Chapter 126: Transmigrated as a Scumbag in a Boy Group Survival Show (8)
“Don’t move,” Zhan Kongqing said.
“…I’m not moving,” Cen Yu replied, looking back. “Are you hallucinating?”
Which eye of his had seen him moving?
Zhan Kongqing frowned, unable to understand how Cen Yu could spout nonsense with such righteous confidence.
His fingers slid lightly along Cen Yu’s spine once more, only for Cen Yu’s body to instantly twist again—
“…” Cen Yu.
“…” Zhan Kongqing.
“It’s like a knee-jerk reflex,” Cen Yu turned his head to explain. “Subjectively, I completely do not want to move.”
Zhan Kongqing couldn’t be bothered to argue with Cen Yu. Taking a close look at the lacings tangled up like earphone cords left in a pocket for three days, he simply dug out a pair of scissors from his suitcase.
With a swift snip, he cut through the lacings wrapped around Cen Yu’s waist.
Cen Yu naturally saw Zhan Kongqing’s movement and heard the snap as the cords were cut. After a moment’s hesitation, he decided to speak up, “I don’t have money.”
Zhan Kongqing took a second to register Cen Yu’s meaning. Once he realized Cen Yu was hinting, ‘If the clothes are ruined, I don’t have money to pay for them,’ he was almost angered to the point of laughing.
Setting the scissors onto the desk beside them, he said, “I have money.”
Of course, those words were spoken out of pique.
Unlike young masters like Jiang Jueming and Li Yanxiao, Zhan Kongqing held the tragic beauty script.
His family’s financial situation was genuinely dire…
His initial reason for joining the survival show was so simple it would bring tears to one’s eyes—
The production crew had enticed him with the promise that all contestants would receive free boxed meals, and as the show progressed, participants would also get a cut from filming embedded advertisements.
Originally tempted by the free boxed meals, once Zhan Kongqing heard he could get a cut of the advertising revenue, he had decided without hesitation to politely give it a shot.
Though he never deliberately played the pity card, poverty—much like a cough—was impossible to hide, especially when some contestants in the group came from wealthy backgrounds. Yet like a stalk of green bamboo, Zhan Kongqing remained dignified and unyielding, never deliberately concealing his financial hardship.
Marketing accounts had even dug up his family background, adding a layer of tragic beauty filter to his image.
—As well as a “debt-ridden shou” persona, Cen Yu thought to himself.
Zhan Kongqing probably didn’t even know it himself!
In the fanfictions, he was eternally the one buried in debt—ranging from a few million at the least, to an endless string of zeroes at the most!
And because of those debts, Zhan Kongqing had to endure the overbearing force and coercion of the other members…
Looking at Zhan Kongqing’s frost-cold face, Cen Yu thought he truly lived up to being the protagonist shou’s best friend—he was indeed as gorgeous as a heavenly immortal.
While Zhan Kongqing wasn’t as eye-catchingly tall as Li Yanxiao at 187 cm, he was actually quite tall and slender…
Sitting on the edge of his bed, Cen Yu watched as Zhan Kongqing set down the scissors and began changing out of his clothes.
He had originally assumed Zhan Kongqing would match his exterior—giving off the feel of a delicate, fragile beauty—yet upon catching sight of the defined muscle lines across his abdomen, Cen Yu instantly felt—
Wait, something’s off.
Squinting his eyes to take a closer look at Zhan Kongqing, he saw that the man’s muscles were firm and tightly knit. Though he appeared tall and lean on the outside, once his shirt came off, he was far from frail.
Perhaps because Cen Yu’s gaze was too glaringly obvious, halfway through taking off his shirt, Zhan Kongqing turned his body away with a touch of discomfort. He raised his head to look at Cen Yu. “What are you looking at?”
“…How did you build those muscles?” Cen Yu got straight to the point. “Pretty impressive.”
Zhan Kongqing’s movements halted at his words.
He looked at Cen Yu, who was sitting on the bed looking up at him.
Cen Yu was still wearing that stage outfit. With the lacings at his waist cut, the garment hung loosely draped across his body.
The collar at the front of the top was extremely high, resting right against Cen Yu’s throat, giving off an impression of restrained abstinence.
Yet Zhan Kongqing knew full well what the view looked like at the back of that outfit—a two-finger-wide gap… With Cen Yu sitting so languidly at the head of the bed, hands propped on either side, if one stood behind him and looked down from above,
one could likely trace the view all the way from the line of his neck down to his waistline tucked into his trousers.
Or perhaps even further, which wasn’t impossible either.
Tossing his upper shirt onto his own bed, Zhan Kongqing looked up at Cen Yu. “Manual labor.”
“Manual labor?” Cen Yu seemed to spark a bit of interest. “What kind of work?”
Zhan Kongqing looked at Cen Yu, unable to tell whether the man was playing dumb or had genuinely never paid him any mind.
His family background was something discussed countless times on the show. Even if he didn’t want to play the pity card, the production crew frequently deemed it a great gimmick—a poor person’s self-esteem and tiny sense of privacy were practically the least needed things here.
Especially in a vanity fair like this.
His poverty had instead turned into a prop to boost engagement.
Even though Zhan Kongqing felt a deep disgust toward all of this, he had no choice but to play along with the show crew’s act because he truly needed the money.
Yet right now, looking at Cen Yu’s almost innocently brainless inquiry, an indescribable emotion inevitably welled up in Zhan Kongqing’s heart… He didn’t put on a new shirt, but walked over to stand right in front of Cen Yu with his upper body bare.
Cen Yu didn’t seem to understand why he would suddenly walk over.
Zhan Kongqing merely lowered his gaze to look at Cen Yu. “Weren’t you curious how I built them?”
He looked at Cen Yu. “Why don’t you come closer and take a look?”
Confronted with the set of abs shoved practically right in front of his face, Cen Yu instinctively averted his gaze.
A few seconds later—
Whatever, how about another look?
He inspected Zhan Kongqing’s firm, tight abs closely. Who would have thought the protagonist shou’s best friend possessed such solid physical specs?
Tracing his gaze along the lines of Zhan Kongqing’s abdomen, he slowly worked his way up to the man’s chest, and finally to his unreadable face. “They’re built pretty well.”
“So how did you train them?”
Zhan Kongqing watched Cen Yu’s expression as the man looked up at him, taking in those two tear-moles beneath his eye.
When Cen Yu spoke, the tongue stud inside his mouth was clearly visible as well…
“Working on construction sites,” Zhan Kongqing said.
“Hauling cement.”
Perhaps because this topic carried a strong gimmick value, the production crew had brought it up repeatedly. Thus, when Cen Yu had asked him just now, he had assumed in his heart that the man was playing dumb.
Looking at it now…
Cen Yu really didn’t seem to know.
Taking in Cen Yu’s gaze—a mix of “appreciation” laced with “I want to build muscles like that too”—Zhan Kongqing ultimately stepped back on his own.
Returning to his bed, he picked up the shirt he had just pulled out, slipped it over his head, and then turned back to look at Cen Yu. “…Since we’re sleeping in the same room from now on,”
“We might as well lay down some ground rules first.”
Cen Yu wasn’t particularly surprised by Zhan Kongqing’s proposal.
After all, in the original work, Zhan Kongqing was a person who held strong opinions and cared deeply about rules.
Standing up, with his back turned to Zhan Kongqing, Cen Yu slipped off his stage outfit… The dusting of body glitter made his cool-toned skin appear all the more eye-catching under the room lights.
In the very next second, Cen Yu pulled on the hoodie he had brought out, blocking Zhan Kongqing’s line of sight.
