—

Fei Bolin's phone rang again at the worst possible time.

It was Zhang Chao calling to brief him on the work he needed to handle this morning and where the files were in his office.

Fei Bolin had pushed his entire morning schedule aside just to cook noodles for Wen Fu. When Zhang Chao asked on the other end whether he'd be back at the office in the afternoon, he clearly heard the sound of soup-sipping next door stop short.

Wen Fu's hearing and sense of smell were both razor-sharp. No doubt he'd caught Zhang Chao's words. Fei Bolin could practically picture him now, bowl in hand, hanging on every syllable of the answer.

Normally, if the pending files weren't urgent, Zhang Chao wouldn't have called to ask. Plus there was a meeting scheduled for the afternoon he had to attend — the rest of the day's agenda couldn't be skipped, no matter what.

Fei Bolin stared at the handwriting on the Wall Calendar. "I'll give you an answer before two."

He ended the call. Another notification popped up at the top of the screen.

This time it was from Weibo:

[An account you follow, @WenFu-DoReMi, just hit the trending list]

Wen Fu had been stuck at home these past few days, no events, no performances — how did he end up on the trending list out of nowhere?

Could it be that post from earlier?

Something clicked. He tapped the notification bar, and Weibo pushed the trending list in front of him. Sure enough — a topic about Wen Fu sat at number two on the entertainment chart: #ThisQiThatFu#.

That was the CP name for Qi Yichuan and Wen Fu. Fei Bolin had known that for a long time.

He'd never bothered to deal with it. First, he'd been abroad for years, too busy to spare a hand for this kind of thing. Second, Wen Fu and Qi Yichuan were old friends — there was history between them going way back.

When Wen Fu first debuted, he had no name recognition at all. It was Qi Yichuan promoting him on social media every now and then that gave him the long-running "songs more famous than the singer" situation. So when Wen Fu blew up overnight three years ago, the discussion exploded — "Oh, so this is Wen Fu's song," "Wait, all those songs I've been listening to are by the same person?" Meanwhile Stella caught the wave and put out a bunch of similar press releases, which finally cemented the first step of Wen Fu's fame.

And the "This Qi That Fu" CP, thanks to Qi Yichuan, had broken out of the niche way earlier than Wen Fu himself, with way more heat — and still did, to this day.

The first time the two of them drew massive attention under vague speculation was the year before last.

Wen Fu's career was just starting to pick up then. Stella leveraged her connections to land him a spot on one of the most prestigious, highest-profile music variety shows in the industry — the first season of Sound into the Ear, produced by Huang Taixin.

This show wasn't like those small-time variety programs that half-assed their way through. The rules and elimination format were almost completely transparent to viewers. Judges' scores alone couldn't decide who stayed or went — live votes from the studio audience and viewers at home were the real deciding factor.

As a challenger guest, Wen Fu didn't appear until the third episode.

He was a newcomer to the scene. Most young singers in his position, walking into a competition stacked with veterans, wouldn't dream of actually winning the challenge. So they'd pick their most attention-grabbing signature song — that way, even if they got eliminated in one round, the show still served as a decent promotional platform, advertising their work and pulling in traffic.

But Wen Fu went the opposite direction. He didn't pick any of his originals — he chose a classic love song to cover.

That song was a textbook case of "amateurs watch the show, professionals watch the craft." It was classic enough that everyone knew it, but the cover difficulty scared most people off.

Wen Fu knew his comfort zone well. His high notes weren't like other classic singers' — his tone wasn't sharp or piercing. His strength was soft, lyrical ballads. His voice carried so much feeling that audiences got completely absorbed in the song while he sang, which made them overlook just how high the melody actually went. Usually it wasn't until he finished — the last note still rippling off the studio walls, the tail end of his voice echoing back in waves — that listeners would suddenly realize: this level of performance and precision took serious vocal range.

The cover Wen Fu picked for his first challenge fit his range perfectly.

The key changes in that song wove into a flowing, easy rhythm. It didn't have the sky-piercing punch of a typical high-note belter. Instead it took a different path — through an undercurrent of feeling, the emotion and the melody it clung to climbed gradually, layer upon layer, leaving a long, lingering aftertaste.

Fei Bolin remembered — when Wen Fu's first live episode aired, he'd been in a cross-border meeting. Luckily it was almost over. So he wouldn't tip anyone off, he just split-screened his meeting laptop: ears for the meeting, eyes for the broadcast. The moment Wen Fu came on and the meeting wrapped, Fei Bolin was the first one out of the conference room, turning all his attention to Wen Fu's performance.

For that whole performance, Wen Fu sat on a high stool — one foot on the footrest, the other planted on the ground, cradling that secondhand Guitar that cost less than a thousand bucks. He wore a simple sweatshirt and jeans, his makeup so light it was almost nothing.

Across the ocean, Fei Bolin watched through the screen as Wen Fu, as was his habit, closed his eyes, rocked the stool gently, and sang in a voice that was clear and unhurried.

The stage lights swayed gently too, like a moon over the bay.

Sway, sway. Before he'd heard enough, Wen Fu was already off the stage.

Then Fei Bolin picked up his phone and, without much thought, voted for Wen Fu from every single one of his numbers.

No surprise — Wen Fu won the challenge and stayed on the show. And because of his stunning performance in season one, the Program Team proactively sent him an invitation when season two started filming.

The night "This Qi That Fu" blew up was during one of the tapings. Paparazzi caught Wen Fu sitting on the flower bed below the Huangtai Platform director's building after filming, wolfing down a meal Qi Yichuan had brought him.

Qi Yichuan was right there beside him, mask on, sitting shoulder to shoulder, chin propped on his hand, watching Wen Fu eat with a smile in his eyes — the look of a grown man staring at a young maiden, plain as day.

As for Wen Fu, he didn't look up once the entire time.

He finished eating, gulped down a whole bottle of water, wiped his mouth, put on his cap, and got in the car to head home.

The next day, when the paparazzi dropped the photos, they didn't say anything outright. Male celebrities and homosexuality — the people in this business generally didn't dare open their mouths and make stuff up the way they did with female stars, unless they had actual intimate shots.

But they had photos of A-list traffic star Qi Yichuan. Doing nothing felt like a waste. So the paparazzi hinted sideways in the headline: Qi Yichuan meets Wen Fu at night; after a brief reunion, the two went home separately to avoid suspicion.

Once the topic dropped, the general public had zero reaction. Qi Yichuan — everyone knows him. Wen Fu — who? Male or female? Oh, that guy who got popular again from Sound into the Ear recently.

What did they do? Night meeting?

Click into the topic — all they did was eat. Qi Yichuan's expression, shot at night, was unclear anyway. Nothing to see.

And Wen Fu's table manners were so ugly, looked like he'd been starving for three years.

So they clicked out again.

But the "This Qi That Fu" double-fan super-topic was boiling over.

The CP fans kept chanting "my CP dropped food — real food!" and brute-forced the topic from somewhere in the thirties up to top five. Now whether you were a real passerby or an industry fan, you couldn't help clicking in for a longer look.

Shipping a CP — other people's attention is the fans' stimulant. Watching the topic's reads climb higher, the big CP accounts started rallying everyone to compile every past sweet moment, interaction, and dug-up "same item" — so-called "evidence of love that a secret couple can't hide" — into a giant spreadsheet, flooding the entire "This Qi That Fu" square. The goal: every confused passerby who clicked in would click out believing "This Qi That Fu, till death do them part." Ideally, grow the CP fandom into a superpower.

Whether any of that stuff was real or not didn't matter. The topic hung around for a day and a half, and the goal of expanding the fandom was achieved.

The "This Qi That Fu" super-topic went from a few thousand to over a hundred thousand in just over a year. When Sina was short on KPIs, tossing in some zombie followers and pushing the topic onto the trending list became routine.

As for this CP — at first Fei Bolin had no time to deal with it. By the time he did, it was already too late to turn things around.

— Blow up their super-topic? He could, but it'd be too crude. Besides, the more you suppress CP shipping, the more fired up the fans get. The louder the top brass shouts "your CP is fake!" through a megaphone, the more the fans develop this lone-hero feeling of "standing against the whole world just proves my CP is real love."

Blocking wasn't as good as guiding. Play the long game.

Fei Bolin tapped into today's trending topic and saw the marketing accounts riding it hard at the top of the hot list.

[@YuDaji: #ThisQiThatFu# Netizens spotted Qi Yichuan and Wen Fu meeting up at KFC. Qi Yichuan's face dead serious, talking nonstop; Wen Fu keeps his head down the whole time getting lectured. One looks like a parent, the other like a naughty kid in trouble. Major 'older partner' energy. You guys shipping it?]

[Video from @YuDaji's Weibo]

Fei Bolin didn't notice himself let out a cold laugh. He muted his phone and opened the video. In the footage, Wen Fu clearly wasn't "getting lectured" the way the marketing account was framing it — he was looking down at something on his phone on the table. And even with the mask on, you could still tell Wen Fu was talking every now and then.

He zoomed in on the video a bit more and noticed the clothes Wen Fu was wearing — both unfamiliar and familiar at the same time.

Unfamiliar because it obviously wasn't Wen Fu's. Fei Bolin had just tidied the closet and hadn't come across it. The size was clearly a bit bigger than Wen Fu's at a glance.

But familiar because...

Wen Fu had actually worn it.

Right there, outside the maternity-and-baby store that day.

Fei Bolin closed his phone. His face didn't look good.

So that day, Wen Fu hadn't run off after seeing him because of some misunderstanding — he'd been rushing downstairs to find Qi Yichuan?

-

Wen Fu noticed that when Fei Bolin came back from the entryway after his phone call to collect the bowl and wash it, his expression seemed a lot colder than before.

He basically never cooked. Even when he did, the best he could manage was a bowl of mushy, overcooked noodles. So they hadn't bothered installing a dishwasher at home — after meals, it was hand-washing only.

Fei Bolin had a thing about cleanliness. When he cooked, he'd instinctively tidy as he went — usually by the time the noodles were done, the whole kitchen still looked brand new. After Wen Fu ate, the only thing left to clean was one bowl.

But today, Fei Bolin stood at the sink for a long time.

Hot water from the tap blasted straight into the sink. Fei Bolin held the bowl in one hand, the other stuffed in his pocket, completely still. His eyes were dark and heavy, fixed on the basin, like he had some personal grudge against the stream of water.

Not until Wen Fu walked around the table to the kitchen doorway did Fei Bolin notice the movement. Then he pulled his hand out and started washing the bowl, head down.

One bowl, washed for a full five minutes. Fei Bolin still showed no sign of stopping.

Wen Fu crept up to the doorframe. "Bo-ge?"

Fei Bolin, looking very focused on the dishwashing: "Hm?"

"Did I make the bowl really dirty?"

"..."