Shift! The Side-Character Heroine

Face Reveal!

Zhao Youyue did not realize that she had become a hot topic on the internet. Her real identity had been exposed. She was just too brilliant in all aspects. Many fans of Ah Yu never thought that she would be such a legendary grade high school girl…

According to the evaluation of some of her fans, when it came to Zhao Youyue, as long as anyone was classmates with her, they would definitely never forget such a perfect girl like her, even decades later.

She was just too dazzling, and was everyone’s unanimously appointed school flower.

In reality, there really were no such things as ‘school flowers.’ Everything was just made up by the media. On television, ‘school flowers’ were portrayed as standard, especially in high schools. However, this was actually not the case.

In another world, there was this girl called, “Sister Milk Tea”[1]. If it was not for her sudden popularity on the internet, she might not have become the undisputed school flower. This was because her academic performance and talents were not outstanding at all.

Even so, it was undeniable that she had the best of lives within the female community. In the end, she got married to the CEO of Jingdong[2], who was much older than her. She definitely got a good catch.

In actuality, when girls reach a certain level of beauty, it all boiled down to personal preference. There was no single, definite way of comparing beauty objectively.

Most students were not even sure of how many pretty girls there were in the school, so how could they possibly vote and decide on who was most deserving of the ‘school flower’ title?

However, Zhao Youyue managed to do it, as she was simply too excellent and had reached the pinnacle of all fields. She completely overshadowed the other girls; they had no chance to shine at all. Her fame had infected the entire school.

Even before she captured the attention of the media, she had already gotten the approval of many students in private. No one could nitpick anything about her. Now, as long as the media hyped her up, the ‘school flower’ title did not seem very unrealistic anymore. She totally deserved it.

As other female live streamers would more or less have some flaws or bad rumors going on about them, Ah Yu Zhao Youyue was like a pristine stream of water that flowed through the live stream community. She almost had no shortcomings. She was academically brilliant, and this led to many people having the first impression of her being a well-behaved, docile girl. If she was not that type of girl, there was no way that she would attain such excellent results…

When viewed in such a conventional spotlight, Zhao Youyue earned a lot of plus points.

It seemed like being able to study hard and obtain good results was a sovereign attribute!

Doing well academically was also beneficial in a societal context. Good grades were equivalent to good character. This way of thinking was very common, even if it did not seem entirely logical.

For a live streamer, graduating from a famous university was also a plus point, as it was another glorious achievement, worthy of great boasting. Not many live streamers had such qualifications.

Too many people had suddenly decided to become live streamers. Some ladies had even bravely started to live stream, just because of their somewhat good looks. No wonder some of their viewers ridiculed them for being slutty…

Since there were many female live streamers, their appearances varied. Some were pretty, some were not, it was really irregular. In such a situation, the fact that Ah Yu insisted on not showing her face, and depended solely on her talents to thrive, seemed even more remarkable.

The most crucial thing was that initially, everyone had not really expected much about her appearance. However, she turned out to be a fresh, pretty young lady. Moreover, her beauty was indescribable, and she was even the school flower of a certain high school. This had to be a dream, right?

God was really just so kind to her. She must be the heroine of the “Earth OnLine”[3] game, right?

Even if she was not really talented, she could easily rely on her good looks and make a name for herself, fairly quickly.

However, all her old viewers knew that she was only able to come so far through her hard work. Step by step, she had ascended the staircase to fame. She was not an overnight success. Instead, she was only able to attract so many fans because she spent a considerably long time live streaming and showcasing her talents.

Without a doubt, the unknown that most people feared turned out to be a pleasant surprise instead, it made the delight all the more sweeter. Due to her good looks, those ‘sensible fans'[4] and ‘casual fans'[5] of hers all became her real fans!

While many bullet curtains containing confessions to Zhao Youyue filled the screen, many viewers had also sent out various gifts. An uncontrollable amount of aeroplanes were being gifted, so many that she could not even thank the viewers in time. Although the number of rockets being gifted was still not as much as the aeroplanes, they were still much more than usual. Usually, rockets were only gifted by her viewers after she made several cool plays during her games, or when her music sent them into a realm of emotions and madness.

It was worth mentioning that those who gifted the rockets were not extremely wealthy. They were not the type of people who viewed money as if it was nothing. They were probably viewers with a small amount of money in their hands. After all, a single rocket cost 500 RMB. However, most of them would still clench their teeth together and send the gift out. As long as they could hear a gentle thank you, it was enough, and they would be content.

However, this time, upon starting her live stream, Zhao Youyue was already being showered with so many gifts. She did not really understand what was going on…

Zhao Youyue was quite a good actress. At that point in time, the number of viewers in her live stream channel had already exceeded half a million people. She said to the viewers, “What’s with everyone today? Why is everyone treating me with such enthusiasm? Also, what’s with the bullet curtains mentioning this ‘Zhao Youyue?’ Is she a new live streamer? It’s not really nice for all you people of the cyber navy[6] to invade and disrupt another live streamer’s channel. Is the chat moderator here? Please mute these cyber navies that are spamming ‘Zhao Youyue’.”

Then, a chat moderator with the username “Ling Ning sama” said, “Ah Yu, stop pretending already. Who doesn’t know that your real name is Zhao Youyue? These are not people from the cyber navy, they are all your fans.”

When Zhao Youyue saw what the chat moderator said, her thoughts became muddled. However, she still tried to deny it, “Who is Zhao Youyue, why don’t I know her?”

At this moment, bullet curtains with replies filled the screen —- —-

“Miss Ah Yu, have you not been on the internet recently? Everything about you is already out in the open!”

“Your voice has already sold you out, there is no point denying it!”

“I have a suggestion. Why not turn on your webcam, and live stream while you read up the news on how your true identity got exposed, so that we can see your reactions and facial expressions. It’ll be priceless!”

“Zhao Youyue… you’re so cute I wanna…”

“So just hurry up and reveal your face already. It’s not like you don’t have the looks to back yourself up. There are so many of your videos and pictures going around on the internet. There’s no point for you to lurk in the dark anymore!”

…

When Zhao Youyue saw these bullet curtains, she was shocked. What exactly was going on?

She used her computer to log into her sockpuppet identity Ah Yu’s Weibo account. Upon logging in, she realized that her Weibo was exploding with activity. The most recent Weibo post of hers was still the video that was taken during the rehearsals. However, she realized that plenty was mentioning her on Weibo, and all of it contained screenshots of her performance during the New Year’s Eve party. There were also comparison videos which were put together by her fans. The fact that she was Ah Yu was simply irrefutable!

Zhao Youyue quickly understood what went wrong. She never expected such a small careless act on her part to inadvertently expose her true identity and set off such a massive wave on the internet!

Now, everyone was just waiting for her to admit it…

Zhao Youyue had always been very calm. Since it is clear that there was no point in denying anything now, she decided not to argue further. She then directly turned on her camera, of course, she made sure she included a filter which only beautified her.

She has finally revealed her face for the first time!

Translation note :

[1] “Sister Milk Tea” is a girl that shot to fame on the internet in China in 2009 from the popularity of a photograph of her. In the photograph she was holding a cup of milk tea in her hand, hence the nickname. Her real name is Zhang Zetian, also known as Nancy.

[2] “Jingdong,” also known as JD.com, Inc. and formerly called 360buy, is a Chinese e-commerce company headquartered in Beijing. It is one of the two largest online retailers in China by transaction volume and revenue.

[3] “Earth OnLine” – “ol” is a famous large-scale MMORPG game in China. At one point, the game had 7 billion players online at the same time.

[4] “Sensible fans” are fans that are sensible and more matured in the sense that they are willing to accept that their idol is not perfect. They find the existence of haters normal, and are ready to accept criticisms about their idols.

[5] “Casual fans” are fans that know who a particular famous person is, and acknowledge they are good-looking or talented and so on, but do not really follow their activities or attempt to interact. They just watch from the sidelines.

[6] “Cyber navy” is a group of hired network writers who publish specific information on specific content in the network. The cyber navy is often referred to as the navy, also known as cyber gunners. They are usually active in e-commerce websites, forums, microblogs and other social networking platforms. They pretend to be ordinary netizens or consumers and influence normal users by posting, replying, and spreading blog posts.