# Chapter 53
Being hit up for attention by some no-name little influencer or streamer was something any professional player would encounter. Shi Luo had been in this scene long enough to know exactly how things worked—it had nothing to do with Yu Sui—but having listened to the whole thing from the sidelines, he'd gotten inexplicably fired up anyway.
When he'd first met Yu Sui two years ago, there were always random people swarming around him, randomly becoming Yu Sui's "friends," randomly going around telling everyone in secret how things were "like this" or "like that" between them and Yu Sui. A few words spread here and there, and anyone who didn't know better would think Yu Sui had actually gotten a girlfriend.
Back then, Shi Luo couldn't even stand Yu Sui being close to Ji Yanhuan. How could he tolerate these "people who came even later than him"?
What's the deal?
He hadn't even done anything yet, so why did some random stranger get to apologize and ask for WeChat access?
A few exchanges later, would people actually think Yu Sui was carrying that person?
Stepping further—if this kept up, would he have to watch his own back just to duo with Yu Sui in the future?
The worst part was, Yu Sui had plainly told him today that he was exactly into this type.
So while duo-queuing with Chen Huo, Shi Luo kept regretting. He should've asked clearly in the afternoon—whether Yu Sui just liked people who pushed their luck endlessly, or...
Or whether he just liked Shi Luo's particular brand of it.
When Yu Sui sent him a group invite, Shi Luo hesitated and didn't respond.
Instead, he switched to Yu Sui's WeChat and sent him a message.
Shi Luo had originally just wanted Yu Sui to send two or three more messages. His temper always came fast and went fast anyway—when Yu Sui opened the stream and grouped him, he'd actually felt appeased. It was enough that the little streamer had automatically kept her distance from his team. He didn't expect this player to be such a smooth talker, sending message after message, each one more ambiguous than the last. After reading a few, Shi Luo's ears turned red.
Yu Sui typed too fast, messages flying out one after another. Shi Luo's ears burning, his hands fumbling, quickly hit the queue button inside the game. Only then did Yu Sui finally, leisurely, call it quits.
But by this point, the comments section of Yu Sui's stream had exploded. The audience had been so thoroughly dazzled they hadn't quite processed what happened yet.
While waiting in queue, Shi Luo held an unlit cigarette in his mouth, then couldn't help quietly reopening Yu Sui's stream interface and enabling the comments.
【????????】
【If it weren't for this familiar typing speed and key sounds, I'd swear Whisper's account was hacked.】
【No camera, but I'm absolutely certain—that's Yu Sui.】
【Wow, duo with Evil again! The skill mains are very satisfied.】
【I literally cannot believe those were the words my husband just typed...】
【Don't flirt with my Luo崽 like that, QAQ, our Luoluo just turned adult last year!】
【Whisper groups with anyone directly anyway. What's the situation here?】
【Can someone tell me what happened? When did this player I've watched grow up become such a smooth talker? Whisper, what have you been hiding from us?】
【Exclusive: The unknown other side of the Free team.】
【@Free Esports Club, what exactly is going on between your team's medic and your flanker?】
【... Who could've imagined that just a month ago, these two were rumored to be at each other's throats and never getting along? Damn it, is there any truth left in this world?】
【TTATT, it's been two years. For the love of god, give us a straight answer—are you two real or not?】
【Anyone who says Whisper is a player from now on is fighting me. He's not a player, he just hadn't met someone he wanted to pamper...】
【I'm crying... Can't you spare some of those sweet nothings for a Weibo post to appease your fans? Damn it, who told you fans that all you want is trophies? You player!】
Yu Sui's countless female fans would get jealous seeing this, sure, but thinking about who he was pampering, everyone felt a bit better. As long as it wasn't some attention-seeking little influencer, the good stuff wasn't flowing to outsiders. Being kept within the Free team was good enough.
Chen Huo felt even more satisfied. He watched Yu Sui's whole sequence of moves in stunned, awed silence. These two were absolutely the most cooperative选手 when it came to publicity work!
Competition results were the players' job. Keeping players free from outside interference was Zhou Huo's job—and that naturally included keeping irrelevant outsiders from leeching the team's popularity and attention. Zhou Huo was undoubtedly the angriest about today's stunt with the little streamer. He checked the streamer's viewer count, felt better seeing it had dropped back to her usual level, and not content with that, notified the team's marketing department to download Yu Sui's stream clip and quickly edit a short video to post on the official blog. It would serve as a warning to those always trying to suck the life out of professional players.
After crashing into them a few times, she'd had the nerve to "apologize" directly and ask to add Yu Sui's WeChat? If Zhou Huo didn't believe that was premeditated, he'd eat his own hat.
The marketing department staff were all Zhou Huo's loyal soldiers. They worked clean, efficient, and swift. The next morning, a video was posted with a title that tickled Zhou Huo pink: "Whisper's Daily Double Standards."
That morning, in the VIP lounge at the airport, the exhausted Free players were sprawled across sofas catching sleep. Zhou Huo was scrolling Weibo with a satisfied grin. "Look at these numbers, look at the views..."
"What'd you post now?" Chen Huo's face was the color of a man who'd been drained dry. He forced his eyes open, pulled out his phone, took one look, froze, refreshed Weibo, and opened the comments. In a flat voice, he read: "I—Discovered—That—Yu—God—Really—Likes—People—With—Little—Tempers—Oh... Hee—Hee—Hee—Hee..."
"Yu—God—Seems—To—Just—Like—It—When—Little—Kids—Throw—Tantrums—Oh..."
Chen Huo squinted, his exhausted brain turning slowly. He wasn't quite sure: "Are they talking about Yu Sui?"
Chen Huo glanced over at Yu Sui, who was leaning against a sofa with his eyes closed in a light doze, wearing sunglasses. He decided to test the theory out: "Yu-ge, go get me some sparkling water, with a slice of lemon."
Yu Sui slowly opened his eyes, turned his head toward Chen Huo, his voice carrying the slight hoarseness of someone recently woken up. "What did you say?"
Chen Huo swallowed hard, pressed on: "If you don't get it for me, I won't drink water for the whole day! I'll die of thirst!"
Yu Sui looked at him the way one might regard someone mentally disabled, then agreed: "Sure. Whoever can't hold out from drinking water is a grandson."
Puppy snorted a sleepy laugh into his arm. Chen Huo raged: "Didn't you say you like it when people throw little tantrums?! And the fans were calling you gentle—what gentleness?! Did you record that?! Hey, camera guy! Are you recording?! Let everyone see how he treats me on a daily basis!"
The accompanying camera operator just grinned awkwardly and didn't dare turn on the camera. Chen Huo shot a glare at the figure in the distance, asleep with sunglasses on, and snorted. "Temptress of the nation. Why don't Yu Sui's crazy fangirls tear him apart instead..."
The facts proved the fangirls were very calm. Instead, they'd sent Shi Luo a barrage of private messages, sincerely expressing their thanks.
Before boarding, Shi Luo also scrolled through Weibo. His DMs were full of messages from grateful fans of Yu Sui. They thanked him from the bottom of their hearts for keeping demons and monsters away from Yu Sui, and urged him to keep it up—not to soften his temper at all. If anyone else came along trying to leech attention, Shi Luo could use any means necessary to drive them off. They encouraged him to deploy all the talent he used for flaming brain-dead randoms in solo queue. Let him go all out.
With someone as battle-ready as Shi Luo keeping watch in the team, ordinary folks wouldn't dare approach. Yu Sui's fangirls felt very secure.
A flight attendant came by with a reminder. Shi Luo switched his phone to airplane mode.
He looked at Yu Sui, sleeping with headphones on to his left, and an idiom surfaced in his mind unbidden.
A guard embezzling from his own post.
Shi Luo choked a bit, then awkwardly put on his own headphones and closed his eyes.
Three hours on a plane, a match in the afternoon—he really should sleep for a bit. But Shi Luo just couldn't. Again and again, he kept thinking about that scene on the terrace yesterday.
Sometimes some moments arrived too unexpectedly, too hastily. No rehearsal, no plan, everything just happened on its own, no time to prepare.
If he could turn back the clock twenty hours, Shi Luo actually wished he hadn't been so quiet. He'd wanted to thank Yu Sui.
Thank you for caring. For making sure my earnest sincerity from back then wasn't wasted.
Thank you for feeling sorry for me. For letting me experience what it felt like to be cared for.
Shi Luo was too embarrassed to say how much this mattered to him.
Growing up, no one had ever felt sorry for Shi Luo.
Sure, Shi Luo had free-reigned his way through life, and he'd grown up fine and whole. If you weren't too demanding, you could say he'd turned out pretty well.
But he still wanted someone to care about him. Or—if that was too cheesy—he just wanted someone to pay attention to him.
Genuinely pay attention.
Everyone around him wanted something from him. Shi Luo saw that clearly. Only Yu Sui wanted nothing from him.
So Yu Sui's care had once been something Shi Luo was addicted to. He'd become a little obsessive about it.
That feeling—where every word, every action of yours draws someone's attention—was truly amazing.
Shi Luo chewed his gum slowly, thinking to himself: As long as you admit you feel sorry for me, that's enough.
Going around in circles back to Free—definitely worth it.
From now on, he'd try not to be so reckless or childish. He wasn't a kid anymore. He needed to be more mature.
Shi Luo blew a bubble with his gum. Someone cares about me.
After quietly replaying yesterday's terrace scene in his mind, Shi Luo's mood finally settled. He opened the blanket bag, shook out the blanket, wrapped it around himself, put on an eye mask, and started to doze.
Shi Luo wasn't a quiet sleeper. Even in a proper bed he'd toss and turn all night, let alone on a plane. Even though business class seats were a bit roomier, that was only a relative term. Half-asleep, Shi Luo kept shifting. His blanket slowly, bit by bit, slid off and fell to the floor.
Shi Luo frowned slightly, too drowsy to bother picking it up. Not long after, he felt warmth on his shoulder.
Shi Luo opened his eyes. Peering through the gap beneath his eye mask, the blanket was back on him.
No need to guess who'd done it.
Shi Luo couldn't help thinking again: He felt sorry for me.
The Shi Luo who'd just resolved to stop being reckless and immature and be more mature? Wrapped in the freshly-arranged blanket, his mental age plummeted two years and he teleported right back to two years ago.
Shi Luo shifted slightly, leaning left, then not long after, leaning right. Within five minutes, the freshly-covered blanket hit the floor again.
Shi Luo froze instantly. With the eye mask on, his vision was reduced to just the lower slit. He watched carefully. Less than three minutes later...
Through the gap at the bottom of the eye mask, Yu Sui's wrist descended, picking up the blanket.
Half a minute later, the blanket was gently draped over him again.
Shi Luo had never realized airline blankets could be so light and soft.
Shi Luo absolutely could not resist causing trouble. He lasted not even three minutes before the blanket hit the floor again.
Then he snapped his eyes open, staring at the eye mask gap.
This time it took less than a minute before the blanket was picked up again.
Yu Sui was probably worried the blanket would slip again. This time when covering Shi Luo, he made sure to tuck it in securely. His fingers accidentally brushed Shi Luo's earlobe. Shi Luo couldn't see anything. He just felt his entire ear canal suddenly heat up.
Shi Luo stayed still for not even two minutes. In his heart, he cursed himself—I'm absolutely a goddamn nutcase—but also told himself this was absolutely the last time. He shifted again.
The blanket was tucked a bit high this time. It wouldn't be easy to knock it down. Would require effort. Shi Luo shifted again. When he turned toward Yu Sui's side, he paused, preparing to make his next move bigger—a bold push to send this cursed blanket flying. Before he could shift again, the earphone on his left ear was removed.
Through the eye mask, Shi Luo couldn't see a thing. Before he could react, the next second, he heard Yu Sui's voice close to his left ear, very low:
"If you drop the blanket one more time, I'm really not going to cover you again."