"Went off stream early and came back upstairs just to secretly watch my own interview and hear myself say how handsome I am?"
"And to hear yourself laugh happily, that's just… wow…"
Sheng Kuang: "…………"
Not knowing where to even begin explaining, Sheng Kuang was silent for a few seconds and directly hung up the video call.
He wasn't here to watch himself anyway. After seeing what the girl on the third floor had said, he simply closed the video.
His Weibo was logged in on his computer permanently. Returning to the homepage, he noticed the 999+ in his @ mentions and clicked on it out of habit.
Sweet Sweet Sweet Sweet updated her status, and many fans tagged him to go see.
He followed the thread to Sweet Sweet Sweet Sweet's Weibo and stared at the latest picture for a few seconds, tsk-ing. Just as he was about to close Weibo and his finger hovered over the mouse, he stopped.
He glanced at his phone beside him, was silent for about ten seconds, then clicked into Sweet Sweet Sweet Sweet's private messages.
...
Everyone was quite busy today.
Sheng Kuang and his team’s training matches ran from 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM, followed by a long session of match reviews.
Lin Jing also had some charity-related matters to handle. However, compared to the young men downstairs, she was much more efficient. By 3 PM, she had nothing else pressing.
She read for a while, browsed Weibo, and finding no other joy, logged into a game.
Lan Tingting was offline, so she had to play alone.
She had originally intended to play a ranked match, but somehow, she remembered the impressive plays Shangguan Wan'er had made several times the previous night when Sheng Kuang and Chen Jing were playing. A itch developed, and she opened a normal match, and with courage she didn't know where it came from, she picked Shangguan Wan'er.
Watching Sheng Kuang stream and feeling like she understood Shangguan Wan'er was quite different from actually playing her.
She thought she might not play very well, but clearing minion waves, getting assists by following her teammates, and maybe snagging a kill if she was lucky, she wouldn't be a complete burden.
However, in reality, she thought too much. Sheng Kuang's Shangguan Wan'er always secured kills when she took off, while her Shangguan Wan'er died before she could even take off.
Within six minutes of the match starting, she had died four times.
Their jungler was a Jing, and quite skilled, just a bit hot-tempered. After she died two more times in quick succession, he started stealing her minions and even gave a sarcastic "Heh, played well" as he passed her corpse after she died.
Lin Jing knew she was being mocked. Normally, she would have retorted, but this time, admitting her own poor performance, she remained silent.
At the tenth minute, after she died for the sixth time, Jing could no longer tolerate it.
"Shangguan Wan'er, who gave you the courage to dare play Shangguan Wan'er?"
Lin Jing pretended not to see.
Jing kept pinging her and occasionally typed in the game chat: "Shangguan Wan'er?"
Perhaps because she never responded, Jing turned on voice chat, and it was a male voice: "Shangguan Wan'er, have you blocked my text messages?"
Lin Jing: "..."
If he hadn't reminded her, Lin Jing would have blocked the text messages of all nine other players.
Jing: "Shangguan Wan'er, you haven't even turned off game voice chat, have you?"
Lin Jing moved her fingers and turned off the small speaker icon. Then, with the mindset of "I saw nothing, heard nothing, therefore no one criticized me," she ended the game with a score of 0-10-1.
Looking at her stats, which could only be described as horrifying, she remembered that Sheng Kuang had invited her to play later.
What if Sheng Kuang was next to her, helping her adjust runes or equipment, and accidentally clicked on her match history and saw this? Wouldn't she be utterly humiliated?
Although the possibility was small, it wasn't zero.
Lin Jing was silent for a moment. She remembered that the match history only kept the last 30 games, so she gritted her teeth and went to play against the lowest difficulty bots.
The reason was simple: playing against bots meant winning, and it was quick.
After battling through thirty bot matches, Sheng Kuang and his team had also finished their activities and were about to have dinner.
Lin Jing looked at the row of victory screen after victory screen for the bot matches, confirming that her dismal 0-10-1 had disappeared from her match history. Only then did she breathe a sigh of relief and exit the game.
...
At 8:30 PM, Sheng Kuang messaged Lin Jing to come online.
As Lin Jing logged into the game, Sheng Kuang's invitation message popped up.
Entering the room, Lin Jing heard Sheng Kuang's voice: "Why did you play so many bot matches this afternoon?"
Thank goodness she had played so many bot matches.
Lin Jing said silently in her heart, then turned on her mic, her voice tinged with guilt: "Just bored, playing around."
Sheng Kuang replied with an "Mhm," seemingly convinced.
Sheng Kuang didn't call anyone else, just the two of them. For some reason, it took nearly two minutes to find a match.
Entering the character selection screen, before Lin Jing could even clearly see the IDs of the other three players, the person in the first slot spoke.
Omnipotent Ultraman: Brother.
...
Jing was fighting a small wild monster. As he was fighting, he suddenly stopped.
Three seconds later, a line of text appeared on the screen.
Omnipotent Ultraman (Jing): 0-10-1?