Chapter 27

Three days had passed when Qin Qingzhuo took the repaired guitar to find Jiang Ji.

Setting aside the talkative nature of Uncle Qiao, he was quite reliable.

Uncle Qiao’s full name was Qiao Qi. He was a friend of Qin Qingzhuo’s father, and they were both members of the same band when they were young. Qin Qingzhuo’s father, Qin Xiu, was the conductor of the band, while Qiao Qi played the classical guitar in the string section.

As for Uncle Tang, Tang Lin, he was a guitar maker. He studied guitar crafting abroad with a master when he was young, then returned to China and established his own guitar brand. Besides that, he also crafted a small number of handmade guitars every year.

The details of the relationship between Uncle Qiao and Uncle Tang were not clear to Qin Qingzhuo. He only remembered that when he used to visit Uncle Qiao, he often encountered Uncle Tang as well. The two of them would frequently quarrel, and just as quickly reconcile. Before Qin Qingzhuo could figure out what had happened, they would make up because of a single sentence.

Later on, for some unknown reason, their relationship began to become somewhat distant, and Uncle Tang didn’t visit Uncle Qiao as often. Qin Qingzhuo asked Uncle Qiao about the reason, but Uncle Qiao skillfully avoided the topic with laughter, refusing to elaborate.

Despite the apparent distance, when one of them encountered any trouble, the other would always be the first to step forward and help.

When Qin Qingzhuo was young, he didn’t understand the relationship between these two individuals. It was only as he grew older that he vaguely guessed a bit about it but couldn’t be certain.

Over the years, Qin Qingzhuo watched Uncle Qiao leave the band, establish his own company, transform from a classical guitarist into a successful businessman. Nowadays, he held shares in numerous music companies, and three years ago, when Qin Qingzhuo established his own studio, Uncle Qiao also lent substantial support.

However, despite Uncle Qiao’s seemingly smooth journey, every time Qin Qingzhuo visited him, he felt a sense of loneliness. Perhaps loneliness is a common state of life, Qin Qingzhuo thought, staring out of the car window, lost in his own thoughts.

The car turned left into Honglu Slope Street. Through the car window, Qin Qingzhuo saw a group of children gathered at the street corner, seemingly engrossed in something. In a flash, he identified the focal point sitting on the top step—it was unexpectedly Jiang Bei with her mushroom hairstyle.

With the children’s heads blocking the view, Qin Qingzhuo could only see Jiang Bei lowering her head, the fringes of her hair covering half of her face. The exposed half of her face looked serious, showing an absorbed expression.

“Zhao, stop the car.” Qin Qingzhuo asked the driver to pull over, opened the car door, and walked towards the group of children. He was curious about what Jiang Bei was doing that had attracted the attention of these kids.

Approaching, he saw Jiang Bei holding a phone, rapidly tapping on the screen with both hands. Several boys next to her looked excited, shouting enthusiastically:

“Run, someone is ganking!”

“Flash, quickly use your flash!”

Qin Qingzhuo looked at the screen in Jiang Bei’s hands. It seemed that two opponents were preparing to surround the character controlled by Jiang Bei. The situation seemed quite dangerous, but instead of fleeing immediately, Jiang Bei kept controlling her character to move unpredictably, dodging the opponents’ attacks.

When the opponents launched their fiercest attack, Jiang Bei’s character suddenly soared into the air, disappearing from the screen. In an instant, she landed, immobilizing the two opponents in place. Following that, Jiang Bei’s fingers pressed frantically on the screen, and a “double kill” sound rang out from the phone.

The boys watching were wide-eyed:

“Wow, she countered that attack!”

“Even I could do that!”

“Come on, quit it, Bronze God.”

“Next time, play on my account; I have all the heroes!”

Jiang Bei, without expression, said, “If you want me to help you climb ranks, pay up.”

So, it turned out that this group of kids was watching Jiang Bei play a game, and it seemed that Jiang Bei was doing quite well, even earning money by helping other kids with power leveling.

Looking at Jiang Bei, surrounded by boys, decisively engaged in the game, Qin Qingzhuo couldn’t help but comment, “Does your brother know how skilled you are?”

The boys, now noticing someone approaching, raised their heads and looked at him inexplicably.

Jiang Bei also glanced at him, imitating the tone of the Japanese warrior she controlled, “Let me tell you a secret—I am invincible.” After saying that, she continued to focus on the game.

Hearing Jiang Bei’s serious delivery of this somewhat cheesy line, Qin Qingzhuo couldn’t help but chuckle and asked, “Will you win this round?”

Jiang Bei remained silent, and one of the boys loudly replied, “Of course! This round is played too brilliantly! In just over four minutes, Musashi Miyamoto is already godlike! Who can stop her?”

Qin Qingzhuo couldn’t hold back his laughter and asked, “Is your brother at the bar?”

“He went to play basketball,” Jiang Bei replied without lifting her head.

“Basketball? Where?”

“The basketball court.”

The boy sitting next to him stretched out his arm to point to it for Qin Qingzhuo. “There’s a broken school over there, and the basketball court is inside.”

Qin Qingzhuo smiled at him. “Thank you.”

The basketball court seemed not far away. Qin Qingzhuo instructed the driver to park the car on the side of the road and walked over himself.

This seemed to be an abandoned and unused middle school. The semi-open iron gate was covered with a thick layer of rust, and the cement on the walls had peeled off in large patches, revealing neatly stacked bricks underneath.

Qin Qingzhuo walked into the school and saw several people on the basketball court.

Entering early September, there was a faint chill in the air, and last night’s rain had washed away the last trace of summer heat.

Qin Qingzhuo had deliberately wrapped himself in a thin windbreaker when he went out today. Most pedestrians had already changed into long sleeves and pants, so the tall teenager in a black T-shirt and sports pants, with his muscular arms exposed, stood out conspicuously on the nearby playground.

As Qin Qingzhuo approached, Jiang Ji received the basketball passed by his teammate, swiftly dodged the person trying to block him, and after a few quick steps, decisively threw a beautiful three-pointer.

“I f*cking told you to watch him!” Zhong Yang bent over, hands on knees, panting heavily as he cursed.

“Why don’t you watch him if you can?” His teammate retorted, unwilling to back down. “Stop standing there and talking nonsense!”

Peng Keshi by the side flipped a page in the scorebook, writing down numbers on both sides.

“Oh, so formal, you even have a dedicated scorekeeper?” Qin Qingzhuo walked over, looking at the numbers Peng Keshi had just written down—43:13, a pretty sizable gap.

Peng Keshi stood up, somewhat surprised. “Brother Qingzhuo, how come you have time to come over?”

“I came to find Jiang Ji for something,” Qin Qingzhuo said. “You’re so tall, why not join them for a game?”

“I went too hard with running before, my meniscus is a bit damaged,” Peng Keshi smiled. “I’m a bit afraid of vigorous exercise.”

Not far away, Zhong Yang also saw Qin Qingzhuo and quickly ran over. “Brother Qingzhuo, why are you here?”

“Checking out the results of your rehearsal,” Qin Qingzhuo smiled at him. “I didn’t expect you to rehearse on the playground instead of indoors.”

“You don’t know, playing basketball helps to inspire creativity. Look, after just playing for a while, Jiang Ji is almost coming up with a new song,” Zhong Yang boasted, “Brother Qingzhuo, do you play basketball?”

“I’ve played a bit before.”

“Then come play with us for a while?”

Qin Qingzhuo shook his head with a smile. “I won’t join in, you guys go ahead.”

“No, you must come. Look at how miserable we are right now!” Zhong Yang pointed to the scoreboard, walked over, and pulled Qin Qingzhuo’s arm towards the playground. “You know a bit, and no matter what, you’re stronger than that guy on our team. Just with your height, if you stand in the paint, Jiang Ji won’t dare to be too arrogant.”

Qin Qingzhuo regretted a bit for saying “played a bit” just now. In fact, he didn’t want to play now. One reason was that he wasn’t wearing sportswear, and another was that he didn’t want to engage in sweaty outdoor activities. Xie Chengyun had warned him before to be careful not to catch a cold during the changing season.

“Zhong Yang,” seeing Zhong Yang enthusiastically dragging him towards the playground, Qin Qingzhuo didn’t want to refuse too strongly. He said with some helplessness, “I really won’t play. Look at the clothes I’m wearing today. Does it look like I can play basketball?”

“No problem, we are all novices, just playing for fun. Brother Qingzhuo, don’t feel too much pressure,” Zhong Yang said, already pulling Qin Qingzhuo onto the playground.

There were six people on the playground, except for Jiang Ji and Zhong Yang; Qin Qingzhuo didn’t know any of them. At this moment, the young men also turned around, looking at Qin Qingzhuo with surprise.

“Let me introduce you, Brother Qingzhuo,” Zhong Yang started introducing Jiang Ji’s team, “You know Jiang Ji, this is Sun Wei and Qian Shiqiang. You don’t need to remember their names; just remember our team’s Wang Zhen,” he shouted to another guy, “Old Dou, you can finally be liberated; we have a foreign aid now!”

He introduced them rapidly, and Qin Qingzhuo couldn’t remember most of the names.

The guys on the opposite side also looked puzzled. Someone tentatively said, “Qin Qingzhuo?”

“Yeah, it’s Qin Qingzhuo,” Zhong Yang said. “What’s up? Seeing a celebrity in real life for the first time, feels like dreaming, right? Let me tell you, strictly speaking, the three of us are stars now. Yesterday, someone even greeted me on the street…”

Lazy to listen to Zhong Yang’s nonsense, Jiang Ji walked to the basketball hoop nearby and picked up a bottle of mineral water from the ground. Leaning against the hoop, he unscrewed the cap and took a few sips, looking at the people on the playground.

More precisely, he was looking at Qin Qingzhuo.

Zhong Yang’s nonsense just now successfully amused Qin Qingzhuo. He looked somewhat amused but also a bit helpless – it was the kind of tolerance that elders had for juniors.

And although Qin Qingzhuo was smiling now and didn’t show any aloofness, Jiang Ji still felt that he looked out of place compared to his surroundings. Perhaps it was because Qin Qingzhuo unintentionally exuded a sense of refinement that made him seem completely out of place in this shabby and noisy environment.

When he met Qin Qingzhuo before, either in the recording studio or in the bar, Qin Qingzhuo didn’t seem disconnected from the surrounding environment. But now, Jiang Ji thought, perhaps because he was facing a group of ruffians like themselves, he seemed particularly out of touch with them, almost… ethereal.

Occasionally, Jiang Ji found Zhong Yang to be quite amazing. For example, now, facing Qin Qingzhuo, who was completely from a different world, Zhong Yang could still unconditionally pull the other party into his own world, regardless of whether the other party was willing or not – and Qin Qingzhuo seemed… not particularly willing to play this game with them.

“Zhong Yang, let’s forget it,” Qin Qingzhuo refused gently. “If I join you, I’ll only drag you down.”

“The one who’s dragging us down is right here,” Zhong Yang pointed to his own legs, shamelessly boasting. “Brother Qingzhuo, don’t be polite, just drag us along!”

Jiang Ji put the mineral water back on the ground, stood up, and walked towards the group of people. “Let’s call it quits, no more playing.”

“Hey, why not play anymore?” Zhong Yang protested loudly. “We finally found a foreign aid, Jiang Ji, are you scared now?”

Ignoring this crude attempt at provocation, Jiang Ji glanced at Zhong Yang. “I don’t want to play, okay?”

“No, you can’t,” Zhong Yang lunged forward and grabbed his arm. “Come back for me!”

Unmoved, Jiang Ji continued walking towards the exit of the playground. Suddenly, Qin Qingzhuo’s voice came from behind him:

“Jiang Ji.”

Jiang Ji paused and turned to look at him.

If he guessed correctly, Jiang Ji was actually trying to help himself out of the situation, Qin Qingzhuo thought.

For some reason, Qin Qingzhuo, who had resisted playing earlier, suddenly felt a bit interested in playing basketball.

“Leaving immediately,” Qin Qingzhuo said, looking at him. “You’re not really afraid, are you?”

Jiang Ji’s gaze lingered on his face for a few seconds. He walked over, picked up the basketball from the ground, and stood up straight. “Alright, let’s do it. Just don’t cry later.”

Qin Qingzhuo smiled and subtly raised an eyebrow.

Seeing Jiang Ji change his mind, Zhong Yang immediately turned around and shouted to Peng Keshi, “Sister Shi, we’re changing players, reset the score!”

Qin Qingzhuo took off his windbreaker and draped it over the basketball hoop. He then rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. With his semi-long hair, it was not very convenient for him to move around, so he casually tied it up with a hair tie behind his head.

Zhong Yang had quite a devious mind, and now he came up with a new proposal. He said to Jiang Ji, “Brother Qingzhuo is new to the game. Shouldn’t we give him the chance to make the first throw?”

Jiang Ji had no objections and glanced at Qin Qingzhuo. Qin Qingzhuo tied his hair halfway up, with quite a few stray strands falling on the side of his neck, making him look slightly different from usual.

Holding the basketball, he made a sound, “Hey,” towards Qin Qingzhuo.

Qin Qingzhuo looked up at him. This “Hey” was obviously directed at him. He suddenly thought of a question – both Peng Keshi and Zhong Yang called him “Brother Qingzhuo,” but only Jiang Ji, when speaking to him, never used any titles.

Qin Qingzhuo didn’t mind the issue of titles, but thinking back to the last time in the hospital when Jiang Ji was mistaken for his younger brother by the nurse, and the annoyed expression he had then, he felt like teasing him a bit: “When talking to someone older, don’t you call them ‘brother’?”

Jiang Ji threw the basketball over. “Catch.” Seeing Qin Qingzhuo catch it, he added, “Just because someone’s older, they can be called ‘brother’? That would be too cheap.”

Qin Qingzhuo caught the basketball and dribbled it on the ground a few times. Since graduating from college, he hadn’t touched a basketball much, so his touch was a bit rusty now. He looked up at Jiang Ji and chuckled, “If not by age, then what else can you use?”

Jiang Ji also looked at him. “If I win this game, how about you call me ‘brother’?”

Qin Qingzhuo chuckled, “So confident?”