiang Kuan grabbed him and yanked him into the car.

“Hey, Brother Kuan, what brings you here personally?” Ye Nai looked surprised, as if he hadn’t seen him at all just a moment ago.

“Cut the crap. If I didn’t come to catch you, you were going to play the disappearance game with me again.” Jiang Kuan pointed at Ye Nai’s phone. “If you don’t have Do Not Disturb on right now, I’ll twist my head off and let you kick it like a ball.”

Ye Nai instantly found a chance to strike first: “Look, your stakes aren’t small either, so stop talking about my bet. Besides, this is only the second episode. There’s still a long way to go, and chances to turn the tables. Don’t rush.”

“You still know I was going to talk about the bet?” Jiang Kuan said crossly. “Thanks to you, I don’t even know which matter is worse right now!”

“What else is there?” Ye Nai blinked, genuinely clueless.

“Didn’t I emphasize over and over to rein in your temper and build good relationships with others?”

Ye Nai recalled his actions and issued a sincere question: “Did I not build good relationships?”

Jiang Kuan closed his eyes, suppressing his anger. “Your idea of ‘building good relationships’—does that refer to asking someone why they didn’t bring substitutes to a football match, advising someone to bring a microscope to the hospital, or cursing the production team as sick and telling the director to step up?”

“All of those were broadcasted?” Remembering that those scenes were streamed live on the spot, Ye Nai chuckled. “You have a pretty good memory, remembering them all after hearing them just once.”

“If even I can remember them, won’t those netizens play with those words until flowers bloom? Are you complaining that your entertainment career is too long? Offending a top-tier idol and then offending Zhuolai Media? If you don’t want to do this job anymore, you can just say it straight out. I certainly don’t want to do it anymore anyway!”

Jiang Kuan entered his usual mode of talking to himself and giving up on himself. He abandoned arguing with him, picked up his phone, and started typing furiously.

“Writing your resignation letter again? What kind of masterpiece is it that you haven’t finished writing it after over a year?” Ye Nai was used to this state of his and couldn’t be bothered to care. He casually opened Weibo, planning to see exactly how the netizens were performing.

As a result, the first thing that caught his eye was the very thing he wanted to see the least—an unlucky Weibo post.

@LiWan: [A bad memory might be due to old age. At the time, the bet was about taking first place, right? Surely it wasn’t dead last?]

The attached picture was a screenshot of Ye Nai sitting at the bottom of the points ranking in the program.

It was obvious that this was a pre-planned collective action. Not long after it was posted, several rappers whom Ye Nai had dissed before and who were completely incompatible with him commented and reposted it, successively joining the mockery brigade.

[Can the ability to talk big also be called true skill? The pie you’re drawing isn’t as good as the pizza I ordered.]

[If it weren’t for having some cash, who would pay attention to him? Eyes higher than the top of his head, thinking the world revolves around him.]

[Just a weirdo, go home early and play with mud.]

With these few leading the charge, their fans were also eager to throw in some rhymes, following suit and bad-mouthing Ye Nai. The comment section turned into a mess of forcefully rhymed, nonsensical words, becoming a large-scale amateur poetry and clapper talk scene.

Ye Nai simply couldn’t bear to look at it. Seeing that Jiang Kuan was still single-mindedly writing his resignation letter, he casually tapped ‘repost’ and wrote one of his own:

[No need to stage a drama of dropping stones on someone in a well, spending all day studying the strokes of my name. Instead of doing this, why don’t you figure out something else? Only the weak love to huddle together because snakes and rats are of the same nest.]