Tong Yao's face was like a persimmon in the autumn wind—paling, then flushing, then turning red again. She fell silent for a moment before asking with uncertainty and horror, "What do you mean? Are you proposing to me?"
Lu Sicheng: "..."
Tong Yao: "..."
Lu Sicheng: "Have you lost your mind? I was asking if you were trying to scam... never mind, I was mocking you."
"..." Tong Yao slowly widened her eyes. "What scam? What dowry? Speak properly! I earn 800,000 a year! Who cares about your pathetic dowry!"
Lu Sicheng snorted coldly and ignored her, lifting the blanket to glance at the bed.
Tong Yao's voice abruptly cut off. After a pause, she asked, "What are you looking at?"
"Checking if you dirtied my—"
Before Lu Sicheng could finish, the person who had been standing obediently by his bed suddenly leaped into a Tiger Landing Pose and pounced onto his bed. Caught off guard, the man was knocked backward. When he lifted his head in annoyance, he saw her lying tensely on the blanket, glaring at him. "Stop looking! If it's dirty, I'll wash it! Just stop looking!"
Lu Sicheng had only been teasing, but seeing her so nervous—as if she actually had a sense of maidenly shame—made the corner of his lips curl. "Then where do I sleep tonight?"
"..." Tong Yao pointed at Little Fatty's bed.
Lu Sicheng glanced over. "His bed's too soft. It hurts my back."
You old man. Tong Yao twitched her lips, barely resisting the urge to pounce and strangle this difficult bastard. Slowly crawling off the bed, she burrowed under the covers right under his watchful gaze, feeling around for any suspicious wet spots while covertly inspecting in the dark. Amid her busy movements, she heard Lu Sicheng lazily remark from outside the blanket, "Couldn't you be more reliable and stop bouncing around? How many times have I taken the fall for you?"
"Yes, yes, Captain, long live you. I'll be your slave in the next life... Move your leg, let me check this side."
As she spoke, she lifted one of Lu Sicheng's legs under the blanket.
Just then, the door opened from the outside, and Little Fatty's voice came through—
"Cheng Ge, Xiao Rui asked if you guys want the shrimp dumplings we packed for you..."
Little Fatty's voice trailed off as he saw Lu Sicheng with one leg raised and what appeared to be someone kneeling between his legs under the blanket. After a moment of silence—
The door slammed shut with a loud "bang."
Inside the room.
Lu Sicheng raised a brow calmly.
Under the blanket.
Tong Yao tossed aside Lu Sicheng's leg and threw off the covers over her head. "The bed's fine, stop whining... Who was that? Little Fatty? Why'd he come back? Shrimp dumplings? I want shrimp dumplings!"
Lu Sicheng bent his leg, smiling leisurely. "Go ahead."
Tong Yao jumped off the bed, smoothing her hair, then turned to see Lu Sicheng slowly getting up as well. Hesitating, she asked, "Do you want to change? You were sweating earlier, right? Don't catch a cold."
Lu Sicheng glanced at her but didn't respond.
Five minutes later, Tong Yao in loungewear and Lu Sicheng in a fresh T-shirt walked downstairs one after the other.Looking at the crowd of people sitting downstairs staring at her with wide eyes, Tong Yao scratched her head, realizing that if she didn’t say something today, she probably wouldn’t get past this… So, with an awkward expression, she said, “Sorry about that. Earlier, I was watching Cheng Ge take his medicine and was supposed to change his towel, but I ended up lying down and dozing off by the bed. It got a bit cold while I was asleep, so I sort of just crawled under the covers and squeezed in with him… Uh, well, did I scare you guys? Honestly, I scared myself too.”
“No, no.”
“Totally normal.”
“Ah, it’s cold today, right? It’s normal for girls to feel cold.”
“Haven’t had dinner yet, right? Here, have some shrimp dumplings. They’re really good—I specially packed them for you guys…”
Everyone wore expressions of forced agreement, clearly putting on an act.
Tong Yao knew that the more she said, the worse it would get, so she simply shut her mouth and walked over to the dining table to sit down, planning to calm her nerves with food—everything she’d just said was the truth. Not only had she scared herself, but she also felt like her soul, startled out of her body, still hadn’t returned.
Opening a takeout box and finding the food still warm, she quickly grabbed a pair of chopsticks and eagerly stuffed a dumpling into her mouth. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lu Sicheng walk over to the sofa and sit down, taking the yogurt Lu Yue had just inserted a straw into but hadn’t yet drunk from, and sipped it twice.
Little Fatty cleared his throat. “You guys… all good now?”
The room suddenly fell dead silent.
Tong Yao, with a shrimp dumpling in her mouth: “?”
Lu Sicheng calmly glanced around at the crowd silently watching him, clearly guessing what Little Fatty had told them after closing the door and coming downstairs the second time. With a sarcastic expression, he retorted, “Just fifteen minutes?”
The tension in the room instantly dissipated. Far from objecting to his sarcasm, everyone seemed to collectively exhale in relief.
Tong Yao, now with a second dumpling in her mouth: “??”
Lu Sicheng: “Tasty?”
Tong Yao nodded.
Lu Sicheng let out an “Oh,” then said, “Eat more.”
Tong Yao swallowed the food in her mouth, still utterly confused.
……
The next day.
Tong Yao sat in her chair, counting the matches scheduled for the week on her fingers. Yesterday, Thursday afternoon, they had played the opening match. There were no matches on Friday or Saturday. On Sunday at 3 PM, the China Telecom Team would return to the group stage’s internal round-robin matches, facing their first opponent in the group: KING.
KING was the newly promoted team that had advanced from the LSPL ( League of Legends Secondary Professional League, China) to the LPL ( League of Legends Pro League, China) during the Spring Split. In the LSPL Spring Split finals, KING had gone all five games, pulling off a stunning reverse sweep in the decisive match. Despite being at a disadvantage, they stubbornly dragged the game into the late stage, stealing the Baron while 15,000 gold behind, then forcing a teamfight to send their opponents packing—securing their spot among the twelve teams of the LPL.
Their Mid Laner was a Korean player with the ID “Ramen.” Originally a high-ranked solo player in the Korean server’s King tier, he had been bought over to China. Tong Yao had once been matched with him on the same team during a ranked match—his mechanics were decent, but she had never laned against him, so she didn’t know much else about him.
“Ming Shen, do you have the video of KING’s Spring Split finals?”
“Yeah, you want it?”
“Yeah, I wanna check out Ramen.”"Oh, okay," Ming Shen glanced down at the instant noodles he was eating. "I'll send it to you later."
Tong Yao sat back in her chair. At that moment, Lu Sicheng passed behind her and overheard her asking Ming Shen for the video. He casually tossed out a remark, "Instead of counting on your fingers when we'll face the newly promoted team, why not count your remaining livestream hours? It's the end of the month—time for everyone to go all out and make up their hours. Why are you the only one looking so carefree?"
"What's wrong with the newly promoted team? Looking down on them?"
"At least I'm not counting the days until we play them."
"..."
Tong Yao puffed her cheeks, refusing to continue arguing with Lu Sicheng—ever since waking up this morning, the atmosphere between them had been a bit strange, probably because she was only now processing last night's "sharing the same bed" incident...
Unconsciously, she felt like she was already at a disadvantage against him.
So frustrating.
She craned her neck to look at the other teammates in the headquarters. Aside from Lu Sicheng, the seasoned veteran who could get fined just for blinking wrong, all the other players had transformed into diligent workers, desperately livestreaming to make up their hours—
No wonder Little Fatty’s language in Ranked Games today was unusually polite.
No wonder Old K and Old Cat were so courteous during their duo queue, practically treating each other with the utmost respect.
Tong Yao: "...I shouldn’t have many livestream hours left, right? What day was it when I signed the contract? Rui Ge said my hours could be prorated this month."
Muttering to herself, she opened the notepad on her computer, lazily counting her livestream hours for the month before pulling out her phone to add and subtract—after the calculations, her muttering stopped. Staring at the large Arabic numeral "42" on her phone, she blinked.
Then, stubbornly, she recalculated.
Still 42.
Beside her, the man who had just recovered from a fever and still had a slightly hoarse voice took a sip of coffee. Without looking away from his screen, he remarked coolly, "Figured it out? Welcome to hell."
Tong Yao: "………………………………"
Today was May 27th.
There were five days left until the end of the month.
Meaning that before June arrived, even if Tong Yao livestreamed every single day, she’d have to stream over eight hours daily to avoid getting her salary docked next month...
And getting docked in her very first month—how would that look?
Tong Yao sighed deeply and reluctantly opened her livestreaming software, planning to stream a bit while training in Ranked Games later... Within less than ten minutes, her stream was already bustling, with veteran fans flooding the chat faster than she could keep up—
[End-of-the-month inhumanity series.]
[I was just wondering how long you’d hold out...]
[LMAO this is so annoying, all the Operator Team members are streaming—I don’t have enough devices to watch everyone!]
[Wifey, I missed you so much!!!]
[You played really well in the opening match against CK—I saw so many plays where you were determined to win.]
Tong Yao skimmed the live comments, humbly (and somewhat hypocritically) engaging with them for a while. When she caught the increasingly mocking smirk on the face of the person next to her out of the corner of her eye, she quickly stopped, took a deep breath, and opened the game client to wait for the system to match her into a game—
It didn’t take long before she got in.Tong Yao was on the third floor, with the priority to ban a Champion. She narrowed her eyes slightly, considering what to ban first this round, when she noticed Lu Sicheng holding a coffee cup in one hand while using the other to open his in-game friends list and glance at it... Then the man turned his head and gave her a deep look before saying slowly, "A Tai is on the opposing team."
Tong Yao's hand slipped, and she banned the eternally unused Yorick.
A teammate typed a "?" in the team chat. Tong Yao quickly apologized, saying she misclicked and banned the wrong one.
Lu Sicheng: "Your mental fortitude is truly unmatched."
Tong Yao: "..."
After entering the game, Tong Yao picked Ekko, but that hardly mattered anymore. What did matter was the enemy picking Fizz and aggressively pressuring her, outpacing her by nearly 15 minions in less than five minutes. Tong Yao was having a miserable time... At this point, she didn’t care who was around her or what the Live Comments were saying—her entire focus was on the game. Just as she was about to hit level six, the enemy Fizz, who had reached six first, jumped on her, unleashing a combo and landing his ultimate. Tong Yao’s healthy HP instantly plummeted, and she turned to retreat—
"Last-hit a minion, level up, and you’ll have your ultimate. Your Jungler is on the way too. You can fight—why panic?"
The man’s calm voice rang in her ears. In her fluster, Tong Yao instinctively clicked to auto-attack a minion, hitting level six in an instant. She used her ability to stun Fizz, dashed in for two quick slashes, and as the stun ended, swiftly activated her ultimate to create distance. Right then, her Jungler arrived and secured the kill on Fizz!
When the kill announcement sounded, Tong Yao stood under her own Turret, momentarily stunned. Seeing the flood of Live Comments—"66666666666," "That’s 20 years of single-hand speed," "Wifey slays 66666"—she finally let out a long exhale and reached for her cup to take a sip of brown sugar water to calm her nerves. Only then did she realize her hand holding the cup was trembling.
...And this was just a ranked game.
This subtle movement was probably noticed by the man currently leaning against the back of her chair. His voice was calm yet carried the authoritative tone of a father lecturing his daughter: "Getting pressured and immediately running away—what kind of play is that? Not checking your teammates’ positions or your own XP bar—what’s the deal with that? Silver-tier gameplay. Has A Tai ever eaten someone in front of you or something? Why are you so scared..."
Tong Yao: "Shut up, stop yapping."
Daring to talk to our Cheng Ge like that—the "6"s in the Live Comments spammed even faster.
Lu Sicheng paused.
After a long moment, he said flatly, "I much preferred how you trembled in bed yesterday, unable to say a word."
With that, he strode off.
Tong Yao "pfft"-ed, spitting the brown sugar water in her mouth back into the cup.
By now, the "66666"s in the Live Comments had been replaced by a flood of "??????"—
How dense was it?
Dense enough that Tong Yao couldn’t even see where her cursor was.
OpenNovel