"Hand in hand, one step two steps three steps four steps climbing Ranked Games, watching Ranked Games one point two points three points four points soaring to the sky, back to back silently making a wish, looking at this month's salary, whether I can get it all It must come true!" Little Fatty hummed a tune, sticking his butt out as he leaned over the second-floor railing. "Hey downstairs, whose account is currently stuck in Diamond II or I hell? Send the account and password to Cheng Ge so he can carry your Little Fatty brother up the ranks—"
One second later, everyone downstairs except for Greedy Wolf, who was wearing headphones, responded enthusiastically.
"I'll log into Tong Yao's alt account," Lu Sicheng said as he sat down at his spot, clicking his mouse. He picked up his phone, scrolled through WeChat, and logged into a new account. While the game loaded, he lifted his eyes to glance at Little Fatty. "Fatty, you're in a good mood?"
"Me?" Little Fatty turned around, grinning so wide he almost looked like a husky. "No, not really?"
He skipped back to his seat with ballet-like steps, bent over to click his mouse, accepting a friend request from "Superman" and inviting them to start a Ranked match.
The moment he pulled out his chair and sat down, Little Fatty sensed the person beside him fall silent before suddenly asking, "Did you do that on purpose?"
"Do what on purpose?"
"..." Lu Sicheng opened his rune page to set up his Attack Damage Carry runes, not looking up as he said, "Never mind."
And so, the two began playing—
In the first game, with champions like Vayne, Sivir, Big Mouth, and Twitch still available, Lu Sicheng locked in Draven. Little Fatty naively thought this was some secret tech Lu Sicheng was pulling out to carry him up the ranks—until fifteen minutes into the game, when he checked the scoreboard and saw Lu Sicheng's creep score—
Little Fatty: "...Cheng Ge, do you even know how to play Draven?"
Lu Sicheng casually muted the Korean teammate who was spamming five lines of furious Korean per second, replying calmly, "No."
Little Fatty: "..."—
In the second game, Little Fatty was first pick. As soon as they entered champion select, Lu Sicheng pre-selected Draven. A teammate typed a "?", and Little Fatty expressionlessly banned Draven... At that moment, the opposing team was probably equally confused—
Lu Sicheng: "Why ban my Draven?"
Little Fatty: "Because you can't play him, and I want to rank up."
Lu Sicheng: "..."
This time, Lu Sicheng picked Varus and skillfully sent Little Fatty's Diamond II to Diamond I promotion series straight to oblivion—
In the third game, Lu Sicheng pulled out Urgot.
This Attack Damage Carry champion, one even the League of Legends designers had probably forgotten still existed in this world, was somehow dug out from some obscure corner by Lu Sicheng. He even had a justification for the pick: "Their Jungler is Li Huanshuo. He’s going to camp bot this game. Urgot doesn’t care about ganks."
"..."
Little Fatty asked how he knew, and Lu Sicheng clicked open a blinking chat window in the bottom-left corner of his screen to show him—the ID in the chat was indeed the Korean server account of the player in question. The kid had spammed a bunch of Korean, though it was unclear what he was so excited about.
Little Fatty: "What did he say?"
Lu Sicheng: "At first, it was his daily confession to our Mid Laner."
Little Fatty: "He was clearly speaking Korean."
Lu Sicheng: "Then I said, 'I'm Chessman, please shut up.'"
Little Fatty: "...And then?"Lu Sicheng: "Then came the endless questioning, asking me why I could log into our Mid Laner's account."
Little Fatty: "Why?"
Lu Sicheng casually deleted Li Huanshuo, who was still blabbering nonstop, and smiled faintly before countering, "What do you think?"
Little Fatty didn’t dare press further because he sensed poison in Lu Sicheng’s smile—the kind as lethal as red orpiment... And this game, Little Fatty finally won, probably because compared to him, the noisy Li Huanshuo was even more of an eyesore to Lu Sicheng—
Of course, Little Fatty had no idea about this.
So that night, he duo-queued with Lu Sicheng all evening, cycling through every off-meta, unconventional AD support Champion in League of Legends. By 1 AM, his rank had settled at Diamond II with zero LP... A net loss of 100 points since he’d dragged Lu Sicheng into the game earlier.
Lu Sicheng tossed his mouse aside and rubbed his wrist. "Seems tonight wasn’t the right time to rank up."
Little Fatty: "Rank up? You call this series of activities tonight 'ranking up'? More like attending a funeral—Qingming Festival just passed."
"It’s been three months," Lu Sicheng closed the game calmly. "Time to sleep."
Little Fatty: "You go ahead. I’m pulling an all-nighter tonight. If I go back to my room, I might not resist the urge to smother you with a pillow and send you to eternal rest... Diamond III. I’m about to drop to fucking Diamond III. The tragic downfall of the number one support in the league’s top team—"
Lu Sicheng stood up. "Goodnight."
Little Fatty nodded. "Drop dead."
...
The next morning, everyone was roused early by Xiao Rui to pack their luggage for the afternoon flight to Xiamen for the Demacia Cup—
The starting lineup had no matches to play and treated it as a short vacation, all cheerful except for Lu Sicheng, who remained stoic as ever. The second-string players, however, were visibly tense, still haunted by yesterday’s scrims where they’d been crushed by Obsidian...
Tong Yao was running up and downstairs gathering her things. After packing her suitcase, she dragged it out of her room and was about to carry it downstairs when their captain intercepted her at the stairwell—
Holding a bottle of mineral water.
Tong Yao: "..."
She now had a headache just looking at mineral water, accompanied by some R-rated fantasies—probably the only person in the world with such a bizarre reaction to a water bottle. Glancing at everyone downstairs, she raised her voice and said, "Thanks for bringing me water again, Captain!"
"Get it yourself next time."
As he spoke, Lu Sicheng walked into her room.
To avoid suspicion, Tong Yao hadn’t closed her door. She followed him inside with natural steps, only to see Lu Sicheng toss the water bottle onto the bed. The two cats curled up there, grooming each other, startled awake. They scrambled up with a few meows and dashed out of the room one after the other...
Then the cats’ owner found herself being placed on the bed by Lu Sicheng.
The first thing the man did was lean down to brush his lips against hers, casually lifting her hair to glance at her neck—just a casual look, but once his eyes landed there, they stayed. His other hand moved to part the hair on the other side, and he inspected that side too...
"What are you doing?" Tong Yao grabbed the large hand tilting her head back and forth. "Looking for something?""..." Lu Sicheng let go of her hair and asked expressionlessly, "Where's the thing I left on you last night?"
"...What thing?" Tong Yao raised her hand to smooth her short hair that the man had ruffled.
Lu Sicheng extended a finger and poked at the approximate spot from memory: "What do you think?"
His expression was as if Lu Sicheng had generously given her his precious Red Buff, only for her to get solo-killed by the enemy AD and lose it to them... Extremely displeased.
...What a weirdo.
Tong Yao touched her neck, thought for a moment, then went "Oh": "Of course I covered that up with concealer! Did you expect me to leave it there for people to ask about?"
"I was waiting for someone to ask you," Lu Sicheng sat down next to Tong Yao, "to see you blush and say it was a bug bite, or try to cover it up with a band-aid—"
"...Stop watching dumb TV dramas, Captain."
"What's concealer?"
As he spoke, Lu Sicheng reached out to rub at Tong Yao's neck, wiping away a layer of foundation until he found his bite mark. He let go to admire it like some kind of pervert.
Tong Yao slapped his hand away and stood up, walking to the vanity to pick up something that looked like a lipstick. She pushed out a small stick of foundation-colored product—
"This. Normally used to cover pimples or red spots. Here, let me show you..." Tong Yao walked back to Lu Sicheng, tilting his face up with one hand. Seeing the man obediently lift his face for her to work on, she smiled smugly. But after searching his face for a while with the concealer, she looked disappointed. "Oh, you don't have any pimples. Damn it."
Just as she was about to pull her hand away, he grabbed her wrist. Following the force on her arm, she bent down and was kissed on her slightly upturned lips by the man sitting on her bed in his reclined position...
Sunlight streamed in through the window behind the bed.
Illuminating their profiles.
Unlike the impatient, rough kiss against the wall last night, this time he was like a lazy feline, leisurely tracing her lips with his tongue, making them wetter and softer under his ministrations...
In the intimate space between their breaths, she caught the scent of mint shaving foam—a fragrance perfectly suited to the morning sunlight. She slightly closed her eyes, pulling her lips away just enough to nudge his nose with hers.
"We don't even have to go on stage for the Demacia Cup matches, yet you actually bothered to shave."
"Xiao Rui made me," Lu Sicheng murmured in his deep voice, reaching up to play with her earlobe. "He said even though we're not playing on stage, the cameras might still catch us sitting in the audience."
Tong Yao made an "Oh" sound, not really caring. She glanced in the mirror at her moist, reddened lips, paused, then turned to apply lipstick at the vanity.
Lu Sicheng sat cross-legged on her bed, watching her reflection in the mirror: "Are you putting that on to stop me from kissing you?"
Tong Yao's hand with the lip gloss froze mid-application: "......Go ahead. It's not toxic. Just a bit expensive."
Lu Sicheng narrowed his eyes slightly and didn't respond.Quietly watching Tong Yao finish applying her lipstick and then cover up the red marks he had "rediscovered" on her neck with concealer, he paused for a moment before suddenly dropping a bombshell: "It's not too late to announce the truth to them now and still get to share a room in Xiamen."
Tong Yao was startled, jabbing herself hard with the concealer stick she was applying to her neck. She turned to look at Lu Sicheng: "Who said anything about sharing a room with you?"
"I want to."
"Pervert."
"Secret relationships are too exhausting. I'm afraid you'll retire and open a little shop specializing in bottled water."
Tong Yao snorted through her nose, turning back to continue applying concealer while teasing, "Think about your fans, Comrade Captain. The face of esports with zero scandals and zero negative press—are you really going to abandon your fans?"
The person behind her fell silent.
Curious, Tong Yao glanced at him through the mirror.
Then she saw him frown and say seriously, "I don't want the fans. I just want you."
Tong Yao's hand paused mid-application. After a moment of inexplicable awkwardness, she blinked and scoffed, "You're such an idiot. Get out and go downstairs."
Lu Sicheng sighed, stood up, and walked toward the door—
"Hey, take my suitcase with you."
The man at the door backtracked, picked up her suitcase with a resigned expression, walked out, and closed the door.
The room fell silent. Tong Yao set down her makeup and stared at her reflection in the mirror, watching the smile at the corners of her lips fade slightly. After a long pause, she murmured to herself, "...How can you just abandon your fans? Do I look like I can be eaten for sustenance? What an idiot."
She raised her hand and wiped the mirror.
"Idiot."
OpenNovel