The Weight of Choice

The competition was brutal.

Especially in a talent show like this, where everything revolved around fan votes.

What idol could be called an idol without fan support?

Some had only recorded the theme song once, a fleeting blur in a wide shot, not even a glimpse of their features. Their vote counts were pitifully low; a few barely scraped past a hundred, likely with every friend and relative they could muster voting for them.

The suffocating sadness weighed on everyone’s chests. Right there, some trainees broke down in tears.

But the schedule didn’t pause for such interruptions. The names of those eliminated dimmed on the screen, and the large display lit up again.

This time, it showed the rules for the first performance.

Jiang Ruyao’s stern gaze swept over each trainee. “After the first performance mission, we will proceed with another round of elimination. Contestants ranked 60 and below — I’m sorry, but your journey ends here.”

Jiao Wangshu quickly calculated in his mind. With the extra theme song elimination this time, fewer people would be cut after the first performance. But combined, the two rounds would eliminate a total of 41 trainees. In fact, this season’s elimination rate was far higher than previous ones.

So now, some trainees — especially those ranked 60 and below — had faces darker than a storm cloud. Their chance of making it to the second round, once promising, now teetered on the edge. Those ranked below 65 looked ashen, drained of all hope.

Because voting required real-name authentication and navigating to a dedicated voting page, the cumbersome process had already filtered out casual viewers. The bulk of votes still came from dedicated fans.

And for these lower-ranked contestants, their popularity was nearly identical, with vote counts tightly clustered. Sometimes the difference was only a few dozen or a hundred votes. If the first performance couldn’t boost their ranking by five to ten spots or more, elimination awaited them.

But not all was lost.

Jiang Ruyao spoke again. “This performance will follow a team battle format. Trainees from the Chinese group and the international group will participate together. There are seven songs, divided into Group A and Group B for the competition. Each group will have 4–7 members. Teams that pick the same song will automatically become rival teams.”

“Moreover —”

She drew out the word, and the trainees perked up. Everyone knew the most important part was coming.

“Moreover, the winning team for each song will receive a bonus of 10,000 votes per person.”

Ten thousand votes. It didn’t sound like much, but for the mid-to-low-ranked trainees with few fans, this bonus was a lifeline.

Suddenly, the eyes of those on the borderline lit up.

If they could luckily hitch a ride with a team that had a popular contestant…

The large screen changed again.

“Now, let’s take a look at the songs for the first performance.”

The names of the seven songs flashed by, and when the screen froze again, the demo played.

The first song was explosive.

Dawn.

A dark hip-hop and EDM style that detonated both the senses and the mind. Such a hard track was clearly the perfect choice for powerhouse main dancers and fierce rappers.

Many skilled dancers’ eyes grew brighter as they listened, but Ling Tinglan and Jiao Wangshu immediately crossed it off their list.

Pass. Pass. Their bodies — mismatched in both hardware and software — had no business joining that party.

Then came the second song, with a melodic, lingering tune completely different from the first. Sharp-eared trainees recognized it: Echoes of Youth, the inspirational anthem played every year during the June college entrance exam season.

So classic that there were countless cover versions, even in different languages. But the version everyone grew up hearing, the most widely sung, was the group chorus rendition.

Clearly a vocalist’s song, but the trainees skilled in singing shied away from it. After all, it was too iconic. With such a masterpiece preceding them, a poor performance would invite public mockery. Not everyone had that much confidence in their abilities.

Jiao Wangshu and Ling Tinglan passed on this one too.

The third song — Extreme Wave.

An electronic rock track. Songs of this style usually had almost no dance moves, low dance requirements, but high demands on vocals and stage presence. Rock was all about live atmosphere. Instruments and arrangement could cover some vocal weaknesses, making it easy to create an impact. The live performance of this song would definitely be explosive.

Jiao Wangshu’s eyes lit up. This song was their best bet. They could assign the lyrics to their teammates, let them shine, while he and Ling Tinglan blended into the group as instrumental and harmony support.

But before they could celebrate, they heard Lev, a trainee from the Japanese group, say happily, “I can sing this song!”

“This is my dad’s favorite!”

Lev was a contestant from Japan, a gorgeous half-Japanese, half-Russian guy. He started humming along with the melody, leaving Jiao Wangshu and Ling Tinglan dumbfounded.

Simply because — it was a Russian song!

There was no way they, Slavs, could learn that tongue-rolling pronunciation!

The fourth song was called Neon Confession. A light, cheerful tune, but with a fast tempo, demanding intense singing and dancing.

Then came the fifth song, Forbidden Zone Game — dark pop. This song was also famous, a classic battle anthem from a once wildly popular girl group. With its sexy, ambiguous lyrics and style, it was an outright “seductive” track, difficult to perform. For a boy group to cover a girl group’s song risked turning greasy.

The sixth song, Floating City, was a refreshing urban R&B style, leaning heavily on vocal performance. Many vocalists who dreaded Echoes of Youth had their eyes on this one.

The last song, No Man’s Land, had a huge background. It was the debut title track of VENIX, the hottest boy group right now. The core concept and stage design were tailor-made for them. If they performed it, wouldn’t they get torn apart by VENIX’s fans?

All seven demos finished playing. The room erupted in chaos.

“Oh my god! How does the production team come up with this stuff?”

Some trainees were already clutching their heads and screaming. “I feel like no matter which song I pick, I’ll get cursed out. Is the last song for real? I’m dying to know how they got the copyright!”

“Every single one is a death squad.”

Another trainee looked utterly defeated. “I quit my company and came back to China because I couldn’t learn Korean. Now we have Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, Russian… five languages in total… I signed up for a talent show, not the International Linguistics Olympiad…”

“Which one do I choose?”

Yeah. Ling Tinglan and Jiao Wangshu looked at each other.

Which one could they possibly choose?