“What do you want?” Wu Biaoqing huffed, glaring at him.
Zeng Yuan rolled his eyes at the open hostility, “chill. What am I going to do, punch you?”
“…well-”
“Shut up. You hit me first.”
“And who’s fault is that?” The fellow gamer snapped.
“Mine,” Zeng Yuan admitted, “I know. That’s why I- I-”
He fumbled over his words, face flushing slightly with a mixture of embarrassment and awkwardness at doing something seemingly out of his comfort zone.
“I want to… to apologize.”
Wu Biaoqing stared at him, face slack in shock, “what?”
“I want to apologize,” he spoke more firmly the second time around, “for what I said. What I did.”
“You want to apologize,” The other gamer echoed, laughing slightly, “what the fuck?”
“I know it’s like, weird for you, I get it,” Zeng Yuan scratched the back of his neck, a nervous habit he had yet to break, “but I’ve been thinking about it and you deserve one. So I’m giving you an apology.”
Wu Biaoqing took a deep breath, mustering his patience, “are you sure you’re doing this for me, and not yourself?”
The team captain paused for a moment, trying to figure out what to say, and it was both aggravating and amusing watching the visible conflict show up on his expressive face.
“I- well, who doesn’t apologize for themselves?” He shot back, “it’s all selfish bullshit anyway. That doesn’t make it insincere.”
“Apologizing with the expectation of that apology being accepted sounds pretty insincere to me,” Wu Biaoqing shrugged.
“That’s not- ugh,” Zeng Yuan groaned, “that’s not what I meant. That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“Then what are you trying to do?” The other fumed, “because clearly you’re not really trying to apologize. So why won’t you just fucking leave me alone?”
“Because you deserve to understand why!” Zeng Yuan yelled, causing them both to startle, and he added softly, “you deserve to know why I was such an asshole, if- if you want to.”
They stood together in an awkward silence, and the captain of ZD collapsed on a bench next to where they were standing, holding his head in his hands, muttering, “fuck… this wasn’t how this was supposed to go.”
Wu Biaoqing studied him for a moment, before quietly sitting down next to him, “I’ll listen.”
Zeng Yuan looked up, surprised, as he repeated, “If you’re serious, and you want to tell me, then I’ll listen.”
The other sighed in relief, “thank you.”
“That doesn’t mean I’ll—”
“I know,” he replied.
“I know, but I want to tell you. It’s been eating me alive all year,” he continued, “I tried to go after you, Y’know. When you moved your stuff out.”
It was Wu Biaoqing’s turn to be surprised, “huh?”
“Yeah,” he chuckled at the memory, though it was bittersweet and tinged with regret, “no one told me they were kicking you out. I didn’t know until I heard Chang Hui arguing with the coach, and then he just quit and walked out the door. I chased after him, but he was already gone.”
“Oh,” Wu Biaoqing suddenly realized something, “then- then Jiang Yu didn’t talk to you before giving a statement?”
“Hell no,” Zeng Yuan scoffed, “I have no idea what got into him. I figured he’d say something neutral like always, we’d both get warnings, and that would be the end of it. But all of a sudden he also said you were at fault, and he wouldn’t talk to me when I asked him about it.”
“Ah,” his former teammate nodded, “so then why did you…?”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Why did I bully you?” Zeng Yuan frowned, “that sounds so elementary. Bullying. Nah, I was a dickwad. That’s a better way to put it.”
Wu Biaoqing stifled his chuckle as the other explained, “I was going through some shit. Personal shit. It’s stereotypical as hell, but it’s true. My dad kicked me out of the house when I got into the trainee program. He told me that if I didn’t make it as the captain, then I shouldn’t bother to come back home. Stupid, I know. What kind of parent cuts off their kid? Not a good one, that’s for sure.”
Wu Biaoqing shifted his gaze to stare at the ground, fiddling with his hands awkwardly, and he laughed, “you don’t have to understand. I know your family’s great.”
He nodded, and Zeng Yuan continued, “that was part of the problem. You were rich, for one, but you were also loved. It’s not something even people with money can experience, y’know. Not to mention we were all young, struggling to figure out life, and in various states of being broke. I think everyone was jealous of you, just like I was. You were so… perfect. You were talented and didn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to. You could go home at any time and never give it a second thought. Not everyone had a home to go back to, and if they did, they would still be worrying about living day to day.”
Wu Biaoqing hummed, “I know. I paid for food.”
Zeng Yuan nodded, “yeah, that was a crazy thing to do for us, y’know. We treated you like shit, and yet you were still so nice. It made me angry, because I couldn’t actually hate you, even when I said I did. Every time I think about it, I cringe. You did so much to make us like you, but we all just scoffed about it being pretentious. You know, Tao Yusheng said you were filling the fridge just to show us that you could, and we all pretended like we were eating it to spite you, but deep down I think we knew the truth. Your food was what helped some of us stay in the program. Me especially. I’m grateful for that.”
Wu Biaoqing nodded, and the two sat in silence, watching the clouds as they passed by in the bright blue sky.
“But I was scared. You were too good, and I didn’t know what to do. Fuck, I was a mess, and I felt like I couldn’t rely on anyone but myself. It’s not an excuse- it was stupid of me, how I acted- but it’s the reason. It started off small and then it got blown out of proportion. When you came out… it got worse, but I didn’t say anything. I had a clear goal to focus on— I had to become captain. You were always better than me, I knew that, so I took out all of my frustration on you to make myself feel better. It was really, really awful.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, “it was.”
“At first, I went along with all of the homophobia because it was what everyone else was saying, even if they wouldn’t say it to your face,” Zeng Yuan clarified, “but then it changed. I was running away from myself and got you mixed up in my fucked up internalized bullshit. I was just so angry all the time, at everything, and I couldn’t understand why. I got angrier the more Jiang Yu got close to you, but then kept denying it when there was obviously something going on between you two. He’s a two faced bitch, I always knew that, but it didn’t dawn on me until later that I… that I was jealous.”
“Jealous?” Wu Biaoqing echoed.
“I was jealous of him. He was close to you. You were always smiling and laughing around him. I wanted you to be like that with me, but no matter how much I tried to pretend I wasn’t, I was a total coward. I didn’t want to lose the friends I had even if they were assholes. I was scared to be alone,” he took a deep breath, leaning back against the bench, “I didn’t want to be abandoned again. So I ignored it, but all that did was make things worse. Then they told us we were going to substitute for AFK players in a tournament— it was obvious what they were trying to do. They wanted to decide on a captain, and I knew I wouldn’t make it. I antagonized you on purpose, because I knew exactly how it felt to like someone who didn’t like you back.”
The LIFE member quirked a brow, “Really? You’re the ‘bully them because you like them’ kind of guy?”
“Fuck off,” Zeng Yuan scoffed, blushing, “if I wasn’t a little shit back then, I would’ve treated you better. I would’ve gotten to know you.”
“Would you like to?”
The question caught Zeng Yuan off guard, and Wu Biaoqing watched with amusement as he came to a halt before looking at him with face that would’ve made for the best expression pack in online history, “you- I- the fuck?”
“I’m saying,” Wu Biaoqing continued, “we can start over. It’s not going to erase what you did, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find a way to change my impression in the future.”
Seeing the other gamer’s obvious confusion, he sighed, “let’s be acquaintances.”
“Acquaintances?”
“Acquaintances. We’re not friends, but we don’t hate each other either, so that’s good enough. A middle ground.”
“…you don’t hate me?”
“If I hated you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Oh. I guess you’re right.”
The two fell into silence again, more comfortable this time, before Zeng Yuan fought through his embarrassment long enough to look at Wu Biaoqing.
Doused in the warm afternoon light, he was just as beautiful as Zeng Yuan remembered him, but he was different than before.
He seemed more sure of himself, carried himself a little higher, slouched a bit less.
He looked back at the sky, and a faint smile found its way his face.
He was still a total wuss, Zeng Yuan doubted that would ever change, but he seemed to understand himself better in a way.
He shared similar feelings—
The thing about time is that it can change people for better or for worse.
For Jiang Yu, the longer he was apart from Wu Biaoqing, the more angry he became, ignoring the feelings inside of him and blaming everything on the one person who wasn’t around to prove it wrong.
For Zeng Yuan, the longer he was apart from Wu Biaoqing, the more he took a good look at himself and tried to figure out what made him act the way he did, instead of ignoring everything he’d done.
It was strange, in a way, how the person Wu Biaoqing expected to be together forever with was the one who abandoned him, and yet the person who he’d once been at odds with was now working hard to make amends.
“What about Jiang Yu,” Wu Biaoqing asked, “did he ever say anything?”
The ZD team captain shook his head, “No. Anytime I mentioned you, he would get all pissy and give me the silent treatment, then go and lock himself up in his room and train for days. There were times when he wouldn’t leave for weeks. I think he was like me, kind of.”
“Like you?”
“He was jealous of you too. Probably more than anyone, even if he didn’t say anything. But when you were gone and the reality of it finally set in, he realized what a stupid fucking douchebag he was. I think he’s still hiding from it,” Zeng Yuan turned again, this time to look his ex-teammate in the eyes, “I don’t want to hide anymore. Wu Biaoqing, even if you don’t want to accept it, I’m sorry. I’ll do my best to prove it.”
“Pfft,” Wu Biaoqing laughed then, confusing him, “I never said I wasn’t going to accept your apology, idiot.”
“So, then—”
“Let’s be acquaintances,” he offered again, holding out his hand for the fellow gamer to shake, “nothing less, nothing more. It’s up to you to prove you’ve changed. What do you say?”
Zeng Yuan smiled, shaking his hand and nodding, “acquaintances.”
—
“And now, heading into their second match of the afternoon, we have LIFE!” Qian Liqiu announced, and the crowd applauded loudly, a few people cheering, though the atmosphere was more tense than before.
Clearly, fans of the rookie team were growing nervous, wondering how the team was going to play in their second match.
The first match they managed to scrape by, but it wouldn’t be so easy getting past Hardcore, one of the most promising rookies from the previous professional season.
Hardcore’s captain, Liang Yusheng, was known to be a crowd pleaser especially with his Legend Of The Wind username being Lively, and he made sure to live up to his reputation.
From the very moment Hardcore stepped out, he was drawing the attention of the audience due to his youthful attractiveness and his overall charm.
Not to mention how he basked in such attention, so he would purposefully do things to get a rise out of the audience, like winking or blowing kisses.
However, with the way he treated things, it would make his opponents mildly annoyed, because it seemed as though he didn’t take things seriously.
Luckily, his teammate Xie Xiaosi was there to drag him and chastise him to high hell until he begrudgingly got back to business.
“Let’s give it up for another amazing match!” The host grinned, “Liang-ge, you might suffer trying to explain this match.”
“Technical descriptions aren’t my strong suit,” Liang Enlai replied, “I’ll just sit here and look pretty.”
A wave of laughter erupted from the audience, before the match finally began.
As the early development started, Wu Biaoqing kept his headphone volume high, and took a deep breath, finally back at his normal gameplay level.
Perhaps because his posture became straighter, or maybe because his gaze was sharper than usual, but it seemed that the hosts picked up on this shift within him as well.
“It looks like Isolation isn’t as disoriented as this morning,” Qian Liqiu commented offhandedly, “could he be the key to turning their matches from near death experiences to something less chaotic?”
The normally neutral commentator finally spoke up.
“I believe if he begins playing at his usual level, the team will work properly,” he explained, surprising the fellow host, “their team’s performance will increase by ten times at the very least once every member is performing at a regular level.”
“Wow, that’s some high praise coming from you,” the host gasped, “don’t tell me you’re biased?”
“A bit,” Liang Enlai replied stiffly, “A friend of mine is always analyzing Isolation’s gameplay. He’s both incredibly skilled and he reviews without any bias, so all the positive feedback about a new streamer surprised me. I watched a few of his lives because of that.”
“Ooh, so his performance in the first match must’ve been a shocker!” Qian Liqiu laughed.
The co-host hummed, “I think his gameplay in a professional setting will be admirable if he’s able to play how he does on a regular basis.”
Unfortunately, the topic of their discussion had no idea what they were discussing.
Instead, he was crouching in a bush, listening to the in-game sounds of footsteps approaching.
It seemed that their enemy has successfully established their base, and was moving forward to gather troops.
He took a deep breath, focusing, and determined that three of the four team members were wandering the jungle together.
So where was the fourth?
“Has anyone been able to gauge enemy positions?” Asked Xi Zhe in their team voice chat, “I just had a run in with Lively, I think it’s meant to throw us off.”
“He was trying to create an opening,” added Wu Biaoqing, “he’s trying to keep you occupied so the others can get close to our base. They’re heading towards me now, so I think they’re aiming to kill me and utilize the downtime to start attacking.”
“Can you get away?” Asked Men Wu, “I can come if you send me your coordinates.”
“Don’t,” Xi Zhe denied him, “I think it’s a trap. They must’ve sent spy troopers and found out we sent Chang Hui to gather troops on the far side of the map. They’re trying to spread us thin so they can take us out one by one.”
“So we just leave him to die?” Men Wu huffed, “the respawn time might mess things up.”
“That’s only if I die,” Wu Biaoqing noted, a humorous lilt to his voice, as if he found the idea amusing.
“Can you deal with all three of them?”
“We’ll find out.”
At that moment, the crisp sound of a bullet flying towards him erupted in his headset.
Bang!
Several more followed in succession after the first brushed past him.
It seemed that they knew he must be close, but they weren’t sure where he was hiding.
Blindly shooting until they got a hit notification wasn’t a bad idea to find a player like him who was known to hide.
Unfortunately for them, they were witnessing the gaming of a fully revitalized Wu Biaoqing in the middle of a competition, not the dazed version of him before nor the semi-serious gaming of his livestreams.
Isolation in true battle mode was something the public has yet to see, but anyone who’d trainee with him knew from experience that he wouldn’t go down without one hell of a fight.
Taking the opportunity of them not knowing his position into account, he kept his character crouched in the bushes and slowly inched his way until he was behind them.
Right as they stopped, most likely pausing to talk about something strategy related through voice chat that Wu Biaoqing couldn’t hear, he climbed up the nearest tree and aimed at their healer.
Bang!
{Clementine was killed by a headshot by LIFE.Isolation. 10 second cooldown enabled.}
A kill with a single shot, totally his style—
Isolation was back.
The author has something to say
Surprise! The person calling out to qingqing wasn’t Jiang Yu. Did I trick anyone? (≧∇≦) I had to cut this chapter into two because it was wayyy too long, so I hope you forgive me for the gaming segment being short, I promise there’s more in chapter 15 (´；ω；｀)
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I really enjoy writing dialogue, as you might have noticed from the 2000 word conversation WBQ & ZY had. I wrote that scene within an hour with no breaks, and then proceeded to not even so much as look at the chapter for days when I realized I had to finally write gaming. Regardless, I hope the gaming reads well, or at least is passible. I’m shooting for a C-, not an A+.
P’nf obecv atgbeut kglalcu atlr atja P cffv ab ifa ub bo mfgajlc atlcur P mjc’a mbcagbi. P’nf yffc fzqfmalcu j iba wbgf ogbw wsrfio atjc lr gfjrbcjyif, jcv tjnf atfgfobg yffc vlrjqqblcafv. P jw, ecobgaecjafis, cba j ilafgjgs ufcler ktb mjc hjq atf qiba ogbw ws wlcv lcab j ubbuif vbm. P’w pera j raevfca raevslcu ab yf jc Scuilrt afjmtfg klat cb obgwji kglalcu agjlclcu, rb wjsyf P rtbeiv mea wsrfio rbwf rijmx WG
Anyway, I’ll see you all in the next chapter dears~ A truckload of gaming, angst, and fluff is ahead of us (/ω＼)
I really liked the conversation between WBQ and ZY, I liked reading it, it’s nice to see a character who reflexes a lot about themselves and admits theirs wrongdoings. And I liked how WBQ forgave him, even though I’m the kind of person when they read that the mc forgives someone, can’t really accept it, for some reason I liked it this time. It showed maturity, and their ability to move on and focus on the present! Thanks for the chapter!
Ahh I’m glad it came across well! I also find myself getting frustrated when an MC forgives an antagonist sometimes, so I wanted it to be clear that ZY was sincere & that WBQ wasn’t forgiving him simply because he apologized, but because he wants to see if ZY has truly changed ( ´▽｀)
You conveyed it well! (/^-^(^ ^*)/
I am very relieved that it was Zeng Yuan and not Jiang Yu! Especially relieved because ZY was only there to apologise! I like that he recognised his horrible behaviour and is now trying to make amends. It’s also very nice of WBQ to accept the apology.
I liked the way you described the gaming, so don’t worry! I don’t play games like that myself so I only have vague knowledge about them, which means that highly technical descriptions of the game play would go way over my head anyway.
(I am very ok with the focus being less on the game plays and more on the characters!)
Glad I tricked you into thinking it was JY XD
I’m also glad the gaming is alright! I’m always nervous about it since I’ve read quite a few gaming novels with detailed descriptions, but I forgot plenty of readers are like me and just skip that stuff ╮(╯▽╰)╭
I wonder how ZS is reacting when he saw isolation on stage and finally did his signature headshot. I’m sure he felt so relief
Zheng Shun sat in his seat, thrumming with anticipation as the host and Liang Enlai bantered for a few minutes.
Was Wu Biaoqing okay?
Would he play bad still?
Was his comforting enough?
Zheng Shun tapped his fingers anxiously, trying his best to keep his breathing steady as LIFE finally made it to the stage.
As Wu Biaoqing stepped out, Zheng Shun noticed the change mmediately.
There was something different about him, his steps unhurried and his whole body much more relaxed than it had been previously.
It was the sort of serious, yet not stifling, attitude that he normally possessed during his streams.
The worry that wormed its way into his heart seeped away, and he watched on with ease, sighing in relief.
Because of his good seat, a perk of being the CEO, he caught Wu Biaoqing’s eyes for a brief second.
For the gamer, it was nothing more than a glimpse of one of many faces in the audience.
For Zheng Shun, however, his heart began to race, his cheeks flushing a light pink, and he willed himself once more to not sneak into LIFE’s waiting room no matter how much he was tempted to so.
He sighed again, this time with impatience, and muttered under his breath, “I can’t wait to hug him.”