Funeral Portraits. Wreaths.
Black and white funeral banners were piled along both sides of the cramped alley, while blood red paint had been splashed across the old wooden doors, making the entire place look garishly bright.
【Celebrating the loss of a hand. Good riddance!】
【Yi Xingran, an A rank war criminal. The funeral home is where you belong!】
【Match fixing bastard, die and get cremated soon!】
“It’s not like this…… It’s really not like this!”
A middle school girl in a school uniform suddenly rushed out, her hands stained bright red by the paint that had not yet dried.
She desperately tore at the funeral banners covered in vicious words, shoved the pristine white chrysanthemums to the ground, then stepped on them with both feet and crushed them beneath her shoes.
The broken petals were ground into the sludge, scattered among the filthy puddles of wastewater.
It was early winter and Shencheng was shrouded beneath a bleak, sorrowful sky. Fine threads of rain fell silently from above, while the damp air pressed heavily against everyone’s chest, making it difficult to breathe.
Another boy emerged from behind the red wooden door at the girl’s back.
His footsteps were neither hurried nor slow. He carried a schoolbag in his left hand and casually swung it over his shoulder, while his right arm was encased in a plaster cast and secured against his chest.
“Yueying, let’s go.”
The girl called Yueying did not turn around. She remained stubbornly determined to destroy every piece of malice that had been thrown in their direction.
Her long ponytail was tied high behind her head, swinging back and forth as she repeatedly jumped and moved with all her strength.
“You’re just wasting your energy.”
The boy’s eyelids drooped slightly as he spoke in a low, mocking tone. Then his voice rose a little.
“If you don’t leave now, you’re going to be late. I don’t have time to deal with your teachers calling your parents.”
Hearing that, Yi Yueying turned around with reddened eyes. Her lips were still trembling slightly from sheer anger.
“It wasn’t like this at all…….. How could they say those things about you? What gives them the right?!”
Only then did the boy lift his thin eyelids slightly and look at her.
His gaze was cold and indifferent, revealing no obvious emotion. The corners of his eyes, however, seemed to narrow gradually, the naturally alluring curve of his peach shaped eyes losing its usual seductive charm.
After a two second pause, the boy suddenly let out a soft laugh.
“Maybe they weren’t completely wrong?”
“Yi Xingran!”
“My hand really is broken and Mom really is gone.”
Yi Xingran shrugged as though none of it mattered. He casually ruffled Yi Yueying’s hair before smoothly herding her toward school.
“For this week, stay at school. I’ll confiscate your phone, so stop looking at all that garbage online.”
Yi Yueying struggled free from his grasp and took back her schoolbag. Just before entering the school gates, she still couldn’t help turning around to ask anxiously,
“What about you?”
Yi Xingran slipped one hand into his pocket.
He couldn’t even be bothered to open an umbrella. His posture was loose and careless and even his voice carried a hint of nonchalance.
“Your brother still has something else to take care of.”
The matter Yi Xingran had to deal with was none other than the match fixing rumors that had recently been causing an uproar throughout the esports scene.
This year’s League of Legends World Championship Finals were being held in Shencheng.
In other words, the tournament was taking place practically right at his doorstep.
This year’s League of Legends World Championship Finals were being held in Shencheng, practically right at his doorstep.
Pain.
Seven years ago, the country’s first major esports tournament had been held in the capital yet in the end, their dream had been shattered at the Bird’s Nest, leaving behind a wound that countless esports fans found too painful to even speak of.
Seven years later, history seemed to be repeating itself.
A similar ending once again unfolded before everyone’s eyes, leaving the entire country bitterly disappointed. The resentment and frustration that had been building for years finally reached its breaking point.
The LCK region’s four time championship winning team had claimed their fifth title.
At the same time, they had accomplished something that had become legendary in the history of esports competitions, a third consecutive championship.
The moment the result was announced, the entire venue erupted.
The performances of all five LCK players were dragged out one by one and put on trial. Every single laning sequence and team fight situation was picked apart frame by frame, while arguments, ridicule, humiliation and furious curses continued without end.
Yi Xingran bore the brunt of it.
It all began with the play in the fourth game.
Playing in the jungle position, Yi Xingran had been the first to circle around toward the enemy’s backline, attempting to eliminate their primary damage dealer before the fight could properly begin.
Instead, his decision caused the team fight to collapse.
That single play became the spark that sent the entire game spiraling into a disadvantage they could no longer recover from.
In the end, LCK lost the championship with a final score of 3:1.
Yi Xingran had a clear conscience.
But there was only so much one person could withstand when faced with a thousand accusing mouths.
The controversy had grown far too loud. Esports fans began demanding that the official league authorities conduct a thorough investigation and give everyone an explanation.
And after investigating…
They really did find some “traces” of something suspicious within LCK.
The team’s management discovered that, before the semifinals, a large sum of money had been transferred into Yi Xingran’s personal account through a third party.
The transaction was opaque and the source of the funds was unknown.
The moment this information was exposed, the entire internet exploded.
Yi Xingran went to find the coach who had once recognized his talent and given him his chance.
Instead, he encountered the team’s manager, who was practically glowing with satisfaction.
With a brilliant smile, the manager spoke to him.
“Take responsibility for this matter, apologize properly and admit your mistake. I can make sure you don’t receive the maximum punishment. Once the storm blows over, you could even switch careers and become an entertainment streamer or something. At least you’ll still be able to make a living.”
Yi Xingran looked toward the coach.
But the coach remained silent, deliberately avoiding his questioning gaze.
Manager Sun raised the bank card in his hand and slowly pushed it across the table.
The certainty in his eyes was impossible to conceal.
“I heard your mother is still lying in the hospital. She’s waiting for you to get the money to save her life, isn’t she?”
The bank card was slapped back across the table.
The phone that had been recording the conversation was snatched away.
Yi Xingran fell from the second floor.
His right hand was permanently crippled.
By the time his surgery was finished, the trending hashtag #YiXingranMatchFixing had already remained on the hot search rankings for three days.
His fans were furious.
For a time, the entire internet was cursing him.
The official league authorities arrived to investigate.
Yi Xingran and the team each insisted on their own version of events.
That money had clearly been something he had desperately and humbly gone to his coach to borrow at the time….
His mother’s surgery had been urgently needed and there was simply no way her condition could wait until the World Championship was over.
But now…
No one was willing to admit that the coach had ever lent him the money.
As he scrolled through a short, blurry video, his phone suddenly lit up with a notification and a text message.
His thoughts were abruptly interrupted. For a brief moment, the cold, indifferent expression on Yi Xingran’s face went completely blank. He paused for several seconds and after confirming who the sender was, a strange flicker passed through his lowered, peach shaped eyes.
His right hand was still in a cast, making it inconvenient to operate the phone with only one hand. He lazily fished a cigarette out of his pocket and bit it between his lips. He did not hurry to light it. Instead, he simply lowered his head and slowly typed out a reply.
【You believe me?】
The phone slipped from his hand and fell to the ground, the screen displaying the message that had never been sent.
Yi Yueying heard the impact and turned around. In her hand was a small roll of banknotes that she had just found inside the pocket of her school uniform jacket.
A note had been tucked between the bills.
Several large characters had been scrawled across it in bold, carefree handwriting:
Eat something good for yourself. Stop always trying to save money for me.
“Yi… Yi Xingran…”
“Bro!!!”
The bright lights seemed capable of cutting straight through the gloomy rain that had persisted for days. The harsh white fluorescent lights made Yi Xingran’s eyes ache from the glare.
There were people quietly sobbing around him.
Others were talking.
The noise was irritating enough to make his head hurt.
“We take the concerns you raised very seriously. After conducting an investigation, we have determined that Wang Tianhao did not display any intentional lack of effort or deliberately poor performance during the match. You misunderstood him.”
“Fire, you act too impulsively and fail to consider the bigger picture. You’ve caused quite a bit of negative impact for the team. After discussing the matter, we’ve decided to temporarily remove you from the starting lineup. As for the upcoming Summer Split…”
Starting lineup?
Summer Split?
Yi Xingran’s eyes snapped open.
He instinctively looked around the room but his memories were still frozen on that single moment when a massive truck had come barreling straight toward him.
At the speed it had been traveling, Yi Xingran was certain there was no possibility that he could have survived.
Even if he had somehow managed to cling to life by sheer luck, he should have been in a hospital right now.
But where was this?
Hadn’t he died?
At this moment, Yi Xingran was sitting inside the conference room of LCK’s headquarters, while the coach stood before him announcing his punishment.
The people in front of him overlapped strangely with fragments of his memories.
For one brief moment, Yi Xingran desperately wanted to rush forward and demand an answer from that man, the man who had once recognized his talent and given him a chance, the same man who had reached out to help him when his mother fell ill.
Why?!
“Brother Ran, I’m sorry……. It’s all my fault. I dragged you into this…….”
A quiet sob broke through his thoughts.
Yi Xingran turned his head and looked over.
There stood one of his former teammates, the team’s support player.
Hu Yu.
You still have the nerve to cry?
Yi Xingran thought back for a moment.
The point in time when he had lost his position as a starter had indeed been the year he joined LCK and finished his very first Spring Split and this incident really had been connected to Hu Yu.
Back then, Yi Xingran had believed that Hu Yu was an honest and simple person. He had always been somewhat timid and submissive in his everyday interactions. Wang Tianhao, the AD carry, was constantly barking orders at him and treating him like a servant.
Whenever they lost a match, Wang Tianhao would even make seemingly casual posts on Weibo, with every word carrying an unmistakable implication that Hu Yu’s gameplay was the reason they had lost.
Yi Xingran couldn’t stand watching it.
He had gotten into a minor confrontation with that AD carry.
Blaming your teammates whenever you lose a match?
What kind of trash was that?
But the truth that came later proved that everyone within the team had long since been working together behind the scenes.
Hu Yu had never been innocent either.
Yi Xingran alone had been kept in the dark, still foolishly dreaming of restoring their former glory and bringing the LCK back to the number one region in the world.
Heh.
The league had already completely entered an era dominated by the LCK region.
Meanwhile, he had become buried beneath scandal after scandal, suffered a comminuted fracture of his wrist bones and from then on was cursed and reviled by countless people, forever cut off from the competitive stage.
“Four years ago, the LCK’s dream was shattered at the Bird’s Nest. It was only after The X won the World Championship the following year that they finally broke the situation where the LCK region had practically monopolized the championships at international competitions for so many years…”
“In this year’s Spring Finals, we narrowly lost to the former World Champions with a score of 3:2. Because of that, you became resentful and decided that the bottom lane’s damage dealer was holding the team back, so you made a false accusation against him…”
The coach was still speaking when Yi Xingran suddenly frowned.
With a loud clatter, he abruptly stood up, knocking over the water glass beside him in the process.
The coach frowned and looked up.
Hu Yu also turned toward him in confusion, tear tracks still visible on his face.
After standing up, Yi Xingran made no further movement.
Four years ago?
The X had won the World Championship?
They had lost the Spring Split?
A crisp sound.
Yi Xingran picked up the overturned water glass and stared at it for a moment.
Then he loosened his fingers.
With a sharp crack, the glass slipped from his hand and crashed onto the floor, shattering into pieces.
“Fire!” the coach immediately called out.
Yi Xingran stared at his wrist.
There was no plaster cast.
When he rotated it, there was none of the stiff, sluggish resistance he remembered from before.
The piercing pain that had once drilled straight into his bones was gone.
So was the strange sensation of cold metal screws embedded deep within his shattered bones.
In their place was a flexible, perfectly functioning wrist, along with tendons and ligaments that would never again ache unbearably, swell painfully and leave him unable to move.
Yi Xingran spread his five fingers before clenching his hand tightly once more.
He repeated the motion several times.
A strange thought had appeared in his mind, buzzing relentlessly.
Had he been reborn?
Or had he already died…
Was this simply a dying hallucination, the final scenes of his life flashing before his eyes?
“I know you’re unhappy about losing your starting position but you were the one who made the false accusation first and then you even resorted to violence. Not being suspended is already the best outcome you could have hoped for. What else are you trying to make a fuss about?!”
Yi Xingran looked over in confusion but there was also a trace of scrutiny in his gaze.
Coldness filled his eyes.
The naturally curved peach shaped eyes that had once carried a faint, almost languid arc now narrowed into a long, sharp curve, as though they could see straight through a person with a single glance.
Three years ago, the first Spring Split he played as a starting player ended in the finals with the team narrowly losing all five games because of the bottom lane duo’s repeated mistakes, which triggered a considerable wave of criticism online.
It wasn’t that Yi Xingran had never suspected that something was wrong with Hu Yu.
But Wang Tianhao was an arrogant man and several of his aggressive team fight initiations had looked almost exactly like he was deliberately “feeding kills,” dragging Hu Yu down with him and sending the two of them to their deaths together.
Hu Yu was timid by nature and barely noticeable within the team. Once, after a training session, Yi Xingran happened to catch him hiding in a corner and crying.
Little by little, Hu Yu became attached to him.
After that Spring Split ended, Hu Yu’s mental state completely collapsed under the abuse he received online. Every few days, he would come looking for Yi Xingran to cry and complain about what had happened.
Because of this, Yi Xingran also got into a conflict with Wang Tianhao. He had almost been suspended from competition.
It was the coach at the time who claimed that he had fought desperately to protect Yi Xingran. Only because of his efforts did the matter not get reported to the official league authorities. Instead, Yi Xingran received an internal team punishment and his position as a starter was taken away.
Only later did Yi Xingran discover the truth.
This had all been a script that Manager Sun had planned together with Wang Tianhao long beforehand.
They had deliberately provoked him into losing his temper, intentionally downplayed and concealed the bottom lane’s poor performance and passive play, manipulated public opinion and ultimately made the rumors that Yi Xingran had bullied his teammates inside the team seem completely confirmed.
And after the incident, Hu Yu even interacted amicably with Wang Tianhao on Weibo while Wang Tianhao publicly condemned Yi Xingran for spreading rumors, directly pushing Yi Xingran into the center of the storm.
LCK Wang Tianhao: The innocent have nothing to fear. /smiling.JPG @LCK Hu Yu, heard that I bully you?
LCK Hu Yu reposted //LCK Wang Tianhao’s Weibo: Rumors stop with the wise. Brother Tianhao has always treated me very well. /smiling face.JPG
“Enough! Manager Sun is only trying to calm the situation down. Discord among the team’s players will affect the team’s commercial value! Fire, be more careful from now on. Watch what you say and what you do!”
Yi Xingran slowly lifted his eyelids.
“Watch what I say and what I do?”
The coach had already stood up and was preparing to leave. When he pulled open the conference room door, he still turned back with a frown and warned him,
“This matter ends here!”
Yi Xingran had experienced this scene before.
It was far too familiar.
Back then, he had accepted the punishment.
Yet that very night, the trending hashtag #YiXingranTeamBullying had surged onto the front page.
Immediately afterward came the team’s official Weibo announcement stating that he had been removed from the starting lineup and that the jungler position would be given to someone else.
Then, throughout the entire transfer window that followed, he had been hung out in the public square to be mocked and cursed by everyone.
“Brother Ran…… just let it go. I know Wang Tianhao’s words weren’t very nice and I know you were only standing up for me. You didn’t actually do much to him either…… But what the manager said isn’t wrong, either. He’s thinking about the team. Everyone outside has been saying that Tianhao and I don’t get along and even the sales of our merchandise and related products have dropped a lot these past few days, ”
Yi Xingran stopped in the middle of walking out.
He glanced sideways at Hu Yu.
He had almost forgotten.
What role were you playing in this script again?
In the end, when the truth finally came to light, the first person to distance himself from Yi Xingran and kick him while he was down had been Hu Yu as well.
The outer corners of Yi Xingran’s eyes narrowed and lifted slightly, carrying that sharp, upward curve. His brows rose faintly as he looked toward the coach, who had already descended the stairs and was standing at the landing.
He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes ever so slightly.
Hu Yu’s heart jolted beneath that gaze.
He knew Yi Xingran’s explosive temper far too well.
His patience was practically nonexistent. After only a few sentences, he would already be tempted to solve the problem with his fists.
He was the quintessential type who would fight the moment anyone refused to submit, always unruly and defiant, an irritable, aggressive personality that resembled a domineering flower.
The only reason he could be called a “flower” at all was because of that face.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a flower.
It would be a terrifying Tyrannosaurus rex.
This “domineering flower” had a cool, pale complexion, deep set brows and eyes and a straight, sharply raised nose that perfectly balanced the overly severe lines of his jaw, softening his naturally aggressive appearance by two or three degrees.
One glance was enough to leave someone’s heart pounding.
But if you looked at him for a little longer, there was something about that beautiful yet obviously unapproachable face that somehow made people develop other, rather ambiguous thoughts beneath the surface.
Hu Yu had no idea what he had said wrong this time to set off Yi Xingran’s terrible temper.
All he saw was Yi Xingran smiling sweetly as he looked over.
Yi Xingran reached out, grabbed his arm and raised it in front of his chest, signaling for him to make a fist and hold his position, protecting his wrist and head.
Then, he kicked him down the staircase.
Hu Yu screamed as he tumbled down the stairs.
The coach heard the commotion and turned around. When he tried to help Hu Yu up, Hu Yu crashed into him, sending the coach tumbling down as well.
The two of them fell into a tangled heap.
Yi Xingran stood on the second floor with one hand resting casually on the stair railing, looking down at them from above.
The corner of his lips curled upward in a faint, crooked smile.
His pink hair was slightly tousled, his expression cold and indifferent and his narrowed peach shaped eyes resembled a curved crescent moon that had just risen above the treetops.
His voice was crisp, his tone arrogant and utterly unrestrained.
“I beat him up but I didn’t beat you up, right?”
Who cared whether this was a dream or some dying hallucination….
He deserved to be beaten!
That night, while the other members of the LCK team were interacting warmly with one another on Weibo and maintaining an atmosphere of perfect harmony and friendship, Yi Xingran’s Weibo stood out with an especially conspicuous series of “clown” reaction images mocking them.
✦ ✧ ✦
Fleurveil
[Translator]
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✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
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Next →
ChaptersChapter 1 · Fire the hole!Chapter 2 · Dude, I’m here to save youChapter 3 · Plaster HeadChapter 4 · I’m well behaved, I don’t talk muchChapter 5 · It’s what Cross needsChapter 6 · What are you barking like a dog?Chapter 7 · “Ah! It’s so… so damn cold~”Chapter 8 · What are you looking at, you pervert!Chapter 9 · The cat I bought for free got dirty.Chapter 10 · Oh no! I forgot to switch to a smaller account!Chapter 11 · It’s my turn to performChapter 12 · Insults? That’s slander! This is slander!Chapter 13 · He’s a very nice personChapter 14 · Hunting TimeChapter 15 · A straight man sells himselfChapter 16 · The number one person who doesn’t eat stressChapter 17 · He is so vividChapter 18 · War! War! War! Kill! Kill!Chapter 19 Part 1 · What’s wrong with guys rubbing against each other?Chapter 19 Part 2 · What’s wrong with guys rubbing against each other?