Chapter 43: Transition
The edited version of Infinite Heartbeat on the platform didn’t lag much behind the livestream version.
After the swap experience ended, the show entered a recording break.
Before the second recording session, the production team also cleared time for platform promotional activities. This free time was equivalent to a vacation for the guests during the recording period.
Although it felt like they hadn’t lived in the villa for very long, when packing luggage, traces of life could be found everywhere.
The netizens in the livestream left comments one after another.
[We won’t see Brother Xie and Dog Lu for a long time.] [It should be soon. I saw the reservation time for the next livestream is next week. Plus, there are promotional roadshows during this time, so we can see Brother Xie offline!] [Damn it, what kind of hand speed do you guys have? I didn’t grab a single ticket!! I’m exploding at you all!] [Hehe, I grabbed tickets for two shows. Brother Xie, I’m coming!] [Upstairs typed wrong, right? Aren’t you an LCH solo fan?] [Doesn’t matter, I’ll open the door for sister-in-law.] [Damn, did they acknowledge you for you to open the door? Dog Lu fans, stay away from my brother!] [Upstairs is fighting again.] [Finally understand what it means for fans to resemble their idols in loving and killing each other.] [No, both their idols have kissed. Do the fans follow suit…] [Uh, it’s not impossible, I guess.] [Impossible my ass! You CP fans are crazy, eating anything up!] [Hehe.]
Before leaving, Xie Shibai looked around and saw the round-headed Potato puppy at the door.
He squatted down and patted the puppy’s head. His long slender fingers rubbed the round back of its head one by one. His lowered eyes looked quiet with a hint of gentleness.
The Potato puppy wagged its tail and did the little seal bow, holding a small twig in its mouth as a toy.
The puppy placed the twig at Xie Shibai’s feet, barked twice as if saying something, then turned and ran away quickly. Unlike previous times, this time it seemed to run into the woods with a clear destination.
Xie Shibai paused for a few seconds, gazing at the round-headed puppy’s retreating figure.
[Brother Xie seems to really like this puppy.] [Yes, this puppy is also very clingy to Brother Xie.] [Can’t he take it away?] [The puppy has an owner. The program team confirmed it. It’s not good to take the puppy away without the owner’s permission.] [The puppy knows the program team is leaving and is saying goodbye. Sigh.]
Each group left at a different time. Qiao Jiayi and Mi Qiran had schedules and left early in the morning to catch a flight. Mu Zhenzhen and Xu Xiangming had just left. There weren’t many people left in the villa.
Su Xingran looked at the puppy running away: “Isn’t this puppy a stray?”
Xie Shibai spoke briefly: “It has a home.”
Su Xingran suddenly realized, then expressed some regret: “I thought it was like other shows, deliberately releasing a stray dog here to create a cute pet script.”
After speaking, he realized the livestream hadn’t been turned off yet and covered his mouth abruptly.
“I was just talking nonsense.”
[Other shows? Could it be the one he was on recently?] [Laughing to death, truly the age of having no filter on the mouth.] [Cute pets should also be purebred puppies, they wouldn’t choose this kind of little local dog, although this little local dog is quite cute.]
Xie Shibai picked up the twig the puppy had just discarded and stood up to walk toward the villa.
Su Xingran quickly followed, observed carefully, and said to curry favor, “Speaking of which, I haven’t seen Senior Lu since this morning. Did he have a schedule and leave early?”
Xie Shibai’s expression didn’t fluctuate much, his thoughts drifting slightly far away.
It had been quiet all morning, which was impossible to ignore. He cared a little, but felt his state was wrong, so he had been distracting himself by looking for the little local dog. But now Su Xingran’s words pulled his attention back.
The lack of physical contact left a hidden restlessness in his heart.
Su Xingran observed Xie Shibai for a moment and whispered conspiratorially, “I didn’t see Li You either.”
Xie Shibai glanced at him. “What do you want to say?”
Su Xingran coughed lightly and immediately promoted himself: “I just feel that moving luggage by yourself later will be inconvenient, Brother Xie. How about I help you? I have plenty of strength.”
[Sticking a needle in every seam (Opportunistic).] [Spot on.] [Where is Dog Lu? His home is being stolen!] [Laughing to death, plenty of strength and methods to dig at the wall (steal the partner), right?]
“No need to trouble you.”
Lu Ciheng, who had disappeared all morning, stood behind Xie Shibai. His hand rested on Xie Shibai’s shoulder, enveloping the person entirely in his embrace. His eyes stared darkly, somewhat unhappy, his tone unhurried: “You’d better save your strength to move your own luggage.”
Then he ignored Su Xingran on his own accord, smiling at Xie Shibai. “Teacher Xie, let’s go. I’ll move the luggage.”
Xie Shibai’s elbow nudged unceremoniously into Lu Ciheng’s abdomen. He didn’t hold back his strength. Hearing Lu Ciheng hiss in a breath of cold air, he said indifferently, “What did you go do?”
“It’s a secret for now.”
Lu Ciheng looked sideways at Xie Shibai. He leaned his cheek in, wanting to rub lightly, but was pushed away by Xie Shibai’s hand. The corner of his lips hooked up: “Let me keep it a surprise for now. Teacher Xie will know in a moment.”
Xie Shibai’s brow pressed down slightly. He felt a slight, indescribable strange emotion towards this concealment in his heart. It was like irritation, yet also like a dissociative symptom after somatization. This emotion was as unfamiliar as watching from a third-person perspective—very wrong, but uncontrollable.
Lu Ciheng circled Xie Shibai and turned to walk toward the villa, leaving Su Xingran, who had ‘plenty of strength’, standing alone in place.
[Curious what Dog Lu went to do.] [Dog Lu’s livestream camera has a record. I can only say the young couple is too sweet.] [Bad, I missed it ahhh!]
When it was time to leave, Xie Shibai didn’t see the round-headed puppy’s shadow again. It seemed like the goodbye just now was final and it wouldn’t come again.
He sat in the car, checking the message sent by Chen Qisheng. He faintly heard rustling sounds coming from the back row of the nanny van. The sound grew louder and louder until he looked up and met Lu Ciheng’s smiling gaze.
“Teacher Xie, aren’t you curious about what’s in the back?”
A bold guess formed in Xie Shibai’s heart. Meeting Lu Ciheng’s gaze, he felt it was too unbelievable. He tentatively looked back, and the next second, he saw the Potato puppy struggling to climb out of a cardboard box.
As soon as the Potato puppy climbed out, it stumbled around. Seeing Xie Shibai, it wagged its tail and went up to enthusiastically rub against his leg, whining and howling a few times. It seemed to be complaining to him about how Lu Ciheng wasn’t human for stuffing it into a cardboard box—whining as if it had suffered a huge grievance.
Xie Shibai stared at the puppy, stunned for a moment. He hadn’t expected Lu Ciheng to actually bring the puppy into the car. His heart beat slightly. He picked up the puppy and patted its head, looking at Lu Ciheng with a complicated expression. “You stole someone’s dog?”
Lu Ciheng: “How could that be? How could I possibly do such an immoral thing?”
Xie Shibai: “…” If it’s Lu Ciheng, it wouldn’t actually be that surprising.
Lu Ciheng’s eyes curved. “I communicated with his previous owner and paid money to buy him.”
Xie Shibai frowned slightly, his fingers subconsciously touching the puppy’s head. “They were actually willing?”
Lu Ciheng’s tone was relaxed. “They agreed as soon as they heard I’d pay.”
regarding what exactly Lu Ciheng had prepared as a surprise, netizens flipped back through the livestream replay.
The solo livestream camera recorded Lu Ciheng going down the mountain during the time he disappeared in the morning. His destination was clear: he went straight to the Potato puppy’s home.
Almost as soon as he pushed open the door, netizens in the livestream saw many little local dogs with similar markings. They looked like they were from the same litter as the puppy.
Lu Ciheng, having found the place, bluntly asked if the juvenile local dogs were for sale.
The dog owner realized they were stars filming at the villa on the mountain upon seeing the camera. Acting hesitantly, he quoted a number.
[Holy crap, that’s daylight robbery.] [Asking for the price of a purebred for a little local dog? Why don’t you just go rob someone?] [He dares to do this in front of the camera. If there were no camera, he’d probably ask for even more.] [Selling as soon as money is offered; he probably wouldn’t treat the puppy well in the future anyway.] [But if it’s to make Teacher Xie happy, this money is well spent.] [So he disappeared for so long just to buy the puppy. XQL (Small Couple) is real. Who still says they are fake!?] [Anti-fans, speak up!]
Lu Ciheng agreed. He specifically named the little Potato dog that had just run back.
The Potato puppy had originally wanted to say goodbye to its mom and say it was going on a long voyage. But as soon as it got home, it encountered Lu Ciheng who came to kidnap it. It let out two confused barks before being packed into a cardboard box and taken away.
Xie Shibai withdrew his finger which was being licked by the puppy, his expression complicated. “So you were gone for so long just to buy him.”
Lu Ciheng gazed at Xie Shibai and said, “Of course. Otherwise, what did Teacher Xie think I went to do?”
Xie Shibai was silent for a few seconds. “Nothing.”
Lu Ciheng smiled brightly. “Teacher Xie, are you concerned about me?”
Xie Shibai glanced at him faintly. “I have the right to know where my puppy ran off to play.”
The Potato puppy looked at Xie Shibai with dark, round eyes, thinking he was calling it, and “barked” once.
Lu Ciheng’s eyes lit up.
Isn’t this the legendary reporting of itinerary during dating!
“Teacher Xie, I’ll tell you everywhere I go from now on.”
Xie Shibai didn’t understand where Lu Ciheng’s sudden excitement came from. Confused, he looked at Lu Ciheng’s face and stopped himself from speaking.
Forget it, a Beagle in its appreciation period is just like this.
Before arriving at Nanshan No. 1, the nanny van stopped at a pet store to buy a lot of supplies and snacks for the Potato puppy. Unknowingly, they bought a lot, adding a bit of warmth to the simply styled home.
It was the Potato puppy’s first time arriving at a strange place. It wasn’t afraid of strangers at all, sniffing here and there. But when it lifted its leg to mark its territory, it was sternly stopped.
Lu Ciheng grabbed the struggling Potato puppy and turned to ask, “Teacher Xie, what name are you going to give it?”
Xie Shibai looked at it for a few seconds. “Let’s call him Bobbi.”
That puppy was also called Bobbi.
Lu Ciheng poked the puppy’s head. “What a good name. What about me?”
Xie Shibai was slightly puzzled. “You what?”
Lu Ciheng leaned in, his eyes smiling. “I am also Teacher Xie’s puppy.”
Xie Shibai instinctively wanted to look for a camera, then belatedly realized they were on break. having left the villa, there were no cameras following them. Logically speaking, there was no need to act anymore.
He looked at the head leaning towards him. For an instant, a strange sense of competitiveness arose. He hooked Lu Ciheng’s chin, looked at that face, then reached out and gently patted it. Knowing exactly what the other wanted to say next, he deliberately didn’t complete the sentence, as if teasing him out of malice. “Mn, I know. Move aside, puppy.”
He curled his finger. “Bobbi, come here.”
The Potato puppy with a new name shook its head and chased after Xie Shibai’s footsteps, barking brainlessly and happily.
Lu Ciheng pressed the tip of his tongue against the cheek that had been patted. His soul was almost hooked away by that touch.
Xie Shibai poured dog food for the Potato puppy as instructed by the store clerk.
The relaxed atmosphere infected his mood.
People always sink deeper while going with the flow.
The phone placed on the coffee table popped up many messages in a row. When Xie Shibai saw them, his face suddenly turned cold.
[Zhou Chengping: Old Mr. Xie demands you return to the Xie residence immediately.]
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