Little Fatty, still suffering from diarrhea, was strictly forbidden from eating cream. Watching Xiao Rui act like a nanny, scraping off the cream and stuffing the cake into his mouth, he muttered, "Never been this healthy in my life, can't even eat cream now..."
Xiao Rui shoved a piece of cake into his mouth. "Drop dead! All you think about is eating!"
Little Fatty snatched the cake back and started picking at it with a tiny fork, meticulously working on it like an old man embroidering. As he did, he said, "Ah, Tong Yao, why didn’t you tell us it was your birthday? When Cheng Ge walked in, he scared the hell out of me. I almost thought those roses were for me—nearly pissed my pants—"
Tong Yao: "..."
No wonder you looked like the sky was falling when Lu Sicheng walked in earlier.
Even came up with "In the heart of a tiger, sniffing roses."
Tong Yao: "Not bad. The fear of coming out of the closet even turned you into a poet."
Little Fatty: "Pah! Fatty here’s always been cultured. If I hadn’t gone pro, I could’ve waltzed into Tsinghua or Peking University."
As Little Fatty boasted, Tong Yao sat smiling on Lu Sicheng’s lap—Lu Sicheng, having gloriously completed his mission of maintaining his "good man" image, was now completely relaxed, holding her securely with his arms draped over her shoulders. He was intently flipping through the little notebook where she’d scribbled her temporary support notes all night. Hearing her words, he lazily remarked, "Those flowers should’ve gone to Little Fatty. Don’t torture people like this... If I hadn’t been nosy enough to check your ID, sixty years from now, you’d still be telling our grandkids, ‘Back in the first year your grandparents were together, your grandpa didn’t even celebrate my birthday.’"
His voice rumbled right by her ear, the vibrations from his chest against her back sending a faint tickle through her. Tong Yao chuckled, patting his large hand before trying to snatch the notebook from him. He hissed, "Don’t move, I’m checking your homework. If you don’t behave, spit out that cake."
Tong Yao stopped teasing him, withdrawing her hand to grip his wrist instead. "It’s not that I didn’t tell you guys about my birthday. Being in a foreign country and getting wrecked playing support today—I even forgot about it myself."
Lu Sicheng: "I don’t believe you."
Tong Yao: "Fine, fine, you don’t believe me. Then why haven’t you ever asked me when my birthday is in all this time we’ve been together?"
Lu Sicheng: "..."
Tong Yao: "See? You’re just asking for trouble. I say it’s fine, you insist it’s not, and when I bring it up, you can’t even respond—"
"He probably doesn’t even remember his own birthday," Lu Yue chimed in from the couch, legs splayed wide as he played a mobile game, not bothering to look up. "Not trying to defend anyone, but if you two break up over this, my ears would thank me for life—thing is, in our family, no one except Mom celebrates birthdays. And she starts announcing hers three days in advance to avoid the awkwardness of being forgotten..."
Tong Yao pointed at Lu Yue. "What about you?"
Lu Yue thought for a moment. "Think it’s around Labor Day? Already passed."
Tong Yao shifted on Lu Sicheng’s lap, turning to cup his face and planting a loud kiss on the tip of his nose. "And you? You’re a Scorpio—your birthday hasn’t come yet."
Lu Sicheng nuzzled her with his nose, his voice low. "I’ll check my ID when we get back. We’ll celebrate this year. Prepare a gift."Tong Yao giggled, making everyone in the room turn their heads away. Watching these two rubbing against each other like cats, kissing and touching, they inexplicably felt as if they were watching something indecent—like a hospital-themed adult film.
After fooling around for a while and keeping Little Fatty company, it was nearly midnight when Xiao Rui finally packed up the cake and started shooing everyone out. He mentioned that because of their visit to Little Fatty, they had canceled today’s scrims with CK, leaving the CK team manager fuming—if Little Fatty couldn’t be discharged tomorrow, he might as well throw himself into a roadside trash can… And with that, everyone left.
As they departed, the medical staff looked bewildered at the large group of young people: they couldn’t understand why, after a visit to a patient, the patient’s room was left completely empty, while one of the visitors was shyly holding a huge bouquet of fiery red roses…
The next day.
Match day against Team C.
Among the three LPL teams today, CK had no scheduled match. Before watching ZGDX Team face off against Team C, the LPL audience had already endured the agony of YQCB losing to TAT Team again—though it wasn’t a complete stomp and they held on for fifty minutes, the pain was real. The worst part was the final teamfight: TAT had already lost most of their members, leaving only A Tai retreating in a desperate escape. With a massive wave of minions pushing in, Pope, who was low on health, stayed behind at the base to clear the wave while Ai Jia, in better condition, was sent to chase.
Ai Jia didn’t think much and went after him—chasing halfway across the map. Suddenly, A Tai made a clever turn into the Blue Buff pit, disappearing from vision and pressing B to recall. But Ai Jia, the absolute idiot, didn’t notice and just walked right past the Blue Buff. After chasing all the way to the enemy High Ground, he finally realized he’d lost his target… and stood at their base entrance, trying to recall.
At that moment, the enemy AD respawned. Their Ezreal, with Homeguards, rushed out and landed a full combo, securing the kill. With YQCB inexplicably down a Mid Laner in the Carry Position, the respawning teammates were instantly aced, and the game ended in a single push.
………………
This loss was just too bizarre. The LPL audience couldn’t accept it—especially since if Ai Jia had just veered slightly off his path, he would’ve spotted the low-health A Tai in the Blue Buff area. But no, he just walked right past!
If A Tai had died, the outcome of the game would’ve been the opposite.
Watching from backstage, Tong Yao nearly had a heart attack and almost snapped her phone in half. Staring at the domestic livestream flooded with "？？？" on her screen, she twitched her lips before finally spitting out: "F*cking idiot!"Old Cat and Old K were slinging their arms over each other's shoulders behind them, laughing uncontrollably once they realized—it wasn’t that they lacked sympathy, but mainly because TAT had dominated their entire group in the Group Stage, with absolute control over securing first place. YQCB losing to them wasn’t a big deal; as long as they didn’t lose to the other two teams, a spot in the quarterfinals was practically guaranteed… After YQCB’s match, there was another game from a different region before ZGDX faced off against C. Out of humanitarian concern, Tong Yao quickly took the chance to check on Ai Jia in the neighboring team’s lounge—this idiot was sitting pitifully in a corner, and the first thing he said upon seeing Tong Yao was:
"My Weibo’s been blown up. They’re telling me to just pick Lee Sin next game—even though he’s a Jungler Champion, blind guys should stick together."
…Lee Sin’s character design was indeed that of a blind man.
Tong Yao couldn’t hold back at that point. The words of comfort she had prepared turned into a burst of raucous laughter!
Ai Jia, annoyed by her laughter, stomped on her foot amidst her cackling: "Laugh all you want. Just wait an hour, and I’ll be counting on your support to divert the haters’ attention for me."
Ai Jia had a point… So Tong Yao stopped laughing and stomped right back on the foot of the guy who just had to bring it up.
An hour later.
Tong Yao nervously took up the support position again—
And in forty-three minutes, proved Ai Jia’s words prophetic.
After Little Fatty’s intense training session the night before, her vision control today wasn’t as disastrous as yesterday. But unfortunately, they weren’t facing a tactically inexperienced Wild Card region anymore—they were up against the Taiwan region. Don’t let the name fool you—first, they had once won an S-series championship, something even the LPL hadn’t achieved; second, who did the Taiwan region most frequently scrim against outside their own league?
Answer: The LPL.
So the two regions actually knew each other inside out—player stats, playstyles, tendencies—they were all too familiar. Even if Little Fatty were playing, he’d have to put in some effort to strategize, let alone how much harder it was for Tong Yao… Everything played out just like yesterday—
At first, they had a huge laning advantage. At the five-minute mark, with the help of Tong Yao’s Nami ultimate, Lu Sicheng even scored a double kill bot and became the carry!
Just as the live comments were flooding with remarks like "Did Smiling take a $100 million bribe from Cheng Ge last night?" "Smiling’s actually giving up kills now?" "Damn, these two actually have synergy, what a tragedy," the enemy team’s jungle-support duo started making moves—the support abandoned their AD, letting him lose the first bot turret while he roamed to steal farm. The support and jungler first ganked mid to target Lu Yue, but this old-school player was too steady to be caught. So they switched to relentlessly camping top… They turned Old Cat’s Maokai, who had been a towering ancient banyan, into a withered sapling at 0/4/0 by the fifteen-minute mark. Paired with Maokai’s Meowkai skin, his constant meowing made him sound like a declawed tiger—Old Cat was so frustrated he was about to lose his mind.Eighteen minutes into the game, during a team fight at the Elemental Drake, ZGDX lacked a frontline. Relying solely on Lu Yue’s Azir’s push and Tong Yao’s Nami’s ultimate knock-up, Lu Sicheng had no space to deal damage. With sharp positioning and flashy escapes, he barely managed to take down the enemy frontline before tragically falling to their still-healthy backline damage dealers—resulting in a four-for-two trade, with only Old K escaping on low health.
C stole the Mountain Drake, took down the mid and bot lane tier-one turrets, and from there, the game became incredibly difficult. Without the outer turrets, vision control was nearly impossible. ZGDX was forced to play defensively in the river for ten minutes, constantly pressured into their own jungle. Tong Yao wasn’t familiar with sneaking counter-jungle plays, and the team quickly found themselves in a dire situation.
Tong Yao was sweating bullets, her mind racing with thoughts like, What the hell is this? Everything that could go wrong is going wrong! and Please, let me channel Little Fatty’s spirit… The agonizing struggle lasted forty-two minutes. By the time the final team fight broke out, the enemy team had a 12,000 gold lead and the Elder Dragon buff—C wasn’t some Wild Card team, and miracle steals and reverse sweeps didn’t happen every day. The gap in gold and items was simply too vast, and in the end, ZGDX lost to C, their Nexus destroyed.
Twenty seconds before the defeat, Lu Sicheng’s calm, almost indifferent voice echoed in her ears: It’s fine, it’s fine. Don’t retreat, fight this one. It’s not unwinnable. If we really can’t win this fight, just let it go. Losing one game isn’t a big deal… Having played together for an entire season, Tong Yao knew his style—he rarely gave such vague, non-directive calls during matches.
She understood he was trying to prevent the team’s morale from collapsing—
But why would he feel the need to do that?
The only explanation was that he, too, was struggling with negative emotions but forcing himself to hold it together.
Tong Yao: “…”
The moment their Nexus fell, she saw the members of C leap up, hugging each other as if they’d just won a championship. She frowned slightly but said nothing, removing her headphones just in time to hear Lu Sicheng say, Losing one game isn’t a big deal. We’ll bounce back. First place in the group is still ours.
This was the first time in history their captain had ever comforted them after a loss.
The team was so stunned they forgot to even feel dejected.
…And on this day, ZGDX and YQCB’s consecutive losses dealt a massive psychological blow to LPL fans. But by the next day—that same evening in U.S. time—ZGDX finally announced some good news: Little Fatty had been discharged from the hospital, and the team was ready to regroup.
The Forum erupted in emotional outpourings—
That night, the entire region’s fans rallied behind ZGDX and Pang. Little Fatty, who had always been mocked as being carried to victory , had somehow earned two unexpected achievements after his two-day hospital stay from a hotpot binge:
Nearly turning his AD gay.
Suddenly becoming the God of Supports in the hearts of LPL fans.
To this, Tong Yao could only conclude: Two achievements built on my corpse. Ugh.
Author’s Note: New modern romance Moonlight Sonata is up! A sweet story about a legendary author and a seemingly meek editor who turns out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing!
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