Sudden clarity.
Like waking from a dream.
Light dawning on the mind.
Those three phrases fit the Little Fruits' mood perfectly. Right, their idol didn't just have insomnia, he had nightmares too.
It hit especially hard for the ones obsessing over who Annie was, and the ones arguing whether Annie's Wonderland really helped you sleep. A lot of people asked themselves hard questions.
Ash Who Never Slips:"If you're always good to someone, they start thinking your kindness is just how things should be. I never thought that line about romance would apply to stanning, and I really didn't think the person taking it for granted would be me, a fan…"
Daoist0759: "It used to be 'I got caught in the rain, so I hold an umbrella for others.' Now it's 'I got caught in the rain, so I tear up others' umbrellas.' Only Jiu-yé's like this: 'I caught a downpour and a nasty cold, so I work myself to the bone developing medicine for everyone else's cold.'"
My Name Is Silent Flame: "I seriously spent time worrying if brother Jiu's found a girlfriend and is about to go public. I really…"
White-Haired Bamboo Temple: "I took a hard look at myself and realized I don't worry about Xiao Jiu because he's too unstoppable. Especially in his career, he's been charging forward and becoming a Chinese label overseas. He's so strong I forgot he's a patient."
Mature Little Fruits know how to turn the knife on themselves, and Gu Peng had set the tone.
How many stabs did it take to make it count? Zoom out from a single case. Ling Zinan was a super lucky Little Fruit, he made it to the Orange Festival and even got picked as a Strawberry Music Festival volunteer. He happily shared the light music with his mom, then, before he knew it, the blade was in his own ribs.
No one knew what scenes he'd cooked up in his head, but he spent an entire afternoon editing a video, then posted it to Douyin and the Orange Family two-creation channel.
The content was simple. He borrowed footage from the MVs for Like Smoke and East Wind Breaks, cutting together scenes of Chu Zhi in ancient costume looking frail, plus shots of him playing the zither.
A caption ran along the side: [I hope my Little Fruits can sleep well], followed by a cut to scenes of late-night studying. In the original MV for East Wind Breaks, the scholar studies hard for the imperial exams. Under this edit and caption, it felt like he was hunched over writing songs for fans instead.
He grew thinner day by day, until he collapsed on the road. Books spilled from his bag. The final shot was the scholar's cracked lips moving, like he was whispering. Ling Zinan added subtitles, [Little Fruits, you can go to bed early now…], then the pure instrumental Annie's Wonderland began to play.
Good grief. Ling Zinan's scissors were ruthless. He chopped a war-and-famine MV into a full-on guilt trip.
"Waaah, I'll sleep properly."
"I swear I won't play on my phone tonight."
"I'll sleep early, can Jiu-yé promise to sleep early too?"
More comments came in.
"I was touched at first, didn't expect a public-service ad about sleeping early at the end."
"Ha, that 'public-service ad' line stuffed my tears back down."
"You sinner, give me back my feelings."
"You can keep feeling touched, because Ah Jiu really did compose pure music for Little Fruits."
Gu Peng swung the blade, the fans got cut, and according to one of the three universal laws, people who get cut want to cut others. They started making more fan works, more fans got cut, and the community formed a tidy little closed loop.
More and more fans felt guilty. A lot of people cleared guilt by spending money. Too bad Annie's Wonderland was free. Fine, buy merch then. Well, everything was sold out. They couldn't even splurge recklessly for their idol if they wanted to.
Only some old hands knew how to set up a ladder to foreign shops for physical albums, or find dependable buyers' agents.
"Look, I did want Annie's Wonderland to 'stab' fans a little," Chu Zhi said in the nanny van, scrolling Weibo, "but there's no need to swap a small blade for a bone scraper." He opened his DMs to apologize to a bunch of Little Fruits, and his public comments got pushed straight to the top.
#YouAlwaysCareAboutOthers shot to number two on the hot search. A fan-topic tag hitting top three without paid promo said it all. That blade hurt.
Number one was, let's say, an official promo slot.
Annie's Wonderland crash-landed in the top three of multiple hot-song charts. Singers who weren't in the loop yelled, "What the heck kind of bot brush is this, a pure instrumental up here?" Then they saw the composer. Oh, it's Chu Zhi. Never mind.
Worth noting, Gu Beisheng's new song was mid-push on the charts and got sunk again, third or fourth time now, just happened to collide with the "Chu Iceberg."
Gu Beisheng's fans, the "Shells," joked he was "the perennial number two under Chu Zhi." Strictly speaking, there was pride in it. After all, that was under Chu Zhi.
The nanny van parked in the Underpants Building's garage. Chu Zhi had arrived to shoot Retracing the Long March. Today was the meet-and-greet dinner for the show's core creatives and guests, time to sit down and get acquainted.
The Emperor Beast rubbed the corner of his eye. "Zhuzi, could you hand me my glasses?"
Xiao Zhuzi passed over the silver wire frames. The makeup artist said they didn't matter much, but the stylist still needed to lock the public-facing look every time.
Professional work should be left to professionals. He trusted the original body's looks. If he could pull off Mu Chire's designs, what other goblin-level looks could possibly stump him?
The life assistant didn't get out. Before taking the show, he'd already decided Lao Qian and Xiao Zhuzi wouldn't tag along.
She still nagged him to eat on time. Just hearing about the CCTV show made you tired. She tried to pump him up.
"Brother Chu, you've got this. When you get back, I'll cook something delicious for you."
Lao Qian was speechless. She clearly had a misunderstanding about both his taste and her cooking. He could've sworn he saw Chu Zhi's back stumble for a step.
There were five people in the SUV including the driver, Lao Qian, Xiao Zhu, Ma Weihao, the driver, and Chu Zhi. One got out, the four who stayed behind felt the vehicle's "center of gravity" shift, then waited a good ten minutes in the garage before Lao Qian finally spoke up with a destination: Star Alliance Jingsheng Film City in Beijing's HR District, meaning, Bona Film's headquarters.
The matter was simple. A Bona director had shot himself in the foot by speaking on a sensitive topic. The film couldn't get the Dragon Seal. After rounds of review and favors, still nothing.
The kicker, Chu Zhi had written the theme song Legend for that film. Everyone knew hiring the Emperor Beast was Tier-0 price. Since Legend was already written, it felt like a waste. So they approached his team, asking if they could, uh, use it one more time.
No doubt, this was the beauty of holding the song rights. If Bona owned the usage, they couldn't just keep using it forever. This was like Jiang Wen using Joe Hisaishi's score across two films.
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Hey guys~ just a quick update ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ
Technically, I've got 9 ongoing projects listed on my account. But! Mom's Apocalypse Survival Log, The Invincible Money-Grubbing Fairy, and My Daughter is the Empire's Lucky Charm are all fully translated already. Right now (as of September 29), Reborn as the Fallen Idol, I Leaned Into the Chaos! has less than 50 chapters left to go.
That means, out of the last 5 projects that are truly active, 3 of them are complete works (the original novels are already finished). The other 2 are still being serialized by their authors, but I've already caught up with the latest chapters—those are also queued up in my drafts with over 400 chapters ready to roll (148+260).
So really, my current active projects are just 3. Yay progress! (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)و
On my side, I also just got a job offer starting in October. I don't know the exact details yet, so I'm holding off on picking up any new big translation projects for the moment. If I do start working, I'll have to juggle both job and translations, and I don't wanna push myself into burnout (ง •̀_•́)ง.
Originally, I planned to dive into another historical-themed novel right after finishing Mom's Apocalypse Survival Log, but that might have to wait a bit. Or if I do take it, I'll probably slow things down to about 2 chapters a day instead of my usual 5. Some of you have also asked me about continuing Glitched: Highway Apocalypse, and I'll see if I can sneak it into my schedule ( •̀ ω •́ )✧.
For now, until I know how much free time I'll actually have, I won't be starting any giant 400+ chapter novels (unless the chapters are really short). If it's on the longer side with heavier word counts, I'll probably cap it around 300