PLT | Chapter 39

Ni Su Fans

After the two of them talked all through the night, dawn came after only a few hours of sleep. Zhou Chenyu had to go to the theater to deal with work matters. After dropping Yan Chao back home on the way, Yan Chao drowsily fell back asleep for another round and did not wake until noon. Only then did he remember to go online and see what the response had been to last night’s special performance.

Just as he had expected, the audience response to the special was very good. Even though it had been a huge venue with over ten thousand people, the effect had not been discounted in the slightest by the size of the crowd.

While longtime audience members expressed great satisfaction, it had also attracted a wave of new viewers paying attention to xiangsheng. Without a doubt, most of them had been drawn in by The Second Role.

There was no question that Xiaqing Yuan’s first ten-thousand-person special had been a huge success, from the performance itself to the audience feedback.

And those sour, petty faces from Dongning Yuan’s fans had long since been drowned in the tide of praise.

Yan Chao felt genuinely honored by that, so much so that for a moment he forgot just how crazily he himself had been used for gua last night.

That was until, out of habit, he casually opened the CP supertopic rankings.

If he had not looked, fine. Once he looked, it was a shock.

“ChenyuLuoyan” was crushing the other CPs with ten times the heat, ranked at the very top, so far ahead it could be called riding alone in a cloud of dust.

Yan Chao only took a casual glance before realizing just how much sugar there had been yesterday. No wonder the CP fans had all gone insane on the spot.

Yet after scrolling twice, Yan Chao noticed that this time the Yanyu Girls were not shipping sugar in their usual like-wolves-like-tigers style. Instead, they seemed much more restrained.

Could it be that last night’s sugar had simply been too much, too fierce, and had sweetened them to the point of overload?

Very quickly, he saw someone in the supertopic raising the same question he had:

@Xiao YanziFliesWuAh-geChases: #[Supertopic] ChenyuLuoyan# Borrowing this space to ask, with so much sugar last night, why is there barely any food in the supertopic? Why aren’t the creators producing anymore?”

As soon as that post went up, several replies immediately appeared below it.

“Sis, don’t you know? The whole YYNH fandom moved bases.”

“The two zhengzhu are too high-profile, so we have to keep a low profile. Shipping them openly on public platforms is bad for their image.”

After all, the vast masses of YYNH fans are still carrying the arduous task of keeping the closet door firmly shut…

Never mind whether the closet needed shutting or not, these few comments genuinely moved Yan Chao very much.

The Yanyu Girls were way too sensible, weren’t they!

Zhou Chenyu, could you please learn from them?

“All of yesterday’s and today’s food is on Lofou now. The creators have completely let loose, all kinds of [bicycles], it’s so fragrant… ah, never mind, just go look yourself and you’ll know!”

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

It sounded like there was quite a lot of eighteen-plus content.

As an internet-addicted young man, Yan Chao had of course heard of “Lofou,” the legendary site used specially for shipping CPs, known by everyone in the CP circle.

Lofou? Lofou? It must mean green is fat…

Anyway, just hearing the name sounded extremely yellow and violent.

But Yan Chao himself had never shipped any CP before, and he definitely had no hobby of shipping other people’s CPs, so he still knew absolutely nothing about the site’s actual contents.

But now that there was plenty of eighteen-plus material in there involving him…

How could he possibly resist looking?

He downloaded the “Lofou” app at top speed and opened the homepage at top speed…

What was going on with this splash comic?

On the left was a man dressed all in black, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, with a cold face and the look of a refined scoundrel?

On the right was a graceful young gentleman in a dark slate-blue dagua, holding a folding fan and smiling like spring breeze all over his face?

Wasn’t this a fan comic of him and Zhou Chenyu???

Lofou, don’t tell him your internal editor was also a ChenyuLuoyan CP fan???

Truly, respect!

Yan Chao watched the splash image autoplay to the end with a face full of surrender, and then came the homepage recommendations right after.

“ChenyuLuoyan” visuals at absolute peak, The Second Role invites you to come say xiangsheng together with handsome gege!

…Respect times two.

The program team’s hard promotion had really achieved precision targeting. Impressive.

Yan Chao clicked open the search bar, only to find that he did not even need to type anything himself. The first recommended tag was “ChenyuLuoyan.”

True one-step completion.

Yan Chao steadied his mood, then clicked into that tag with tens of thousands of participants.

What entered his sight was a huge…

Photoshopped kissing picture.

It was simply… unbearable to look at.

Yan Chao did not understand why he still had to hurt himself like this, but his hand still moved uncontrollably toward the “Most Popular” button.

The dense mass of titles and blurbs left him overwhelmed for a moment.

Spring Is Born♂ Summer Grows♂ / ABO mpreg / one-shot complete

The Consequences of Using Your Wife for Gua / pwp / 10k words

Fun for a Moment on Stage, Crematorium in Bed, dedicated to Zhou Xiaoyu

Screen recording of that part where a sister shouted “tsundere gong” on-site! ChenyuLuoyan is real!

“My wife is like a wolf and tiger”

“I did entrusting wife and offering son with my partner, I did cut robes and cut sleeves with my wife”

@XiaoYan-gege How does your household usually do domestic♂violence♂?

That costume play, you know

Your laogong went looking for a ticket himself because he wanted to give you a surprise, really no sense of romance

There is a girl, he’s handsome and his dior is long

“Xiao Yan-gege, hurry up and get on my pirate ship~”

“Refined scoundrel or beast in gentleman’s clothing?” “Try both tonight.”

@Xiao Yu, don’t you know the fate of ni su fans is to be [sun]!

…

Yan Chao was stunned.

…What the hell was all this stuff?

In the magical land of Lofou, he and Zhou Chenyu had unlocked one hundred and eight Dragon Yang positions in just one night, from the sofa to the bathroom, from the floor to the balcony, every kind of玩法 had been done once over.

What was even more outrageous was that he was somehow still vigorous, valiant, standing tall, and able to keep going for another three days and nights.

Yan Chao only had to read a few lines before he felt like he was about to die of complete depletion.

…He was still only a twenty-three-year-old child!

As an outstanding MC who always stood at the very forefront of gossip, Yan Chao had, in the past, seen what other celebrity CP fans were usually like.

One glance and it became a love lasting ten thousand years. One random Weibo post and they would add and subtract the time stamp until it produced some number with special meaning. One casual sentence in an interview and they would knead it apart and analyze it for three to five thousand words…

Wasn’t that what CP fans were usually like?

So why was it that when Yanyu Girls shipped a CP, they only! Drove! Cars!

Plot?

What plot?

This was truly pwp.

Yan Chao was convinced, completely prostrating himself.

Before he had even recovered from the enormous shock, he suddenly saw Zhou Chenyu send him a WeChat message.

Zhou Chenyu: “[shared Weibo]”

Yan Chao clicked open the shared Weibo, and what came into view was a familiar avatar.

…Wasn’t this the exact same Yanyu Girls from Lofou just now who had written that thing about dagua play?

@DidYanYuDoiToday?

Right, right, right! It was her!

Looking at that yellow-and-violent ID, Yan Chao really could not figure out how Zhou Chenyu had the nerve to share that post with him.

So he could only pretend Zhou Chenyu had no idea at all what that ID actually meant, and brace himself to keep reading.

@DidYanYuDoiToday: First time in my life seeing Xiao Yu sing opera, really too beautiful too adorable too easy to ni su, 1551… Xiao Yan, I’m sorry, today I’m going to be your wife’s ni su fan for one day. Xi Shi-jiejie, I can!!!

Yan Chao: ……

Why exactly had Zhou Chenyu shared this with him…

Was there something a little wrong with him?

No, his sickness had never once gotten better.

Yan Chao backed out to the chat screen again, and saw Zhou Chenyu had sent him another message: “What is a ni su fan?”

Yan Chao: ……

How the hell was he supposed to explain that?

Just last night, at midnight, Zhou Chenyu had told him that he had always felt awful inside because he had to play women when singing dan roles!

If Zhou Chenyu found out the true meaning of ni su fan, he probably would never sing opera again for the rest of his life, right?

But Yan Chao also could not just make up some random explanation to trick him. Otherwise, sooner or later Zhou Chenyu would find out what it really meant, and then the backlash would probably be even worse.

Yan Chao thought it over and over, and could only reply with the greatest care: “It just means a kind of fan who really likes you, only they like to call you… wife?”

He felt that his explanation was still fairly close to reality, at least without stabbing straight through to the yellow-and-violent intentions buried in the depths of a ni su fan’s heart.

Zhou Chenyu suddenly replied: “Okay, understood [cute]”

Yan Chao: ???

That was understood?

What exactly had he understood?

Before Yan Chao could work that out himself, Weibo suddenly popped up a notification.

Your special follow @ZhouChenyu has posted on Weibo, come see what he said~

Yan Chao instinctively felt it would not be anything good. He quickly opened Weibo—

@ZhouChenyu: Xiao Yan-gege and his ni su fans~ [image]

Attached was a photo secretly taken at some unknown moment at the dinner table last night.

In the near foreground, one of his own eyes curved into a crescent with laughter, while farther away was Yan Chao’s perfectly handsome side profile from every angle.

The photo was beautiful, the people were perfect, and the business was flawless.

However…

Big brother, “ni su fan” really is not used like that.

Footnotes:

[1] “zhengzhu” means the real people involved in a ship, the actual public figures fans are shipping.

[4] “[bicycle]” is a common euphemistic or coded way to refer to explicit sexual content or “driving” in fandom slang.

[6] “pwp” means “plot, what plot?” and refers to works focused primarily on explicit content rather than narrative.

[7] “Dragon Yang” is a classical allusion to male-male eroticism, so “Dragon Yang’s one hundred and eight positions” is an exaggerated joke about gay sex positions.

[9] “ni su” refers to a fandom mode of projecting someone into a feminized, wife-like, or otherwise gender-shifted role, often with heavy romantic or erotic implications.

[10] “[sun]” is a coded or euphemistic substitute for an explicit sexual verb, commonly used in online fandom spaces to dodge moderation.