"I didn't do those things. I only wanted to play properly."
When Mo Bei walked in, that was the sentence she heard from her brother.
Mo Nan had lowered his voice, as if lowering it could still buy him a little dignity from the person on the other end of the call.
The club did not even give him that.
Another voice took over the phone, colder and far more pleased with itself.
"Mo Nan, you are still this naive? Whether you did those things or not, does it matter? Even if I had someone frame you, so what? Your hand is injured. You are no different from trash now. Stop making things hard for the manager. Even if he speaks for you, the rest of the team will never agree to let you come back and drag down our level."
Pa.
The call ended.
The sound was crisp enough to make Mo Nan's fingers stiffen.
It was obvious now.
The club had decided to abandon him because he no longer had value.
He was unwilling.
So unwilling that his shoulders were shaking.
"Brother."
The voice that sounded beside him was faintly cold.
Mo Nan turned and saw his younger sister. His first instinct was to hide how wretched he looked.
Before he could, Mo Bei said, "I will play the next match for you."
"What?"
Mo Nan was stunned. A light trembled in his eyes.
Mo Bei put one hand in her pocket and gave a light smile.
"What? You do not trust my level?"
"How could I not trust your level?" Mo Nan murmured. "But..."
Mo Bei cut him off carelessly.
"We look the same. No one in that circle has ever seen me. If I pretend to be you, no one will suspect it."
That was true.
Other than Mo Nan, no one knew the secret.
Three years ago, the player who swept Glory's Area A, the national server's number one, the genius worshiped by countless players before suddenly retiring at the height of fame, was a girl.
If she returned, even Mo Nan could not imagine what kind of shock it would cause.
"You really want to go?"
"Of course."
As Mo Bei spoke, she picked up a pair of scissors and cut through her long hair in one clean motion.
The move was so handsome it almost made the heart stop.
When she turned her eyes sideways again, the messy black short hair around her face carried a faint edge.
"I need to tell them something," she said. "My brother is not someone they can bully whenever they like."
One month later.
At the high-speed rail station.
Because of the holiday, the platform was packed with people.
In the middle of the crowd, one slender young man stood out too much.
His youthful frame was wrapped in a dark suit jacket, and without any deliberate effort, he gave off a beauty sharp enough to make people look twice.
Several girls were already glancing in his direction.
The young man smiled faintly, and a blush spread through the crowd.
Wang Dongdong, the assistant sent to pick him up, froze when he saw that scene.
No matter how hard he tried, he could not connect this elegant young man with the old non-mainstream punk who smashed keyboards whenever he lost a match.
What exactly had happened to him?
Was he possessed?
Mo Bei had seen Wang Dongdong's photo before coming. According to her brother, this assistant was the only person he trusted.
Since that was the case, she would start with him and see whether he could tell who she really was.
"Dongdong."
Mo Bei walked over with a smile.
Wang Dongdong looked as if a cat had stolen his tongue.
"You dyed your hair?!"
So that was it.
No wonder he felt something was different.
It had to be the hair.
It had to be because of that that he had the illusion this person had become elegant.
"Mm. I dyed it." Mo Bei remembered her brother's eye-catching yellow hair and smiled. "What? Does it look bad?"
Before Wang Dongdong could answer, the flow control at the station suddenly shifted.
Screams rose without warning from the crowd ahead.
The old Mo Nan had lost the right to enter that crowd with his head up.
Mo Bei was walking in for him.
The screams ahead were not only noise. They were the sound of the world her brother had been thrown out of, and the first person she would meet there was someone everyone in esports treated like a god.
The crowd was packed shoulder to shoulder.
Raised posters were everywhere, and the fans' enthusiasm burned hot enough to turn the station into chaos.
Mo Bei lowered her head and looked at the support poster someone had dropped near her shoes.
The front showed K God.
The back said, I like you.
Almost without thinking, Mo Bei bent down and picked it up.
Beside her, Wang Dongdong looked as if he had suddenly understood everything. His face filled with grief and indignation.
"Idol, I thought you had changed. I never expected this was your plan. Did you know K God once said in an interview that he liked cleaner-looking people, so you dyed your hair back to black? Scheming. You are too scheming!"
Mo Bei opened her mouth.
She wanted to say her hair had always been this color.
But then she remembered she was currently playing her brother, so she could only raise the corner of her mouth with a helpless sort of smile.
"Idol, really!" Wang Dongdong looked serious. "If you want me to survive, you absolutely cannot act like before. And do not even think about running into K God here by chance. Come on. We are leaving right now!"
Mo Bei was amused.
"Aren't you exaggerating?"
"Did you forget how you hugged his leg last time and tried to confess to him?" Wang Dongdong looked like a walking reaction meme. "Me? Exaggerating? The most exaggerated thing I did that day was not stopping you!"
Mo Bei paused.
The words in her mouth got stuck.
She hugged someone's leg?
And confessed?
"Quick, quick, quick. We have to go!"
Wang Dongdong kept urging her. He was afraid this non-mainstream disaster would freeze the moment he saw K God.
Mo Bei did not explain further.
Through the crowded fans, she could vaguely see a black-and-red team uniform being surrounded.
As a new member who would report to the club soon, she had an identical uniform in her suitcase.
What a coincidence.
Mo Bei's thin lips curved slightly. She planned to leave through the exit with the fewest people.
But just as she turned, she bumped into something.
It happened too suddenly.
The man took one long step back, but he still did not avoid it.
"K God!"
The assistant behind him tried to pull his young master away, but it was already too late.
The two of them had collided.
And the position was far too ambiguous.
Their noses brushed past each other.
Before Mo Bei even had time to feel pain, the pleasant scent of tobacco mixed with lemon rushed over her completely.
The other person was looking at her.
His brows were slightly furrowed. Because he was bent forward, his back arched a little. His team jacket had been tugged down by the contact, revealing a glimpse of a sexy collarbone beneath.
In that startling instant, his skin looked cold and pale through the half-open fabric, like fine porcelain, noble and restrained.
Only then did Mo Bei realize something.
She seemed to be in his arms.
The warmth from the man's chest touched her face, burning enough to make Mo Bei's mind go blank for a moment. Her limbs also went still.
Maybe they were too close.
When Mo Bei lifted her eyes, it felt as if even his breath could touch her.
The fans around them fell silent for one impossible second.
Then the screams became sharper.
The station staff were already trying to push the fans back, but no one was looking at them now.
They were looking at Mo Bei and the man she had accidentally crashed into.
If Wang Dongdong had wanted to drag her away before, he wanted to disappear now. Because this was no longer a rumor about Mo Nan chasing K God. This was a fresh scene, in public, with too many witnesses.