Chapter 72 (1)
Lu Sicheng stuffed the plastic bag into Tong Yao’s hands, took off his shoes, and went to go check his fish.
Tong Yao opened the bag and looked inside. There was only one bag of chips and a box of bandages. It seemed that everything had been bought specifically for her……Tong Yao felt even worse. Carrying the bag, she followed Lu Sicheng to his desk, watching him lift the fishbowl up with one hand to check. Tong Yao: “Uhr.”– —
Lu Sicheng turned around.
Tong Yao backed away one big step. She was terrified he would angrily dump the fishbowl on her head.
She nervously looked at Lu Sicheng and squeezed her apology through her teeth. Little Fatty, who had finally figured out what had happened, came over to support her: “Cheer up, just think that your fish had developed wings and flew away– –In the northern sea there’s a fish named Kun……” [1]
Lu Sicheng raised his eyelids to take a glance at Little Fatty. Little Fatty spinelessly stopped talking. Lu Sicheng put the fishbowl back on the desk, put on his earphones, then reconnected his other equipment to his computer. He did everything one swift motion, though one could sense from his movement that he was far from a happy mood.
— –Tong Yao didn’t make a single sound for the entire duration.
She didn’t sit down on her own chair until Lu Sicheng had logged on and started a match. She moved her own chair a little bit away from his. As she was scooching her chair, she heard Lu Sicheng say, “Bandage.”
Tong Yao: “……”
She looked up at him and found that his eyes hadn’t left the screen at all. She answered with an “Oh, oh,” then took the bandages out of the bag and put one on her bloody heel. Afterwards she began streaming– —
The stream soon attracted a large audience. Her viewers found Smiling sitting off to one side of the camera, almost out of the frame. They all began asking her for an explanation.
Tong Yao: “There’s ill feeling coming from the seat next to me. It’s so strong that it can almost cut through me.”
[……Damn, idiot.]
[How can such an idiotic person crush all the other players? I like it.]
[hhhhhhhh, wifey, what’s going on?]
[Didn’t you just come back from the frozen hell?]
[This afternoon some fans swore that you two were back on good terms. In the parking lot, your captain forcefully protected you.]
Tong Yao: “Yes, yes, yes, there was a brief moment when I returned from the frozen hell. But now I’ve gone back– –Yet, this time it isn’t my fault, it was that beast Dabing– –That’s right, that cat. The cat ganked my captain’s fish while no one was in the base……………………”
Tong Yao took a look at Lu Sicheng, who was still wearing earphones and busy with a ranked game. She gulped and glanced back at the bullet comments– —
Tong Yao: “I apologized. It’s necessary to apologize. What else can I do?”
Tong Yao: “But, if apologizing is useful, why do we still need policemen.”
Tong Yao: “Yeah, Dabing is in jail now. En, I locked the cat in the cage– –I’ve ordered the cat to reflect on its mistakes and correct its wrong doings. If there’s a next time, I’ll send it back to my hometown……It’s not that I’m cruel, the goldfish were here first and have been swimming happily for so long. What right did Dabing have to swallow that fish, right?”
While she was talking, she took a glance at the fishbowl. There were still several cat hairs floating on the surface of the water in the fishbowl. Wracked by guilt, Tong Yao reached over to drag the fishbowl over– –Lu Sicheng took off his earphones: “What are you doing?”
Tong Yao used her fingers to stir the water and took out a hair: “Cat hair……I’ll go change the water for you.”
Lu Sicheng said with a stone face: “Put it down.”
Tong Yao used both of her hands and gently pushed the fishbowl back to its original position.
[1]: He is referencing Zhuangzi’s ‘Carefree Excursion’ a story from a compiled list of writings by Zhuangzi and is known as one of the two foundational texts on Taoism.
Comment