novelraw Chapter 21 Haters Can't Scold Me!
Chapter 21 Haters Can't Scold Me!
"Splash!"
The sliding door of the van opens.
The sweltering May air rushed in, mixed with deafening noise.
"Get down here, you scumbag!"
"Get out of the entertainment industry!"
"Don't sully our stand-up comedy venue!"
Outside the Xiaoguo Club, the black railings were squeezed and deformed.
Hundreds of young men and women held up their phones, some waving cardboard signs that read "Scumbag, get lost" with a scarlet cross drawn on them.
Shen Xiaoyuan peeked out halfway, then shrank back in.
"How about... we tell the director we're canceling it?"
She swallowed hard.
The co-pilot didn't respond; he simply pressed the walkie-talkie down a little.
Song Ze yawned.
He threw the empty Coke can into the trash can and tugged at the hem of his black T-shirt.
"Since we're already here..."
He slipped on his yellowed SpongeBob SquarePants Crocs and stepped out of the car.
The shouts and curses from the crowd rose several octaves.
An empty mineral water bottle smashed onto the asphalt road half a meter away from him, splashing water onto his calves.
Song Ze did not pause.
Without turning his head, he put his hands in his pockets and walked towards the gate through the gaps in the human wall formed by security guards.
The control room on the second floor of the club.
The assistant director stood in front of the monitor, a half-smoked cigarette between his fingers.
"Remove half of the security guards outside. Tell the ticket gate staff to put the guys who were yelling the loudest and holding the playing cards right in the middle of the first row."
The person in charge of the stand-up comedy venue wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"Really doing this? Live-streaming it online, what if something goes wrong..."
"The more chaotic, the better."
The assistant director stubbed out his cigarette.
"Put a floating poll in the main live stream room with the title: How many minutes can Song Ze last before he's booed off the stage? Options are one minute, three minutes, and five minutes."
The live stream data in the bottom right corner of the screen started to surge.
The screen was filled with comments, the vast majority of which were betting on "within one minute".
3 PM.
The venue lights dimmed, and a spotlight shone on the high stool in the center of the stage.
The announcement came through the loudspeaker.
"Next, please welcome our guest speakers Shen Xiaoyuan and Song Ze."
There was no applause from the audience.
A chorus of boos mingled with the muffled thuds of front-row spectators slapping the backs of their seats.
The side curtain is drawn back.
Shen Xiaoyuan forced a smile and walked towards the microphone.
The opening remarks she had memorized on the bus fell silent when she faced the angry faces below.
"H-Hello everyone, I'm Shen Xiaoyuan."
She spoke faster and faster, preparing to throw out the first punchline.
There was no reaction from the audience.
Hundreds of people stared at her coldly.
The male audience member in the front row holding up a sign rolled his eyes.
An awkward silence.
Shen Xiaoyuan's finger bones turned white from gripping the microphone too tightly.
She tried to jump to the second joke.
"Being an actor is actually quite difficult."
"Stop talking! Change the person!"
The male audience member in the center of the first row stood up and pointed at the stage.
"What are you talking about? Get that scumbag up here! We bought tickets to yell at him, not to listen to your awkward chatter!"
The crowd erupted in cheers and whistles.
Shen Xiaoyuan's mind went blank.
She stood under the spotlight, her mouth opening and closing, but no sound came out.
Shanghai Starry Entertainment Building.
The Public Relations Director's Office.
Zhang Juan stared at the television screen on the wall.
"Sister Juan, the number of viewers in the live stream has exceeded three million. It's all insults, and the chat is unreadable."
Xiao Li was so anxious that he stomped his feet while holding his tablet.
Zhang Juan gritted her teeth.
Taking a step back now would be tantamount to falling into an abyss.
on the stage.
Shen Xiaoyuan took half a step back, not yet having finished bowing.
The sound of slippers scraping the floor came from the edge of the curtain.
Song Ze walked out.
Black shorts, white T-shirt, and Crocs.
He stood there, in the sight of three million online viewers and hundreds of offline viewers.
The insults suddenly escalated.
Song Ze walked to Shen Xiaoyuan's side without pausing.
He reached out and snatched the microphone from her hand.
He casually tapped the metal mesh cover twice with his knuckles.
"Bang, bang."
He stood still, microphone in hand, and scanned the first row of people who had been making the most noise.
That calm, unafraid of being condemned by thousands, held the audience captive for a brief second.
He raised the microphone and activated the "Talk Show: Excellent Level, 430/1000" function.
"I was just backstage, and I heard you guys are all waiting to hear the gossip about me?"
They completely abandoned the usual setup for stand-up comedy.
The pause in his sentence was precise, hitting the point just as everyone was about to start cursing him again.
The people in the audience were stunned for a moment.
"You've come to the right place."
He patted the high stool next to him.
"This place is a melon field right now, and the yield is more than enough."
The live chat paused.
The audience members looked at each other.
"Xia Ziming. Xu Yuyu. Zhang Yilin."
He enunciated the three names clearly and distinctly in the air above the stadium.
"Yes, those are the three ex-girlfriends you heard about in the live stream at noon."
The entire audience erupted in uproar.
The male audience member in the front row who had started the commotion opened his mouth, but the swear words he had prepared got stuck in his throat.
Song Ze was extremely relaxed.
"You think being a scumbag is easy?"
He began to deconstruct the label.
"That girl surnamed Xia is a medical student. I stayed up until 2 a.m., using my tablet to help her check human skeletal diagrams."
"The next day when I went to record the show, I saw that guy carrying the camera—"
He gestured with his hand in the air.
"He's not a person. He's just a skeleton with 206 bones and no flesh, carrying a machine."
Two seconds of silence.
Someone in the corner couldn't hold it in and let out a "poof".
Shen Xiaoyuan stood half a meter away from him.
Her instincts as a stand-up comedian were activated by the absurd joke, and she stepped forward and spoke into the spare microphone.
"Didn't you ask the cameraman if he had recently suffered any hard trauma to his tailbone?"
"I asked. The cameraman said he wanted to break my ribs."
Song Ze answered immediately.
The burden was dropped cleanly.
Someone in the front row was covering their mouth and chuckling.
The two began a high-intensity two-person attack.
Song Ze abandoned all his idol image.
"When other celebrities in the industry have scandals, they immediately send lawyer's letters. What about me? I was planning to post my medical report online."
Shen Xiaoyuan pressed further, "Why do you need a medical report? To prove you have extraordinary bone structure?"
"This proves I'm about to die suddenly."
He counted on his fingers.
"I had to divide my time into three parts to deal with three people at the same time. Xia Ziming was reciting in the east of the city, Xu Yuyu was live streaming in the west of the city, and Zhang Yilin was waiting for me in the south of the city. I was running between the three ring roads all day, and I slept less than an hour on average."
Song Ze spread his hands.
"You say I messed around? I was so exhausted that I ended up in the hospital."
The atmosphere at the scene changed.
That tense sense of hatred was shattered by this set of serious-sounding nonsense.
"The most outrageous day was when I had just finished eating with people from the west side of the city, and as soon as I stepped outside, people from the east and south sides of the city were buying milk tea across the street. I immediately rushed back to the restaurant."
Shen Xiaoyuan: "Trying to escape through the back door?"
"No, I'll go back and pay the bill. If I run away, the three of them will have to split the cost of the meal. That would make me look like a jerk and very unprofessional."
The bottom part, which is very visually striking, crashed down.
Laugh out loud.
The stadium dome was almost blown off by the laughter.
The male audience member who had just led the shouts for him to get lost was bent over, laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his face, slapping his thigh and punching the back of his chair.
The fifteen-minute performance unfolded amidst waves of laughter.
Song Ze looked at the crowd below the stage, who were laughing and swaying.
The rhythm is perfectly timed until the last thirty seconds.
"So now you understand why I said on the show that I wanted to find a rich woman, right?"
Someone in the audience shouted, "So that we don't have to work hard!"
Song Ze pointed to that person.
"It's not just that I don't want to work hard. Because I found a rich woman, I have the money to buy three villas without mortgages. One is used to display human skeleton diagrams, one is used for live streaming, and the last one is where I lock myself up, weld the security door shut, so that that obsessive woman can't get in."
He put the microphone back on the stand.
"As long as the money is right, all these problems can be solved. Thank you everyone, I'm the scumbag Song Ze."
The headlights came on.
Someone was the first to stand up and applaud.
Immediately following the second and third rows, the entire audience stood up.
Applause and cheers surged forth, drowning out the boos that had started the show.
In the control room on the second floor, the assistant director's cigarette butt burned the filter, making him shudder violently.
Below the stage, at the very front of the crowd.
A girl wearing a baseball cap didn't smile the whole time.
She stared at the figure on the stage.
"Song Ze..."
She murmured the name, took a utility knife from her pocket, and extended the blade.