Phew, finally felt like he could breathe again. Lin Xing relaxed.
If he didn’t already have the habit of checking his private messages, he probably wouldn’t deliberately dig through them. So the one from “Seasonal Little Xingxing,” buried among so many others, shouldn’t stand out.
Besides, calculating the timeline, that message was from quite a long time ago. It should already have been pushed far down by newer ones.
Lin Xing got out of the car with the takeout bag, walked around to the passenger side window, and stopped there. The closed window slowly lowered, and Lin Xing waited for the man inside to speak.
“Um…” Lin Xing hesitated. After a moment of uncertainty, he still made up his mind, took off his backpack, unzipped it halfway, and reached inside to grasp the bunch of baby’s breath flowers. “Our dorm doesn’t have anything to keep flowers in. Do you… have a vase at home for them?”
He carefully pulled the baby’s breath out, gripping the stems tightly as he held them forward.
The clumsy excuse made Lin Xing cringe internally the moment he said it, but he couldn’t take it back. And he genuinely wanted to give the flowers to him anyway. After weighing it in his mind several times, he simply went through with it.
The “boyfriend” remark had also been heard by him earlier. Lin Xing had assumed he might mind it, but after two or three seconds of silence, he still hadn’t responded. Lin Xing instinctively began to pull his hand back, trying to recover the situation: “Or I can just take them back—”
A hand that had been resting on the steering wheel suddenly reached out, crossing the boundary between inside and outside the car, and stopped the bouquet.
“Thank you.”
The unease in Lin Xing’s heart instantly turned into joy: “Then be careful on the way. I’m going in now.”
The summer night had finally shed the daytime heat, carrying a hint of coolness as it approached midnight.
Since he hadn’t returned yet, Aunt Liu hadn’t been sleeping deeply. When she heard movement in the living room, she immediately got up, still dressed, and went out to see that it was him.
“Are you hungry? I can make you a late-night snack,” she said. Then, noticing him standing by a storage cabinet in the corner of the living room, she walked over curiously. “Xiao Tong, what are you looking for?”
Only when she got closer did she see the bouquet of baby’s breath in his hands. It was rare. There was no long-term resident woman in the house, and although the garden was maintained by a gardener, fresh flowers were seldom used as decoration indoors.
“Auntie, could you help me find a vase?” he asked.
Her gaze lingered on the simple-wrapped bouquet, already slightly wilted, and she froze for a moment before responding, “A vase? Alright, wait a moment.”
She went to the storage room and, after some searching, finally brought out a very beautiful transparent vase.
He thanked her, took it, and went straight upstairs.
Standing downstairs, Aunt Liu watched the small bouquet resting in his arms, and for some reason, felt her mood soften.
Lin Xing’s bedroom once belonged to his father. The basic furnishings inside had hardly changed since the day he moved in after he was old enough to understand things.
With the sound of the door opening and closing, the room filled with a cold light. On the desk lay a cat figurine, which, together with a faded teddy bear placed at the corner of the bed, stared toward the entrance of the room.
Lin Xing walked over and placed the bouquet beside the cat, then gently touched its head with his fingertip.
Even he didn’t know how old this cat actually was. It hadn’t even originally belonged to the Lin family. It had been a stray of unknown origin, only that it had become his companion since he could remember. After it died of old age, it was made into a preserved specimen and placed on his desk.
Lin Xing had always tried his best to keep hold of the people and things that had once appeared in his life and left him with attachment, because loss always felt like a huge hollow constantly swallowing him whole. The people and things that could fill that void were too few, which gradually formed a kind of pathological fixation. What was kept out became difficult to approach, but once admitted, it became equally hard to escape.
He removed the baby’s breath from its wrapping and placed it into the vase, setting it beside the cat. He sat at the desk, quietly looking at the flowers, and gently touched the petals with his fingertips.
“What kind of flower is this?” the cat suddenly stood up and circled the vase. “It’s so pretty.”
“I like this bouquet too,” the teddy bear behind him said brightly. “Who gave it to you?”
“Did the person who gave you the flowers not come back with you?”
“Why didn’t you bring him home? We’re so bored.”
“Are you afraid he’ll see us and stop liking you?”
“How could he be afraid of us? He promised he would save you, don’t you remember?”
“Even if he’s afraid, a promise can’t be taken back. He has to keep his word.”
Lin Xing curled his fingers into his palm, closed his eyes, then opened them again. The voices around him vanished. The cat specimen was still in place, and the teddy bear lay softly on the bed.
In the lifeless room, only the baby’s breath illuminated a small corner.
Chen Chong was a professional esports player, specializing as a jungler. He had delivered standout performances in both the spring and summer seasons this year. His team was newly established, originally just a young owner’s experimental venture, but after several matches, it had unexpectedly begun to look like a properly structured professional team.
Outside of training, Chen Chong also streamed. His personality was direct and fiery, occasionally creating strong entertainment value. Although his streaming schedule wasn’t fixed, his audience remained consistently stable whenever he went live.
He regularly played viewer matchmaking games, so the first thing he usually did after going online was manage his friend list on the streaming account, to avoid it getting full and preventing new requests.
Today was no different, until the system suddenly notified him that someone had sent a high-value gift. Only then did he look up at the monitor and read aloud the message attached beneath the gift.
“The ‘Chi Tong’ in your streamer list, is that the Chi Tong from D-net?”
Only then did Chen Chong notice that people in the bullet comments had already been asking similar questions earlier, but they had been ignored. He scrolled up through his friends list and saw that Chi Tong was currently online.
Chen Chong glanced at the gift again and felt there was nothing particularly sensitive about it, so he said, “Yeah. Our team owner added him to play together before, and we’ve also played a few times outside of streaming hours.”
He didn’t expect such a casual answer to instantly set the bullet comments off.
Chen Chong’s appearance was considered top-tier among professional players, and a large portion of his fanbase was female. Many of them usually lurked quietly, but now they suddenly turned extremely active.
“Can you stream playing with Chi Tong?”
“Ahhh let Chi Tong join!”
“When are you going to do a live collab with Chi Tong?”
“Invite him!”
Probably because Chen Chong had read out the earlier donation message, the subsequent comments about Chi Tong were accompanied by various amounts of gifts. He was almost stunned by the sudden flood. Even when he performed exceptionally well during streams, he had never seen this level of donation density.
What he didn’t know was that Chi Tong’s fans had long been frustrated with his update frequency. But since commenting under his videos didn’t help, and private messages got filtered after a few attempts, and he didn’t even have accounts on other platforms, there was simply no way to push for updates. No one had expected that a professional player and streamer would be connected to him at all. Even if the connection was limited, it was enough for accumulated frustration to pour into Chen Chong’s stream in the form of gifts, as if afraid the topic would just pass by.
At this point, Chen Chong was starting to feel that if he didn’t get Chi Tong to join today, he might be torn apart by these viewers as a substitute outlet for their frustration.
“Hold on, I need to ask the boss,” he had no choice but to say.
He only had Chi Tong added as an in-game friend. Usually, it was always their team owner who queued with Chi Tong.
Although Chen Chong didn’t know Chi Tong’s exact background, the fact that he was clearly a real-life acquaintance of their boss suggested they were at least from similar social circles. He didn’t dare treat him like an ordinary internet influencer.
Chen Chong was quite familiar with his boss, so he messaged him directly during the stream.
“Boss, want to play a game?”
After thinking for a moment, he added, “A lot of people in my stream are asking for Chi Tong to join. Can you call him?”
The boss replied quickly, saying he could go ask Chi Tong.
Chen Chong started a match first. “Let’s play one game first, they might not reply that quickly.”
Just as the game began, a new message from the boss arrived.
“He said he’s busy, but I can play.”
As expected, Chen Chong took advantage of the hero selection phase to show the viewers his WeChat interface.
“Don’t say I didn’t try, alright?”
The fans weren’t having it.
“What do you mean ‘busy’? He’s clearly online in the game. Your boss just wants to duo with you, don’t talk nonsense.”
“Boss just wants a sweet duo queue, ignore him, just invite Chi Tong directly!”
“Go go go!”
The barrage of comments was again accompanied by a screen full of gifts.
Seeing the phrase “sweet duo queue,” Chen Chong felt a little embarrassed. Still, he thought the viewers had a point, so after finishing the match, he went ahead and invited Chi Tong.
Unexpectedly, the invitation was accepted almost instantly.
Even Chen Chong didn’t expect that. Before he could react, another join request popped up, which he reflexively accepted as well. Suddenly, there were three people in the room.
Chen Chong’s account, Chi Tong, and the newly joined player named “Xingxing the Noob.” The three accounts stared at each other in awkward silence.
About two minutes earlier—
Lin Xing had just taken a refreshing shower and was lying on his upper bunk, idly scrolling on his phone.
He had tried several times today to find a natural way to start a conversation with Chi Tong, but always felt the timing wasn’t right. When his roommates started playing games, Lin Xing suddenly remembered that games were a topic he could use, and immediately rolled over, energized. He tapped his phone a few times and sent a message to Chi Tong.
Not long after rejecting Jiang Chengyi’s game invitation, Chi Tong saw his phone light up again and assumed it was that same persistent invite.
Xingxing the Noob: Do you play Honor of Kings?
Having just used “I already uninstalled the game” as an excuse to refuse Chen Chong’s boss, Chi Tong, within two seconds, mentally reinstalled it.
Chi Tong: I play.
Lin Xing happily rolled over in bed, and both of them logged into the game one after the other.
Chi Tong waited for Lin Xing’s team invite, and the moment he saw it, he immediately entered the room. Lin Xing, seeing that he was already in the team, then sent a join request as well.
That was how the situation ended up like this.
Originally, Chi Tong hadn’t planned to play with Chen Chong and was preparing to tell Lin Xing on WeChat to leave the room. But Lin Xing’s message came faster than his.
Xingxing the Noob: Wow!! That looks like Chen Chong.
Lin Xing sometimes watched professional matches and had seen Chen Chong’s highlight reels. He also knew that Chen Chong was straightforward, blunt, and hot-tempered. As a mechanically-inclined but skill-hungry player, Lin Xing had a natural admiration for strong players.
Chi Tong’s movements paused. In the team chat, Chen Chong had already tested the waters with voice chat:
“Brother Chi, is Xingxing the Noob someone you brought?”
Chen Chong’s voice was very recognizable, and Lin Xing immediately confirmed who he was.
Xingxing the Noob: Can we play with him today?!
Xingxing the Noob: 【Pig rolling emoji】
Chi Tong’s intention to leave the room stopped. Lin Xing’s excitement was practically spilling through the screen, and he simply couldn’t bring himself to disappoint him.