Chapter 181: Untitled

Translator: Atlas Studios  Editor: Atlas Studios

Another ten seconds of silence followed, Ji Zhiyao’s expression was warped as he exclaimed, “What the f*ck, it’s hanging right at this time! Bastard!”

“Cut! No cursing, otherwise it cannot be aired, let’s try again!”

Several takes later, Ji Zhiyao felt that he was gradually losing control over his expression and finally succeeded in saying his line with the suitable emotions. “What a crappy item, it’s actually stuck at this point in time!”

“That will do, that will do, the others continue.”

Nuo: “Ah! Goddamn mine is stuck too!”

K: “Ah dear me oh my god mine too!”

Heng: “Oh dear, why is mine stuck too?”

Xiaofei: “Ohmygod I’m stuck too!”

The corner of Mo Huaifeng’s lips twitched, and he grudgingly read out his line. “So annoying, mine too, let’s try swapping to another brand of keyboards!”

“Yes, that’s the feeling! Very good!

“That take was not bad, but we have not rolled the cameras, let’s do one more take!”

When the filming ended, it was already five hours later. Yuan Wei also happened to walk out from where he had been with the advertisers, when he saw their dreadfully pale makeup after enduring the studio, he took a step back in both surprise and bewilderedness, “What the hell! He did not tell me that they had to act as ghosts…”

Yet Yuan Wei’s voice had already died off before he even finished talking, because he realized that his beloved members, including Xiaofei who had the best temper, were all glaring at him with a look that showed their itch to chop him into pieces.

“Excuse me? What have I done wrong?”

Ji Zhiyao bit out viciously, “Yuan Wei you bastard!”

The others followed unanimously, “Yes!”

Yuan Wei still did not understand why he had went from the kind and adorable manager to the bastard that everyone in the team wanted to beat up, when he saw the assistant from the advertiser walk over. “Mr Yuan, we are done with filming, we will send the final payment to your end as soon as possible. When the actual advertisement is completed, we will also send it over at the first moment.”

Yuan Wei nodded. “Alright, then we will be leaving now.”

“Yes, good bye and take care.”

Before Yuan Wei turned back, his thoughts were still about how the bunch of rascals had yet to remove their makeup, he did not know what to do. He intended to ask for their opinions, yet once he turned back… “All of you..”

There wasn’t a single person behind him.

Yuan Wei quickly walked outside, taking three steps in two, and found that their van stopped outside the studio had already gone so far that he could only see it as a tiny little dot.

He was dumbfounded.

They all ran?

Then what about him?

…

In the van, Ji Zhiyao glanced back through the windows and indeed did not see Yuan Wei. He touched his jaw with his fingers and looked towards Mo Huaifeng, commenting with heartfelt worry, “Us leaving Yuan Wei behind like this, it’s not right.”

His Captain amiably gave him a smile. “How do you intend on removing your makeup?”

Ji Zhiyao’s anger meter was instantly maxed. “Damn it, let’s not bother with him! It’s quite a good thing that we left him behind!”

Then he gloomily rubbed an inch of the makeup on his face, seeing his fingertips become a pale white, he immediately groaned in despair. “What should we do, can this be removed using cleansing foam?”

Heng joined in, equally depressed. “It’s terrible, yet what’s even more despairing is that I don’t even f*cking have cleansing foam.”

Ji Zhiyao chimed in happily, “I do!”

“Alright!”

Mo Huaifeng frowned slightly, evidently uncomfortable because of the makeup on his face. He said, “When we drive pass a makeup store later, we’ll go get a bottle of makeup remover.”

Nuo agreed. “That’s a good idea. Then here comes the question, my brilliant and resourceful Captain, which one of your teammates are you planning to select to go buy the makeup remover?”

Mo Huaifeng went blank for a moment, then drew out his phone, calmly saying, “I’ll send Yuan Wei a text.”

Ji Zhiyao chuckled. “Yuan Wei is really pitiful!”

Even after being abandoned by the battleteam, he still had to take the Captain’s order and obediently go get the makeup remover, being a battleteam manager was truly a tough job.

A minute later, Mo Huaifeng received a voice message from Yuan Wei, he tapped it and the entire vehicle was instantly filled with Yuan Wei’s gloating voice. “Sure Captain, wait for me to bring it back. But there’s another advertisement to be filmed tomorrow, remember to prepare yourselves beforehand! Xoxo!”

Ji Zhiyao gritted his teeth.

That’s right, Yuan Wei was a mutt undeserving of sympathy!

Half an hour later, all of Mix’s members arrived at the base, everyone collapsed on the sofa in the living room. Ji Zhiyao sprawled out for a while after ordering some takeaway, then struggled to get up and go to the bathroom to look at his own face, then a thought came into his mind and he suddenly got the chills.

He rushed out of the bathroom and swiftly returned to the living room, announcing, “I suddenly have an ill premonition.”

Mo Huaifeng very kindly gave him a glance, Ji Zhiyao felt encouraged and continued to speak. “Would the bluetooth speakers for tomorrow be the same, ‘oh dear my speakers are spoiled they can’t be used anymore’, ‘ahhh what a coincidence mine too’?”

The others stared at him.

Mo Huaifeng lifted the corner of his lips, his expression very sarcastic. “You have great ideas.”

“Not really. Captain could you get Brother Xiao to come back today? I’ll pay for his air ticket. After all he’s the starter, the idiot who keeps buying the wrong equipment should not always be me.”

Mo Huaifeng was speechless. “I’ll ask him for you?”

Ji Zhiyao nodded with hope. “Sure sure sure!”

Hence Mo Huaifeng brought out his phone and lazily texted Xiao.

Xiao was at home being a phyzait this whole time and replied very quickly, also with a voice message.

Mo Huaifeng curled his finger, Ji Zhiyao obediently ran over, placing his ear by the speaker-

“No thanks! I’ve heard about it all from Yuan Wei, do you guys think you would be able to bribe me with an air ticket? Wishful thinking!”

“Goodness gracious, my ear hurts.”

His face was twisted in discomfort as he patted his left ear, only feeling that his ears were ringing from Xiao’s roaring laughter.

Mo Huaifeng saw that he was uncomfortable and was hitting his own ear rather forcefully, hence he sat up and held down Ji Zhiyao’s restless hand, while helping to pat his ear very lightly. He then asked, “Feeling better?”

“Much better, Captain you’re really a clever little child.”

The remaining four people looked up towards the ceiling, pretending that they did not hear anything at all.

They hung around for almost another hour before the front door of the base was pushed open from the outside. Yuan Wei carried a plastic bag, panting as he walked into the living room and stood with arms akimbo. “Seriously, if you guys do this to me again, I’m really going to resign.”

Nuo was the closest to him, while he wasn’t paying attention, he deftly snatched the bag in his hands, opening it for a look, he found that it was indeed two bottles of makeup remover.

Nuo first grinned, then his expression suddenly became a little complicated, he turned towards Yuan Wei. “I’ve seen something that the makeup artists have, it’s called a cleansing cotton pad.”

“What?”

“Simply speaking, it means that this makeup remover cannot be used to wash faces, instead we should wipe our faces with it.”

Yuan Wei was confused, evidently for the straight-thinking man that he was, there was no difference between washing and wiping.

Ji Zhiyao also remembered the cleansing pad thing, but to him, between “casually removing his makeup” and “keeping a large pale face”, he still preferred the former. He stood up and grabbed a bottle of remover. “It’s fine, don’t we have tissues, we can just make do with it. I can’t stand it anymore, everyone, I will go ahead first.”

When everyone was done cleaning themselves, their takeaway had also arrived. They surrounded the table and shared fried chicken and burgers.

Yuan Wei said between mouthfuls of food. “Treasure the times you guys have here, eating, chatting and bantering together, when we arrive in Korea next Monday, we won’t have such leisure days anymore.”

Ji Zhiyao took a bite and asked inarticulately, “Korea? Is the first stop of our training Korea?”

“Yes. Korea’s eSports industry is the most developed, we will be spending a long time training there too, about three months. Followed by Japan and North America, a month each. This also means, we can only return home five months later.”

K still shuddered at the thought of it. “That’s really terrible. We won’t be able to eat authentic Chinese food for five months, what the use of living?”

“That’s still secondary.” Ji Zhiyao roughly calculated the months, then asked, “Then can we make a trip back midway through? Probably at the beginning of June.”

“You do get breaks during training, if you save all your breaks and use it to come back, it’s possible. But the duration is too short, it would especially inconvenient to make a trip back. Why do you want to come back?”

“My sister is taking her high school national exams, I need to watch over her.”

Everyone was suddenly enlightened, Nuo made the “tsk” sound twice. “NoHomo, you’re hopeless, the extent of your sis-con is so serious.”

Ji Zhiyao gave him an eye roll. “What has that got to do with sis-con, if I’m not around, there’s no one to take care of my sister.”

Nuo was confused. “But your fam…”

“Stop talking, eat up.” Mo Huaifeng spoke up and interrupted. “Training after eating, look at how lazy each one of you have become.”

Nuo quickly shut his mouth, at once, there was only the sound of eating left in the room.

When they finished, they entered the training room one after another. Ji Zhiyao only had eyes for colored blocks and ended up practicing alone for half an hour, when he saw the results of 41 seconds on the screen at the end of it, the corners of his lips lifted in satisfaction.

Through the practice of the past few days, not only has his hand speed returned, it had become slightly faster. If he continued to practice like this, he might be able to surpass Mo Huaifeng one day.

Ji Zhiyao recalled that it had been some time since he last heard Mo Huaifeng mention his results and hence shifted to poke his arm. Mo Huaifeng was in a match, after being bumped several times, he directly pulled of his earphones and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Captain, let me take a look at your computer.”

Mo Huaifeng instinctively glanced at the ongoing match, then glanced at Ji Zhiyao and decisively let go of his idiotic teammates who were relying on him for a carry, shifting aside to give him space. “Go ahead.”

Hence Ji Zhiyao minimized the Heroes interface, then launched the program on Mo Huaifeng’s laptop and found the column stating “high scores”.

52 seconds.

Mo Huaifeng understood what he was trying to do and gave him a close lipped smile. “You didn’t even train much for the entire break and still want to compare to me?”

Ji Zhiyao realized that he made sense too. The building up of hand speed and judgment had to be taken slowly, not to be rushed. Hence he nodded, while making a promise to himself. “Wait for it Captain, when the day comes that my results are better than yours, I will be able to take off and carry you to a win.”

Mo Huaifeng smiled. “Sure.”

Ji Zhiyao met his Captain’s eyes for a while then heard a howl that sounded like a pig being slaughtered from his side. K: “What the f*ck, f*ck Captain, I thought you disconnected! Turns out you were talking to NoHomo? Ahhhhh, my ranked match Captain you bastard!”

All at once, the others in the training room all stared at K with an extremely surprised look.

Ji Zhiyao: “The elderly top-laner who can only perform in favorable matches, cannot live without the jungler is actually dissing my Captain?”

K:” I was wrong! Slip of the tongue, slip of the tongue!”

Ji Zhiyao: “I think you wouldn’t dare to too. Isn’t it good to keep quiet and sponge off him?”

K was utterly speechless and hugged his chubby self with a pained heart.

Nuo: “Do you see that? I’m asking if everyone saw that? This is the classic bums before chums, such a person would end up being mocked by the public in the future!”

Heng: “I’m on NoHomo’s side this time, after all our Captain is the universally acknowledged most handsome in the eSports scene, which gay man wouldn’t want him?”

Ji Zhiyao rolled his sleeves and stood up. “You are asking for a beating!”

The training room instantly turned into chaos.

…

A week later, Monday morning.

A group of ten people in Mix’s team uniform entered the VIP lounge of the airport.

As their dressing were very unified and there were many of them, all the attention was on them once they stepped in, not to mention that there were already people who recognized them and were secretly taking photos on their phone… They found seats and settled down, Ji Zhiyao suddenly sighed with emotion. “Why do I feel that this scene is so familiar? Brother, Yuan, Wei?”

“Shut the hell up, don’t think I won’t dare to beat you up just because we’re in public!”

Ji Zhiyao pouted. “This service attitude sucks, you bought coffee for me back even when I was just a tag-along, why are you ignoring me now?”

“Would the treatment for one who’s been deceived to join the team and one who’s yet to be the same? Are you a fool?”

“… You win.”

He turned back towards Mo Huaifeng, preparing to secretly be a little tattletale, yet once he turned he saw that Mo Huaifeng’s lids were drooping as if he had fallen asleep, he quickly shut his mouth… Between venting his anger and his life, of course his life was more important.

After all Captain’s morning temper was not something that the average joe could handle.

Yuan Wei went to retrieve their boarding passes, Ji Zhiyao sat in his seat, watching his other teammates who were out cold, he was bored to death. Hence he looked outside at the drinks store and stealthily walked out.

The queue at the store was quite long, Ji Zhiyao walked over and joined it, pulling his phone out to entertain himself at the same time. He read several news articles and was scrolling, when he heard someone call him. “This physique… Are you Yao-god?”

Successfully ganked by fans once again, Ji Zhiyao was already used to it.

He pulled his mask down as he looked back and found that it was a teenager slightly younger than himself, his eyes were bright. “Hello Yao-god, I am your fan! I became a fan after the match between Mix and Miao Pai battleteam, you were really cool, making use of the big dragon to attack your opponents.”

Ji Zhiyao exclaimed to himself at heart, he did not expect that this fan even remembered a training tournament so clearly. Hence he smiled even more kindly. “Thank you for your love.”