Chapter 12

“Yu Qinghuan!” The boss roared angrily on the phone. “The document you brought back from your business trip, you left one out!!”

“O-one is missing?” Yu Qinghuan hasn’t figured out that he left this piece of document in the hotel room.

“What is the matter with you? And in the report you just sent me, one line is wrong. How can you be this stupid? Can you not even do such a simple thing? Go check it again!!! Immediately!”

The boss then sent a wave of foul flame to Yu Qinghuan, before hanging up the phone.

Yu Qinghuan sighed in dismay as he listened to the prompt sound of an ended call from his phone.

At nearly eleven o’clock, Yu Qinghuan hurried back to the company, woke his laptop up and began to carefully check the data line by line, but after reviewing the data for the third time, he did not find the incorrect line. He began to question whether the boss was mistaken. When he picked up his phone to make the call, he held his phone with hesitation, worrying he would be bothering his boss so late.

However, after a short while, his boss sent him a WeChat message.

[The data is correct, I am the one who misread it.]

Yu Qinghuan felt a lump in his throat, put down his phone with a sigh, leaned forward, rested his upper body on his desk, and closed his sore eyes from staring at the laptop screen for so long.

On the large and quiet floor, there was no one here except for Yu Qinghuan. The clock on the wall was ticking, as if whispering a gentle reassurance, or tirelessly rambling off.

He rested on his desk. After a while, he rubbed his eyes, raised his head, took out the external drive he carried with him and plugged it to his laptop, opening the game installed on the drive, connecting to his VPN, and logging into the NA server.

As he was about to start a game, he stopped his cursor over the start button. Moving his mouse, he checked his match history, and as Ren Jian had pointed out, the total time he played per day was unbelievably long.

The minute and hour hands on the wall clock slowly pointed to the number twelfth. It was midnight, the start of a new day.

He glanced at the date displayed on his phone, closed the client, opened the browser, and searched Ran Jian’s name on the search bar. As expected, many videos, clips and interviews from competitions showed up, so he picked a random one.

In front of the camera, Ren Jian was so handsome that no viewers could take their eyes off of him. His smile was full of energy. Beside him were his teammates, holding up the trophy and shouting together, “We won, we are the champions!!!”

The second half of the video was Ren Jian’s edited gameplay in competitions. After his dazzling mechanics, he appeared in front of three enemies, successfully took first blood and stole the drake.

A sentence appeared at the end of the video.

[Tea brewed with fresh fire, chant poems with wine in the prime of youth. They are the champions!!!]

Then, the screen went dark, and Yu Qinghuan’s face was reflected on the dark display.

He shutted off the laptop, and rested his upper body on the desk again.

In a daze, he recalled the day when he won the first competition during his college year, how his teammates rushed to him, arms around his shoulders, and shouted in tears. “We won, we won!”

At that time, Luo Buyu, the team captain, was also there. He said, “Qinghuan, you are amazing. We must persevere.”

Immediately followed by the scene being distorted.

The group of celebrating teammates and the medal began to shatter, leaving only a void of white. He saw Ren Jian stood in front of him and calmly asked, “Why are you still persevering on?”

Yu Qinghuan was shocked awake.

He looked around in confusion and realized that he had accidentally fallen asleep in the office.

Breathing out, he tidied his desk, walked out of the office, and looked for a night market food stall nearby.

The night in the city was composed of bustling bodies, chattering mouths, and grumbling bellies, a framework that was repetitive. Everyone has their own things on their mind, a completely active environment.

Yu Qinghuan ordered a lot of beer at one go. Seeing how young he looked, the owner of the stall asked, worried that he might be a student, “Young man, have you graduated from college yet? How good is your alcohol tolerance?”

Yu Qinghuan replied with a smile, “I graduated, for a few months now.”

“Uh-huh.” The owner asked, “Is today a special occasion for you to drink so much?”

Yu Qinghuan opened a bottle of beer, filled his glass, raised it and smiled.

“Today is my birthday. Hey boss, would you like to wish me a happy birthday?”

“Oh! It is your birthday, well happy birthday. That bottle you just opened will be on the house!” The owner of the stall was very outspoken.

“Thank you.” Yu Qinghuan beamed.

He did not eat much, and just kept drinking. Once he reached about six points of drunkenness, he settled the bill with the owner first, and then returned to his seat to continue drinking. As he was drinking, his eyes suddenly turned red. He bit his lips, crying silently. When the tears would not stop, he lowered his head to wipe them away.

He had not cried for a long time. The last time he cried was in the TKOW’s recruitment competition. That time, he got second place. He stayed outside of his father’s ward and cried in a low sob the whole night.

Then the next day, he washed his face and went to the school library like everything was fine, intending to make up for the lessons he had missed.

If Ren Jian did not show up, did not ask what he was persevering on for, he would not have cried tonight.

Humans are really strange creatures. A simple, weightless sentence can cause so much sadness to a person, making them unable to control their emotions.

Yu Qinghuan also did not know what he was persevering on for. He just…just dreamed about the moment when he won the trophy, countless times.

–

Yu Qinghuan took a few deep breaths to try to control his urge to cry. Unexpectedly, the tears refused to stop. He was worried about scaring other customers, so he simply rested his upper body on the table. Resting on the table intensified the intoxication feeling as his whole being drifted off, and soon he became unconscious.

Suddenly, he felt that someone was carrying his drunken self, with his arm around the other’s shoulder.

The man sighed in his ear and muttered, “You know, counting the previous time…I will be vomiting twice because of you…”

The translator has something to add:

Teo: A new week and a new hint. The Easter eggs are technically in each chapter…but for one line OwO ps, Easter eggs is not my notes, I guess my first hint was horrible lol