At the end, the marketing director asked again if any controversial remarks needed to be edited out. Fang Juexia shook his head.
“Since I chose this segment, I was prepared for the backlash.”
Fang Juexia didn’t want to hide anymore. Ignoring negative voices had been an effective emotional coping mechanism, but now that they were confronting him, he was ready to face them head-on.
He had to admit that Pei Tingsong’s relentless drive had genuinely influenced him. In the past, to protect himself and avoid dragging others down for his own future, he simply stayed silent. But preserving his integrity and defending his purpose were fundamentally aligned. No matter how many times his back was stabbed, he would refute the rumors. Falsehoods remained falsehoods. Even if no one believed him, even if the cost of refuting them was high, he had to speak up.
Not running away was also a form of resistance.
That night, just before falling asleep, he received a message from Pei Tingsong.
[Hengzhen Style: I am honored to have collected such a precious sample as you.]
Fang Juexia chuckled. He always saw himself as lowly; he couldn’t fathom what made him the “precious specimen” Pei Tingsong described. So he replied:
[Moonlight: I’m merely the peak of a normal distribution—the most ordinary, commonplace specimen.]
Pei Tingsong disagreed.
This world was utterly mad. Everywhere, frenzied attackers reveled in violence, while puppets followed their every step. Rage and brutality congealed into black water—an irresistible torrent that swept everyone along, drowning them all. Resisters like Fang Juexia—mature and rational—were as rare as true heretics. He leaned on his cane, walking against the current, each step firm yet trembling.
Pei Tingsong knew Fang Juexia wouldn’t easily accept his assessment. No matter how lavish his praise, Fang Juexia—born into negation—would never believe compliments. He trusted only himself, his clarity almost painful.
So he changed tactics, abandoning persuasion.
[Hengzhen Style: Then I’ll be the most ordinary sample. I’ll stand beside you. We’ll be two parallel points on the curve’s peak.]
It was insignificant, but together they could face the world’s truth and falsehood.
[Moonlight: Sounds good.]
Celebrity work was incredibly demanding, especially for stars at smaller agencies who sacrificed rest to maintain visibility. This break was precious for them. Though they still had fixed variety show recordings, the schedule wasn’t intense.
Fang Juexia and Pei Tingsong had arranged to meet at the practice studio to write songs for their new mini-album. Passing by the snack shop downstairs, Fang bought a bunch of everyone’s favorite treats to take upstairs. He asked Pei to bring some to the practice studio for He Ziyan and the others, while keeping a portion for Xiao Wen—he’d been working especially hard lately.
Stepping out of the elevator on the fifth floor staff department, he saw few people working late. Xiao Wen’s desk lamp was still on, and Fang Juexia silently breathed a sigh of relief—he’d feared arriving too late, that Xiao Wen had already left for a meeting.
But as he approached, he realized it wasn’t Xiao Wen at all. It was an unfamiliar face—a young woman who didn’t look very old.
Fang Juexia had an excellent memory and quickly recalled the new hire Xiao Wen had complained about.
His gaze swept across the desk, but his attention was drawn to a silver USB drive plugged into the computer’s host.
“Are you the new assistant?” ” Fang Juexia asked calmly, his tone composed. The startled newcomer, however, flustered and scrambled to her feet from Xiao Wen’s seat, sending papers scattering across the floor. She immediately crouched down, frantically gathering them while apologizing profusely.
Fang Juexia placed the snacks he’d bought on Xiao Wen’s desk and crouched to help tidy up. “Why so nervous?” He glanced at her intern ID, which read Wang Lu.
“I… I’m a bit timid,” Wang Lu explained.
“You can’t be timid in this line of work. You’ll need to get used to walking at night.” Fang Juexia bent over to gather the papers, noticing most were schedule sheets for Kaleido members and Xiao Wen’s work notes.
Hearing Fang Juexia’s words, the girl was almost speechless.
“Don’t be afraid.” Fang Juexia stood up, placed the documents on Xiao Wen’s desk, and added before leaving, “Oh, and a reminder—Xiao Wen really dislikes people sitting at his desk. I believe the company assigns interns their own workstations. You should stick to your own seat from now on.”
He glanced one last time—the USB drive on the host computer had vanished.
These actions were highly suspicious. For days, several of them had been stalked by private investigators in shifts. Information leaks must be the cause. If this new assistant was indeed behind it, Cheng Qiang absolutely had to be informed.
Fang Juexia pondered this as he walked toward the practice room. At the doorway, he encountered Pei Tingsong, who was staring at his phone with a troubled expression, as if something had just happened. Fang Juexia slowed his pace, but Pei Tingsong still noticed him.
“Did you give it to Xiao Wen?” Pei Tingsong looked up, his displeasure vanishing completely at the sight of Fang Juexia. “By the time I brought it over, they’d already finished. I saved you a bowl of preserved egg and lean pork congee.”
Fang Juexia nodded. He’d originally intended to report this directly to Cheng Qiang, but now something else crossed his mind.
“Have you been investigating the private photos lately?” he asked bluntly, cutting straight to the point.
Pei Tingsong chuckled. “Nothing escapes your notice. How did you guess?”
“Xiao Wen told me you had him take those private photos.” “And that’s not all. He’d always suspected Pei Tingsong wasn’t the type to just retaliate online. He couldn’t stand injustice, couldn’t tolerate even a speck of sand in his eye. Naturally, he’d find ways to make the other side suffer.
Pei Tingsong didn’t deny it. “Yes, I had people look into them. Just a little lesson, to make them understand their actions carry legal consequences.”
He continued, “Most of these people come from wealthy families with too much time on their hands. They think they can get close to celebrities. I had to make them understand their actions affect their families. I can’t control that, but their parents can. If that doesn’t work, the police will.”
Thankfully, it wasn’t actual violence. Fang Juexia guessed his countermeasure and breathed a sigh of relief, then relayed what she’d witnessed at Xiao Wen’s desk to Pei Tingsong.
“Follow the trail of that intern assistant. We should be able to root out a bunch of them.”
Pei Tingsong was quite satisfied. He immediately passed the intern assistant’s information to his investigators, instructing them to thoroughly probe the matter—the reward would be generous.
“Wait a few days before telling Brother Qiang about this assistant. For now, keep things quiet. I’ll just wait to close the net.”
The moment the two entered the practice room, they overheard the others gossiping while rehearsing.
“Heard As’ stock has been plummeting lately.”
“No way. You didn’t buy shares in the rival company, did you, Ling Yi?”
“I don’t have that kind of spare cash. I just heard from a friend that there’s been another shakeup in Astar’s upper management. Not sure if it’s true or not.”
The captain spotted the last two members entering and clapped his hands. “Alright, let’s get practicing together. We’ve got songwriting to do later, right?”
“Alright—”
Though such incidents were hard to eradicate entirely, that didn’t mean they should be ignored or that the members deserved such treatment. Even if the online discussions sparked controversy, the mere act of debating it could awaken some people. The participants needed to be exposed at the source, while everyone else needed to understand that such twisted behavior deserved moral condemnation.
Under Cheng Qiang’s investigation, that newcomer turned out to be a habitual offender. This time, she even organized an entire group, serving as its administrator. She infiltrated Xingtu to sell everyone’s private information—not just Kaleido’s, but also that of their senior and junior members.
Seeing the dismissal notice, Fang Juexia finally felt a weight lift from his heart.
He finally felt the urge to rest properly.
One day, he discovered a bud had formed on the double-petaled jasmine on the balcony. Like a tiny baby tooth, it had sprouted a sharp tip, small and perfectly formed, nestled quietly among the emerald leaves.
Only then did Fang Juexia realize summer had truly arrived.
Summer was a season for a little laziness. After all, spring had merely dozed off and would only wake again next year.
Without work, Fang Juexia had no desire to go out. While the others played games in the living room, he curled up in his room reading The Roots of Romanticism, which he had borrowed from Pei Tingsong. He had never found the time to read it properly back then, only skimming bits here and there. Now, rereading it, his perspective had shifted. Initially, he’d wanted to understand Pei Tingsong as a person; now, he found himself seeking insights about himself within its pages.
Was he truly a romanticist? Fang Juexia remained skeptical.
The book was dense with humanities and social sciences discourse and expression, not particularly accessible to someone with a science background like Fang Juexia. Fortunately, it was a collection of lectures and quite engaging, so he read every word carefully, pausing frequently to ponder and form his own thoughts. But as he read on, he came across a sentence underlined by Pei Tingsong.
[“Whenever the word ‘freedom’ is mentioned,” Fichte said, “my heart immediately opens and blossoms, but the moment the word ‘necessity’ is spoken, my heart begins to spasm painfully.”]
The emphasis wasn’t on the underlining, but on his annotation. In English, it read: Fichte, you are another me.
He had also circled the word “necessity” in pen, scribbling a line of barely legible English. Fang Juexia could only make out a sentence or two, along with his own initials. It roughly said: This is Fang Juexia—always spouting ‘obviously’ and “why not?”—treating necessity as truth.
This must be an old reading annotation by Pei Tingsong, as the fountain pen ink had faded somewhat.
What Fang Juexia found intriguing was that Pei Tingsong privately paid such close attention to his speaking style. Even his occasional “mathematical” verbal tics were worthy of being recorded in this young master’s annotations—quite an honor.
He found a pencil and quietly added a line beside it.
[When fjx speaks of freedom, his heart blooms. For the attainment of freedom possesses its own inevitability.]
