Chapter Fifty-Two: The Quality of This Generation of Fans Leaves Much to Be Desired! (Please add to your favorites and vote for recommendations!)

Returning to Apartment 402 with Zhang Shuo, who had his head hung low, Li Shixin had just enjoyed a comfortable bath when Zhang Ying walked through the door.

The moment Zhang Ying saw the pair of worn, faded canvas shoes on the shoe rack, she let out a startled cry. Catching sight of Li Shixin in the bathroom, already changed into pajamas and toweling his hair, she immediately began to complain.

“You old man, you said you wouldn’t keep in touch and you really didn’t! You’ve been gone for so many days, couldn’t you at least have called?”

Li Shixin chuckled, knowing there was no way out of being scolded; he simply asked about the phone. When he learned that, apart from a few WeChat notifications, his phone hadn’t rung at all these past days, he frowned.

“Not a single call?”

“Mm…” Zhang Ying nodded hesitantly. She knew Li Shixin was waiting for a call from his daughter and said, “Maybe my sister—your daughter—has just been busy at work lately. Maybe she’ll call you once things settle down in a couple of days. Godfather, have you eaten dinner? Look at you, you’ve gotten darker and thinner from being out these days. Where on earth did you go to ‘experience life’?”

Li Shixin shook his head, signaling that he had no appetite.

After a moment of thought, he picked up his phone and scrolled through the handful of numbers in his address book, dialing one. Only when he heard the recorded message that no one was picking up did he silently set the phone down.

“Godfather…” Seeing Li Shixin’s disappointment, Zhang Ying took his arm gently.

“Never mind, I’ll wait a bit longer.” Li Shixin managed a faint smile, patting Zhang Ying’s hand to reassure her.

While Zhang Ying went to cook some noodles for him, he opened his phone again.

“Hm?”

Seeing over ninety-nine unread WeChat messages, Li Shixin frowned. Upon opening them, he discovered that Mrs. Wu Ming had created a fan group and had invited him to join. But since he’d been away, and Zhang Ying likely hadn’t dared to decide for him, no one had replied. So, Mrs. Wu Ming had sent over a hundred voice messages and invitations in succession.

“Brother Shixin, why aren’t you replying? I haven’t seen you at the square these days, and you’re not answering WeChat either. Where did you go?” Clicking on the latest voice message, sent just after six that evening, Li Shixin shivered at the voice nearly dripping with grievance.

Worried that Mrs. Wu Ming would bombard him with more WeChat messages, he quickly replied: “I’ll join the group right away. If there’s anything, say it in the group.”

Then, he accepted the group invitation.

In his previous life, when Li Shixin was an idol trainee, he’d had fan groups too. He was no stranger to interacting with fans online.

But—

When he entered the WeChat group and saw several pages of chat logs pop up, he was stunned.

What did fans chat about in his previous life’s fan group?

“Wow! Our idol’s new rap is so good!” “The album cover is so handsome! His dancing is amazing! No wonder I like him!” “So-and-so stole the spotlight from our idol at the so-and-so event, that little witch!” “I wish I could be his wife in real life, wake up every morning to his gorgeous face, make cute breakfasts together, and watch him eat all the sausages and eggs (✧◡✧)!”

And now?

Heh.

Some were eager to share the latest “secrets” they’d learned:

[MUST READ] Major announcement from Beijing at 8:40 this morning—this is important!

Do you live in an apartment building? Read this now, it could save your life!

Click this link—it works faster than medicine! 99% of people don’t know!

Some poured out their lonely, rebellious hearts in song:

[Link] Waiting a Thousand Years: Choral adaptation, feedback welcome [grinning emoji]

[Link] Little Poplar: Just posted a new song on Sing! Come listen!

[Link] Where the Peach Blossoms Bloom: Thanks to his aunt for joining the chorus [applause emoji]

Others posted outdated gossip, as if Li Shixin had traveled back to 1998:

UFO Mysteries: The truth about aliens!

Armed soldiers with AKs everywhere just because you’re Chinese [proud emoji]

The best country for China revealed—you’d never guess! (Shocking!)

Most of all, there was soul-soothing “chicken soup” even more toxic than the motivational platitudes he’d peddled to kids on Bilibili back at the junkyard:

Good morning thoughts | Let go, move on, forgive, show compassion.

The fortunes of life—what’s meant to come may not come; what you avoid may not be escaped…

Li Shixin could only stand to read two pages before giving up.

What the hell is all this?

The group was only ten days old and not a single message was normal conversation—just wall-to-wall spam, making Li Shixin seriously doubt his own existence.

The quality of these die-hard fans… left much to be desired!

Brrrrrring.

At that moment, Li Shixin’s phone rang. Seeing the caller ID—Jiao Chendong—he answered immediately.

“Hello? Director Jiao, ten o’clock tomorrow morning, right? I thought you said two weeks? Oh, the situation changed. Got it, I’ll be there on time.”

…

After hanging up, Li Shixin lay on his bed, questioning whether his acting career would be nothing but a flash in the pan due to the quality of his fans, and if he’d end up dying unknown in Rongdian because he couldn’t collect enough applause.

At Rongdian Railway Station—

A young man, shouldering an oversized travel backpack and dressed head-to-toe in outdoor hiking gear, followed the throng of passengers out of the station. Gazing up at the star-studded sky, the young man—whose hairline had strategically retreated to the top of his head—adjusted his large, square glasses.

“Excuse me, comrade, how do I get to the Third Waste Sorting Plant?” He politely asked a paramilitary policeman just outside the station.

After receiving directions, Zhang Quandan bowed in thanks. Looking toward the city’s southeast, he inhaled deeply, full of anticipation.

“Master, I’m here!”

“Zhang Quandan! Is that you, Quandan?”

Suddenly, a shout came from not far away. Turning, Zhang Quandan saw a group of youths dressed much like himself clustered by the east exit. He grinned.

“Heavenly King covers the Tiger!”

“All fools together!”

“Crazy Station Jokers?”

“Soaring to the Ninth Heaven!”

“Hahaha! Enough nonsense—come on, we’ve been waiting for you for over two hours! Let’s go find the master together!”

Elsewhere in the city—

Not far from the 1998 Workers Stadium Square, in the Hongfeng Residence, Chen Boshi was nestled in the arms of a dignified-looking middle-aged man, her twin braids brushing against his chest. Taking advantage of Wu Ming’s busyness in the kitchen, she tattled on her grandmother.

“Daddy! I missed you so much!”

“Aww, Daddy missed you too, Boshi. Have you been studying well and listening to Grandma?”

“Hmph! Don’t even mention it—I’m so angry! Daddy, you have no idea, Grandma… she’s gone bad!”

“Oh?” Hearing his daughter badmouth her grandmother, Chen Antang’s brows furrowed. “Boshi, how can you say such things about Grandma?”

“It’s true! Daddy, you haven’t been home, you don’t know. Grandma has been super strict lately—and obsessed, like she’s lost her mind, chasing after some celebrity.” As she spoke, Chen Boshi pulled out her phone from her panda pajamas and opened a photo.

The picture showed a series of mobile payment receipts from Grandma Wu Ming—dozens, totaling six or seven thousand yuan! “See, in just the past ten days she’s spent so much money! She hired someone to design a website, found a photographer, said she wanted to make a fan home for her idol, paid out of pocket for promo videos and glamour shots! And it’s not enough that she’s a fangirl herself—she’s dragging me in too. Daddy, my studies are suffering! On this exam, I only got first in the whole school, and I was more than twenty points ahead of second place! If you let Grandma keep this up, her life and my education will be ruined!”

“Oh?!” Hearing this, Chen Antang shot up from the chair in his daughter’s room. “This is outrageous! How can your grandmother still be so childish at her age?”

Just then—

A ghostly voice intervened.

“You two, who are you talking about?”

At the doorway—

No one knew when she’d appeared, but there was Mrs. Wu Ming, dressed in an apron and holding a rolling pin, standing there as stealthy as a shadow!