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.
Before Tong Yao went to bed that night, she raised her voice so that Lu Sicheng could hear her even with his earphones on, to announce to all her teammates that Dabing was locked inside the cage of no freedom and would be denied canned food until it recognized its own mistakes-- -- When she passed by the cage, Dabing pressed its face onto the side of the cage and kept meowing. Tong Yao gritted her teeth and heartlessly walked by and thought to herself: If she was partial to the cat, then Dabing wouldn't be the only one who wouldn't see the sun rise tomorrow.
Tong Yao went upstairs and showered. Afterwards, she saw Jinyang's WeChat message-- --
[Ah Mao's mom: .........Dabing's in big trouble?]
[Ah Mao's mom: Your captain's searching online for piranha fry…...It's so hilarious that I dropped my cell phone on my face.]
Tong Yao: "..."
… …
Tong Yao had a sleepless night.
First, she had to get used to sleeping by herself, without a cat next to her. Then she had to worry about what would happen when her cat and her captain were left alone together downstairs-- --
She had nightmares the whole night and got up very early the next morning.
She went downstairs and discovered that Dabing's cage was empty, the cat wasn't in there. Tong Yao's heart skipped a beat; she was afraid that she would find the body of a cat flushed halfway down the toilet-- --She anxiously searched around the base and eventually found her cat on the couch in the living room. The cat was perfectly intact and quietly crouched down on a man's body, bearing its teeth at her, the person who had locked it inside the cage...
The reason why the cat had the courage to be so haughty probably had something to do with the person under its feet-- --Under the cat's fuzzy bottom, ZGDX's captain was lying face up on the couch with closed eyes with faint bluish bags. His tummy rose up and down in regular intervals.
He was sound asleep.
He didn't even realize that a cat weighing over a dozen kilograms was sitting on top of his stomach, using it as a floor mat.
Tong Yao turned to check his computer, which was still logged waiting for a ranked game…...But his id had already been kicked out of the queue probably because he had failed to respond when a match was found earlier.
He probably had played ranked games the whole night. When he finally had enough of them, it was probably already daybreak and he was too tired to go upstairs to sleep.
…...Such an internet addicted man.
Tong Yao lightly walked to Lu Sicheng's computer to log off the game and turned off his computer for him. She turned to pick up a small blanket from another couch and waved her hand to get Dabing off Lu Sicheng. The cat jumped off his stomach. As Tong Yao bent over to put the blanket over his body-- --
A big hand reached over to cup her head from the back of her head and pushed her head down. Tong Yao was taken by surprise as her entire face was pushed against Lu Sicheng's tight abdomen. Right at that moment, she heard the man said in a dazed voice: "Be still or get lost if you keep moving around."
Then he stroked Tong Yao's hair as if he was stroking the cat.
Tong Yao's whole body stiffened up. Both of her hands gripped the edge of the couch as her face was buried in the man's stomach with only a thin blanket and his clothing separating her and him. When she breathed, her nose with filled with his scent.
-- --If someone came over now, I probably can't...
Before Tong Yao could finish her thought, she heard the sound of a door opening upstairs. Little Fatty, with sleepy eyes, came out wearing a white tank top and his big Ultraman underpants: "Cheng Ge, shit, you haven't gone to sleep yet, I already woke up-- --"
Little Fatty's voice abruptly stopped.
Tong Yao didn't even have a chance to raise her head to explain to Little Fatty since the big hand on the back of her head was still exerting a steady amount of pressure-- --The next second, Little Fatty mumbled: "I'm not up yet, I'm sleep walking." Then he turned and returned to his room.
A few seconds later, Lu Sicheng's cell phone rang.
Tong Yao struggled to reach over for his cell phone on the couch and picked it up to take a look-- --
[The rounded fat: I didn't expect that you're this kind of captain. I was too naive.]