Chapter 72

Act IX: The Secret that Cannot Be Told (6)

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With a busy schedule, time lies quickly. It was National Day holiday in the blink of an eye. Although the beginning of autumn had passed on the calendar, the weather was still terribly hot.

During Golden Week, there were comic exhibitions all over the country. Tan Yiming packed up his luggage, took a few well-known juniors from the company, and embarked on the road of signing autographs across the country.

[T/N: Golden Week = national holiday in China that happens a few times a year.]

In order to attract popularity, large-scale comic exhibitions often invited all kinds of celebrities to come and hold autograph meetings. From the millions of anime masters at station B, to well-known cosplayers and grassroots; the fans' favorite voice actors were also naturally indispensable.

During the seven-day National Day holiday, Tan Yiming spent half of his time on the road. Smiling, shaking hands, signing autographs, taking photos, and interacting with the voice actors and friends beside him to ‘sprinkle sugar’... Tan Yiming felt that this was more tiring than spending a night in the recording studio.

[T/N: sprinkle sugar = spreading dog food of the various CPs (such as him and Gu Liang).]

However, all this hard work was meaningful.

In the signing team, Tan Yiming saw many fans wearing T-shirts with his characters, and some people directly cosplaying as characters in the game. Regardless of gender, everyone looked forward to them with hopeful expressions, wishing that their team would go faster.

They would write letters by hand, bring a lot of small snacks, and some people would even sculpt clay dolls to give to Tan Yiming...

Tan Yiming had a small basket next to him, dedicated to all the gifts from fans, except for the food he couldn't take back, which would be distributed directly to the staff on-site. He packed all the small gifts from other fans and sent them back home.

He also saw a mother in the team. The mother said that her daughter liked to imitate TV characters since she was a child. She was in her third year of high school this year and was determined to apply in the direction of professional voice acting. Her daughter regarded Tan Yiming as an idol, but could not come to see him in person because of tuition.

Tan Yiming picked up a pen and wrote a long series of blessings on the signature board, encouraging her to enter her favorite university - "In five years, Blockbuster Studio will be waiting for you to apply."

The times changed so quickly. Many years ago, voice actors were hidden behind the scenes, and they were still ‘non-existent roles’ in the hearts of the general public. However, now, more and more viewers were beginning to understand and face the importance of this profession.

At one point, a lot of film dubbing work was performed concurrently by drama actors. Those who had devoted their youth to dubbing careers in China, the unknown artists of the previous generation, never imagined that in a few decades, voice actors would have their own loyal fans and would gain endless love.

Tan Yiming never regretted giving up his original career and returning to China to start a business, becoming a voice actor.

Even if his family objected, he was proud of his choice.

...

The rain hit the windowsill and Huacheng ushered in its first rain of the autumn. When Tan Yiming awoke, his brain was still not sober.

He opened his eyes and saw a familiar bedside table, only to remember that he had finished his busy autographing tour and had returned home.

Throughout Golden Week, he had been running shows all over the country, and when he woke up every morning, he couldn’t remember which city he was in.

It wasn’t until he got home that he could relax and sleep till dawn.

It was already past ten in the morning, but he didn’t need to go into the studio to record today, and it was rainy outside...After thinking about it, he simply gave himself a day off so that he could lazily stay in his bedroom and have a good rest.

He picked up his phone from the bedside table and clicked on Weibo, which he hadn't been on for several days.

He first patrolled his comments and private messages, replying to fans’ enthusiastic confessions and rainbow farts. He then looked at ‘@My Weibo’, and found that many people had posted group photos from the day of the signings.

One of the photos’ repost rate was extremely high, and it was actually a hot topic of the day.

It was a fan snapshot: On the main stage of an anime, Tan Yiming stood next to the host, and the light and shadows on the big screen behind him constantly changed, displaying well-known roles that Tan Yiming had dubbed. The man held the microphone in one hand and put the other in his trouser pocket. The cuffs of his white shirt were folded a few times, revealing his firm forearms. He was tall with sword-like eyebrows, starry eyes, and a three-point smile on his lips. He was very handsome, but not a kind of aggressive handsome, instead, he was restrained and humble.

The blogger who posted the photo did not leave any text, only tagging the Super Topic of #Wang Qingyun#, followed by a series of [can][can][can][can].

[T/N: Nevermind, kekeke is not laughing. Ke = can, like I can. (usually means ‘I like’ towards a celebrity or star.]

One could guess what the fans would say without opening the comments.

It was a pity that they wanted to [can], but he did not [can].

Tan Yiming didn't like the photo, but smiled and stroked it.

After patrolling his own territory, Class Leader Tan changed his position on the bed and clicked on the search box, intending to search for news of Xiang Cai as usual.

However, just after he typed the words ‘First Love Is Now’ in the search bar, the search bar automatically offered similar content—

#First Love Is Now stage accident#

#First Love crew, the male lead has fallen and is taken to hospital#

#Happy Pancake Statement#

Tan Yiming: !!!

He was shocked and quickly opened the first hot search.

His hands kept shaking. In just a few seconds, countless of his thoughts flew, but in the end, they all disappeared, leaving his brain blank.

He subconsciously sat up and held his phone, reading the news on the screen word by word—

@Stage Drama Melon Eating bot: [Shock][Shock] The third round of First Love Is Now premiered the night before yesterday in Huacheng, and the fans were extremely enthusiastic. After the curtain call, when the audience rushed onto the stage, a male harasser with ulterior motives mixed in!

In order to protect the female lead, the male lead was dragged off the stage by the male harasser!

This bot was not on site at the time, but some friends contributed video recordings, click here→http://

‘Rushing the stage’ referred to after the curtain call of a stage play, when fans would leave their seats and rush to the stage to give gifts and take photos. The actors would also walk to the front of the stage, shake hands with fans, and accept gifts.

There was mixed praise and criticism regarding the audience rushing the stage. Those who supported it thought that going to the stage was a benign interaction, where the audience could get close to the actors, while the actors could feel the love of fans more intuitively. Those who did not support it felt that it was very rude to enter the stage, because it would make the whole theater messy and affect the perception of other passers-by audience members.

But this time, an audience member of First Love Is Now rushed to the stage and actually caused the male protagonist to fall off the stage! The audience had exclaimed, and the crew directly called the police, who took the harasser to the police station.

Tan Yiming took two deep breaths and clicked on the video to watch.

The person who filmed the video was also a rushing audience member. Her position was on the side of the stage, and she was just in time to take pictures of what happened.

The screen shook, and the female protagonist, wearing her white veil, walked to the stage with a smile and bent down to shake hands with the audience members below the stage. At this moment, a male audience member squeezed into the crowd, holding an oil painting high in his hand. The figure in the oil painting was the female protagonist. The female protagonist was about to take the painting, when the male audience member suddenly pulled her wrists tightly. She was shocked and wanted to pull out of his grip, but she was thin and could not resist the strength of the man.

The surrounding audience noticed that something was wrong, and began to talk and criticize the male audience member. However, the male audience member turned a deaf ear, still staring at the female lead enthusiastically.

At that moment, the male protagonist on the other side of the stage quickly walked over to break off the grip of the harasser with a serious face. So, the harasser became angry and he actually backhanded the male lead's clothes and dragged him offstage!!

The video ended with countless screams, and the screen became pitch black again.

Tan Yiming was stunned for a few seconds while holding his mobile phone, but after a long time, let out a sigh of relief - the male protagonist in the video was not Xiang Cai.

Tan Yiming was so concerned that he had become confused, forgetting that a total of four crews were on tour across the country for First Love Is Now, and this incident was the Huacheng tour crew.

Tan Yiming sympathized with the actor's experience. As a public figure, Tan Yiming had also encountered bad-intentioned fan harassment. Although he had not been injured, it was of the same level of horror.

Fortunately... the person who fell off the stage was not Xiang Cai.

Tan Yiming followed the link and jumped to the official website of Happy Pancake. The official website released an official report of this bad incident.

Three things were written in the bulletin. First, they had already called the police and would pursue the legal responsibility of the harasser along with protecting the legitimate rights and interests of the two actors. Second, the audience would no longer be allowed to enter the stage. Third, the male protagonist suffered minor injuries to his leg and could not return to the stage. After internal discussions within the company, another A-point male protagonist was to be urgently flown to Huacheng.

And the ‘firefighter’ they had chosen: Xiang Cai.

※

"Is there no substitute in the Huacheng tour group?" Xiang Cai received a call from the producer in the middle of the night. His mind was still chaotic when he got on his morning flight in a daze.

Producer: Originally there was, but the substitute’s wife was in labor, so he didn't participate in this North China tour.

Producer: No one expected such an accident.

Producer: We took a look at the scheduling of several other groups, and only your group has substitutes now.

Producer: Xiao Xiang, you have worked hard.

Producer: [Smile][Smile][Smile]

guess: [Goose Flaps Wings].jpg

Xiang Cai reluctantly thought, he had only finished his tour in Chengdu yesterday. He had wanted to have a good rest for a few days, and was also going to meet with other actors in the crew to see giant pandas. How could he have expected to suddenly encounter such an immediate situation.

When acting for a big company like Happy Pancake, the actors were like Lego blocks. With a word of the company, they could dismantle at will, and then combine and insert at will.

Today, Xiang Cai could be called back to Huacheng for an emergency by phone call, so tomorrow, he might also be thrown to Shanghai, Guangzhou, or Shenyang.

As for the company funding the ticket? Unless absolutely necessary, it was absolutely impossible! After all, a crew had dozens of mouths to feed before and after, and the rental cost of the theater for a day was also terribly high. If the ticket was funded and the loss was too much, it was better to pay a ticket fee and call an actor from another group back for an emergency.

Although Xiang Cai regretted flying away, when he thought of the performance fee settled by the show, his regrets were immediately filled with money.

No way, he was the one who had to pay the rent now!

...The uncontrollable divergence of thinking.

When thinking of rent, Xiang Cai thought of the landlord, and when he thought of the landlord, he thought of the chat between himself and the landlord on WeChat.

The chat records between them still stayed ten days ago. The two hypocritically congratulated each other, and mentioned each other’s CPs... with such a false tone.

Xiang Cai couldn't understand why, but his brain was hot for a while, and he actually sent those kinds of inexplicable words to Tan Yiming.

It seemed that every time Tan Yiming was around, he would become a childish teenage ghost.

Xiang Cai refused to think about things that couldn't be understood.

The stewardess walked over and reminded everyone that they were about to take off and to set their phones to airplane mode as soon as possible.

Xiang Cai was about to shut it down when a new message suddenly came to his phone.

And the person who sent it...was indeed Tan Yiming.

Yiming Qingyun: Cai Cai, I saw your company's announcement.

Yiming Qingyun: When will you return to Huacheng?

Xiang Cai bit his lip and replied.

guess: I will go back today, I’ll be there at one in the evening.

Yiming Qingyun: What time is the plane, I will pick you up.

guess: No.

guess: I’ll take a taxi to the theater by myself.

Yiming Qingyun: There are too many people taking taxis at the airport. I happen to have a rest day today.

Yiming Qingyun: And it is raining in Huacheng now, it is estimated that planes will be delayed and cars will not be easy to find then.

Yiming Qingyun: If you can't keep up with the show, how bad will the impact be?

guess:...

Tan Yiming’s words were reasonable, Xiang Cai couldn’t think of any reason to refute.

guess: CAxxxx.

Yiming Qingyun: Flight number?

guess: Well...

guess: As long as you keep the small fees for the gas and highway toll, I will give you taxi fares.

Tan Yiming looked at his phone, and sighed, amused and frustrated.

...Hey, Xiang Cai actually cut things so clearly with himself.

***

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