8.22–8.23

8.22

The contestants return to the villa with a big face of heavy makeup and the first thing they do is grab one of the only four bathrooms. Ever the feisty one, Ivan pushes past a couple of big men to grab the fanciest one, spends five minutes taking a fighting shower, and then lets her bestie do the washing.

The bathroom was installed with a translucent glass door, and as Zhou Yunsheng stood under the rosette head to take a shower, he saw several sets of male contestants hovering in the doorway, staring thievishly and ogling his lower body. When they left, he vaguely heard someone say that Romeo was actually really a man.

Is this a questioning of your gender? Just because he was too pretty as a woman? Zhou Yunsheng was both angry and amused.

After taking a shower and eating dinner, the female contestants gathered to chat while the male contestants stayed in the gym to work out. Zhou Yoon Sung’s body relied entirely on 007 to make adjustments and there was no need to work out, so the male contestants were surprised when he walked into the gym for the first time.

Oddball Ivan is naturally there, and she’s no less interested in abs and waistlines than the men.

“Romeo, what brings you here?” She put down two heavy dumbbells.

Zhou Yunsheng didn’t say anything and walked towards the singles bar. A male competitor was doing pull-ups, which worked out very nice arm muscles and back muscles.

Zhou Yunsheng walked to his side and held the bar and started to do the same. The two of them fell together as if they were competing, but gradually, the physically strong black male competitor was a bit overwhelmed, and when he reached the twentieth one, his hands let go and fell down. That was his limit.

But Romeo continued, twenty one, twenty two, twenty three …… Ivan stood by and helped him count, and when he reached seventy he began to get uneasy, and exhorted, “Romeo come down, overdoing it will hurt your body.” The strongest person she had ever seen could only do a hundred pull-ups a day, and still do them in groups of ten separately, and after doing them she was so tired like a dog that she couldn’t even move her fingers.

Romeo’s bravado wouldn’t be a problem on a normal day, but it’s a match, and twisting a tendon to the point of immobility will have unforeseen consequences for his game.

Her heart and liver fluttered as she counted to one hundred and one and warned, “Romeo stop doing that and get down. We have a race later and you must keep up enough energy.”

The male competitors all gathered around, staring at the teenager hanging on the bar with the eyes of a superman, who did not show any sign of pain. They absolutely could not imagine how amazing strength the teenager’s seemingly thin body contained.

“There’s no need to stop him, can’t you see he’s done over a hundred of them without even breaking a drop of sweat? He’s strong.” A male player said soothingly.

It was then that Ivan realized that his best friend’s expression had been flat to the end, neither reddened with exhaustion nor gritting his teeth in agony.

It was only when he did one hundred and fifty reps that Zhou Yunsheng violently exerted his strength to do a supported pirouette on the bar, and then landed steadily on the ground. The male competitors applauded, and some whistled. Doing one hundred and fifty pull-ups in one go, Romeo’s physical strength was enough to rival the most rigorously trained special forces.

Zhou Yunsheng patted his smooth and tight biceps and said lightly, “See? I’m a man.” The words fell with a cold expression as he left.

It dawned on Ivan that her best friend was still irritated from playing a woman today, which was adorable. She crossed her arms and laughed. The male contestants felt both embarrassed and amused, and identified a lot more with the teenager.

“Of course Romeo, you’re the real deal!” A male contestant yelled at his back, then looked to the cameraman following him and sincerely exclaimed, “He’s awesome, both in looks and personality, I like him already.”

At the judges’ critique the next day, there was no doubt that it was Zhou Yoon Sung and Yi Fan’s group that won the best hard photo. Emily’s performance in this installment hadn’t been aired yet, so the viewers didn’t feel bad for her and gave her photo a decent score, successfully allowing her to advance to second place.

Daphne, the most petite of the bunch, was eliminated and she broke down and cried on the spot.

After the episode aired, the ratings really went wild again, so much so that ABC gave the show another big budget boost. The scenes of Hayden’s violence were slightly edited, but the cause and effect were clearly explained, and the viewers’ ill feelings towards him could simply be tangled into a thick black fog. Emily was also slammed in all sorts of ways, and some even nicknamed her the Black Widow.

“Hayden and Emily are the most disgusting couple I’ve ever seen. Thank God Black Widow took out her poor little male spider or I would have vomited at the sight of them together.”

“Don’t you guys realize? Hayden and Emily are surprisingly not half as grateful to Romeo. If it wasn’t for Romeo, they wouldn’t have been able to participate in the challenge at all! How in the world can there be such cold-hearted people.”

“I think Hayden is suddenly going crazy because he’s trying to avoid a high-flying fetch mission. He’s so despicable, but he didn’t realize that his girlfriend would be a million times more despicable than he is. I have to say, they’re actually a perfect match, and it’s kind of a shame that they’re separated.”

Taunts like these can be seen all over The Next Top Model’s official website, where Emily, the former king of popularity, has finally retired from the stage of history and turned into a popularity-bottom existence.

And Romeo’s fan base is growing at a frenzied pace, doubling in size with almost every episode that airs, with members from all walks of life, all walks of life, and all ages. His charisma is unrivaled.

He selflessly helps Hayden and Emily; he is not afraid of any challenge; he has elfin beauty and even more elfin singing voice; he is a male god and now a goddess to many; he did one hundred and fifty pull-ups in one breath because he was suspected of his gender. When you think he is weak, he always shows you his strongest side.

The lesbians say they were broken straight by Romeo and can love men from now on, and the straight men say they were broken by Romeo and can love men from now on. In short whether he is a man or a woman, as long as he is Romeo, everyone will always love him.

Of course, Ivan’s handsomeness has also gained a large audience, and her fan base has been flooded with a large number of little girls who have shown her love, making for a very hot scene.

But the hottest thing was not the two androgynous contestants, but Acheson. Once again, he was the subject of serious suspicion by the masses of corrupt men and women.

“I say Gustav must be gay, he likes Romeo. Lo and behold, he gave Romeo a kitten endearment in private and accidentally blurted it out.” Attached are a couple of intercepted videos as evidence.

“I agree! He clearly treats Romeo differently than he treats the other players.” The netizen also attached a video he edited himself.

In the video, Gustav is taking pictures of the other contestants, with little expression on his face, even his gaze is calm and unruffled, and the only thing he says from start to finish is – well, your shoot is over, so the next pair of contestants hurry up and get in the ring. This sentence was repeated four times, and there was nothing else to say.

He maintains this high-flying style until Romeo and Ivan make their entrance, and then the picture changes instantly. This netizen is very creative, the soundtrack in front of him is a piano fingering exercise, repetitive and monotonous. As soon as Romeo’s ‘beauty out of the galaxy’ face appeared on the screen, the soundtrack immediately changed to the most popular confession song of the moment, ‘loveme, baby’.

With the female singer’s joyful chanting, Gustavo obliviously cries out, “Baby, make a stand in the center.”

“Baby look at me with eyes a little softer a little deeper, like I’m your favorite person.”

“Baby, smile at me.”

“Baby you’re an angel on earth!”

“Baby come over here and get on my lap.”

“Baby you were fantastic, I love you!”

These words in the middle of the shooting do not feel how, by this netizen alone edited out and coherently put together, there is a strong sense of ambiguity, as if Gustavo every shouting is a confession to Romeo, especially the background sound is still that female singer over and over again pleading: lovemebaby, lovemebaby… …and will die the next instant if he is not loved.

“Oh god, so much love! If Gustavo wasn’t crushing on Romeo, I’d rather swallow my keyboard!” A rotund girl asserted decisively.

Their YA has incurred the displeasure of Gustav’s fan base. They also made a video of some of the world’s top fashion photographers in the middle of a shoot, yelling and screaming and even kissing models and making love to them in their excitement. They tried to use this evidence to show others that, lo and behold, photographers can be this crazy on set. Gustav was indifferent to the other contestants because they didn’t inspire him.

The two gangs were at once at each other’s throats, which in turn caused the video documenting the full extent of Gustav’s dementia to catch fire on the internet. Gustavo’s hands itched to like it after seeing it, but he eventually held back.

Regardless of what the outside world says about the players, they themselves have no access to information. They repeated the intense and hectic daily routine of training, challenge, challenge and training again. Emily found that her net casting scores were definitely getting lower and lower, which made it necessary for her to give her best in every challenge. But after all, she was a heroine, with strong qi and very tough willpower, even though she was on the verge of elimination every time, she relied on her strength or luck to advance smoothly.

After that, the best hard photo was decided between Romeo and Ivan, and the other contestants always had the feeling of being in the company of the prince, with feelings of resentment and jealousy quietly piling up in their hearts.

Gustav took on the role of regular photographer for the contestants. He has now collected many, many photos and videos of the kittens and goes to great lengths to organize them every day.

“Rooney, you little devil. How many times have I told you no pawing at baby pictures.” He threw down the little folded cat who had jumped up on the desk to mess with the piles of pictures with his fat paws, then picked up the top one and put it to his lips to kiss it with a very mesmerized expression.

Finishing organizing the photos, he locked them in the safe and turned back to his desk when he saw a private message from his best friend, complaining that he hadn’t shared Rooney’s adorable photos on social media in a long time. Before he became obsessed with the teenager, he used to put up Rooney’s photos on his personal webpage almost every day and describe his experience of owning a cat, and his warm and funny words often brought a smile to those who saw them.

But now that his whole world is taken up by Junior, he really has no time for anything else but paying attention to Junior and going to great lengths to get close to him.

This close friend was also a cat slave, and especially liked to brush up on Rooney’s photos, and even took the initiative to pass along a photo of his own Ragdoll cat. Gustav clicked on it and looked at it, then found the folder named My Little Cat from the documents and packed it up to upload it to his personal homepage.

8.23

Gustav’s fans have just been slapped in the face by denying that their idol has special feelings for Romeo. They saw a set of photos appear on Gustav’s personal page titled “My Kitten”.

You’d be naive to think that these are pictures of Rooney, these are all pictures of Romeo, both published and unpublished by the show, taken in the open or stolen, everything!

Romeo sitting cross-legged on the floor nibbling on a sandwich; Romeo cuddling a doll and being cute; Romeo pouting and sending flying kisses; Romeo falling asleep on the couch; Romeo sitting obediently in a chair and letting a couple of stylists fiddle with him ……

These photographs capture almost every moment of Romeo’s participation in the competition, so how could he have gone to the trouble of photographing him if he didn’t have the heart to do so? How could he have called him ‘my kitten’ if he didn’t have the heart? How could I have made him the whole of my life if I hadn’t had the heart to do so?

Gustave really did have unusual feelings for Romeo! What’s going on with these photos? Are they real?

Fans rioted and left comments on his page in search of the truth.

Come on, tell me your social media account was stolen, you didn’t post this yourself! Some people try to fool themselves.

Gustav only reacted half an hour after the incident broke out, and it was too late to delete the photos. He hurriedly mimicked the photos and took a set for Rooney as well, ordering his assistant to make scaled-down versions of all the fashions Romeo had worn for Rooney to wear, and then instructing Rooney to strike the same pose and expression.

How can a cat possibly resemble a person? But amazingly, after Rooney’s photos were taken, there was a sense of divine synchronization when they were put together and compared with Romeo’s group. One person and one cat both have the same navy blue eyes, the same clean, innocent and cute temperament, especially when they look straight toward the camera with their ignorant little eyes for a moment, the images of one person and one cat almost overlap.

After taking the photos, Gustav rewarded Rooney with two bags of dried minnows, and then immediately packed the folder and uploaded it, labeling it – My Little Cat, Part 2 – the photos aren’t done yet, so don’t get too excited.

Fans immediately clicked on it to take a look, and their moods of either outrage or concern or skepticism all instantly turned into laughter. I knew that the idol is an ultimate fluffy control, but I did not expect him to take pet portraits to a new level, and would let Rooney to imitate the male god and goddess of the same body Romeo.

But don’t say, although the idol’s brain hole is big, the photography technology is superb, Rooney and Romeo is clearly a person and a cat, but he shot a double body and a soul feeling, especially the same sea-blue eyes, can put the heart of the hearts are adorable. One of the Rooney wearing a small blue dress, paws on the shoulder of the doll with its height, tilted his head to put the round face and the doll’s face together, with a clear as seawater gaze to the camera.

God-synchronized! God-similar! It’s seriously doubtful that Romeo is a variation of the idol’s Rooney. They’re actually the same person, right? It’s a transforming leprechaun! A netizen swore. A long line immediately formed downstairs from him, and the number of people who seconded and liked the post exceeded tens of thousands within minutes.

There are also attributes of the same fluffy control of the netizens, immediately itchy, the pets of their own families also dressed up as Romeo’s look into the photos uploaded. As long as those animals with navy blue round eyes, no matter what shape to wear what clothes, look similar to Romeo five or six points, their temperament is too close, the same innocent and unsullied, ignorant and lovely. This makes everyone’s love for Romeo rise to a new height.

Gustav had been keeping an eye on the developments, and he hadn’t explained more after sending the second file packet. He knew that the more he said the more room he gave for speculation, and with the two packets together, they could think whatever they wanted. But he knew that they would definitely make up a lot of solid reasons for their idol, because they themselves were more willing to believe those reasons.

Sure enough, the situation was going in the direction he expected, and everyone assumed it was him having a bad taste attack and showing off his family pet again. The fans’ outrage subsided, but it didn’t make it any easier for him. He foresaw how much difficulty he would face if he wanted to be on a first name basis with his kitten.

While he was in the midst of his depression, a small group of people on the internet started acting up. They said that even if Gustavo didn’t have an affair with Romeo, he was clearly overstepping boundaries with his attention to Romeo, who is a producer on Next Top Model, which was very unfair to the other contestants. Who knows if Gustav will open the door wide for a contestant he admires? It’s possible that all of Romeo’s great performances in the first few episodes were because Gustav was cheating for him.

To be fair, either Gustav resigns as producer or Romeo quits the game altogether, or both.

Their comments were immediately met with fierce attacks from Romeo’s fanbase, while Gustav’s fanbase was incited. Out of jealousy, they dropped letter after letter to the show demanding that Romeo be eliminated. They were unwilling to give him any more access to their idol, let alone ruin his career because of him.

At one point things became serious again.

It was someone who saw that the show was on fire and wanted to sideline himself in order to take the fruits of his victory, and Gustav understood very well that Next Top Model had become ABC’s ace show, and that it would bring huge profits to its investors if it stuck around. And since he was the biggest investor in the show, he naturally became the prime target for someone else to get rid of. He had a good idea who this person was.

Right now there are six contestants left on the show, and two more will be eliminated to move on to the championship round, in other words – just three short weeks until the end of the competition.

Resigning as producer meant that he would not be able to be near Romeo for three weeks, and this annoyed Gustav to no end. He could hardly imagine how he was going to get through those three weeks, like a fish out of water, or everything out of air, not even Rooney’s furry little body could bring him the slightest comfort.

He would never resign, much less let them eliminate Romeo. With that thought in mind, Gustav put on his coat and headed out the door with a cold face, and had just arrived at the underground parking lot of the ABC building when he saw Bonnie leading a film crew hurriedly towards a commercial vehicle.

“Where are you going? What are you going to do?” He rolled down the window and spoke coldly. It seemed that he had kept too low of a profile during the week to make ABC’s top executives forget who really owned the company. The Atchison family’s turf was not for the faint of heart.

“Mr. Acheson, you’re just in time. We were just on our way to the villa to announce a decision.” Bonnie wiggled her way over, wanting to laugh but not daring to. I hadn’t realized that Acheson would have a day in his head to do something as ominous as this.

“What decision? Who made it? If the decision is not to my liking, I will make the other party pay dearly.” Gustav tore off his tie, his eyes full of hostility.

“The decision was made by me to the higher ups.” Bonnie shuddered, explaining before Acheson could get mad, “The higher-ups weren’t so confused that they wanted to take you out, and they’d have to pack up and go home if they took you out, so they decided to drop Romeo out of the match. But I persuaded them to give Romeo a chance. From now on, in the middle of the shoot, Romeo’s thirty shots will be reduced to five, which means that his five shots must overwhelm the other contestants’ one hundred and fifty shots, or he’ll be eliminated. How’s that? Isn’t it exciting and challenging? That’s fair enough, right? And since there are only six contestants left, the competition will be much shorter, and the fifty-minute release per episode means the crew won’t need to edit the extra footage at all. We can totally change the taping to a live broadcast and let the viewers see for themselves if we’ve backdoored Romeo or not.”

Here she paused for a moment and asked cautiously, “What do you think of this offer? You’re not really going to resign, are you? If you do, Dave Acheson will be taking over your position, and he’s betting that you have feelings for Romeo and are willing to quit voluntarily in order to protect him. When he’s in charge, it’s going to be bad luck for all of us, with Romeo taking the brunt of it!”

Dave Acheson is the illegitimate son of the elder Acheson, who has long coveted the Acheson family estate, and has little ability of his own, but is a guy who bites around like a mad dog.

Gustav certainly wasn’t going to let Dave Acheson get away with it. He considers for a moment and agrees to Bonnie’s proposal. It wasn’t that he was selfish and refused to make concessions for Romeo’s sake, but he knew that once he resigned, Dave wouldn’t let him off the hook so easily, even if Romeo performed as well as he did. Dave was always happy to use the meanest of means to destroy everything Gustav cared about.

“Don’t worry, Romeo will be able to do it. He tends to take wonderful to great photos in his first SHOOT, no one can catch up with him, not even me and many long established supermodels.” Seeing that BOSS still had a sullen face, Bonnie patted him on the shoulder and comforted him.

Gustav responded to her with a cold stare. Of course he knew Kitten would never be crushed, he was far better than anyone could imagine. He was just worried if Kitten would be angry when she learned that he had invited this big trouble? Would she never want to talk to him again? Lord knows, his stomach was cramping with nerves right now.

The car arrived at the villa amidst Gustav’s tangled thoughts. Bonnie had no intention of letting the other contestants know more. She called the teenager into a separate room, had the cameraman turn the camera on, and then gave a brief explanation of what had happened and laid out on the table the two sets of photos that had been red-hot in the online social circles.

Gustav covered his face, afraid to face it.

Exasperated, John gave him a close-up, focusing on his red, dripping ears. And you know shame? It’s so shameless! For your bad taste idol will probably be eliminated!

However, in reality, Zhou Yunsheng did not feel angry or flustered, but rather excited. When he was asked to compete with a bunch of rookies as a former world supermodel, he always had the feeling that he would not be able to win. His seemingly free-spirited personality hid a militant element that never liked to challenge difficulty. He even felt that Bonnie could still cut her five chances down to three.

He picked up Rooney’s picture and admired it for several minutes before speaking slowly, “It’s cute, what’s its name?”

“His name is Rooney. I think you’re cuter than he is.” Gustavo, who never failed to praise his sweetheart, saw Bonnie give himself a hard stare and quickly straightened up and said, “I’m sorry for getting you into so much trouble. But I’m sure you can do it.”

Zhou Yunsheng feigned a bitter smile, “I don’t really have a choice do I? This is the only way to prove my strength to everyone, and to prove your fairness, Mr. Acheson. For the sake of all those who believe in me and support me, I accept your resolution.”

“It’s nice of you to think so.” Bonnie stood up and hugged the teenager.

Gustav gave him a solid hug in return and whispered in his ear, “I’m sorry, and, I love you.”

The tip of Zhou Yunsheng’s heart was gently touched.