# Chapter 25
"I knew it…" Ji Yanhan was气得坐下来，喃喃道，"我就知道……你 have been unwilling to share a room with anyone for sleep. Everyone more or less knows your little preference. It's an unspoken understanding that no one has ever been assigned as your roommate during competitions or training all these years. That day at Shi Luo's hometown, I thought it was strange—why did you suddenly not care anymore? Why would you be willing to squeeze in with me…"
The more Ji Yanhan thought about it, the angrier he got. "What? Were you afraid something would happen if you shared a room with him back then?"
Since he'd already admitted it, Yu Sui had nothing left to lose. "Yes, I was afraid things would happen prematurely, so I let him have his own room and went to squeeze in with you. You're straight as an arrow anyway—what's the big deal?"
"You liked him but didn't tell me. I tested you over and over again, practically asking you directly to your face, and you still kept me guessing…"
"And you told me all about it so righteously… saying it was to repay a favor, saying you didn't want the burden of a guilty conscience, saying it was for the team. You made me jump through hoops, made me put in so much effort to help him with his college entrance exam!" Ji Yanhan gritted his teeth. "So that whole time you were helping me chase your little boyfriend? Whisper, you're so conscience-driven! So considerate of me! You've really grown up, playing your big brother like a fiddle!"
"Why would I tell you when nothing's even confirmed yet?" Yu Sui definitely hadn't wanted to spill this. If Ji Yanhan hadn't provoked him with his shouting, he never would have lost his cool. He already regretted it now. "Once we walk out that door, this conversation never happened. Don't bring it up again."
Ji Yanhan roared, "What do you mean? What kind of attitude is that? I haven't finished being angry yet, and you're already giving me orders?!"
Yu Sui was about to die from Ji Yanhan's stupidity. "Do you want to shout louder? Should I help you start a livestream so you can tell everyone about this?"
Ji Yanhan froze. His lips moved, then his voice dropped. "There… there are no outsiders here."
Ji Yanhan thought about it and realized something was off. His anger reignited. "Aren't you going to have to tell him eventually anyway? You think I'd be the one afraid to say it?"
"I ain't saying shit!" Yu Sui irritably stood up, stuck a cigarette in his mouth, and lit it. "I'm not arguing about this. Keep it in your stomach. Thanks."
Ji Yanhan didn't trust Yu Sui at all. He looked Yu Sui up and down. "What? You already confessed and got rejected? Well served! You deserve it!!"
"No confession, and no plans to tell him either." Yu Sui smoked as he spoke. "Can't tell if he's straight or gay. Doesn't look straight, doesn't look gay either… No idea what he is. He might not have figured himself out yet. I'll wait."
Ji Yanhan furrowed his brow. "You all can't just… tell at a glance?"
"Not that accurate, thanks." Yu Sui was getting annoyed. "Can you stop asking?"
Yu Sui wasn't敷衍 Ji Yanhan—he genuinely hadn't fully confirmed yet.
All he could say was… Shi Luo was eighty percent gay.
Ji Yanhan was impatient. "If you're not sure, then get sure. There are ways to judge, right? Oh right, didn't he have his ears pierced? That's basically confirmation!"
Yu Sui coldly laughed. "His left ear does have a piercing, but the bastard got three done in one go, and he has two more on his right ear. What does that prove? Besides proving he was once a member of the Love葬礼 style crowd, it proves absolutely nothing!"
Ji Yanhan recalled Shi Luo's fierce row of ear piercings and said uncertainly, "Well, there's still some hope.换个思路想想, he might be a total uke—wouldn't that be perfect for your type?"
"Stop right there." Ji Yanhan clearly didn't know anything. Yu Sui wasn't interested in discussing this with him. He lowered his head to smoke. "I don't want to talk about typing issues with you at all."
Ji Yanhan impatiently said, "Then what do you want? Why not just ask directly? If he's straight or just doesn't like you, that's perfect—we can just sell him off. No point in wasting it."
"I kept him around, and it has nothing to do with whether he's straight or not. Can we stop talking about this?" Yu Sui and Ji Yanhan had fundamentally different understandings of competitive gaming. Yu Sui really didn't want to argue with Ji Yanhan. "Once we walk out that door, the fact that I like him doesn't exist. How many times do I need to repeat this?"
Ji Yanhan didn't understand. "Why can't you say?!"
"We're on the same team! We see each other every single day!" Yu Sui was about to go crazy from Ji Yanhan's denseness. "Aren't you embarrassed? If you had fallen for Old Qiao back in the day and he rejected you, could the two of you still compete together on the same team? Why make life so unnecessarily dramatic and angsty?!"
Ji Yanhan's eyes lit up and he immediately grabbed the key point. "Then you should definitely sell him off even more! Once he's sold, you can confess to whoever you want. If it fails, it fails. At least you won't be living together anymore."
Yu Sui was convinced Ji Yanhan had recently lost his mind from business stress. He stared at Ji Yanhan like he was an idiot and asked with pity, "And what if it works out?"
Ji Yanhan choked.
Yu Sui crushed out his cigarette and said coolly, "Then when we face his team in competition, whether we win or lose, you'd probably accuse me of throwing the match."
Ji Yanhan's head hurt badly. "Then what were you originally planning?"
"Take things as they come. He's still a bit young anyway, and I'm not in a hurry." Yu Sui leaned against the window looking outside. "There's plenty of time. Let's take it slow… Once he's an adult, I'll tell him about my orientation. If he's not interested, he'll naturally start avoiding me. We won't need to say anything outright. Things will go back to normal, and nothing will be disrupted."
Ji Yanhan looked up. "And if he is interested?"
Yu Sui paused, then lowered his head and smiled.
"If he's interested…" Yu Sui's eyes sparkled slightly. Looking out the window, he slowly said, "FS will just gain another pair of healer twins."
Ji Yanhan looked extremely disapproving, but Yu Sui had always been the kind of person who made his own decisions and couldn't be dissuaded. Ji Yanhan stood up with a black face. "Do whatever you want. I'm giving you a heads-up though—keep a close eye on your little kid. If anything else goes wrong, don't just talk about 'later'—the present situation itself is over. I don't care if he gets suspended, but if you get dragged down by him again, it's not going to be a discussion—I'm kicking you off the team directly!"
Yu Sui nodded. "Relax. Get the contract drafted for him soon. Can you find some time? This has been dragging on forever."
Ji Yanhan frowned. "Got it. I'll send it to you tonight."
Ji Yanhan really didn't have time to stay any longer. He pushed open the door and left.
As he was exiting the hospital entrance, he happened to run straight into Shi Luo carrying a food container.
Ji Yanhan coldly glanced at this white-haired, short-haired kingdom-toppling vixen, then got in his car and left.
Shi Luo was completely baffled. He figured Ji Yanhan must be mad at him for dragging Yu Sui into this mess. Feeling guilty, he didn't glare back.
Outside the hospital room, Shi Luo carefully knocked on the door.
Yu Sui had just come out of the bathroom. He wiped his hands and opened the door.
Outside, Shi Luo quietly and carefully asked, "Do you… want to eat wontons?"
Yu Sui sighed. "Come in."
After arguing with Ji Yanhan for so long, Yu Sui was indeed hungry. Silently, he opened the food container and poured out a bowl of wontons, which he finished clean in no time.
Shi Luo stood off to the side, not knowing what to do with his hands.
After finishing the bowl of wontons, Yu Sui poured himself some more soup and drank it. He looked at Shi Luo. "Did Chen Huo tell you everything?"
Shi Luo nodded honestly.
"As an esports player, you should…" Yu Sui started but then couldn't be bothered to finish. He waved his hand. "Forget it. Just keep it in mind for next time."
Shi Luo hesitated. "Shouldn't there be some kind of punishment? Chen Huo told me that Baozaoshu got suspended and fined. I also…"
Yu Sui was exhausted, looking at Shi Luo. "If you got the same punishment as him, wouldn't my hospital stay have been a bit pointless?"
Yu Sui thought to himself with clicks of his tongue—as expected, those who are favored always have no fear. This kid was actually asking to be punished.
"True…" Shi Luo quietly said. "It really was me who threw the first punch. Last night…"
"Don't bring it up again, and don't tell anyone else. Don't let me eat this unfair loss for nothing." Yu Sui furrowed his brow. "You hear me?!"
Shi Luo knew Yu Sui just wanted to bury the violence incident completely. He bit his lip and nodded. "Got it, but…"
Shi Luo furrowed his brow. "Still—shouldn't there be some kind of punishment? Something like what Baozaoshu got…"
"Punishment, what kind of punishment? Suspend you from playoffs too?" Yu Sui smiled, and his back immediately started hurting from the movement. He could only endure it. "Luo Luo, hate to break it to you, but you're a substitute. You weren't going to play in playoffs anyway. Does it matter whether you're banned or not?"
Shi Luo paused. "Can… can you still play?"
"As long as my hand isn't broken, I can." Yu Sui answered without thinking. "If it were regular season games, I'd let you replace me, but these are semifinals and finals. Can't take the risk."
Shi Luo bit his lip. He had almost no tournament experience at all. He really wasn't confident he could win even a semifinal BO5 for Yu Sui.
"Don't think too much about it. Our team has always been like this—fifty lashes publicly, a slap on the wrist internally." Yu Sui勉强 sat back on the bed. "Page turned."
Lying on his stomach really wasn't a good look. Yu Sui's idol包袱 was extremely heavy. Gritting his teeth, he laid flat. "Alright, that's enough."
Shi Luo stood perfectly straight by Yu Sui's bedside, his eyes red and puffy, fighting hard to hold back his tears.
When Puppy pushed open the hospital room door—after taking a walk outside and watching the old folks do square dancing for a while before unhurriedly buying congee and coming back—what he saw was exactly this scene.
Yu Sui's face was pale, lying flat on the hospital bed, his condition unclear.
By the bedside, Shi Luo's eyes were wet with tears, his sobs suppressed.
Puppy squinted and looked carefully, then quietly试探道, "Did Yu Sui… not make it?"
Shi Luo hastily turned around to wipe his face.
Puppy entered the room. After asking a few questions, he nonchalantly said, "Hey, just give him some token punishment. Otherwise, little Luo Luo here will feel too guilty."
Yu Sui also didn't want Shi Luo to feel guilty. After some thought, he said, "How about this—the semifinal happens to be on my birthday. You can order me a cake as an apology."
Puppy slapped his forehead. "Oh right! You're having a birthday! I forget every year. This year we can't敷衍. I'll go tell the manager—we'll throw a big party!"
Shi Luo still felt it wasn't enough. "Is that… is that really all?"
Yu Sui looked at Shi Luo and laughed. "Then what kind of punishment do you want me to give?"
Shi Luo's ears somehow turned slightly red. He scratched his ear and stammered, "That day… I'll prepare something else for you as a gift too."
"Sure. I'll hold you to it." Yu Sui looked at Puppy. "Wild Ox didn't dare say anything else, right? Has this thing been completely buried?"
"More or less." Puppy said. "Wild Ox definitely doesn't dare say anything. They're terrified, worried that if this gets out, the league will punish their team. They're also scared your fans will surround their base. But…"
Yu Sui frowned. "But?"
"Someone at that hot pot restaurant yesterday noticed something. Fortunately, they were too busy watching the drama to take photos. No evidence in their hands. They only posted a thread last night around midnight, excitedly gossiping, but since they couldn't post any pictures, the thread got deleted this morning." Puppy平静道. "A bit slow on the deletion, but it doesn't matter. The people who saw that thread reacted just like our boss—they all thought it was impossible."
Puppy coolly looked at the two of them and imitated a fan's tone: "Our Baozaoshu little brother just has a wild-sounding ID, but he's actually very gentle. He doesn't even dye his hair."
"Wild Ox people need to stop踩一捧一. Luo Luo just looks like someone who goes clubbing, but who didn't have a wild youth? The real person has no temper at all. Plus ever since he joined FS, our Luo Luo took out all his ear studs. The moment he removed his earrings and accessories, it represented him leaving his old self behind!"
"Our Whisper is even more impossible. I'm not playing favorites, but anyone who's lasted more than three years in the healer role has basically transcended the possibility of human emotional outbursts. If Whisper still had even a trace of basic human emotions, he would have killed Chen Huo, Old Qiao, and Puppy long ago."
"The little brothers who play healers all have Buddha in their hearts. I suspect they don't even kill insects in their daily lives. How could they possibly get into a fight?"
"Right, right! The brothers who enjoy playing healers are national treasures. Fighting passionately at a hot pot restaurant at midnight哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈 don't make me laugh—did this tip-off person even play this game? 2333333…"
Puppy stared expressionlessly at the two of them. "Your fans really do have a very deep misunderstanding of you two."