Chapter 479: 503 A Chat About [Wendy] (Asking for Monthly Votes at the End of the Month)

Inside the private room.

After getting past that little interlude, the three of them—Lin Xiuyuan and the others—finally officially started their dinner for the evening, tucking into the steaming hot pot before them.

The soup base was a yin-yang pot chosen by Lin Yun'er; one half was spicy beef tallow, and the other half was a milky white mushroom broth.

The three of them chatted while swishing their food, their chopsticks shuttling back and forth between the bottom of the pot and their respective bowls and plates.

Now and then they would clink glasses, and now and then they would burst into laughter simultaneously because of some remark; the sound of their laughter mixed with the bubbling background noise of the hot pot, making it sound quite lively.

By the time they reached the end of the meal, all three were a little full, so the speed at which they swished their food slowed down significantly.

After Lin Xiuyuan dropped the last plate of beef rolls into the pot, he didn't add anything new; the group reached the final stage by unspoken agreement, switching to eating fruit and snacks.

The two fruit platters brought in earlier had long since been cleared, and as for what they were eating now, they didn't even know how many plates had been swapped out.

And it was right at this moment that the topic drifted, without anyone noticing, to some little anecdotes from when Kim Taeyeon first debuted as a soloist.

Then Kim Taeyeon opened the floodgates.

While eating crispy pork, she smiled and talked about the situation back then.

"What other feeling could there be? Just not being used to it. After being in a girl group for so many years, I was long accustomed to that kind of orderly chaos. But when I went solo, things suddenly changed; being alone in a waiting room, that kind of quiet actually made me feel uneasy."

Speaking of this, Kim Taeyeon continued to reminisce with a smile, "Actually, I was a bit intimidated being in a waiting room by myself back then too. Luckily, Irene and the others happened to be debuting around that time, so we got together; it's better to have some company."

"But when you sang the OST 'If' back in the day, weren't you also running your promotions alone? How come you still weren't used to it?" Lin Xiuyuan asked curiously upon hearing this.

As a veteran fan of 13 years, Lin Xiuyuan remembered very clearly that Kim Taeyeon's song "If" was incredibly popular that year.

It stayed on the music charts for several months, and she appeared on music programs quite a few times as well.

So logically speaking, she should have had some experience with running schedules alone back then.

Kim Taeyeon laughed after hearing this, bit off the tail of the piece of crispy pork in her hand, and explained, "What time was that? How could I have had a private waiting room? I was sharing one with other seniors."

Although she was Kim Taeyeon, the leader of Girls' Generation, at that time.

She was also just a rookie singer who had debuted not long ago and had been arranged by the company to sing an OST.

In Seoul, on the Peninsula, rookies have no dignity whatsoever.

Let alone an exclusive waiting room.

Being able to squeeze into a room with seniors was already decent; it was good enough that they didn't make you sit in the hallway.

How could there be any special treatment?

Still wanting a private waiting room.

Hearing this, Lin Xiuyuan nodded, "Oh, alright then, I thought there would be special treatment."

"In your dreams." Kim Taeyeon smiled and rolled her eyes at him, then tapped the salt and pepper crumbs off her fingertips.

Lin Xiuyuan, having been retorted twice, didn't rush to talk back.

Instead, he picked up his cup of plum juice and took a sip; after putting the cup down, his expression became slightly quiet, as if he were organizing something in his mind.

Then, after hesitating for a moment, he finally asked the question that had been swirling in his mind for quite a while, "By the way, YoonA, Taeyeon, there was a pretty big accident with Red Velvet's group back then, right? Do you have any impression of it?"

"Which one are you talking about?"

Lin Yun'er, who was still busy eating, looked up from her bowl and looked at Lin Xiuyuan with curiosity and seriousness.

Having just swished a beef roll, the meat was still hanging from the tip of her chopsticks, dripping with red oil.

In her memory, people in the industry had heard something about the major incidents that had happened to Red Velvet since their debut, but since Lin Xiuyuan was asking so suddenly, she had to first confirm which one he was referring to.

"Do they have many accidents?" Lin Xiuyuan couldn't help but laugh at her question.

He had originally thought that he only needed to mention it briefly, and Lin Yun'er and the others would be able to pinpoint the specific event.

At this time, Kim Taeyeon chimed in from the side, "For any group that works as a girl group, how could there be a shortage of news about accidents? The only thing that matters is whether the news is true or false; it's normal for you, Xiuyuan, as an outsider, not to understand this."

Lin Xiuyuan nodded, then let out the thought in his mind, stopped beating around the bush, and pointed directly to that specific incident.

"Actually, it's nothing much, just that news about their group member getting injured on stage; wasn't that quite explosive at the time?"

Seeing Lin Xiuyuan accurately point to that accident, Kim Taeyeon reacted quickly; her brows furrowed slightly almost immediately following Lin Xiuyuan's words, squeezing out two shallow vertical lines.

"I thought you were talking about the bullying one, so it was this one."

She paused when she said this, as if comparing the two incidents in her mind, then shook her head, her tone becoming a few degrees lighter than before.

"There's nothing to say about this; it was purely an accident. But what makes people uncomfortable is that the TV station was too excessive; they didn't want to take any responsibility at all. The company cleaned up the mess afterward, and I heard the costs were even pushed back onto Wendy herself."

In Kim Taeyeon's view, that incident was an accident from beginning to end that no one wanted to see.

It wasn't caused by anyone's malice, nor could it be fully explained by anyone's negligence.

Although the accident itself could be understood, the way all parties handled it after it happened was very uncomfortable.

Especially the TV station; as the provider of the venue, logically speaking, they really should have shouldered a considerable portion of the responsibility.

But their attitude was to push it away whenever they could.

They were eager to dump all the aftermath work onto the artist's company, or simply issue a notice saying they would be careful.

And that was it.

As for the company, although they stepped in to clean up the situation, the subsequent medical expenses and related financial burdens were said to have been pushed back, layer by layer, onto Wendy herself.

The final result was that the artist got injured, and then had to pay for her own injury.

That was the most uncomfortable part of the whole thing.

Hearing this, Lin Xiuyuan straightened up, "Ah, wasn't it said that your company took full responsibility for the subsequent medical expenses? How did it end up back on her?"

"Yeah, that's about what I know too, only I hadn't heard about the cost issue. Unnie, is it really like that?"

Lin Yun'er, sitting next to them, also put down her chopsticks, feeling a bit curious.

She had been quite busy in 2019, and she only learned about many news items afterward; since she wasn't particularly curious, she hadn't dug too deep.

So she only knew a little bit about this matter, and it was all information pieced together from various channels, making it even more incomplete.

Kim Taeyeon, who was asked, was silent for a moment; she didn't answer immediately, but instead calculated the information she knew, and only then did she lift her gaze again, answering in a relatively cautious tone.

"How should I put it? The person in charge of them at the time was Zaiyong oppa—YoonA, you know him, the older brother who followed us when we debuted. I happened to run into him backstage at the year-end festival back then, so we chatted briefly, but there wasn't much time to ask for specific details."

"Besides, it's not really easy to ask too much about this kind of thing."

In fact, given Kim Taeyeon's status and seniority at SM, if she really wanted to find out the inside story of this matter, she could find out whether she asked the management or the staff following Red Velvet.

But the problem is that this kind of thing is too sensitive in itself.

If you go and ask, the other party might think you are gloating, or that you are using someone else's pain to satisfy your own curiosity.

So even though she had the ability and the channels, she chose not to ask in detail, leaving a decent distance for each other.

Then Lin Yun'er began to press for some details.

And Lin Xiuyuan, who was sitting opposite, was also listening quietly to their discussion at first.

It wasn't until a while later that he suddenly interrupted their voices, "Wait a second, there's a general trend online about the situation you're talking about, I've seen some of it, but that's not what I want to ask about."

"Then what is it?" Lin Yun'er turned her head to him, her gaze falling directly on his face.

"Isn't it said online that regarding the situation of her fall, besides the injuries all over her body and face, it seems that even her fertility is affected; is this situation true or false?"

After he finished asking, Kim Taeyeon's reaction was to think seriously.

Her brows furrowed slightly, her body leaned back against the chair, changing to a more comfortable posture for thinking, and her fingers tapped lightly on her chin.

However, Lin Yun'er, who knew Lin Xiuyuan better than Kim Taeyeon, did not think about the answer to the question the moment she heard it, but stared straight at Lin Xiuyuan.

Someone was also made to feel uncomfortable all over by this look from Lin Yun'er, so his eyes began to drift aimlessly around the private room.

One moment he looked at the crystal chandelier on the ceiling, the next he looked at the TV on the wall.

Then he looked at the fruit platter on the table and the half-drunk cup of sour plum juice in front of him.

In short, he dared not make eye contact with Lin Yun'er.

Lin Xiuyuan didn't even know what he was feeling guilty about.

Honestly, back in 2014, he could tease many people unscrupulously.

Whether it was Lin Xiaolu, Goo Hara, or Park Hyomin, he could always use his glib tongue to gain the upper hand with ease.

But once he came to 2026, let alone teasing, even if he said a few more words, all his little thoughts would be seen clearly by these big sisters.

These women who have been struggling in the entertainment industry for more than ten years, which one of them isn't a thousand-year-old fox spirit reincarnated?

Each and every one of their eyes is as poisonous as an X-ray.

You think you've hidden it well, but in their eyes, you are practically transparent.

Fortunately, after Lin Yun'er discovered his embarrassed behavior, she didn't intend to pursue it.

Instead, the corners of her mouth curled up slightly.

Then she withdrew that gaze from Lin Xiuyuan's face and turned to look at Kim Taeyeon, who was still thinking seriously.

"Alright, Unnie, stop thinking about it. You didn't even ask about the previous matter, so how would you know about such a private thing? Let the guy who asked the question go ask her himself, or rather, go ask her leader."

"Hmm???"

Kim Taeyeon is not stupid; she is the type of person with a keen mind, so after hearing this...

In one second, she sensed a problem from Lin Yun'er's words, which clearly carried a special tone.

Her gaze fixed back on Lin Xiuyuan's face, and she asked bluntly, "Xiuyuan, have you really taken a fancy to Irene?"

"What is it, Unnie? I feel like this guy hasn't just taken a fancy to her, he practically wants to add her to his harem," Lin Yun'er added with a smile from the side.

Now Kim Taeyeon understood completely, and confirmed that all the logical links were clear.

However, thinking about what Wendy endured in that accident.

Whether it was the physical injuries or the subsequent unfair treatment.

She frowned after all, didn't express too much on this topic, and just quietly picked up the cup of sour plum juice at hand and took a sip.

On the contrary, when Lin Xiuyuan saw this, he hurriedly denied it, "Don't mess around, YoonA, I really don't have that thought right now, I'm just purely curious if it's like that. Is it really that serious that a fall would affect fertility?"

From the perspective of a normal adult male who has never experienced a serious physical injury, he really finds it hard to imagine how a seemingly ordinary slip and fall on stage could be so serious as to affect fertility.

"You can die from a one-meter fall, what do you think, Xiuyuan?" Kim Taeyeon asked back.

Her tone was very calm, without blame, and without any sign of anger; she was just stating a perspective that Lin Xiuyuan might not have considered.

Hearing this, Lin Xiuyuan didn't argue with her, but made a gesture of surrender.

His palm waved vaguely in the air, indicating that he had no intention of arguing or quibbling, "Repeating again, I'm just purely curious."

According to that married woman's original idea, he was just full and had nothing to do, feeling idle.

Kim Taeyeon knew he wasn't doing it on purpose by his expression, so the slightly heated emotion from just a moment ago only lasted for an instant before quickly dissipating.

She nodded along, sighing lightly, "I know, it's okay. Actually, in my opinion, Wendy's injury situation was not as serious as the subsequent recovery."

"If Wendy could have rested and recovered properly at that time, her body should have been able to recover."

"But it seemed to be the rising period of their group at that time, so there was really no other way; under the company's requirements and her own stubborn personality, she dragged her injured body out. It was too desperate."

"That kind of opportunity, once it's gone, it's gone, so I can actually understand it," Lin Yun'er nodded gently from the side.

As someone who had also struggled in a girl group, she understood that feeling all too well.

Under such immense pressure and anxiety, many artists would choose to sacrifice their physical health in exchange for a chance not to be left behind or forgotten, even if they were covered in injuries afterward.

Wendy's choice at the time might not have been rational from the perspective of an outsider.

But if others could stand in the same position to make a choice, it is estimated that they might not necessarily have been able to make a more correct decision than her.

"So the question I was curious about is directly unsolvable then," Lin Xiuyuan leaned his body back against the chair.

It seems that for this kind of extremely private physical condition, apart from the person involved and the few people closest to her, very few others would know the truth.

Lin Yun'er speared the last cherry tomato on the table.

Before putting it in her mouth, she said lightly with a smile, "Probably. If you're really curious, Xiuyuan, you'll really have to go ask Irene. Anyway, your relationship isn't bad, right?"

Pei Zhuxuan??

Lin Xiuyuan murmured softly.