Chapter 16
Shi Luo looked at Yu Sui, his throat tightening. He didn't say anything more, turned around, and walked out of the meeting room.
Zhao Feng walked Yu Sui to the door. Shi Luo returned to the second team's training room by himself. Earlier, when he saw Zhao Feng coming, he'd only closed the livestream—the game client was still logged in. Shi Luo slowly sat down in front of his computer station, hesitating between continuing to grind ranked matches on his main account and just shutting down to sleep. A notification lit up in his friends list on the game client.
Shi Luo clicked to open it. It was Wa Wa.
[Awa]: Shi-ge, can you carry me in a few matches? *puppy dog eyes*.jpg
[Awa]: Chen-ge was supposed to help me grind ranks, but after three duo queue games he said he was gonna retire from playing with me. QQ
[Awa]: Ge, I tilted myself again as an entry fragger.
The annoyances in Shi Luo's heart instantly cleared away. He stared at the chat log and felt a headache coming on.
Back when Wa Wa was still a dedicated support-healer, Shi Luo really enjoyed duo queueing with him. Wa Wa had a good temperament, great synergy, worked hard without complaint as Shi Luo's pocket healer, and his mechanics were solid too. They'd absolutely dominated the national server together. But ever since Wa Wa started learning Yu Sui's playstyle, Shi Luo found himself wanting to quit the map whenever he got randomly paired with Wa Wa.
Shi Luo considered pretending he hadn't seen the message and going offline, but he'd already slept through the entire day and wouldn't be able to rest in his room anyway. Weighing the options between lying awake with insomnia or playing with Wa Wa, he ultimately chose the latter.
Shi Luo typed in the game friends list, [Evil]: I'll switch to my smurf.
Wa Wa replied immediately, [Awa]: Thank you Shi-ge! Kowtowing to Shi-ge! *thumbs thumbs thumbs*!
Then Wa Wa quickly added, [Awa]: But Shi-ge, is your smurf ranked high enough? Can we even duo queue?
Shi Luo typed, [Evil]: My smurf is also in the top 200 of the national server. What about you? Still in the top 1000? I'm more worried your main can't queue with my smurf.
Wa Wa went silent. Shi Luo logged out of his main, switched to his chaotic smurf account, and messaged Wa Wa.
Shi Luo got on his random-character smurf, [Jyhbdhs]: Invite me.
Wa Wa quickly sent a party invite. He found typing tedious, so he sent Shi Luo a voice chat request instead.
Shi Luo hesitated but accepted, frowning. "I'm in a bad mood today. Don't expect nice words from me. If we're voice chatting, don't stream."
"No problem!" Wa Wa agreed readily. He addressed his livestream viewers, "Alright everyone, that's it for today. I'm gonna log off. See you all tomorrow night!"
The livestream chat exploded with fans begging him not to end the stream, all assuming he was duo queueing with Evil. Wa Wa chuckled as he tried to calm his viewers, then closed the stream anyway.
With the stream off, both of them relaxed considerably. Wa Wa dared to speak more freely now, lowering his voice. "Shi-ge... are you doing okay now?"
Shi Luo was quiet for a moment. "What could possibly be wrong?"
Wa Wa hesitated, then asked, "Yu Shen left tonight. Chen-ge said he went to find you. Did you two... work things out?"
Shi Luo lit a cigarette.
After a moment, he said, "There should be an official announcement within a month."
Wa Wa breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good... Honestly, even though I heard you and Yu Shen had some bad blood before, compared to everything else, Yu Shen's new team is definitely way better than IAC."
The two of them loaded into a map. Wa Wa kept healing Shi Luo and another teammate who was playing entry fragger while saying, "Our captain told me that back during the transfer window, he actually didn't recommend you go to IAC. I agreed with him then.怎么说呢... these purely commercialized clubs just don't feel right."
Shi Luo took a drag of his cigarette and said slowly, "Every rose has its thorns. While I do get annoyed sometimes, there's something about IAC I really like."
Wa Wa asked, "What?"
Shi Luo said, "The relaxation."
Wa Wa was completely confused. "Relaxation?! You don't even have a single close friend there, especially that manager of yours... I mean, since you're not streaming anymore and you're leaving anyway, I'll just say it—what's so relaxing about your manager? Last year during playoffs, you were in the top four! The day before the semifinals! He organized an offline fan meet-and-greet! The meet tickets were over a thousand each, hundreds of fans! He raked in a fortune and had the audacity to call it 'letting fans send you off to battle.' What a freaking marketing genius."
Wa Wa couldn't believe it. "The day before the semifinals?! Do you have any idea how happy we were—IAC's opponents—when we heard about this?! We thought you guys were definitely done for in the semifinals! Cough... even though you guys ended up eliminating us anyway, but it definitely affected your mental state, right?"
Shi Luo admitted, "It affected us. We didn't make finals... that probably had something to do with it."
Wa Wa was disgusted. "That's why we can't stand him. He doesn't treat players like human beings at all—just tools, and not even proper ones. There were way too many incidents like that, I can't even count them all... Where's the relaxation in that?"
"I'm asking you." Shi Luo loaded his bullets, marked a spot on the map, then said, "If the same thing happened with your manager, how would you feel?"
Wa Wa instinctively defended the manager who treated him like a son. "That's impossible! Our manager never pulls stuff like that on us! We do maybe two or three events a year, and they're always during the off-season!"
Shi Luo held his cigarette. "I'm asking hypothetically. How would you feel?"
Wa Wa hesitated. "...My heart would go cold. It would break my heart."
Shi Luo said, "See? I don't feel that way."
"No matter what messed-up stuff a club like that pulls, you only get angry. You never feel betrayed." Shi Luo said, "Trust me, anger is a thousand times better than having your heart broken."
Shi Luo helped Wa Wa secure a kill on an enemy. "Everyone keeps emotional distance from each other. If it works out, we stay together; if not, we part ways. Both sides are at ease. So I don't actually hold any grudges against IAC."
Wa Wa went quiet for a moment, then said softly, "Did I bring up something I shouldn't have again?"
Shi Luo smiled. "You thought I was talking about myself? About why I left FS back then? Not at all."
Wa Wa didn't understand. If it wasn't that, what was it?
Wa Wa thought about what happened at the club last night, full of curiosity, burning with questions, but he didn't dare ask.
The two of them chatted casually while playing, and after two games, Wa Wa stepped away for a bit. Shi Luo was alone, playing with his phone while waiting. Soon Wa Wa came back and said quietly, "Yu Shen came back. He's in his own room now."
Shi Luo acted like he hadn't heard anything. "Keep queuing."
Wa Wa agreed. After a while, Wa Wa said quietly again, "Shi-ge, I have a question I want to ask, but I'm afraid you'll beat me up for it."
"Ask." Shi Luo remained unmoved. "What else is there for me to be afraid of being asked?"
Wa Wa hemmed and hawed for a long time, lowering his voice as much as possible. "Shi-ge, did you and Yu Shen ever... get together?"
Shi Luo froze for two seconds, then asked back, "What do you mean by 'get together'?"
Wa Wa's voice dropped even lower. "You know what I mean."
Shi Luo smiled.
Wa Wa was terrified. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, forget I asked!!"
Shi Luo asked, "How did you even come up with this?"
"Just... you know." Wa Wa trembled as he spoke. "I follow a bunch of player fan communities,打卡 every day... I recently checked the communities for you and Yu Shen, and I saw a lot of unverified rumors. Thinking about you two's vibe last night, I suddenly had this wild idea..."
Before Wa Wa could finish, Shi Luo said, "No."
Wa Wa blanked. "...Never?"
Shi Luo said, "No."
Wa Wa relaxed. "That's good, that's good, otherwise that would be way too dramatic, but..."
Wa Wa couldn't contain his little burst of excitement, eagerly asking, "Ge, can I ask another question?!"
Shi Luo figured he had nothing to hide and was completely open and honest. "Go ahead."
Wa Wa tried his hardest to keep his voice down. "Some people in the community are saying that Chen-ge and Yu Shen were together. True or false?!"
Shi Luo: "..."
The story was taking a turn toward the thrilling and mysterious. Shi Luo suddenly wanted to check that ridiculous fan community too.
Before Shi Luo could answer, Wa Wa continued quietly, "Actually, everyone started out discussing whether Yu Shen had ever dated any girls over the years. After digging for a long time they found nothing, then they started gossiping about you. Turns out you're even more righteous! No female friends at all, not many male friends either, and the one you were closest to was me. Then they started writing fanfiction about us... oh my, the little stories they write are so embarrassing..."
Shi Luo's expression was complicated. "Skip that part..."
"Okay, okay." Wa Wa went on, "Then someone also said that you and Chen Huo have something going on..."
"Stop right there!" Shi Luo felt a headache coming on. "I'd rather be caught having a thing with you! Skip that too."
Wa Wa quickly agreed. "Okay, okay. The important part is coming. Then, finally, an old FS fan revealed that Chen-ge and Yu Shen are the real couple. The reason being... Yu Shen's first kiss was with Chen Huo."
"They said there was a team gathering at FS that went pretty late one night. The next day during Chen Huo's stream, he jokingly said Yu Shen lost his first kiss. It seems like Chen Huo was really drunk at the time, and... it spread quite a bit back then."
Wa Wa didn't dare ask much but couldn't hold it in either. "So... true or false? Were they joking, or..."
In the game, Shi Luo destroyed the enemy's respawn beacon. He said, "Do you believe everything leaked in those communities?"
Wa Wa hesitated. "They gave it with such detail, even knew where the gathering took place..."
"I'll go to your NSN community tomorrow and leak that Captain Gu has designs on you. I'll give it just as much detail. You think some of your fans won't believe it?" Shi Luo sneered. "Or how about I go to Chen Huo's community in a bit and leak that Chen Huo got drunk last night and made a scene under the grape arbor. Think some people would believe that?"
Wa Wa burst out laughing, trying so hard to hold it in his stomach hurt.
Shi Luo quit the map. "Stay away from that stuff normally. How boring can you be?"
Shi Luo duo queued with Wa Wa all night. At two in the morning, Wa Wa couldn't stay awake anymore and went to sleep. Shi Luo quit the game and stared blankly at the computer screen.
The old fan's revelation wasn't false.
Just some details were off.
Two years ago, on Yu Sui's birthday, he was hospitalized for acute gastric bleeding. The birthday party that had been planned for so long naturally fell through. A month later, the FS crew threw Yu Sui a makeup birthday celebration.
It was supposed to be Yu Sui's birthday banquet, but Yu Sui arrived latest. Everyone waited until they were bored. Under Puppy's urging, they started a game of truth or dare.
Shi Luo had bad luck. He lost right at the start. Chen Huo punished him with drinking, but Shi Luo back then didn't drink at all, no matter what. He refused absolutely. Chen Huo switched to a different punishment. Shi Luo objected to that one even more. But everyone from FS was cheering him on. Shi Luo back then was still someone who couldn't stand being provoked. When he was backed into a corner with no way out, Yu Sui, who had arrived late, pushed open the door and walked in.
Yu Sui, still a bit pale in the face, was the person Shi Luo forcibly kissed.
Chen Huo's alternative punishment: kiss whoever you want.
Shi Luo still remembered Yu Sui's shocked, bewildered expression that day.
After the two of them kissed, the entire private room went wild with cheering. Chen Huo never expected Yu Sui to arrive at precisely that moment. He laughed himself half to death saying this was definitely Yu Sui's first kiss. His teammates laughed until they were out of breath, wishing they could post on Weibo to tell Yu Sui's fans that their Whisper was finally no longer virgin territory.
Yu Sui touched his lips with his thumb, then turned to ask Shi Luo if this was his first kiss.
Shi Luo, looking at how crazy everyone was laughing at Yu Sui, was suddenly seized by some inexplicable teenage pride. He flushed bright red and said defiantly, "Of course not."
Yu Sui froze for a moment, then laughed and grabbed a throw pillow and threw it at Shi Luo.
Old history. Because it had come out of Chen Huo's mouth, as it spread, the story gradually changed protagonists.
True or false—who could ever tell anymore.