Chapter 4 — The Beauty Drainage System

On the day of the live performance, I wore my loosest practice clothes and stepped onto the stage. I wore no makeup, my hair was tied up haphazardly into a ponytail, and the dark acne scars on my face were fully exposed. The audience below started whispering the moment they laid eyes on me.

"Who is that person? Her condition is abyssal."

"It looks like Lu Nian. Her conditions were quite good before, so why has she ended up like this?"

I completed my entire dance routine. It wasn't considered exceptionally good, but it wasn't terrible either. When the rankings were announced, I stood at thirty-first place. Exactly one spot above the elimination threshold. I was safe. However, Song Qiaoqiao’s rank had plummeted from first place all the way down to seventh. As she stood on stage hearing the announcement, the smile on her face lasted for less than a second before it shattered completely. Because everyone could clearly see that her face was a whole circle rounder than it had been the week before. The pimples on her chin could not be concealed by concealer, and the flesh at her waist was squeezed into distinct, ugly rolls by her tight performance costume. Coach Han Zheng’s critique was brutally direct:

"Song Qiaoqiao, your recent state management has issues. As the center of Group A, you need to be much stricter with yourself."

She stood under the harsh stage lights, gripping the microphone so tightly that her knuckles turned stark white. After stepping off the stage, she walked straight toward me.

"Lu Nian."

Her voice was very low, just loud enough for me to hear.

"You are sabotaging me."

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

"You know."

Her eyes turned red, though she held back her tears:

"You did it on purpose. You deliberately ate those things, deliberately skipped training, deliberately..."

"Deliberately what?"

I tilted my head and looked at her:

"I eat my own food, what does that have to do with you?"

Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Because she could not explain. She could not say in front of everyone:

"You eating junk food makes me fat."

Doing so would be no different from admitting the existence of the system.

"Song Qiaoqiao, are you perhaps too exhausted?"

I patted her shoulder:

"Get some good rest, don't put too much pressure on yourself."

Those were the exact words she had once said to me. Not a single word was different. Her body trembled. I turned around and walked away. After returning to the dressing room, I took the box of fried chicken I had prepared beforehand out of my bag, tore open the packaging, and devoured it piece by piece. The comment streams were scrolling wildly: 【Lu Nian is so vicious! She's eating fried chicken right in the dressing room on performance day! This is adding immense pressure to the female lead!】 【System crash warning: The transferred fat has exceeded the host's tolerance limit! The facial edema index is skyrocketing!】 【There are only two weeks left until the finals. At this rate, the female lead is totally doomed!】 I gnawed on a chicken drumstick while watching the grease drip down my fingers. Two weeks? I could wait.

There was only one week left until the finals. The atmosphere in the training camp was tense to the absolute extreme. Everyone was risking their lives practicing extra hours. Except for me. Throughout this week, I pushed the spirit of letting go to its absolute limit. Every day, I slept until I woke up naturally, and all three meals consisted of foods high in oil, sugar, and calories. Snacks never left my hands, and my physical activity level was zero. My appearance completely collapsed; I developed a double chin, heavy eye bags, enlarged pores, and my entire body gained a size. But I didn't care. Because Song Qiaoqiao's condition was ten times more miserable than mine. Her face, which used to be the size of a palm, had bloated to nearly the size of a rice bowl. Her once slender waist now bore distinct layers of excess fat. Her skin transformed from porcelain white to a sickly, sallow yellow. Her forehead and both cheeks were crowded with hidden acne and pustules. She drove herself mad trying to fast, exercise, apply face masks, and get aesthetic injections. None of it worked. Because the system was still operating. What she was draining from me was no longer my beauty, but the endless grease and metabolic waste continuously generated within my body. The more desperately she wanted to become beautiful, the harder the system tried to transfer the "garbage" from my body into hers.

Three days before the finals, Song Qiaoqiao requested a meeting with the show's producer. I didn't know what she had said, but the next day, a staff member came to inform me:

"Lu Nian, the producer said your recent condition is too poor and is affecting the image of the show. If your state doesn't improve by the finals, your stage qualification might be revoked."

I nodded.

"Understood."

After the staff member left, I continued eating my potato chips.

The night before the finals. All the trainees were in the dressing room, preparing their looks for tomorrow. I sat in a corner with a mirror placed before me. The reflection in the mirror was indeed quite ugly. But I didn't care. Because tomorrow, everyone would witness a magnificent show.

Song Qiaoqiao walked over from the other side of the dressing room. She wore an oversized sweatshirt, her hood pulled very low, and a face mask completely concealing her features. Yet, it failed to hide the figure that had ballooned by ten kilograms compared to a month ago. She stopped in front of me and pulled down her mask. I saw a face that was almost unrecognizable. Swollen, dull, covered in pustules and rashes, her jawline completely vanished, and a sagging double chin hung heavily.

"Lu Nian."

Her voice was hoarse, as if she had been crying for a long time.

"You won."

"I don't understand what you're talking about."

"You know."

She squatted down, looking straight into my eyes:

"I'm begging you. Tomorrow is the finals, can you... please stop eating?"

"Just for one day. I'm begging you. As long as you don't eat those things for a single day, my condition will recover a little bit."

"Just a little bit is enough. I'm begging you."

Her tears fell, splashing onto the toe of my shoe. I lowered my gaze to look at her. Three months ago, when she stepped on my face to climb upward, she hadn't been this humble.

"Song Qiaoqiao."

"Hmm?"

"Do you know why Fang Yuanyuan was eliminated?"

Her body instantly stiffened.

"Do you know that when she left, she had lost fifteen pounds, half of her hair had fallen out, and she looked ten years older?"

"That's because..."

"Because of you."

She said nothing.

"You drained her beauty, sucked away her collagen, and drained her hair and complexion. Then she was eliminated, and you became the prettiest girl in the camp."

"I..."

"And then you came to drain me."

I stood up, looking down at her from above as she crouched on the floor.

"Now you come to beg me?"

"On what grounds?"

Her lips trembled, unable to utter a single syllable. I reached into my pocket, tore open a pack of spicy gluten sticks, and slowly chewed them one by one right in front of her.

"Tomorrow is the finals, and not only will I eat, but I will eat the oiliest, greasiest, most disgusting things possible."

"I want the whole country to see what kind of person Song Qiaoqiao—who was hailed as having 'skin white as ice and bones like jade'—truly is."

She collapsed backward onto the floor. Her tears mixed with her peeling foundation, looking patchy and ruined like a cracked wall. I turned around and walked out of the dressing room. Behind me, the sound of her stifled sobbing echoed. I did not look back. Tomorrow was the finals. Tens of millions of people would be watching the live broadcast. I wanted everyone to see the truth.

On the day of the finals, the number of live viewers in the broadcast room exceeded thirty million. The moment the stage lights blazed to life, the comment section instantly flooded the screen:

【Where is Song Qiaoqiao??? Who is that fat person???】

【Oh my god, what is that on her face? Pustules???】

【There's no way that's Song Qiaoqiao, it must just be someone who looks similar!】

Song Qiaoqiao stood at the center of the stage. The lights showed no mercy, illuminating every inch of her swelling skin. She wore a custom-designed performance costume, but the fabric around her waist had stretched to the point of deformation, and the flesh of her lower abdomen spilled out of the gaps. Under the high-definition cameras, there was nowhere left for her face to hide. Pustules, rashes, grease, edema—all of it was exposed to thirty million viewers.

Meanwhile, I sat in front of the monitoring screen in the backstage area, holding a freshly bought box of fried chicken. I took a bite of a chicken wing. On the screen, Song Qiaoqiao’s face swelled up yet another circle.