The left side of Sheng Xufeng’s face was slightly swollen.
Yi Xingran coldly tugged his jacket back up where it had slipped down, picked up the peripherals bag from the floor and patted the dust from it. His pink hair was disheveled and his clothes were a mess, making him look like an angry, puffed up cat that had barely made it out the door before some bad guy had grabbed him and thoroughly tousled him.
As he passed Pei Du, Pei Du held the door open for him, his other hand still carrying Yi Xingran’s bag.
Inside the room was Sheng Xufeng, furious yet unable to say a word. At the very moment Pei Du closed the door, he even glanced back at him with a faintly amused, almost mocking smile.
What a show off. No wonder he was the king of pretending.
Yi Xingran walked with his head lowered. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Pei Du’s long, slender fingers wrapped around the handle of the suitcase, the joints sharply defined, while his long legs moved forward at an unhurried, steady pace.
He suddenly remembered how Pei Du had stood outside the training room just moments ago, completely composed, his tone casual and unconcerned yet with only a few sentences, he had managed to leave Sheng Xufeng unable to utter a single word in response.
For some inexplicable reason, Yi Xingran felt that the man really had pulled off that act rather impressively.
Damn it, he’d managed to look cool again!
Yi Xingran couldn’t help replaying the scene in his mind, the captain of TheX, a prestigious powerhouse team and reigning world champion squad, carrying his bag and opening the door for him.
This guy actually knew how to behave. He knew to give him some face in front of outsiders.
Pei Du closed the trunk and let his gaze fall briefly on the pink haired head that looked like it had been thoroughly ruffled. “Do I need to open the car door for you and personally invite you inside too, President Ran?”
The teasing implication was far too obvious. Yi Xingran abruptly came back to his senses. “You actually know how to joke?”
Pei Du said nothing. He merely lowered his eyes slightly and looked over at him, his expression seeming to ask: What kind of person do you think I am?
What other kind of person could he be? A sarcastic, smug king of showing off, obviously.
Of course, Yi Xingran didn’t say that aloud. He obediently climbed into the car instead and even complimented him. “I just didn’t expect you to be this funny.”
Some of the things Sheng Xufeng had said were still echoing in his ears. Yi Xingran thought about how things had seemed to go much the same way in his previous life. A lot of the information he had known about Pei Du back then had come from Sheng Xufeng.
Things like being arrogant and looking down on everyone, having an improper private life, acting like two completely different people in public and behind closed doors, appearing refined and aboveboard on the surface while behaving like a petty, despicable person in private, supposedly being rotten and filthy to the core.
Well, they were opposing teams, after all. It wasn’t unusual for them to seize on rumors, twist things out of context, slander each other and spread malicious gossip.
If Sheng Xufeng hadn’t accidentally exposed himself later on, Yi Xingran might actually have believed him.
There weren’t many truthful words that came out of a person like that’s mouth. So Yi Xingran glanced at Pei Du and asked, “Someone said you guys bought me without wanting to pay anything-”
Pei Du lowered his head and sent Qian Deshuai a message. Hearing that, he didn’t even lift his eyes. “Mm. What else did he say about me?”
Calculating, fond of showing off, overly scheming, convinced he was always right………………
Yi Xingran paused. Then he poked his head up from the back seat again. “Exactly how much did you give them?”
Only then did Pei Du look up. Through the rearview mirror, his gaze landed on that round head peeking out from the back seat.
His pair of peach shaped eyes drooped slightly at the corners, filled with unmistakable confusion, making his gaze look exceptionally clear and innocent. For some reason, he resembled a little cat that had just been brought home, poking its head out cautiously as it tried to find out exactly how many cans of cat food had been paid to bring it home.
Pei Du’s expression remained completely unchanged. “Nothing. Your former captain didn’t lie to you.”
Those peach shaped eyes immediately widened even further, his eyebrows lifting along with them. “You actually got me for zero yuan?!”
Yi Xingran was genuinely stunned. Not wanting LCK to take too much of his transfer fee was one thing but actually being bought for absolutely nothing was an entirely different matter. Even if Manager Sun was exceptionally good at bargaining, he couldn’t possibly have bargained that hard, could he?
It made him seem way too cheap!
Pei Du pressed down the corner of his lips that had begun to curl upward, thinking to himself that the resemblance was getting even stronger. The symbolism of a stray cat was that you had to be quick or someone else would snatch it away first. As for a house cat, you had to grab a sack and make your move, otherwise there was no way you’d ever manage to steal it away.
Strong.
Yi Xingran’s face fell. He was irritated for a while but soon managed to talk himself back into a better mood. Zero yuan purchase it was, then. A zero yuan purchase was still better than letting those people get even a single extra cent.
The moment he remembered the disgusting look on Sheng Xufeng’s face just now, he felt as though his entire body had become unclean. Good heavens, he had no chest and no butt, what the hell had that guy even been looking at?!
Pei Du watched the changes in his expression for quite some time, as though eight hundred complicated plots had already flashed through his mind. “You really hate your former club?”
Yi Xingran collapsed limply across the back seat, his entire body drained of energy, his voice filled with despair. “I feel dirty. You know that?”
Pei Du locked his phone screen at those words and narrowed his eyes slightly.
Yi Xingran hadn’t understood at first but then, thinking about Sheng Xufeng’s appearance at his mother’s funeral in his previous life, he grew suspicious for a moment before suddenly having a flash of realization.
Fuck. No wonder!
Only now did Yi Xingran understand what Sheng Xufeng had meant that day when he had handed him a hotel room key card before leaving.
At the moment when Yi Xingran had lost a family member, had his career destroyed, had his reputation completely ruined and had practically been driven into a dead end, Sheng Xufeng had been the only person from the team to step forward and attend his mother’s funeral. Yi Xingran had even once been grateful to him for that.
Fucking pervert……. Was there something wrong with him?!
Yi Xingran’s expression became strange. Pei Du turned slightly and his gaze met Yi Xingran’s for a brief second.
“You’re uncomfortable?”
Yi Xingran couldn’t seem to sit still at all, as though his butt had somehow grown teeth. He twisted and shifted around restlessly in the back seat for quite a while. He endured it for a moment, swallowing all the curses he wanted to spit out but eventually couldn’t hold back anymore.
“Buddy, I’m straight! A proud, upright man who stands tall and true! Would you be comfortable if another grown man shoved a gun against you?”
Pei Du’s expression turned cold for a brief moment. After a pause, he asked, “You’re straight?”
Was that really the important part?!
Yi Xingran grabbed onto the front seat and leaned his head forward between the seats. “What else would I be? What about you? You’re not?”
Pei Du fell silent.
Then he turned around, his gaze passing over through the rearview mirror.
Yi Xingran immediately retreated from between the front seats, hastily withdrawing like a pink cat head that had suddenly realized it had poked itself out too far.
Immediately afterward, he tugged at the jacket whose zipper had already been damaged from being pulled. The collar of the shirt underneath opened even wider with the movement, exposing a broad expanse of straight, defined collarbones, while the neckline dropped even lower.
Yi Xingran raised his brows, his tone deliberately provocative. “No way, buddy. You like looking too?”
Pei Du merely lifted his eyes and glanced at him. His expression remained unchanged, still carrying that same detached, indifferent air as though none of this had anything to do with him.
“I’d say you certainly have a lot to say.”
Yi Xingran couldn’t help laughing. His pair of peach shaped eyes curved into crescents, the natural arc at their corners carrying an almost inherent hook. Clearly, he hadn’t taken it seriously at all.
“I knew it. What exactly is so interesting under this shirt, anyway? Who doesn’t have a pair of nipples?”
Pei Du calmly handed him a bottle of mineral water.
“How do you usually address your former captain?”
“Captain Sheng, obviously. What’s wrong?”
Pei Du unscrewed the bottle cap and calmly took a sip of water, his gaze quietly studying him.
Yi Xingran felt increasingly strange under that stare. “Buddy, what exactly are you trying to say? Can’t you just say it straight?”
Pei Du lowered his eyelids and spoke with a faint, almost teasing smile. “Oh. So I’m not worthy of being called that?”
“……No, buddy, you- ?”
“Knock, knock, knock.” Someone knocked on the car window. Manager Qian’s voice arrived before the man himself, accompanied by the clinking of his bracelets, tinkling like little silver bells.
“Good grief, that Sun Sheng! He’s seriously infuriating! Baby, what happened to you?”
The front passenger door was suddenly yanked open and the moment Manager Qian got into the car, he immediately launched into a nonstop stream of complaints.
Yi Xingran, a perfectly living person, nearly choked to death on his water. Some of it splashed onto his collar, leaving him scrambling to wipe his mouth in embarrassment.
“Nothing, cough, I was just listening to our Captain Pei lecture me.”
With that interruption, the topic from before naturally came to an end. Yi Xingran slumped across the back seat, listening the entire way as Manager Qian complained about how Sun Sheng had completely forgotten how to behave like a decent human being, how he himself had gone on a rampage and how he had utterly annihilated the enemy and left them without a shred of resistance!
“Wants to play dirty with me? When it comes to dirty tricks, he’d have to call me his ancestor! Did he really think I’ve been working as a manager for twelve years for nothing?!”
Yi Xingran nodded along obediently with a series of “Mm, mm, mm,” playing along quite dutifully with Manager Qian’s bragging.
It wasn’t until they got out of the car that Pei Du spoke again, his talent for being sarcastic and making pointed remarks was simply too strong. Every sentence seemed to take three twists and turns before reaching the point, twisting so much that Yi Xingran’s head was practically tying itself into knots.
After calling him “Captain” nicely for so long that Yi Xingran was practically seeing sparks, Pei Du picked up his peripherals bag and casually tossed a small bottle toward him.
Yi Xingran looked down and saw that it was burn ointment.
Pei Du held out his hand toward him. “An infected wound will interfere with your training, what, you can’t use your left hand either?”
Yi Xingran had just been about to say that this guy was actually pretty nice after all but the second half of the sentence immediately made his fists itch. He pulled a cold face and snatched the peripherals bag back from Pei Du’s hand.
Pei Du bent down and lifted his suitcase out of the trunk. Resting one hand on the handle, he locked the car, then glanced sideways at him.
“What’s wrong with me?”
“You’re really a nice guy!”
Pei Du gave a quiet laugh and escorted him all the way to the door of his room. “See you tomorrow.”
“Thanks, see- ”
“Remember to call me Captain.”
His expression was indifferent, his tone carrying an indistinct, almost inscrutable edge.
He had been provoking him the entire time!
With a loud “bang,” the door was slammed shut with tremendous force.
Pei Du raised a hand and rubbed the tip of his nose, which had nearly been caught by the door. As he turned and walked away, he suddenly remembered how, in his previous life, after Yi Xingran’s obituary had been published, Sheng Xufeng had once posted a long collection of images and written a lengthy, seemingly heartfelt tribute.
Every line of those words had been filled with remembrance and mourning. In photograph after photograph, Yi Xingran appeared in candid shots from his everyday life, his expression cold and indifferent.
Occasionally, the camera had managed to catch him looking directly toward the lens, his bright eyes glancing over with impatience and annoyance, coldly warning the person behind the camera who had been secretly taking his picture.
A camera had feelings.
Those different angles were the eyes behind the person holding the camera. Remembering those scenes from his memories, Pei Du couldn’t help rubbing his fingertips together.
Sheng Xufeng.
…….
Yi Xingran opened his suitcase and froze in an instant, suddenly wondering if he had perhaps slammed the door of his room a little too loudly just now.
The clothes he had carelessly stuffed inside had all been folded neatly, one piece at a time. Even his pants had been rolled into shapes that wouldn’t develop creases from being compressed, everything arranged in perfectly orderly rows inside.
It was so neat that it was almost ridiculous.
What was this? A magical snail captain?
The moment Yi Xingran imagined his obsessive compulsive captain unable to stand the sight of the mess after he left, opening his suitcase and gritting his teeth as he folded and folded and folded everything inside, a moment of bewilderment flashed across his face, which had originally been holding back his anger.
…..
The next day.
Yi Xingran picked out a clean outfit from the suitcase. Everything else remained exactly where it was, untouched and perfectly arranged.
He descended the stairs with both hands in his pockets, sauntering along at an unhurried pace. His hair was still damp because he hadn’t even bothered to dry it properly.
As he walked, he thought that perhaps he should restrain himself a little more today and be a bit sweeter with his words. So what if he called him “Captain” a few extra times? It wasn’t like he would lose a piece of flesh over it.
Just as he spotted that familiar figure appearing around the corner not far ahead, Yi Xingran unconsciously reached up and ran a hand through his hair. In the end, he simply walked over without saying anything else.
“Captain, good morni- ”
Before he could finish, he raised his eyes and saw that there was another person standing on the other side of the corner.
The man’s face was flushed red with anger and the moment he saw Yi Xingran, fury immediately surged across his features.
“Shibal!”
Yi Xingran: “?”
Heh. An old acquaintance.
They met again.
Park! Seokho!
Yi Xingran’s eyes widened as he glared at him. “What a damn unlucky way to start the morning. What are you shouting ‘shibal’ at me for? You think you’re the only one who knows a foreign language? I can say ‘fuck’ too! Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Pei Du stood there with his arms folded across his chest. At those words, he lifted his eyes and looked over.
Yi Xingran suddenly remembered the image he was supposed to maintain within the team. He immediately straightened up and stood properly.
“He was the one who cursed at me first. I just cursed back. That’s not going too far, right?”
After a pause, Yi Xingran added another word.
“……Captain.”
Pei Du leaned against the corner. He lowered his eyes for a moment before his thin lips parted.
“Not at all. You’re well behaved and quiet. It’s all his fault.”
Yi Xingran is adorable is weird way! No one can change my mind! 😂😂
✦ ✧ ✦
Fleurveil
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
The Realm is pleased. The translator would be even more pleased with coffee.
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
← PreviousNext →
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?