BXBX NOVEL Chapter 38 - He didn’t even have the words "meet an online friend" in his dictionary.
Chapter 38 - He didn’t even have the words “meet an online friend” in his dictionary.
He stared at the shining sunlight for a few seconds and then instinctively picked up his cellphone to take a glance at it. It was half past ten.
Usually, after livestreaming all day, although he would be very tired, he still wouldn’t be able to sleep well at night. He hadn’t expected that, after taking a break yesterday, he would actually sleep better.
He still had half an hour before he had to start his livestream, so he used the skill everyone in the nation possessed: lazing in bed.
He opened his Weibo to find a large number of unread messages on the private message notification icon—391.
“Yanyan, do you feel better? Rest well, and don’t work too hard.”
“Without your livestream, I suddenly have a lot of free time before I go to bed. I’m begging you; you must start your stream on time tomorrow ya TVT.”
“Boss 1 also came to the stream to try and find you yesterday!”
Reading through the series of messages, it turned out that they were actually all messages from his stream fans. He switched to the Weibo home page and took a look at his statistics. It had only been one short day, but his follower count had risen from two digits to 1800. Even the Weibo post that he previously forwarded to save for himself had more than 100 comments below it.
He quickly posted to his Weibo.
[yanxyan: I’m in very good health. I just asked for leave yesterday because of my poor game performance. Don’t worry everyone, I will return to my regular streaming schedule today. Thank you.]
It had only been a few seconds since he had posted the message, but a reply immediately popped up below.
[1YanTang News Station: Please give me an honest answer—Why have you only followed “Yanyan’s Daddy” but haven’t even followed Boss 1?! Ah!! Speak!!]
Yu Yan: “…”
What could he say? You’d have to go ask 1 ah.
Closing this Weibo post, he buried his head in the sand, opened the search interface, and followed—StarTV’s official account, Tuantuan’s account, and Lulu’s account. Only after following those accounts did he slowly get up to go and wash up.
Yu Yan was surprised when he opened his livestream page and saw the real-time popularity list of the “Kills King of the Year” competition.
He had gone from sixth to fourth place.
He looked at the gifts he had received these last few days. Naturally, 1 was the highest contributor. Going down the list, the next highest contributor was “Yanyan’s Daddy”, and below that were his very active stream followers. Scrolling all the way down this surprisingly long list, he realized that most of the gifts had been sent to him after he had stopped streaming yesterday.
The individual gifts given by the stream followers weren’t much, but they were still worth several hundred yuan per person. Adding them all together, it was still a big number. They had directly helped him to surpass the two anchors in front of him on the list.
As he was still dealing with his surprise, his QQ suddenly dinged.
Tuantuan: You’ve seriously attracted some fans. You haven’t been streaming for that long, but you already have this many loyal fans. They’ve been sending you gifts since you stopped streaming yesterday, saying they would help you get into the top three.
Yu Yan glanced at the “Best Anchor of the Year” competition. Tuantuan was ranked third, with banana in front of her, and at the top was a retired professional player from the LoL category.
Before he started his livestream, he went to Tuantuan’s livestream first.
This was his first time entering an entertainment anchor’s livestream. The livestream’s background was pink and tender. There were also lots of plushies floating around the page; it was extremely girly.
[Holy crap? Who am I seeing? I just have to ask, what’s wrong with you two? Always not starting your own stream, but just running over to another person’s stream. Why do you do this?]
Yu Yan glanced at the barrage and also thought it was kind of funny.
However, he hadn’t come here to just pay Tuantuan a visit. He opened the gifting interface, flicked his mouse, and smashed down two meteor showers.
“Huh?” Tuantuan was just playing some dating simulator game. When she saw the gift notification, she was first stunned, and then laughed, “Thank you Xiao Yanyan for the two meteor showers. I feel your love, but I can’t respond to your feelings. I’ll never do anything to break up other couples.”
“…”
[yanxyan: Is it too late to get those meteor showers back?]
Of course, he was only joking. Tuantuan had brought his livestream a lot of popularity and had taken good care of him in all aspects. These two gifts were sent purely because of gratitude.
Tuantuan naturally understood this, and replied with a laugh, “It’s too late. The money is already in my pocket.”
Yu Yan immediately returned to his stream after tossing the gift.
[Fuck. As soon as you got online, you went to send gifts to a female anchor. See if I don’t break your legs for Boss 1!!]
[Everyone calm down. Xiao Yan and Tuantuan are good friends. Tuantuan has also given Xiao Yan a lot of gifts. Barrage, don’t spread rumors, okay?!]
[Start livestreaming ba. I’ve suffered enough anger from the other anchors. Those dudes aren’t even a bit manly when it comes to playing games.]
Yu Yan didn’t say much. He quickly started the livestream and directly launched PUBG.
His queued solos for his first match and landed at Paradise Resort.
Just as he landed, he found a shotgun by his side. He picked it up, reloaded it, and casually said, “I’m invincible now.”
The barrage successively filled with question marks. There were also stream followers who asked him to recall last night’s perfected process of turning into a lootbox.
Such comments lasted until he killed four people in a row with that shotgun. After that, the stream viewers just kept sending out 666.
It was important to have a feel for the game. Before, when Yu Yan had played as an accompanying player, he had still played a few warm-up matches for his hands first. After he started livestreaming, because he was playing PUBG for about 10 hours every day, he could directly omit this warm-up stage.
Only yesterday had been an exception. His thoughts had made him restless, so he didn’t play well.
After clearing out the last person in Paradise Resort, the six kills quiz game bet was paid out, and the stream moderator very quickly opened up a quiz game board for eight kills.
By the final circle, he had already killed 11 people.
[Solos chicken dinner??]
[With this anchor’s strength, it’s much easier to eat chicken in solos rather than squad matches. Squad matches depend too much on teammates, while in solos, you just need to ensure your own skill.]
[Yes. Usually, when he does squad matches, the anchor basically has to play 1v3 to eat chicken.]
Yu Yan didn’t look at the barrage. The player counter in the upper right corner of the screen showed that there were only three people left alive. That was to say, in this circle, two enemies were present.
For him, solos were much simpler than squad matches. However, once solos reached the final circle, it usually meant that several players with good skills were crowded together. It was very easy to get overthrown, so he had to pay attention and not slack off even a bit.
He was in a completely tense mode when suddenly, his cellphone on his desk rang.
At this time, as long as there was a little noise, it could conceal the tiny action movement sounds from the headset. Yu Yan didn’t hesitate in pressing the lock screen button and declining the call request. He quickly brought his attention back to the game.
But it only took three seconds for the phone to ring again. At that same time, he heard a gunshot in his headset.
The gunshot had gotten mixed with the noise coming from the phone, so he couldn’t locate the other party’s position. But because someone had opened fire, he didn’t have any free hands to decline the phone call again.
He killed the last man in the final circle as the phone kept ringing away.
[Holy crap, what a near miss. I had already bet my life on the Can Eat Chicken board!!]
[If I was bombarded by such a phone call in the final circle, the person at the other end of the call wouldn’t be far from death.]
Yu Yan breathed a sigh of relief and only after that did he look down. He hesitated when he clearly saw the ID on the call, but then raised his hand to mute the livestream microphone.
“Really, such a young lord. Not even picking up the phone call…” The person on the other side of the call seemed to be complaining to someone. It wasn’t loud, but it was loud enough to be clearly heard. “Oh, he picked up.”
The caller was Li Hang, his junior high school classmate.
“Was still playing a match just now.” Yu Yan explained and asked, “Something up?”
“If there wasn’t, why would I come to find you?” After Li Hang finished speaking, he handed the phone to the person next to him. He said in a disgusted tone, “Forget it, you talk to him ba.”
“Ah… okay. Hello? Xiao Yan, I’m Chen Min. My girlfriend accidentally deleted you from my WeChat when she was looking through my phone before. I sent you a friend request, but you haven’t accepted it, so I thought of using Li Hang’s WeChat to send you a voice message.” Chen Min explained, “It’s like this, the place for our class’ reunion party has been decided, and it’ll be tomorrow evening. I saw that you didn’t reply in the group chat, so I’m just letting you know.”
“Okay, sorry. I’ve had some stuff going on these past two days, and I haven’t had the time to look at the group chat.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s the same if I tell you…” Li Hang’s voice sounded out from the opposite side again, as he started to say something in the background. Yu Yan couldn’t hear what he had said, but it probably wasn’t anything good. Chen Min also lowered his voice and told Li Hang to keep his voice down. “Originally, we thought that we would all go get dinner together, but the group said that was too boring. Finally, the group decided to go to Ginza.”
Yu Yan asked, “Ginza?”
“It’s a new nightclub on Minxi street. It’s very exciting and only opened a few days ago. You usually can’t even get a seat!” Chen Min said, “Fortunately, this club was opened by Li Hang’s relatives. Not only did they give us booth seats, they also gave us a 70% discount!”
Yu Yan: “…”
“I’ll send the address to your WeChat later. Please record it down. Then, we’ll see you tomorrow evening?”
Since he had already promised previously, he couldn’t go back on his word now. Yu Yan could only nod. “… Okay, see you guys tomorrow.”
—
Mo Nancheng was a man of his word and arrived at the Yi residence at precisely 7 p.m.
Upon seeing Yi Chen push his suitcase out, Mo Nancheng couldn’t help asking, “Really man, why don’t you hire a life assistant? You’re even carrying your suitcase yourself, is that proper?”
The man wore a simple suit and had casually thrown on a coat. Taken altogether, he looked more laid-back than usual, just like the handsome senior who had entranced a multitude of girls at school.
Yi Chen put the suitcase in the trunk and asked, “Do you have broken hands or a limp, so much so that you need someone to carry your luggage for you?”
Mo Nancheng admitted defeat. “OK. Let’s not engage in personal attacks ba.”
Yi Ran followed Yi Chen out and when he saw them standing together, he couldn’t help but let out a “wow” sound.
Mo Nancheng said, “Haven’t seen you in a long time, Xiao Ran. What do you think? Do you think I’ve become even more handsome?”
“No.” Yi Ran said honestly, “I was just thinking that, when you two stand together, you really don’t look like you two belong in the same age group.”
Mo Nancheng asked, “… I must have a feud with your guys’ Yi Family. Is that it ba?”
No matter if there was a feud or not, since he had already invited them, he could only wait upon them.
When they arrived at the airport, the three of them passed the security check and entered the airport lounge, which was full of familiar faces.
Mo Nancheng loved having fun and had wide connections. Almost all the famous young masters of Jincheng were in this VIP airport lounge.
“I told you, since we’re all flying together, let me know a little in advance ma.” When one person in the group saw the three of them, he immediately got up and said, “Could’ve just used a private plane to avoid this wait time.”
Mo Nancheng waved his hand dismissively. “Nah. That requires informing the airport chain of command about when the plane will take off. It’s too much trouble, I’d rather just wait a bit.”
Due to business needs, Yi Chen naturally knew these people, but they were all just normal acquaintances. After greeting them, he sat aside, not planning to participate in their discussion.
The people who had originally wanted to strike up a conversation with him saw this attitude, and felt that it was difficult for them to draw closer.
The opposite side was still noisy. “Nancheng, in order to celebrate your birthday, I’ve put off all my appointments.”
“I know, I know.” Mo Nancheng patted the man on the shoulder. “If you don’t think it’s fun, feel free to curse me out!”
“Aren’t we going to the beach tomorrow afternoon? Why are we flying over there tonight? Just going to make us stupidly wait there for a night ah?”
Mo Nancheng winked at him. “How could that be? Don’t worry about it.”
Yi Chen opened the stream and put on his earphones. The young man’s voice immediately drowned out all the noise around him.
“Tried out both of the two new guns. MK47 has a small ammo capacity and a poor bullet velocity, don’t recommend using it. If you’re new though, you can pick it up since the recoil is small. The M762 is okay, but it can’t replace my white moonlight, the AKM…” The anchor spoke up to here before suddenly stopping. “1? Didn’t you say that you wouldn’t have time to stop by these next two days?”
Yi Chen’s cellphone screen was relatively small. He didn’t open the barrage and instead just opened the keyboard to reply with: [On cellphone.]
After a while, as he continued to watch the livestream, someone suddenly sat down beside him. Yi Chen looked to the side and saw that Mo Nancheng was handing him a bottle of mineral water.
“What are you watching? The plane is preparing to board now.”
“A game livestream.”
“…” Mo Nancheng thought it was funny. “What, the longer you live, the younger you get? Now you’re even addicted to a game.”
“My Ge isn’t addicted to the game.” Yi Ran, at the side, interjected, “I think he’s addicted to the anchor.”
“Anchor? What anchor?”
“A male PUBG anchor.”
Mo Nancheng was stunned, and then let out a long “ohhhh” sound.
With a mysterious smile on his face, he said, “It’s like that then. That’s great. It seems like I wasn’t wrong.”
When the boarding announcement broadcasted, Yi Chen turned his cellphone off, and gave Mo Nancheng a cool glance. “Wasn’t wrong about what?”
“Nothing.” Mo Nancheng quickly got up and said, “Let’s go ba, board the plane.”
The plane flew smoothly the whole way and safely landed two hours later.
Several luxury cars, with drivers in suits and gloves sitting in them, were parked in the parking lot. This scene had become the most eye-catching feature of the airport, and many people had been standing around taking pictures. Mo Nanchang had always been a high-profile person. With such a big event as his birthday, he would like it if he had made all of Manyang aware of it.
The cars speedily drove all the way to the hotel.
Mo Nancheng had been very generous with respect to the hotel. He had directly booked ten of the hotel’s highest quality suites, even giving Yi Ran his own separate suite.
No one had eaten yet, and they were about to discuss where to eat when Mo Nancheng hurriedly interrupted, “Don’t. I’ve ordered a big meal at the hotel. Someone will deliver it to you guys later… You guys, just enjoy it.”
Yi Chen gave his luggage to the lobby attendant and headed straight to the elevator.
He went to his hotel room and took a bath first. Then, he sat on the sofa and turned on his laptop in a leisurely manner. He had already finished his work for the next two days. This trip to Manyang could probably be considered his vacation.
Just as he opened a webpage, the doorbell rang. It should be the dinner that Mo Nancheng had previously mentioned.
He got up and took a look through the peephole. Indeed, there was a serving cart outside, with a big lobster lying in the center of it. It looked pretty good.
As soon as he opened the door, the person on the outside immediately wanted to come in. Yi Chen blocked his path and raised his hand to grab the handle of the serving cart. “I’ll push it in myself. You can leave.”
The person outside froze, reflexively grasping Yi Chen’s wrist, and anxiously pleading, “Wait…”
Yi Chen frowned. It was only then that he looked up at the man in front of him.
It wasn’t an attendant. He was a very good-looking man, with a high nose and a cupid’s bow mouth. It looked like he had applied something on his face, since it even shone in the light. His skin was too white.
Yi Chen pulled his hand away. “Who are you?”
“I am… someone that Cheng Ge called over.” The man bit his lower lip and kept looking at the man in front of him. “My name is Liang Shao.”
Yi Chen asked, “Called you over to deliver the meal?”
“No.” Liang Shao was shocked. “You don’t recognize me?”
Yi Chen raised his eyebrows, his patience exhausted. He pulled the serving cart in to close the door.
“Wait, wait, Chen Ge.” Liang Shao grew frantic, pressing both his hands against the door. “I’m not here to just deliver food, I’m—I’m here to accompany you.”
In fact, Yi Chen had already vaguely guessed what was going on.
His frown grew even deeper, and he said, “No need. You can go back ba.”
With a little effort, he directly closed the door.
As soon as Liang Shao left, Mo Nancheng’s call immediately arrived.
“What’s the matter, dude, not satisfied? Isn’t this little actor very good-looking?”
Yi Chen pushed the serving cart aside. “I think that you’ve been so idle that you developed some kind of illness.”
“Isn’t this just me being afraid that you’ll harm yourself with how pent up you are?” Mo Nancheng clicked his tongue and said, “You’re almost 30 now. What, is your true love just your right hand?”
Yi Chen laughed angrily. After a while, he asked, “What’s your intention, sending a man over here?”
“Didn’t you also chase away the women I sent over to you? No, dude, are you… not normal, ah?”
“Mo Nancheng.”
“Oh, no, no, you’re normal. You’re so normal. Your masculinity is head and shoulders above the rest. The universe’s number 1.”
Yi Chen didn’t bother to squabble with him. He simply told him to not try anything else and then hung up.
The little anchor’s voice was still being heard coming from the laptop.
“Thank you Verdant for the gift… Everyone, you don’t have to spend money to smash gifts at me. I’m not planning to climb the rankings. Save it to buy some midnight snacks ba.”
The skin of the boy on the screen was very pale and springy, unlike that of the man just now, who had powder all over his face, just like a Beijing opera singer.
His nose was also better looking than that person’s. The tip seemed to be very slightly tilted downwards—cute.
His lips looked very natural, and when he laughed, Yi Chen could see the little tiger tooth on the right—cute.
His double-lidded eyes were just the right size, and his eyelashes quivered slightly when he blinked—cute.
He looked down at the underside of the neck area of the person on the screen.
If he hadn’t seen wrong that day… The little anchor had a mole under his collarbone.
Yi Chen’s gaze grew deeper. After a while, he picked up his cellphone and opened his chat box with the little anchor.
“I’m in Manyang.”
As soon as he typed out those words, he heard the person say through the laptop, “Oh right, I need to tell you guys something. I have to go out for personal business tomorrow night, so I’ll have to ask for a leave.”
The barrage immediately started wailing.
Yi Chen snapped out of it, and seeing the words he had just typed, couldn’t help laughing at himself.
Normally, he found all communication outside of work troublesome, let alone online communication. He didn’t even have the words “meet an online friend” in his dictionary.
After a moment, he deleted the words he had typed into the chat box and then tossed his cellphone aside to enjoy the dinner in front of him.
—
The author has something to say:
Chen: It’s impossible to meet an online friend, it’s impossible to meet an online friend in this lifetime.
—
Juurensha: Nooo, Boss Yi go meet him! (And if you don’t, fate will definitely intervene!) Also Mo Nancheng is such a rich asshole playboy, but I also love him because he’s hilarious? Who else dares to give Boss Yi shit?
Divi: Should’ve just pressed send Boss Yi! Why else would you be thinking “cute” for everything?
Noks: Mo Nancheng seems to have a good read on his friend, though he does act as he wants to mostly. Also, that ‘cute’ comparison… Ah, Boss Yi, you’ve fallen hard!
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