Chapter 19  

“After all, I don’t know how to play. What if I ruin your perfect game? Let me check your stats…” Pei Jiyin’s voice paused deliberately for two or three seconds. “Oh my, how did you manage to feed two kills in just five minutes?”  

“Is this some new advanced tactic that I, as a girl, just don’t understand?” Pei Jiyin scoffed.  

Her voice, soft to the extreme, paired with that tone, instantly maxed out the sarcasm.  

[Can’t Sleep at Midnight (Tyrant): Can you speak properly?]  

“How am I not speaking properly?” Pei Jiyin laughed. “Not a single curse word in sight.”  

[Can’t Sleep at Midnight (Tyrant): …]  

Pei Jiyin secured the dragon, rotated to mid-lane, and picked up a triple kill.  

“Oh dear, look at me—so careless, stealing another triple kill. Teammates, I’m so sorry. Oh wait, do I even have teammates around me? Nope.”  

[Can’t Sleep at Midnight (Tyrant): …]  

Pei Jiyin then went on to secure a quadra kill and a penta kill. The Tyrant’s score was 6-8, which wasn’t entirely abysmal, but compared to Pei Jiyin’s flawless 16-0, it was downright pitiful.  

“What should I do? Suddenly, I don’t feel like playing anymore. How about this, dear bot-lane friends—I’ll gift each of you a Legendary skin after this game, and we’ll just let this match end in a loss,” Pei Jiyin said.  

“After all, he already preemptively flamed me. I’ve had my fun styling on them. Letting him leech off my star just doesn’t sit right with me,” she continued.  

[Coming from the Wind (Minotaur): Sounds good, sis. Should we just surrender then?]  

[Coming from the Wind (Minotaur): You don’t even need to gift us skins. Just surrender. Honestly, I can’t stand people like him either.]  

[Coming from the Wind (Minotaur): This was so satisfying to watch! Sis, you’re amazing!]  

[Can’t Sleep at Midnight (Tyrant): …]  

“I was wrong, okay? Sis, I was wrong. Please don’t surrender, don’t surrender,” the Tyrant pleaded over voice chat, deliberately forcing a deep, breathy tone.  

Pei Jiyin sneered. “Stop straining your voice, kid. Even if you dragged it down to the Mariana Trench, it still wouldn’t sound good.”  

“I was just venting. I’ve lost six games in a row. Please, I was wrong, really wrong.”  

[Damn, what an Iron elo slave.]  

[The way his attitude flipped is insane.]  

[Tsk tsk tsk, how embarrassing.]  

…  

“I don’t look down on women, I really don’t. I was born from a mother—how could I look down on women?” His tone was utterly pathetic.  

Song Zhen was also stunned. It was her first time witnessing something like this. Pei Jiyin’s lips twitched slightly, and the other two teammates were equally speechless.  

However, Pei Jiyin still initiated the surrender vote. She’d seen too many people like this.  

They’d apologize now, but they’d do it again later. People who could say such things usually had skin thick enough to lack any moral boundaries. Their inherent condescension wasn’t something a single apology could fix.  

Begging was easy, especially online. Once this match was over, who knew if they’d ever cross paths again? Who’d remember how pathetically he acted in this game?  

Sure enough, after four players voted to surrender, the guy started raging like a madman. Pei Jiyin muted his mic.

After they left, despite the other person’s refusal, Pei Jiyin still added them as a friend and gifted them a skin.

“Do you want it?” Pei Jiyin asked.

“Huh?” Song Zhen was momentarily stunned. “No, I don’t. You’re the one who carried me up the ranks. If anything, I should be the one gifting you, right?”

Pei Jiyin rubbed her chin. “By the way, should we bind a relationship? Our intimacy level is already pretty high.”

“Sure.” Song Zhen’s relationship list was completely empty, as was Pei Jiyin’s. Her main account’s relationships were almost all filled, with only the couple slot left vacant.

Pei Jiyin applied for the Bestie badge and sent her fifty flowers. Song Zhen reciprocated by gifting her items too, since she had no one else to give them to.

Their badge instantly leveled up to three.

“You have so many items?”

“Yeah, I’ve been saving them for a while,” Song Zhen said.

“Always solo queue?”

“Always solo queue.”

Pei Jiyin started the next game. “I’m about to hit Kings of Glory.”

“Ah…”

“I’m only Diamond IV,” Song Zhen sighed.

The promotion match took two attempts. In the first game, two players went AFK—one at the start and another midway. When the latter left, their mic was still on, and Pei Jiyin could hear them crying and calling for their mom. After that, the kid never returned.

Pei Jiyin didn’t even know what to say.

Today really wasn’t her day. Why was she encountering all these weird situations? That night, she dreamed of wielding Lan’s blade, furiously slashing at the man from the subway while someone’s voice cried “Mom!” in her ears.

When she woke up the next morning, Pei Jiyin felt even more exhausted than before sleeping. By the time she got to class, she looked completely drained.

“What’s wrong?” Cheng Yu glanced at Pei Jiyin. “Did the meetup not go well yesterday?”

“It went fine. I even ran into the senior… and got recognized,” Pei Jiyin sighed.

“The senior knows you’re a streamer now?” Cheng Yu asked.

“No,” Pei Jiyin said. “Unless she follows Zhi Zhi’s Weibo, she shouldn’t know.”

“Then what’s there to worry about? That senior definitely doesn’t know.”

Pei Jiyin shot Cheng Yu a look and checked Zhi Zhi’s Weibo posts from yesterday, which she’d forgotten to read.

**[Zhi Zhi: Seriously, Sister Yin is ridiculously pretty. Like, instantly-turn-me-gay levels of pretty [photo].]**

Pei Jiyin’s lips twitched as she left a comment.

**[Yin Song: Sis, no need to exaggerate that much.]**

The replies were full of people asking if it was true, and Zhi Zhi responded to a few.

Pei Jiyin turned off her phone and yawned again.

“That tired?”

“Yeah.”

“Skip streaming tonight?”

“No way,” Pei Jiyin said. “We only get to see each other a few times a week.”

“Four times in seven days isn’t enough?”

“No. I wish it were every day,” Pei Jiyin grumbled.

“Gross.”

“You and your boyfriend are way more lovey-dovey, and I never say anything.”

“Well, sorry not sorry, but my partner and I are just that sweet. If you manage to woo that senior, you can do the same, and I promise I won’t say a word.”

“Fine. If I succeed, I’ll flaunt it in your face every day,” Pei Jiyin huffed.

“Then good luck.” Cheng Yu patted her shoulder. “By the way, any actual progress between you two?”

“Shut up.”

Cheng Yu laughed shamelessly.

Pei Jiyin didn’t want to deal with her, but to be honest, she really didn’t know what to do when pursuing someone—she had zero experience.  

Moreover, the boundaries between girls were often blurry. Back in high school, she’d even seen two straight girls kiss each other on the lips in class.  

The hardest part was figuring out how to convey to her senior, *”I’m pursuing you—not in a let’s-be-good-friends way,”* without ruining their existing relationship.  

There was also another issue. Even though society had become more open-minded, many still found homosexuality strange. What if her senior thought it was weird too? It had happened before—once someone found out she liked girls, their attitude toward her changed completely.  

Pei Jiyin sighed. What a headache.  

“Stop sighing,” Cheng Yu said, already knowing what was on Pei Jiyin’s mind. “First, test the waters and see how she feels about homosexuality. If she’s outright homophobic, just give up early.”  

“If she’s open and accepting, then move on to the next step,” Cheng Yu added.  

Pei Jiyin shot her a glance. “How am I supposed to test that? I can’t just casually ask out of nowhere.”  

“That’s up to you. Weren’t you always the clever one?”  

“Ugh.” Pei Jiyin sighed again. “I’ll figure something out.”  

“Mm.” Cheng Yu nodded. “Good luck.”  

“Thanks,” Pei Jiyin said. “Not easy getting a decent word out of you for once.”  

Cheng Yu rolled her eyes. “Too bad I still haven’t heard a single decent word from *you*.”