Chapter 136

unedited

At that moment, the talking voices surged around Qi Jing, but he didn’t hear any of it.

The only thing he could hear was the heavy ‘thump, thump, thump’ sound, each beat stronger than the other. It was his heart—his heart’s beating blocked away the clamouring noises of the numerous audience, as if someone clicked the mute button by an accident. He was sitting in a vacuum, hearing only his own, hurried breathing.

It felt a bit… feverish.

He tried to remain cool, but still kept feeling hot.

After saying this ID, Shen Yan didn’t provide any explanation—he didn’t need to. He only nodded his head quietly toward the person asking, signalling that he had already finished his answer.

And as for the audience, they also didn’t need any explanation, as just hearing this ID was enough to set the crowd aboil.

As for Qi Jing, he also didn’t need an explanation—because he should understand.

Qi Jing understood.

And because he understood, the moment he heard the answer he almost stood up from his seat, but barely managed to hold himself back.

At that time, he suddenly felt an impulse—unlike the impulse to stand up and run onto the stage he just had the moment earlier, it wasn’t a careless urge spurred by the heat of the moment getting to his head, but a thought he clearly understood the outcome of. His reason was still there, he also somewhat calmed down, but he still made a choice to do something he would usually never dare to do.

Shen Yan still had the last question to answer before he had to leave the stage.

It was the last question, and so it was also his last chance—

When he saw that the host on stage moved forward, preparing to choose the next person, his throat bobbed slightly—he immediately made up his mind, raising his hand up.

“Hey, hey…”Qiu Tianyang on his side got genuinely scared by him doing so, looking at him with a startled expression. He couldn’t help but call out, attempting to warn him.

His heart was racing in his chest, yet he had a wide smile on his face, the warm and full thing in his chest making him determined to keep his hand raised. To express his eagerness, he even waved it toward the stage, making sure that the man on the stage would notice him.

Shen Yan did notice him—and couldn’t help but stare, surprised.

And when he saw Qi Jing’s raised hand, his astonishment was even more profound. He didn’t react at first, sending him an inquiring gaze, shocked. Qi Jing met his eyes, smile becoming even more radiant. He kept his hand raised high up with no intention of putting it back down, nor any fear or hesitance—it seemed like he really, consciously and on his own, wanted to ask his question.

At that time, Shen Yan suddenly opened his mouth, hurriedly stopping Yang Chunqu, “…Miss host.”

“Hm?” Yang Chunqu was still undecided who to ask next when she got called, so she turned her head at him, at a loss.

Shen Yan lowered his gaze, asking huskily, “About the last candidate to ask a question… Can I be the one to choose them?”

So that’s what it’s all about. Of course, Yang Chunqu had no reason to decline, “Of course.”

Saying this, she let him have the right to choose.

The moment the fans heard that Shen Yan would choose on his own, even more hands shot up enthusiastically, striving as much as they could for the rights to the last question. Someone put up their hand while shouting “Kitty’s Papa, look at me! Look at me!”. Someone else straight up stood up, waving both their hands, jumping continuously to attract his attention.

But those to Shen Yan were all as if caught on a monochrome photo, with only that man with a faint smile in the last row appearing vibrant with colours, so bright that he couldn’t take his eyes away.

So he slowly took a breath, extending his hand to point there.

“Last row,” He said in a deep voice, “The person with his hand up back in the last row—”

Everyone turned their heads all at the same time to where Shen Yan was pointing, every pair of eyes in the venue momentarily focusing on Qi Jing. Among them some were full of curiosity, some were disappointed, some envious, and some were filled with displeasure for him snatching the last question. Faced with so many gazes watching him, Qi Jing remained just as calm as before, lowering his hand with an easy smile then gracefully standing up to receive the mic passed by the worker.

He could hear clearly what people in the audience were secretly whispering about.

“Eh, the one asked is a guy!”

“Oh, but he looks quite refined!”

“Anyways, I feel like the guys here are all either the novel fans or the game fans and wouldn’t ask any questions I’m interested in and I’m! So! Hurt!”

“Sir, sir! Can I ask you to help us ask a question related to Don’t ask for my return date! You’re the last one, so if you won’t ask it then no one will get to do that, please~”

People fixed their fervent gazes on him—after all, in this situation, they could only rely on him to pry some information about ‘Don’t ask for my return date’ from Shen Yan’s mouth.

Under each of those watchful gazes, especially those who begged him to continue asking the questions about ‘Don’t ask for my return date’, Qi Jing smiled slightly. First, he cleared his throat unhurriedly, then tapped the mic to test it before finally speaking, “Hm… First of all, thank you for your answer to the last question, I’m honoured.”

His voice slowly passed through the speakers, causing the whole venue to go completely silent for a second.

And the next second, the whole place resounded with squeals.

“Oh my dear!”

“Don’t ask for my return date? The real deal?? Aaaaaah&#k2026;!”

“Holy heck&#k2014;this voice, it’s definitely Don’t ask for my return date’s! And he even said that he’s &#k2018;honoured’, it has to be him! My heart almost leaped out of my chest!”

The startled buzzing among the crowd amused Qi Jing to the point he almost laughed, but he held back, standing leisurely, his posture relaxed.

His heart at that moment was still a bit loud, but he didn’t panic, didn’t hurry.

At that time, Shen Yan replied to him, “You’re welcome. Everything I said, it was all sincere—”

The way he replied left it clear to everyone that he wasn’t at all surprised with Qi Jing’s real identity, evidently knowing since the very beginning who he was choosing. The atmosphere of the scene quickly reached the boiling point as the fans whispered to each other’s ears, unable to hide their excitement—this development with one surprise chasing the other excited a lot of people enough to make their voices shaky as they whispered to themselves.

“Haha…”

Qi Jing laughed slightly. When he did, his breath quivered on the microphone, almost betraying that belated note in it.

“Fine, I really intend to ask a question, otherwise I might earn a beating from everyone here.”

Before going to the main point, he still cracked a small joke, making a couple of girls in the front rows giggle secretly. Only then, he met Shen Yan’s gaze and asked, “In all of the auditions you took part in till now, in some you commemorated your grandpa, in some you challenged yourself, all of them with some importance or commemorative value for you. That being the case, I would like to know—which one was your favourite?”

People in the audience collectively stopped discussing, pricking up their ears to listen.

Only to hear Shen Yan chuckling lightly, his voice deep and sincere, “The one where I played with you.”

“Oh my—!”

When the audience heard it, they exclaimed from excitement, with some of them already lowering their heads to compile a Weibo post, wishing to pass this news to their friends in the circle as fast as possible.

And as the two of the involved were simply holding the other’s gaze, each had a subtle smile on their lips, in need of no further elaboration.

“Thank you, A-Yan.”

When Qi Jing called him this publicly for the second time, a glint of light danced in Shen Yan’s eyes. After a moment, he slowly nodded his head at him, saying nothing.

After this, Qi Jing calmly returned the microphone to the event worker, simply sitting down among the public that was already slipping out of control, his expression unchanging. But it didn’t stop the people from glancing his way while excitedly discussing the scene from just now with their friends. Aside from that, there were a couple of his little fans who waved at him from a few rows away, shouting, “Lord Return Date, Lord Return Date! We love you!”

He returned it all with a gentlemanly smile, waving back at them, then continued listening to other introductions with no qualms about his actions.

At this point, Qiu Tianyang finally snapped out of it, watching him speechlessly for a moment before whispering, the lingering fear still audible in his voice, “…You little… Do you even understand how this can end?”

“Hm?” Qi Jing’s eyes narrowed in a cheerful smile, looking completely unbothered, “I don’t care. If I let this opportunity go, there would be little chances for the next one—and aside from that, I’m content with this answer, so it’s enough for me. The antis can make a noise out of it however they wish to.”

Right, suddenly he was so unbothered by this all—

No matter if it was before the competition or after it, Shen Yan could calmly face everything, so he could do that as well.

All these mouths were plastered on other people’s faces, no matter how he tried to control it, the less he would be able to—so why not just stop paying any mind to it altogether. As long as they understood each other between the two of them, as long as they continued to depend on each other and help each other, it was enough.

“Only those with a guilty conscience would act so sneaky and secretive. I haven’t done anything wrong, so why should I need to hide?” He smiled brightly.

“Eh,” Hearing this, Qiu Tianyang sighed helplessly, “Fine… As long as you get your mindset right…”

At that time, Qi Jing turned his head toward him and added,

“Rather than worrying for us, you’d better worry about yourself for a bit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Shen Yan won both a side character and an NPC role, so he got arranged to come on stage exactly between those two groups—which means, after him, it’s going to be the group of contestants playing the NPC roles.” Qi Jing narrowed his eyes mischievously, appreciating the sight of the colours changing slightly on the other man’s face upon hearing this, “It was you who went against great god Bronze Sparrow Terrace for Noodle’s sake on Weibo. So now that everyone is aware of that, there will definitely be someone who will ask about this—don’t you agree?”

Qiu Tianyang didn’t even have time to say ‘You’re right’ before he heard Yang Chunqu announcing far away on the stage, “Next, we will continue to introduce the following contestant from the NPC group—everyone, welcome the voice actor for the page boy ‘Lu Wei’, contestant ‘Crossing the bridge noodles’—Tan Zixian!”

Crossing the bridge noodles’ ID was already famous in the first place, with no small amount of fans, so when the host said this, everyone had a hard time sitting still.

“Aaah, Little Noodles is about to turn up!”

“Which one is it? Which one??”

A great deal of the people below the stage started reaching their heads out, trying their hardest to take a look at the back of the stage, their faces expectant.

What everyone looked for was a “refreshing youth like a clear water”. Or, to be a bit more realistic, “refreshing young man like a clear water” would make a do as well. Most of all, it would be best if he had gentle features, a shy and delicate individual that seemed detached from the filth of this world.

As a result, the one who walked forward wasn’t the pitiful little white bunny they imagined, but a grave and stern man clad in a black suit, dressed like a model example of an elite. Although this man’s looks were quite exceptional, because it was far too different from everyone’s expectations, it could be said that instead of being an eye-candy, it made everyone go wide-eyed from shock. He went to the front of the stage without a single word, correcting his collar slightly, allowing not a single trace of negligence to slip through.

The girls below the stage were dumbfounded, with a wave of astonished ‘eh’ raising up.

“Eh?”

“Thi-… This person is Little Noodles?”

“So… So handsome, and so stylish…”

“Lies! You can’t be our sweetheart Little Noodles! Lies, lies, lies!” Some people cried, unable to believe, but their eyes still couldn’t help but gravitate toward that face, so even those voices of protest slowly started to die out.

The scene went into an uproar for a while.

Tan Zixian’s calm and composed, tepid words resounded throughout the venue, “You were shouting so loudly just a moment ago, could it be that there is not a single Time Limit shipper here? What is your standpoint?”

The fans were shocked.

Qiu Tianyang was shocked.

Qi Jing was shocked as well, but after the initial shock, his lips twitched—Noodles-kun, I beg you, don’t be so ‘individualistic’ with your means to shift the attention!

Setting the whole ‘individualistic’ character of it aside, this measure was truly quite effective. Sure enough, the fans momentarily moved their attention away from Shen Yan and Qi Jing, now watching him, starry-eyed.

“Kyaah~ This voice it really is Little Noodles~ I’m a veteran die-hard, there’s no way I could mishear it~”

“I ship Time Limit! Although I admit that just now, I kinda began to ship Kitty’s Papa and Return Date, but! I still love Time Limit the most!”

“Time Limit rules! Ugh, although now I feel like I could also ship Limited Time!”

“Little Noodles… Ah, now I feel like this nickname doesn’t suit the real person at all. What to do, I never thought that he would actually look this mature in person—”

—I just knew you would all react like this. Qi Jing sighed woefully, tossing a silent glance at Qiu Tianyang at the same time.

And as expected, Qiu Tianyang was smiling.

But unlike the smile he couldn’t contain when Two went on the scene, this time it was a faint, quiet smile—his gaze rested on that person, staying there for a long while. Qi Jing intended to say something, but the Q&A section had already started on the scene, so he temporarily focused on it instead.

Just like most of the other contestants, Tan Zixian left the choice of people to ask a question to Yang Chunqu.

But this time, there were many more people raising their hands, so Yang Chunqu spent quite a while before finally choosing one.

“Little Noodles… Ah, no, Lord Noodles, your appearance in person really surprised us all!” The first one mentioned this particular matter, giving a voice for everyone’s thoughts, “I listened to a lot of your works, and the vast majority of them was for the youth or barely adult young man roles, so my image of you was also as a young and inexperienced boy—but today, it got completely subverted! That’s why I’m very, very curious—how old are you actually?”

Below the stage, the Rice Noodles Fans echoed along, waiting while holding their breaths.

Tan Zixian didn’t give an upfront reply, only asking back, “I believe that good ninety percent of the people here are of age starting with ‘2’. Am I right about that?”

Most of the people nodded their heads instinctively, Qi Jing included.

Not to mention those of age starting with ‘2’, there were also quite a lot of girls of age starting with ‘1’, since Noodles’ fanbase was quite young on the most part, especially with the VA and games fans being predominantly from the younger generation.

At that time, Tan Zixian lifted his chin and raised brows, “Then those of you whose ages start with the number ‘2’ or below, you should all call me ‘ge’—”

What was that right now? An auditory hallucination?

Qi Jing’s worldview wasn’t getting F5ed anymore, nearly getting deleted altogether instead, leaving him even more shaken than when he heard that Two was a teacher. Meanwhile, the fan used the most straightforward means to express her astonishment, saying out loud, “Ehh? Cou-, could it be that you’re already in your thirties?”

Tan Zixian smiled faintly, neither admitting or denying.

Everyone’s jaws were on the floor.

This time, Qiu Tianyang finally cracked up, actually having the balls to wave his hand at Qi Jing, who was looking at him dumbfounded, seeking his confirmation. With that look of being outside of the picture, he said, “Don’t look at me, I’m an exception, my age also starts with ‘3’. I’m also older than him, so I can still call him ‘Little Noodles’.”

“Wh-, why would someone like Lord Noodles read us children books on the voice channel?”

The second person was no older than eighteen or nineteen, even more like white-rabbit-like than any actual white rabbit—a frequent visitor of Tan Zixian’s children book reading sessions on his YY channel.

To be honest, Qi Jing was also curious about that.

And the reason Tan Zixian gave was beyond what everyone had imagined, “There was one time when, because of my work, I got in touch with some people from a school for the blind children. It was also the time when they were recruiting volunteers to record the audiobooks for those children and asked me if I was interested, so I agreed. Among those recordings, some of them were recited, while some of them were more like stories and needed a couple of people to play different roles together, so it’s also part of the reason why I took interest in audio drama voice acting later on.”

“Oh…” It was the first time for Qi Jing to hear this, so he gasped in surprise along with everyone else.

“Ah, an origin story like this sounds so amazing,” The little fan was both shocked and belated, seemingly very proud that her idol used to help the blind children, “So it became a kind of habit for you to read those children stories?”

“Mhm. It’s because I later kept in touch with that school. Aside from them, I also did stuff like this for other non-profit organisations, but sometimes there are no events like this being organised, so right now, I’m just recording them by myself and sending them out, to see if any of them have any use for it.” Tan Zixian said impassively, “I would always practise before the recording to get into the feeling, so I always just read it once in my channel first.”

So that’s how it was…

Once again, Qi Jing gained a new understanding of this man. Maybe he wasn’t actually as ‘cold’ as he looked on the outside?

As he joined the audience in the applause, he couldn’t help his eyes from stealing a glance at Qiu Tianyang.

Only to see him holding his cheek on his hand, eyes gazing at the man on the stage as he sat quietly. He didn’t know what Qiu Tianyang was thinking about, only the slight curl at the corner of his lips let Qi Jing understand his current mood clearly—he seemed to be immersed in some happy memory, light flickering somewhere deep in his eyes.

If someone put a mirror before him right now, he would probably get shocked as well—this expression looked so tender that it was almost illegal…

Qi Jing watched him secretly for a moment, thinking about how those guys kept stumbling about with their feelings—even more so since Qiu Tianyang wasn’t always a homosexual—and how he was worried that Tan Zixian would follow the same path of no return as he once entered in his dark past. But looking at it now… Maybe he should reconsider it one more time.

“Did you know about this?” Qi Jing meant Tan Zixian volunteering to record the audiobooks for the blind children. He wasn’t sure just how much Qiu Tianyang knew about this guy.

“I know,” This fellow didn’t move his gaze, only opening his lips slightly, “And only because I knew… I introduced him into this circle.”

Qi Jing was dumbfounded.

“He…” He got introduced to online voice acting by you?

So they actually first got to know each other in real life?

Only half of the questions got asked by that point, and the host on the stage had already chosen the first fan to ask the next one, so Qi Jing could only leave his own for later.

The third person coughed a couple of times first, preparing to ask the following question.

“I think that if people here are into online voice acting, everyone should know about this particular situation—the already retired for four years, legendary VA god Sleek horses run fast came back to life on Weibo, and it was to speak up for your cause. He got into a fight with god Bronze Sparrow Terrace and currently Weibo is still in a mess. In this case, I would like to ask you—what is your actual relationship with Lord Sleek Horses?”

—There it was.

The main point was now here.

Qi Jing took a breath, making no noise, not even daring to blink as he watched.

Tan Zixian tossed a glance at Qiu Tianyang in the last row—he was still looking only at him, meeting his gaze quietly and waiting patiently.

After a long while, he lowered his gaze and tossed out four impossible to make out words, “First party, second party,”

He said it in a standard tone of a lawyer pronouncing the case.

Then, he once again added three more words. It’s just, this time there was a trace of a smile as he said them.

“He owes me.”

A/N:

…The author wore the strongest sunglasses to finish writing this chapter… (Originally I wanted to finish writing this for the Winter Solstice, *flops* _(:з」∠)_ )

But, I feel so blessed (oi).

That’s why I imagined a certain little theatre while writing this:

Noodles: Author, what about your standpoint as the ringleader of the Time Limit Ship? →＿→

Lotus: QAQ I… I… I apologise to Returning Geese…

Noodles: →＿→

Lotus: QAQ But I also ship Time Limit a lot…

Noodles: →＿→

Lotus: QAQ Fine, lately I started to ship Noodles X Bang too…

Noodles: This Winter Solstice we’re having a lotus soup.

(2Yan sits in Kitty’s Papa’s arms, smiling gently as he watches Noodles cooking a lotus soup)