I Really Like the Male Supporting Character (Quick Transmigration) - Chapter 54

The filming for ‘We’re Living Together!’ lasted five days. They’d filmed in the mansion for two days, and they’d switch locations for the next three days. They were meant to do one of the special activities that the production crew had prepared, such as surfing by the sea, vacationing at a resort, or skiing on a snow-capped mountain.

They had a draw and got the recently popular Maze Castle, so on the morning of the third day, everyone set off together for the destination.

As the name suggests, Maze Castle was a puzzle-solving attraction that’d been a trending destination in recent years. The castle was filled with hidden mechanisms and labyrinths, with mystery-solving checkpoints in between. It promised an experience full of fun and adventure.

Ah Luo stood outside the Maze Castle, looking at the fairytale-like spired towers before her, and couldn’t help but admire how deep the production crew’s pockets were.

Maze Castle was wildly popular, and just a single visit cost a small fortune. However, the show had gone all out and booked the entire castle—for three whole days!

Once everyone settled inside, the challenge was announced: whichever pair first discovered the treasure hidden somewhere in the Maze Castle would be the winner.

The winning pair would receive a prize. The production crew was going all in. They paid out of pocket for two tickets on the Elsevier, a luxury cruise ship. The winners would get to enjoy a whole month of leisurely ocean travel aboard the famous cruise.

On the first day at the castle, the couple began exploring the mysterious place.

The interior was designed entirely in elegant and antique European palace style. Staying there made one feel as though they’d stepped through time itself.

Since it was a team competition, each couple was technically a rival, so everyone chose to move separately.

Ah Luo and Shen Xi walked down a long hallway. The lighting around them was dim. A faint glow filtered through the stained-glass windows. It was silent, and the soft echo of their footsteps, and the cameraman’s, was the only thing they could hear.

She gave a slight shiver. The young man suddenly stopped, turned around, and held out a hand to her.

“Sister, I’m kind of scared. Will you hold my hand?”

“Huh?” Ah Luo was stunned for a moment. The young man’s eyes were sparkling, without a hint of fear. On the contrary, they seemed to be gleaming with some inexplicable excitement.

They walked a few steps hand-in-hand before Ah Luo realised—was it because he sensed her mood just now?

She had been a bit unsettled by the spooky atmosphere. But how had he noticed? He didn’t even really know her before. When had that changed?

Before Ah Luo could figure it out, the young man walking ahead suddenly made a discovery.

“Sister, look. Doesn’t that look like a number?” Shen Xi pointed to a barely noticeable pattern on the black marble floor.

The markings looked like natural stone veining, but it was a bit paler than the marble itself and resembled the number 302.

Ah Luo glanced at it too and said, “It does look like a number. But isn’t that just part of the stone’s design?”

The young man shook his head. “Maybe in other places it would be. But in a maze like this, anything that stands out even a little could be a clue.”

The two of them headed straight for Room 302. They pushed open the heavy door and entered a spacious music room. The floor was covered in old brown wooden boards, and in the centre sat an enormous, elegant grand piano. Aside from that, the room was completely empty.

“Is there anything here?” Ah Luo scanned the room but didn’t spot anything unusual.

Shen Xi walked over to the piano. After a moment of observation, he sat down on the bench. He faced the sheet music laid out on the stand, then placed his ten fingers on the black-and-white keys and began to play.

Melodious notes filled the air. Ah Luo’s eyes widened in astonishment.

The young man sat upright. His long lashes cast shadows on his face as he lowered his gaze. His slender, fair fingers danced across the keys. He already had a clean, pure look to him—completely untouched by the world—and in that moment, he looked just like a noble, elegant, flawless little prince.

[Is this the little prince from a fairytale come to life!?!!!]

[Screenshot! Screenshot! These two together are perfect—just looking at them side by side is pure bliss!]

[Who knew Shen Xi was not only a gaming god but could play piano too!? If someone could rely on looks but chooses talent instead, it’s definitely him!!!]

The young man played beautifully. Ah Luo stood beside him, nearly entranced. When the piece ended, he jumped up, eyes gleaming.

“Sister, I found something!”

“What is it?”

Shen Xi said, “When I was playing just now, I noticed a few notes were off. If you turn those wrong notes into numbers, they spell out 406.”

[He figured that out? Incredible, just incredible. This game is that hard!? What if the player doesn’t know how to play piano?]

Even the cameraman nearby was stunned.

The treasure wasn’t supposed to be that hard to find. The challenges set up by the production crew were actually designed to be pretty easy to spot—like a note hidden inside a vase, or a clue written somewhere obvious. There definitely wasn’t any piano-code-breaking involved.

As the cameraman was thinking that, Shen Xi was already excitedly dragging Ah Luo up to the fourth floor.

Room 406 was a small storage room. The moment all three of them stepped inside, the door slammed shut behind them with a loud bang.

Ah Luo startled and turned around quickly, only to feel her hand being squeezed by the young man, as if to comfort her.

“Don’t be scared,” he said softly.

Ah Luo nodded. She felt the warm heat of his palm, and her racing heart gradually began to calm down.

Shen Xi didn’t let go of her hand as he led her towards the door. He reached out and gave it a tug, but it didn’t budge at all.

“Looks like this is a locked-room puzzle. We can’t get out for now. We’ll have to look for clues inside.”

Faced with this situation, the cameraman was stunned, and so were the viewers.

[Who would’ve thought I’d end up watching a live mystery unravel in a romance variety show? This program really knows how to play!]

[I checked out the other pairs. They’re all acting normal! Film Emperor Zhou found a diary in one of the rooms, Sun Ningyu’s team is still wandering around, and Lu Tao and Yan Jiaqi are just reading in the study.]

[Either it’s a problem with the production crew, or Xin Luo and Shen Xi just operate on a completely different wavelength. Are they even having the same experience as the other pairs?]

From the start of filming, Xin Luo and Shen Xi’s team had always marched to the beat of their own drum, constantly doing the unexpected and sparking endless discussion.

Thinking about it like that, the fact that they’d turned this romance variety show segment into a mystery game wasn’t so strange after all.

Shen Xi quickly found something unusual indoors. The storage room was filled with clutter—worn-out furniture, cleaning supplies, and the like. He spotted a particular chair propped against the wall by the door. Everything else in the room was covered in a thin layer of dust, but the chair was suspiciously clean.

“Sister, there’s definitely something off about this chair,” Shen Xi declared with absolute confidence.

As he spoke, he moved the chair aside—and sure enough, there was a button-like device on the wall behind it.

When things turned out exactly as he predicted, the young man grinned in delight. His soft, puppy-dog eyes squinted up with joy, and the little canine tooth at the corner of his mouth made him look adorably innocent.

He looked eagerly towards Ah Luo. His eyes shined with a clear plea for praise.

Ah Luo went with the flow. She raised a hand and ruffled his hair. “You’re so clever.”

[Tsk. I can’t even watch this. Lingshen is always so cocky when he’s gaming, but the moment he’s in front of his Sister Goddess, he turns into a puppy. Unreal.]

Getting his head patted made Shen Xi feel a little shy. His ears turned red, and he turned away to press the button.

Ah Luo quickly grabbed his arm. “Don’t press it yet. There might be some kind of trap.”

The young man blinked and mused, “But this is the only clue I found. It has to be the way out.”

Ah Luo knew, of course, that it was indeed the way out—but not the door kind of exit. The moment that button was pressed, the section of floor they were standing on would split open and drop them into a real hidden chamber below.

In the original storyline, Shen Xi had fallen just like that and ended up trapped in the hidden room for an entire day and night. When they finally rescued him, he had developed claustrophobia.

The original Xin Luo had always treated him with cold detachment. She insisted on teaming up with Zhou Jiayin while searching for clues and even took the cameraman with her, which left Shen Xi all on his own. As a result, no one noticed he was missing for a long time.

In the end, it was the female lead, Wen Yuxin, who realised he’d vanished and alerted the production crew to search for him.

It was precisely because Wen Yuxin had saved Shen Xi that his older brother felt indebted to her. He later gave her a wealth of resources and opportunities, which propelled her to fame. Meanwhile, Xin Luo’s character arc completely collapsed. She was viciously attacked by Shen Xi’s fans, cursed out by countless bystanders, and completely fell from grace.

Since Ah Luo had ended up here now, there was no way she’d stand by and let the same thing happen to him.

She said, “Let’s keep looking. Maybe there are more clues somewhere.”

Although Shen Xi didn’t understand why she stopped him, he still nodded obediently and gave up on pressing the button. He started searching the room with Ah Luo.

After more than an hour of searching—surprisingly—they really did find another clue.

Inside an old dressing table, Shen Xi discovered a mirror. On the back of the mirror was a painting of a European woman gazing into a mirror.

“There’s something off about this painting. Look, Sister—the woman is clearly looking into a mirror, but her eyes are staring at the comb on the vanity table.”

The vanity in the painting was identical to the one in front of them, cluttered with items like a comb, a powder case, lipstick, flower-shaped jewellery, and a variety of bottles and jars. Shen Xi followed the angle from the painting and found the item she was looking at was the single wooden comb.

Ah Luo picked up the wooden comb and saw a line of cursive English letters engraved on the back. It read, ‘We shall all fall into darkness.’

“What does that mean?” the young man asked, confused. “I guess this clue isn’t much use. We still can’t get out.”

Even so, Ah Luo remained firm. The button was not to be pressed.

By now, the three of them had been stuck in the room for over two hours.

[Why won’t Xin Luo let them press the button? Is there something wrong with it?]

[She’s acting so weird. Shen Xi clearly found the exit, so why stop him from using it? Is she trying to stir up drama on purpose?]

Ah Luo’s heart was heavy. She was beginning to understand that the only exit in this place led to the hidden chamber below. However, Shen Xi had been deeply traumatised ever since a childhood night when a storm had knocked the power out while his parents were both away working. He’d been afraid of the dark ever since.

She didn’t want this sunny, bright young man to face that fear again. It would hurt her to see it.

Just as Ah Luo was thinking this, she heard the cameraman—who had been getting antsy—suggest, “Why don’t we just try pressing the button and see what happens?”

Without them noticing, the cameraman had walked over to the wall. He reached out and pressed the button.

Ah Luo cried out in alarm, “No! Wait—!”

The next second, her voice cut off.

The floor beneath the cameraman gave a sudden whoosh and split in two, revealing a gaping black hole. With a loud clang, he fell straight through.

The floor closed back up, while the door to the storage room creaked open.

Ah Luo: ‘…’

Shen Xi: ‘???’

[Holy crap!! Why did the screen just go black all of a sudden!!!???]