# Chapter 52
Yu Sui did his best to restrain himself, warning himself not to ruin all the careful groundwork he'd laid over these past days on impulse.
Yu Sui braced both hands against the balcony railing, putting his implication more tactfully: "Besides... Shi Luo, I'm not the kind of dense straight guy who can't read between the lines."
Having mingled in this circle for years, the temptations he encountered daily were few and far between, yet at the same time, not lacking. Yu Sui had entered the industry's upper echelons the moment he joined as a first-year. He knew nothing of internet celebrities or streamers—even minor celebrities crossed his path regularly. The entertainment industry was chaotic and superficial; there was no shortage of people who, relying on a bit of looks, tried to flirt and connect with celebrity players, either to leech off their fame or make a quick buck. Ever since entering the industry, Yu Sui had been tagged with a glaring "rich" label. He had looks, he had reputation—so naturally, he was prime cut of meat in many people's eyes.
Confessions in broad daylight, covert seduction—from his teens until now, Yu Sui had truly seen it all.
He wasn't completely oblivious to Shi Luo's occasional little schemes.
Yu Sui just never considered them schemes.
Schemes are what you call it when someone you don't like is scheming.
When someone you *do* like is scheming, it's called flirting.
Even if this flirting was a bit extreme—even if he'd ended up back in the hospital with another stomach ulcer because of it, two days this time.
But Yu Sui was willing.
Shi Luo still hadn't processed what Yu Sui had said about only having one stomach ulcer episode since going to Germany. He watched Yu Sui warily: "You... don't think I'm being ridiculous?"
The wind was picking up on the balcony. Yu Sui gripped the team jacket draped over his shoulders and shook his head: "I told you, this is exactly my type."
Shi Luo's lips parted.
He desperately wanted to ask Yu Sui: do you just go for anyone who'd die for you, or is it only when *I* nearly get myself killed?
But just moments ago, confessing that two years ago he'd intentionally tried to get himself killed just to make Yu Sui collapse from the truth had already drained Shi Luo of all his courage for the day.
Every response Yu Sui had given so far was too gentle. He'd said he'd gotten sick when he learned Evil was Shi Luo. He'd said he'd felt heartbroken.
Yu Sui almost never lied. Shi Luo didn't want to hear something like "I never recognized you the whole time" to cut him to the quick, nor did he want to ruin the rare warmth between them at this moment.
Shi Luo lit a cigarette. That was enough.
But there was nothing to regret about not asking—the answer found him that very evening.
Not long after they'd returned to the training room from the balcony, Old Qiao called everyone to the conference room to review the match. The review of their game against Holy Sword was painfully uncomfortable. Fortunately, Zhou Huo was skilled at boosting morale, and halfway through he switched to showing comments from Free's official Weibo page. Zhou Huo's scathing post about Holy Sword had already amassed over ten thousand comments; fans had torn Holy Sword apart from head to toe. The team watched the top hundred hottest comments before continuing the review.
They worked through dinner while reviewing. By the time they finished, it was already ten at night. Old Qiao said, "I'll edit the key points and send them to each of you individually. Anything else you need to watch out for, remember to read it."
Zhou Huo had been fighting drowsiness through the whole review and was relieved when it finally ended: "Alright, we're flying to Chongqing tomorrow, so everyone dismissed—go sleep, go sleep."
"Those who really can't sleep can stay up," Old Qiao countered. "Stream or whatever. It's fine."
Before Zhou Huo could respond, Puppy said helplessly, "I literally cannot sleep. You could put me in bed and I'd just be on my phone. My circadian rhythm isn't something you can reset in a day."
"Fine, fine..." Zhou Huo relented. "But don't stay up too late. Fair warning—when I wake you up tomorrow morning, no complaints, no hitting snooze."
Not a single person returned to the dorms. Everyone headed to the training room.
They'd only managed a one-one draw against Holy Sword today; everyone had been given a wake-up call. Jokes were jokes, but they all had a chip on their shoulder—they weren't willing to waste training time.
"Come on, come on—we said we'd practice coordination, practice coordination." Chen Huo, looking thoroughly unwilling, entered the training room. "Shi Luo... I know you don't want to duo with me. Coincidentally, I don't want to duo with anyone outside my healer either. But our coordination was way too off in today's practice match, so... come on."
Shi Luo usually ran duo with a healer anyway, so naturally he was reluctant. But duo really was better for practicing coordination. He knit his brows and grumbled, "Invite me."
Puppy glanced at Yu Sui: "We don't need to practice coordination, right? Nothing worth practicing. I'll go solo queue. You... streaming?"
Yu Sui shook his head: "I've already hit my quota for the month. Solo queue."
Puppy nodded and went off to solo queue. Yu Sui powered on his computer, opened the game client, logged in, and began solo queue.
Sometimes Yu Sui suspected he was a reverse oracle.
Whatever it was, as long as it was bad—once he mentioned it, without exception it would come to pass.
On the balcony that afternoon, he'd just finished saying he'd seen through all kinds of schemes. That evening, he walked right into one.
It hadn't started out as anything significant. Yu Sui was quietly ranking up on the Chinese server. He was using his main account; random teammates who recognized him would typically make a fuss—either excited or confessing. Basic treatment for a pro player. Yu Sui was used to it and usually wouldn't respond, only occasionally typing a few words when he was in a particularly good mood. And as luck would have it, today was one of those days.
Shi Luo's words on the balcony that afternoon had been a bit of a gut punch, but Yu Sui, who'd been walking through fire in this industry for years, took it in stride.
Shi Luo might not have noticed himself, but their relationship had grown increasingly ambiguous.
Ambiguous enough that Yu Sui was finding it harder and harder to hold himself back.
If it weren't for how deeply the two years of separation had carved themselves into his memory, Yu Sui would have let himself go already.
Just when Yu Sui was in such a good mood, a random teammate sniper started spamming表白 in the chat.
**[EE Streamer]**: [Is that really Whisper? Whisper, I love you so much! And Evil too!!]
Yu Sui saw Shi Luo's ID and replied with an emoji. The random teammate sniper immediately grew more enthusiastic. Yu Sui didn't reply further, but that game he made sure to give the random sniper some preferential treatment—shielding on time, top-ups whenever he could spare a moment. It wasn't easy playing pure assassin with a healer, and they weren't teammates who'd been synergizing for years. Yu Sui did stuff like this occasionally in normal solo queue anyway. He hadn't given it a second thought.
Just his luck—one quick match later, Yu Sui continued solo queue, and in the next three games, he ended up matched with that random sniper twice.
They were both climbing ranks; running into each other wasn't strange. Yu Sui played normally. After those three games wrapped up, Zhou Huo knocked on the training room door, his expression awkward: "Whisper, you're... solo queuing? Did you happen to run into a streamer?"
Yu Sui glanced at Zhou Huo: "That sniper called EE? What about it?"
"She's a streamer from our competitor platform—one of our签约 streaming platforms' rival. None of this is your fault, of course. What she does has nothing to do with you; you just happened to match. But..." Zhou Huo's expression was incredulous. "Your fans, to watch you stream from a distance, all flooded into her stream. She's a singing variety streamer who normally only gets around a million viewers—at this point, her stream already has five million."
"You could have... been a bit more active pushing ranks these past few days," Zhou Huo said helplessly. "If you'd hit the Chinese server top ten earlier, you definitely wouldn't have run into these entertainment streamers." "Now it's so awkward. You basically handed her free traffic."
Puppy, who had just finished a match, swiveled his gaming chair to look at Zhou Huo: "Has our streaming platform management contacted you? Do they think Yu Sui's redirecting traffic to the rival platform?"
Zhou Huo showed everyone his WeChat chat log,苦笑: "Yes, and they think the other side was deliberately sniping you."
Yu Sui pulled off his headset, frowning: "Even if she was sniping me... how would others know we kept getting matched together?"
"Now there's a question." Zhou Huo opened a screenshot the streaming platform management had sent him. "You want to know what her stream title said?"
Shi Luo, who had been duo queuing with Chen Huo and had only caught fragments of the conversation, pulled off his headset and set it on the desk, listening as Zhou Huo read aloud from the stream screenshot: "'Girlfriend POV—Watch the Gentle Whisper Heal-Main Live!'"
Great. His signature gentle healer, gone.
Shi Luo's face went cold. He emptied an entire magazine, taking three consecutive headshots.
Chen Huo, who had no idea what was going on, yelped: "Shi Luo, what the hell? Can you share some of the action? What happened?"
Shi Luo acted like he hadn't heard, upgrading his equipment and continuing to rack up kills.
Zhou Huo had been carefully cultivating Yu Sui and Shi Luo to this point without results. Having his core schtick plagiarized out of nowhere, he couldn't help but complain: "You actually healed her?!"
Yu Sui snorted. "I didn't heal anyone."
Zhou Huo thought about it and had to agree. "These streamers and their management companies—fucking shameless just to ride the hype... Forget it, not worth the drama. Don't queue anymore. Your rank is probably too close to hers, too easy to get sniped. We have an early start tomorrow anyway. Take a break. Her viewers can't watch you anymore, it'll blow over soon."
"I'll handle the rest. The worst part is this ambiguous attention-grabbing bullshit." Zhou Huo typed on his phone. "I have to warn them, or this'll keep happening. You all do what you need to do. I'll contact their streaming platform management and have them change the stream title."
Yu Sui ran a hand through his hair, saying flatly: "I suggest you don't."
"Why?" Zhou Huo shot back without thinking. "If we don't call them out, it might go on forever. I haven't even been willing to cash in on your popularity—why should they get to?"
Yu Sui knew this playbook only too well. Sure enough, not three minutes later, a friend request notification popped up on his WeChat.
Yu Sui unlocked his phone and glanced at it—
**[EE Streamer]**: Sorry, Whisper-senpai, I'm the sniper from earlier. Sorry for the trouble! I just like you so much—can I add you as a friend? I want to apologize in person TAT.
Yu Sui looked at Zhou Huo. Zhou Huo was stunned by the sheer sequence of moves: "I know your WeChat number isn't exactly secret anymore, but... they're way too slick at this. After the 'apology,' won't they just post the chat logs?"
Yu Sui, long ago past the point of being familiar with every trick in the book, tossed his phone aside: "What do you think?"
"These people... holy shit, I actually ran into someone more mercenary than me today." Zhou Huo's scalp was about to explode from frustration. "Is this going to go on forever?! What do we do? With a streamer at this popularity level, us dragging them would only give them views! Are they latched on for good? Fuck them..."
"Stop making a fuss." Yu Sui said coldly. "I'll handle it myself."
Yu Sui actually didn't care much about being used for attention—he'd long since gotten used to it. What he was slightly annoyed about was worrying about another person in the training room being upset.
And judging from Chen Huo's whining and the especially aggressive clatter of a certain keyboard nearby, the other person in the training room was already upset.
Yu Sui gently gritted his teeth. He'd finally made some progress with Shi Luo today—he couldn't let some uninvolved bystander interfere.
Yu Sui started his own stream.
Wasn't the best way to bring down that streamer rival's viewership simply to snatch it away himself?
Yu Sui opened his in-game friends list. Shi Luo and Chen Huo's duo had just finished.
Yu Sui invited Shi Luo immediately.
Yu Sui sent a message in the friends interface.
Streaming, purely for show, he typed—
**[Whisper]**: [Solo queue is boring, want to duo for a bit?]
The stream chat exploded with messages, everyone howling and teasing. Sharp-eyed fans grabbed onto "solo queue is boring" and began subtly mocking the rival streamer for staging the whole thing.
**[omg, Yu Shen said solo queue is boring.]**
**[╮(╯_╰)╭ Of course it's boring. What kind of game can a pro have with an entertainment streamer? Can't even play properly.]**
**[Still like watching co-op with teammates best.]**
**[呵呵呵呵, that streamer just lost two million viewers.]**
**[Gross. They were streaming themselves adding Yu Shen's WeChat earlier, fake-apologizing. Ugh.]**
**[Just showing off that they know Yu Shen's WeChat, 呵.]**
**[Wonder which higher-up gave out the WeChat. Sure, lots of industry people have Whisper's number, but could they please respect pro players' privacy?]**
**[Alright stop advertising for the rival platform, calling Shi Shen.]**
**[Calling Evil+1]**
**[Calling Evil+2]**
**[Calling Evil+757, wait—where's Shi Shen? Why no reply?]**
Yu Sui wanted to know too. He glanced sideways—Shi Luo was clearly not solo queuing or doing anything else. He just sat there, expressionless, staring at his computer screen.
Yu Sui continued typing.
**[Whisper]**: [Is that okay?]
**[Whisper]**: [Or are you sleepy?]
**[Whisper]**: [Shi Luo?]
Shi Luo still didn't reply.
Yu Sui breathed out lightly. Was he actually angry?
Then a simple stream wouldn't cut it.
Just as Yu Sui was about to stand up, his phone buzzed.
Yu Sui opened it—
**[Evil]**: [Keep typing...]
**[Evil]**: [...be a little sweeter.]
Yu Sui's lips couldn't help but curl upward. He fought to control himself, not quite laughing.
Little jealous monster.
Yu Sui set down his phone and opened the streaming game client, facing the wall of screaming chat, and began typing.
At the other station, Shi Luo had initially regretted thinking he'd been a bit too dramatic—but not two seconds later, his friends chat kept pinging with message after message.
**[Whisper]**: [If you're sleepy, we won't play. If you're not, want to play for a bit?]
**[Whisper]**: [Want to play?]
**[Whisper]**: [I'll heal you, help you rank up.]
**[Whisper]**: [Is that okay?]
**[Whisper]**: [Why no reply?]
**[Whisper]**: [Just reply?]
**[Whisper]**: [Don't even need to reply—just tap accept.]
**[Whisper]**: [I'll wait for you.]