Rose and Renaissance#4 - Chu Zhi

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Kids make choices, Adults make love.

--Rose and Renaissance

Cool and alpha to his core, playboy Xia Xiqing has everyone fooled with that angelic face of his, but he just had to give the game away in front of his idol and reveal his true colors⁠-and so Xia Xiqing's first encounter with his idol backfired on him and ruined his chances.

Xia Xiqing: I like you a lot.

Zhou Ziheng: stay-away-from-me.jpg

However, Xia Xiqing beautiful face appearing for just three seconds in the audience of a press conference leads to his debut as Zhou Ziheng's foremost fan, and he, together with his idol, gets on the trending list, gets on a reality show, and gets on... That's right, it's exactly as you think.

But it's not quite what Xia Xiqing thinks it to be.

At first, he think he's hooked up with the unrivaled alpha of the entertainment industry, but it's only after he strips away the latter's public persona that he finds out that Zhou Ziheng is a naive and innocent tsundere. He thought he has gotten an "I bedded my idol" script, but in the end, it turns out to be a script of "my idol bedded me."

How... stimulating. *lights up cigarette*

Xia Xiqing: I thought you didn't like me at all. What's with all this hugging and clinging?

Zhou Ziheng: Well, I take it back.

Xia Xiqing goes idol-chasing at a public event just once, and it results both in him going viral and also in everything immediately backfiring on him as his true colors get revealed to his idol, thus belying his angelic appearance. After his overnight explosion of fame, Xia Xiqing and his idol, Zhou Ziheng, end up on an escape room reality show together, going head-to-head in an intense game of wits and accepting each other's true selves as they go through this game within a game. Behind the push and pull of flirting and refusing to be seduced are the myriad warnings of changed minds and reluctant enjoyment. This story is set in the entertainment industry, and a big highlight of the narrative is the brain-melting script of the reality program, full of problem-solving and suspenseful challenges. Both protagonists hide behind many masks, wearing public personas that contradict their true selves, which results in satisfyingly tense interactions between the two of them. Family backgrounds and dependent personalities are explored in this novel, as well as the emotional relationship between the savior and the one who is saved. The narrative is immersed common knowledge from both academic STEM disciplines and fine arts disciplines, using ascetic physics principles to express emotions and displaying in full the unique romance that arises from the confluence of science and art.