Inside the sports facility, the crowd gathered to watch the match was massive.
It looked like most of them had come specifically for Jiang Xu.
There was no telling how everyone managed to get such fast news, since a private match was actually known in such complete detail.
The spectators arrived at the bleachers in groups of three or five to watch the basketball game.
Xie Ran felt completely out of place.
Since there were quite a few girls coming to watch the match, even he ended up surrounded by a group of girls whispering behind his back.
Most of them were discussing Jiang Xu.
Xie Ran sat properly in his seat, holding his camera and the several bottles of water he had bought.
At that moment, someone asked cautiously, “Excuse me, are you also here to watch Jiang Xu’s match?”
Hearing this, Xie Ran turned his head and looked at the girls who had spoken behind him.
A few of them in that row were probably from the same dorm, arms linked together.
They looked at Xie Ran, seemingly waiting for an answer.
He pondered for two seconds, unsure whether to say yes or no.
After all, he was mainly there for Wang Wenjing.
Yet just as he wanted to say no, he raised his head and saw hopeful gazes in those girls’ eyes.
Swallowing the words on the tip of his tongue, he gave an ambiguous reply: “I suppose you could say that.”
“Ahhhhh.”
Those girls let out soft shrieks.
Xie Ran was startled.
What was this about? Why were they suddenly screaming?
Right after that, the girls spoke up one after another with total familiarity:
“You are Xie Ran from the art department, right? I saw your photo on the forum before, and you look even more handsome in person.”
“Are you and Jiang Xu especially close? We just saw the two of you strolling around the sports field together earlier.”
Xie Ran smiled and said, “Thank you, you look very pretty too.”
As for that latter sentence, he didn’t know how to answer, seeing as there had also been a third person during the field stroll.
The girls didn’t mind either. Pointing at the camera in his arms, they asked, “Is the camera in your hands Jiang Xu’s?”
Their words leaked a hint of strange excitement.
Xie Ran nodded. “It is his.”
One of the girls pointed at the water in his hands and asked, “Then is the water you bought for Jiang Xu?”
This time Xie Ran didn’t hesitate at all, because he actually had bought a bottle for Jiang Xu.
Nodding in response, he said, “Yes.”
The girls exchanged glances, a “just as expected” look on their faces.
Xie Ran had no idea what kind of situation they were in, let alone why they would suddenly start screaming.
Every now and then, he could hear the few of them whispering unfamiliar buzzwords.
Phrases like “I am shipping this,” “I am dying of shipping,” “Mom, my OTP is real,” and things of that sort.
Xie Ran felt baffled for the very first time.
Seeing that the crowd inside the sports facility was growing larger, he raised his head and shifted his gaze back to the basketball court.
After waiting another three minutes, the match still hadn’t started.
Xie Ran pulled out his phone and only then saw that Teacher V had sent him a message.
[I am playing basketball on the court. Do you want to come over and deliver water to me?]
Seeing this message, his heart fluttered with a mix of excitement and tension for a brief second.
Deliver water? Deliver water to He Ruizhe?
Xie Ran thought to himself: That doesn’t seem to work out.
Besides, wasn’t this Capital University’s chemistry department playing against Chu University’s physical education department?
What did this have to do with He Ruizhe?
The guy wasn’t even playing on the court, so why would he ask him to deliver water?
Xie Ran didn’t reply right away, instead looking left and right to search for He Ruizhe’s location.
The moment he turned his head, he spotted He Ruizhe sitting in the front row of the spectator bleachers not far away.
The people sitting next to the guy were all guys, except for the seat on his immediate right, which was occupied by a mature, imperial-sister-style beauty.
No wonder he wasn’t bothering to reply to him.
So he had changed his flavor.
Did getting slapped in the face by a cute girl leave him with trauma, making him prefer this mature style now?
Thinking of his own QAQ-style lines, Xie Ran felt a wave of melancholy wash over his heart.
Without a shred of hesitation, he pulled out his phone, opened the camera app, and snapped a stealthy photo aimed right at He Ruizhe’s location.
Evidence plus one.
Once he gathered other pieces of evidence, he was going to make a PowerPoint presentation and send it to Xiexuan.
Just to earn those two thousand yuan, he really had put in a lot of effort.
To think he was a straight guy, yet because of his competitive streak, he had resorted to acting like a maiden to flirt with a scumbag.
Forget it, none of them were any good!
Xie Ran tapped open V’s chat box and typed out: [Teacher V, I am a bit busy right now. Let’s do it next time.]
As soon as the message went out, he raised his head to look over at He Ruizhe’s spot.
Sure enough, he saw the guy pick up his phone, glance at it briefly, give no reply, and shove the phone right back into his pocket.
Xie Ran genuinely wanted to curse the guy out as a scumbag.
How could he not even reply after seeing the message?
In reality, He Ruizhe, who had merely checked the time and wasn’t actually V, thought: (…)
Another five minutes ticked by.
The players, having changed into their uniforms, took to the court one after another.
The moment everyone caught sight of Jiang Xu, piercing shrieks erupted all around.
It practically almost flipped the entire sports facility over.
Who would have thought Jiang Xu’s popularity on campus was this high, capable of drawing so many fan girls to an ordinary basketball match.
Xie Ran’s gaze also fell upon the basketball court, picking out Jiang Xu in his number 7 jersey at a single glance among the crowd.
Coincidentally, the other person raised his head, and their lines of sight seemed to briefly intersect in midair for a split second.
Barely two seconds passed before Jiang Xu looked away.
A basketball match was called a match, but it was mainly meant for entertainment, so nobody took things overly seriously.
The atmosphere on the court was relatively relaxed, with back-and-forth plays accompanied by a few sighs and cheers from the bleachers.
Whenever Jiang Xu scored, the cheers surged upward in wave after wave like hot tides.
The youth had broad shoulders and a narrow waist, wore a loose jersey, dribbled the ball smoothly to dodge opponents with a sharp turn, rose up to jump, and effortlessly tossed the ball into the hoop with a casual, lazy motion.
“Ah! Jiang Xu is so handsome!”
“That triple-threat layup is going to make water-delivering fans lose their minds into idiots.”
“Are those abdominal muscles? Ahhh.”
Xie Ran raised his camera, aimed it at the basketball court, and picked the right timing to snap a photo.
Over in the bleachers not far away, He Ruizhe felt like something was slightly off.
He asked the others around him, “Do you guys think my brother’s playing style looks a little weird today?”
The others shook their heads like rattling drums. “Nah? Doesn’t Brother Xu always play this cool?”
He Ruizhe was far too familiar with Jiang Xu.
The two of them had grown up together, and the number of times they had played basketball was too high to count.
This time, the vibe the other person was giving off felt like a peacock spreading its tail feathers, actually deigning to slightly pull back his jersey shirt-like top.
What kind of operation was this?
It felt wrong.
Something was genuinely very wrong.
Yet he couldn’t put his finger on where that wrongness lay.
Even though this kind of movement was ordinary and casual for someone active in sports, applying it to Jiang Xu felt utterly unreasonable, as if the guy had been possessed by a ghost.
He Ruizhe rubbed his chin in deep thought, his peripheral vision catching Xie Ran holding a camera on the opposite bleachers and aiming it toward the basketball court.
That camera looked awfully familiar.
Wasn’t that his brother’s camera?
Why had it ended up in Xie Ran’s hands?
He Ruizhe had previously assumed their relationship was just that of ordinary roommates.
Clearly, he was sitting right there watching them play ball, so why would his brother hand his camera over for Xie Ran to hold?
A nameless sense of crisis abruptly rose in He Ruizhe’s heart.
Did this mean his and Tan Hao’s positions as the left and right protective guardians were about to be replaced?
Aside from having slightly higher looks than them, what on earth was Xie Ran relying on to win Jiang Xu’s favor?
He was completely baffled.