Flirted Then Forgot Everything - Chapter 2

“A Capture System? What on earth is that?”

Jian Li’s almond-shaped eyes widened in a panic. He glanced around frantically, his movements so abrupt that they caught the attention of the artists seated nearby. He immediately stiffened, forcing himself to sit upright, not daring to move another muscle.

“Warning! Warning! Warning! Your target Yu Cheng’s favorability has plummeted below the passing mark. Please kiss Yu Cheng within one minute to salvage his favorability, or your existence will be erased.”

Jian Li’s lips parted in disbelief. “That’s impossible. I don’t believe it. What are you even—”

THUMP.

Suddenly, Jian Li went rigid. He was forced to close his eyes as violent, flickering images flashed across his vision. His body erupted in agonizing pain—a sensation so intense his breath hitched, yet he could neither scream nor move.

The cold, mechanical voice continued:

“If favorability is not restored before the countdown ends, the system will return you to the scene of the car accident. This time, the system will not save you.”

The pain vanished as quickly as it had come, but it left Jian Li drenched in a cold sweat, his frame trembling. If the vision he just saw was the true reality of his accident, another encounter with it would mean certain death.

The system began the countdown:

“Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight.”

Jian Li looked at Yu Cheng on the awards stage. His mind flashed between Yu Cheng’s indifferent, phoenix-like eyes and the gruesome imagery of the car crash. His heart hammered against his ribs. He was torn, but time was slipping away.

On stage, Yu Cheng finished his acceptance speech and prepared to step down.

Driven by sheer desperation, Jian Li bolted from his seat. He kept his eyes locked on Yu Cheng. The older man paused on the steps, looking down at him. Under the harsh glare of the spotlights, the lingering smile on Yu Cheng’s lips didn’t reach his eyes—they were cold enough to freeze anyone in their tracks.

Under that chilling gaze, Jian Li’s walk turned into a sprint. The system’s countdown felt like a death knell tolling in his ears:

“Twenty, nineteen, eighteen.”

His charge was so sudden that the security guards, caught off guard by a fellow celebrity, failed to intervene. Jian Li lunged onto the stage. With eyes blurred by panic, he grabbed Yu Cheng’s tie, refusing to look him in the eye.

He stared at Yu Cheng’s chin, his fingers trembling with such force that he didn’t even feel the tie clip digging into his palm. Above them, the spotlights burned; below, the darkened hall was filled with the industry’s elite.

Jian Li squeezed his eyes shut and leaned up, pressing his lips against Yu Cheng’s.

Cool met warm.

The host’s scream pierced the air at the exact moment the mechanical voice chimed in his head:

“Ding—Target Yu Cheng’s favorability has reached 60. Passing grade achieved. Punishment retracted.”

The kiss lasted only a fleeting second.

Jian Li opened his eyes to see Yu Cheng’s thin lips parted slightly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in a slow swallow. Jian Li scrambled backward, still unable to meet the man’s gaze.

The audience, previously bored, erupted into a frenzy of screams and applause. The host’s high-pitched shrieking through the microphone was so loud Jian Li felt he might go deaf. And yet, amidst the chaos, his own heartbeat was the loudest thing he could hear—rapid, heavy, and erratic.

The security guards finally regained their senses and rushed the stage, but they hesitated when they reached Jian Li. These were veteran guards; they had tackled countless sasaeng (obsessive fans), but dragging a top-tier idol off stage was uncharted territory.

Should they move in, or stay back?

Jian Li didn’t give them the chance to decide. He turned to flee, but before he could take a single step, Yu Cheng—who had been passive until now—suddenly reached out and hooked an arm around his waist.

Yu Cheng’s hand was large, his grip firm enough to easily dominate Jian Li’s narrow waist. As Jian Li gasped in shock, Yu Cheng silenced him by crashing their lips together again.

CLATTER.

The heavy Best Actor trophy hit the floor, sending the crowd into another roar of excitement. Yu Cheng tightened his grip on Jian Li’s waist, one hand pressing firmly against the back of the boy’s neck, returning the kiss with predatory intensity.

It was an aggressive move, yet strangely tender in its execution. Unlike Jian Li’s frantic warmth, Yu Cheng’s lips were cool—much like the man himself.

Flashbulbs popped incessantly. The media was in a state of delirium; if not for the security line, they would have shoved their lenses directly into the pair’s faces.

Blinking against the blinding lights, Jian Li’s vision finally focused. He saw Yu Cheng’s eyes—dark, bottomless, and utterly devoid of emotion. They were locked in an embrace that looked intimate to the world, yet felt cold and distant to the touch. It wasn’t an act of affection; it felt like retaliation.

Panic flared in Jian Li’s chest. Trapped by Yu Cheng’s overwhelming strength, he bit down hard on the man’s lower lip.

Yu Cheng narrowed his eyes but bit back.

“Jian Li,” a low voice vibrated against his lips, “I never take a loss.”

The hand on his waist finally loosened. Jian Li wasted no time pushing Yu Cheng away and sprinting off the stage. He ran blindly, ignoring the chaos behind him, and bolted into the restroom. He locked himself in a stall, sitting on the toilet as he struggled to catch his breath.

“I’ve gone mad.” Jian Li groaned, clutching his head and messing up his hair.

The mechanical voice mocked him in its flat, monotone drone: “Such a coward.”

While Jian Li hid, Yu Cheng remained on stage.

Under a thousand flickering lights, Yu Cheng calmly straightened his rumpled collar and bent down to retrieve his trophy. He walked back to the microphone and spoke with unnerving composure:

“My apologies.”

He lifted the trophy slightly, an elegant gesture of regret for dropping it. The bite mark on his lip was magnified on the giant screens for everyone to see, yet he seemed entirely unbothered.

“Thank you.”

With that, Yu Cheng ended the ceremony and walked off stage, leaving the stunned host standing in silence.

Within ten minutes, the internet exploded. The names “Yu Cheng” and “Jian Li” trended across every platform, accompanied by high-definition photos of the kiss. While every celebrity has rumors, theirs had always been vague and baseless. This was different. This was undeniable.

Back in the restroom, Jian Li called his manager, Wan Tao.

To his surprise, Wan Tao sounded remarkably calm. He instructed Jian Li to leave through the back exit and wait for the company car. Jian Li pulled his hat low and slipped out the back. Only when he was safely inside the van did he finally let out a breath.

He watched Wan Tao through the rearview mirror, bracing for the inevitable explosion. How was he supposed to explain this?

Everyone in the industry knew that the prestigious Film King, Yu Cheng, looked down on “traffic idols” like Jian Li. Similarly, Wan Tao had spent years listening to Jian Li complain about Yu Cheng. After all, who could like someone who either ignored them or looked at them with nothing but cold contempt?

Jian Li hated Yu Cheng. He hated him with every fiber of his being.

And yet, he had just publicly initiated a kiss with the man he loathed most.

The sensations from the stage played on a loop in his mind: the coolness of Yu Cheng’s lips, the weight of his hand on his back, the scent of his breath and finally, those icy, indifferent eyes.

“Agh—Yu Cheng, you bastard!” Jian Li screamed from the backseat.

“Keep it down!” Wan Tao snapped.

Jian Li went silent, his thumb hovering over the icon for Xunsheng—the social media giant—before he chickened out and closed the app. He didn’t need to look to know that the digital world was in a state of total anarchy.

Wan Tao glanced at him through the mirror again.

Jian Li lowered his phone and asked softly, “Tao-ge, aren’t you going to ask me why I did it?”

Wan Tao let out a sharp, frustrated laugh. “Jian Li, if I ask, will you actually tell me the truth? It wasn’t easy for us to get where we are. You might be a top-tier idol now, but you know as well as I do that in this industry and even within our own company—‘traffic’ is cheap. You are replaceable. You could be discarded at any moment.”

Jian Li lowered his head and said nothing. He came from a poor background; his early years were defined by struggle and obscurity. Wan Tao had started as a small-time manager. Together, they had climbed from being nobodies in an 18th-tier boy band to the pinnacle of stardom.

It had been a long, hard road, and he had just set it on fire.

To put it nicely, Jian Li was a “top-tier” idol. To put it bluntly, he lacked any defining legacy beyond his striking face and a collection of catchy, mindless pop songs that anyone could sing. He simply had no masterpiece to call his own.

Anyone could pull off fast-paced choreography and upbeat tracks. The company was full of trainees waiting in the wings who could do exactly what he did; any one of them could be plucked from obscurity to replace him. Their only shortcoming was that they didn’t possess Jian Li’s specific features.

But looks could be manufactured. With the right branding, any face could become the next “unique” idol.

Jian Li had spent his career walking on eggshells, following Wan Tao’s instructions to the letter—until today.

The ride back to the company was draped in silence. It wasn’t until they were safely inside that Wan Tao finally let out a long, heavy sigh. Jian Li sat on the sofa, his back stiff and ramrod straight—a dead giveaway of his guilt.

The mechanical voice that had mocked him earlier hadn’t returned, making him wonder for a fleeting moment if it had all been a hallucination. But the memory of the agony the system inflicted was still fresh, and the fact remained: he had charged onto that stage in front of the entire world and kissed Yu Cheng.

He hadn’t just kissed him; he had bitten him.

Jian Li licked the corner of his mouth and winced slightly. Yu Cheng had bitten back, and he hadn’t been gentle.

Wan Tao noticed the wound on Jian Li’s lip, his expression unreadable. He sat across from the boy, saying nothing, merely sighing over and over again. Jian Li’s fingers curled instinctively as he bowed his head, bracing for a lecture. The longer Wan Tao sighed without speaking, the tighter Jian Li’s nerves wound.

Finally, Wan Tao pulled out a tablet and began scrolling rapidly. In just two short hours, the internet had become a battlefield of speculation.

In the seven years since Yu Cheng’s debut, no media outlet had ever managed to dig up a real scandal. It wasn’t just his love life; his family background and social circle were a total black box. As for Jian Li, while he had dealt with minor rumors, they were always baseless and easily dismissed.

That two people who seemed to exist in entirely different universes were now linked by such an explosive event meant the industry wouldn’t see a moment of peace for a long time. Online, the two fanbases had already entrenched themselves in their respective camps, declaring war.

As one of the two people at the center of the storm, Jian Li should have been worried about his own future, yet his mind kept drifting back to Yu Cheng. For the older man, this entire ordeal was nothing short of an unprovoked disaster.

Jian Li’s rigid posture slumped slightly. His chestnut hair fell over his forehead, and his rounded eyes flickered with a panicked, lost look—like a deer caught in headlights. Yu Cheng already despised him; after this, that loathing would surely only deepen.

He grits his teeth, trying to convince himself it didn’t matter. What did he care if Yu Cheng hated him? He hated Yu Cheng just as much!

Suddenly, Wan Tao’s finger froze on the screen. He handed the tablet over.

“Yu Cheng just followed you on Xunsheng.”