Lu Boyuan was shocked awake by the song.

He paused momentarily while holding the headphones before he sat down in front of the computer screen full of barrage comments.

“Where is he.” Lu Boyuan’s voice was even more hoarse than it had been during the interview.

[Ahhhh husband TAT!!!]

[Thank you to the heavens and earth and god for making me open StarTV at 4 AM!]

[When I saw that God Lu was still this handsome despite his hair being so damn messy, I couldn’t help but get out of bed and check myself out in the mirror. Now I’ve done it, I’m so ugly I can’t fall back asleep.]

[Dunno, he said he went to wash his hands, he probably got snatched away by a ghost in the bathroom.]

[God Lu, are you feeling better? Soft said you had a low fever… judging from your complexion, you seem to have recovered a bit?]

[Husband how’d your eyes become monolids, you’re even more handsome now 555¹]

Lu Boyuan narrowed his eyes and read the barrage for a while.

Most likely to prevent sleepiness, Jian Rong had turned up the brightness very high on his monitor.

Lu Boyuan lifted a hand and adjusted the monitor to a suitable brightness before he answered a random comment, “The fever went down, don’t worry.”

Jian Rong’s computer desktop was very chaotic. The LoL client, stream barrage helper, LoL lottery window, and music software were all open at the same time, layered atop one another; it was enough to make someone dizzy looking at it.

Lu Boyuan glanced over the lottery interface before he opened the inventory.

After drawing from a LoL web event, you still had to go to your inventory and accept the skins in order for them to actually be sent to your game account. Because Jian Rong wasn’t able to pull the one that he wanted, he hadn’t accepted a single skin.

Seeing the excessive number of pages for the available skins, Lu Boyuan lifted an eyebrow in surprise.

Jian Rong didn’t like squandering money, and he basically never bought any of the newly released skins. Even when he occasionally ordered takeout, it would always be the simplest set meal, let alone spending money on pulling skins.

Every time Xiao Bai duo queued with Jian Rong, he would roast Jian Rong for being contradictory; Jian Rong was reluctant to even buy a 45 yuan skin, but he was more than happy to smash a hundred thousand yuan of gifts on Lu Boyuan. When Jian Rong was in a good mood, he would insult him back a bit. If he was in a bad mood, he would abandon Xiao Bai and go solo queue on his own.

Lu Boyuan’s thoughts were getting sidetracked. He snapped out of it and roughly calculated how many skins Jian Rong had pulled altogether.

With the total amount of skins… it probably cost at least three to five thousand yuan.

Players who participated in this kind of lottery event usually had their own goals in mind.

Lu Boyuan glanced at the prize pool and asked, “What does he want to pull?”

[Do you even need to ask? Of course it’s your TTC Lee Sin.]

[TTC Lee Sin.]

[TTC Lee Sin.]

TTC Lee Sin was the name of Lu Boyuan’s championship skin.

Lu Boyuan leaned back in Jian Rong’s chair and nodded. “But this skin… doesn’t it come back every year?”

Sets of skins that came out in previous years would come back and be purchasable for a limited amount of time in the current year. For example, near the Christmas season, “Snowdown Showdown” skins would return for sale; during Valentine’s Day, “Valentine’s Day” skins would go on sale again—likewise, every year around Worlds, all the championship skins from the previous years would be available for a limited time.

[Oh that’s right…………… it’s over, I got too into watching the little dumbass pull skins, forgot to remind him.]

[It’s only February right now, how long would you have to wait for them to go back on sale? What my son has is money, anything he can resolve by spending money, he definitely won’t delay it until the second half of the year!]

[It’s over it’s over, I’m the person who told him to go pull in the lottery. I didn’t think that he wouldn’t be able to draw the skin even after spending 5,000 yuan… what to do, this dumbass won’t kick me out in a fit of anger, right?]

[It’s fine, the little dumbass will get super rich this year, he isn’t lacking that 5k.]

[What the hell do you all know, is the little dumbass trying to pull a skin? No, he’s pulling Road’s heart!]

[The little dumbass doesn’t even have many LeBlanc skins on this account, yet he furiously smashed a glorious 5,000 yuan for TTC Lee Sin. It gives off a bit of the same feeling as when he was smashing gifts on Road last time.]

[Won’t say anything else, my bros who understand, type it out in the barrage.]

[Understood]

[Understood]

…

After more or less understanding the situation, Lu Boyuan opened up the game assistant, wanting to check Jian Rong’s detailed match history for the night.

Just now, he had only swept a cursory glance over it. Jian Rong was the MVP for over half of the matches on the page, and his most frequently played champion was Fizz, the one that he hadn’t played well earlier that day.

Right as Lu Boyuan finished looking over the stats from the first game, his phone chimed.

Lu Boyuan lowered his head and checked his phone before he minimized the game assistant and picked an inoffensive barrage comment to answer.

“His performance today? …it was okay, not bad, can’t be considered as dragging down the team. Soft’s playing style is aggressive, so it’s very normal for him not to do well against a slow-paced team like Fighting Tiger. Was I satisfied?” Lu Boyuan gave a tiny huff of laughter before he said lazily, “It’s not important whether I was satisfied or not. But he most likely isn’t very satisfied with himself, or else he wouldn’t have played Fizz for the entire night.”

After he said that, Lu Boyuan opened the lottery’s purchase interface and scanned his payment QR code in front of a screen full of question marks.

Once Lu Boyuan finished buying the event tokens needed for the lottery, he stood up and left without saying goodbye to the water friends in the stream.

Lu Boyuan took out a bottle of spring water from the second floor fridge and had just gone back upstairs when his phone chimed again.

[PUD, XIU: Whatcha doing not sleeping this late at night and running over to your newcomer’s stream instead.]

[PUD, XIU: You there? My newly created side account also wants to pull a TTC Lee Sin skin.]

[R: Keep dreaming then.]

[PUD, XIU: Haha. Thanks to you, I encountered a whole heap of Graves tonight in ranked, I climbed quite a bit.]

[PUD, XIU: Ai my wrist hurts a lot, we had to call the doctor over to our base in the middle of the night for acupuncture… how’ve you been doing lately?]

The older professional players all had occupational diseases. XIU’s tendons were severely inflamed and a large portion of his muscles were strained, in addition to his waist injury. Precisely because of this, the news of him retiring soon had started spreading ever since last year.

[R: Pretty good.]

[PUD, XIU: That’s good, recently I just got put in touch with a doctor who I heard was not bad. I’ll try it out first and if the results are good, I’ll recommend them to you.]

[R: OK]

[PUD, XIU: Oh right, speaking of which, forward me Soft’s WeChat.]

[R: ?]

[PUD, XIU: Hey, Savior asked me for it, he said he wants to have some friendly communication with Soft.]

[R: Wants to solo with Jian Rong?]

After being exposed by Lu Boyuan, XIU replied with a smiling emoji.

[R: They can just communicate at the stadium, or tell Savior to get the account from Jian Rong himself the next time they meet.]

[PUD, XIU: …]

[PUD, XIU: Dude, I feel like something’s a little weird about you.]

[R: ?]

[PUD, XIU: Aren’t you a bit too protective of your team’s mid laner?]

Lu Boyuan paused as he was drinking his water.

[PUD, XIU: I could tell just from today’s match. I was even wondering why you’d accept the interview when you were that sick, but then you went up and bambambam cleared the blame from your team’s mid laner.]

[PUD, XIU: Don’t try to deny it, we’re already old buddies. As for the most effective words to say in every situation, brothers understand best. Purchasing tokens for him to pull skins with, even in the middle of the night, and now you’re not even willing to give his WeChat…]

Lu Boyuan twisted the cap back on the bottle. The icy liquid slid down his throat, leaving behind a feeling of comforting relief.

[R: Didn’t deny it.]

XIU choked when he saw Lu Boyuan’s three word reply, and he deleted the chunk of text that he was typing out for quite a while.

[PUD, XIU: What’s going on?]

[R: Nothing’s going on.]

[R: Cherishing the team’s newcomer, is that not enough?]

[PUD, XIU: I didn’t see you cherish Xiao Bai or the rest ah.]

[R: I did, you just didn’t see it]

[PUD, XIU: If Xiao Bai saw that, he would feel extremely wronged]

[PUD, XIU: There’s really nothing going on between you two?]

Lu Boyuan chuckled.

[R: How old are you again, gossip less. There’s nothing going on between us.]

[R: At least, not right now.]

After sending that text, Lu Boyuan ignored XIU’s flood of “?” and put his phone on silent before dropping it on the table.

—

Jian Rong returned to the practice room, holding a cup of coffee in his hands. As he shut the door with his foot, he glanced over the barrage and said, astonished, “It actually didn’t give me a warning for idling?”

StarTV had a strict system. If a streamer left their computer for longer than a specified time period, an idle warning would pop up. After some more time passed, the system would forcibly shut down the livestream room.

[Come come come, let Dad see just what kind of noble and precious hands you have in order for you to wash them for over ten freaking minutes.]

[Dad was worried that something happened to you, so I helped call the police for you, you can explain the situation to them yourself when the police get to your base in a bit.]

“I was thirsty after I finished washing my hands, so I wanted to pour myself a cup of water. I also checked out the base’s coffee machine.”

Done explaining, Jian Rong picked up his coffee and took a small sip, which caused his face to instantly crinkle.

[Are you still gonna pull? Been waiting for so long.]

[How’s the coffee?]

It tasted a hundred times worse than the coffee that Lu Boyuan had made.

“Tastes bad.” Jian Rong endured the bitterness and gulped down half the cup in one go before he set it down to the side. “Pull. Wait for me to add some more money.”

With the ease of practice, Jian Rong moved his mouse over to the “purchase” button before he suddenly saw that there was actually a string of numbers following behind the token balance on the left—100,000.

?

Jian Rong stared blankly for a moment… before he slowly leaned in towards the screen to count the zeroes.

After counting the number over and over again five times, he confirmed that there were indeed 100,000 tokens, which converted into 10,000 yuan.

The entire time he was counting the zeroes, Jian Rong’s mouth was slightly open, but it didn’t close even after he finished counting them.

A long pause later, he mumbled quietly, “…did Tencent bug out?”

The water friends, who had plotted together in advance, spammed out countless comments—

[Congratulations! You’re the 5,200,000th lucky player to participate in this lottery event! You’ve received this company’s super-prize!]

[You’ve received Tencent’s 100,000 tokens, along with one Apple MacBook! Once you send out a 10,000 yuan red envelope in the stream, you will be able to unlock the laptop reward!!]

[If you open the window and shout “I am a dumbass” outside then you can also unlock an even more awesome mysterious prize!]

Jian Rong laughed. “Dumbass… just what exactly happened?”

[Xiao Bai came by earlier.]

[Qian-ge did it.]

[Pine used your computer.]

Jian Rong rolled his eyes and decided to just check the stream replay himself.

The moment he saw Lu Boyuan appear in the camera frame, he choked firmly on a mouthful of bitter coffee. Jian Rong covered his mouth and coughed until his neck turned red.

Once he heard Lu Boyuan’s “doesn’t this skin come back every year,” Jian Rong even more so nearly stopped breathing.

Jian Rong very rarely bought skins. When TTC’s championship skins first came out, he had bought them immediately on his other account, so he really didn’t know that they returned every year.

He looked at the 100,000 tokens on the webpage and felt his heart ache even more.

“And none of you told me?!” Jian Rong clenched his teeth and went to find customer service. “Can this be refunded…”

[Let me tell you a joke: LoL’s lottery can be refunded.]

[Didn’t you also pull with 5,000 of your own money? There’s no difference between 5,000 and 10,000.]

[It’s the captain’s love, you’re even willing to return it??]

Jian Rong wasn’t in the mood to look at the barrage.

When customer service refused him, he forced himself to pick up his phone and send Lu Boyuan a text: [Captain…]

After waiting for a while, Lu Boyuan still didn’t answer.

Jian Rong ruffled his hair and felt deeply conflicted. “…stop urging me, I’ll pull right now and end the stream after I’m done.”

In the first ten pulls, TTC Lee Sin appeared.

Jian Rong was stunned at first before his eyes widened in pleasant surprise, his ears completely red. “It came! The first one!!!”

Before he could get too happy, he saw the remaining tokens left in the account, and Jian Rong wilted again.

After contemplating for a long time, he stubbornly opened the Tencent customer service portal once more—

[Just Watch My Gameplay: Miss, I really can’t refund the money?]

[Just Watch My Gameplay: If a child steals their parent’s money to purchase tokens, do you all not even care?!]

[Just Watch My Gameplay: Does justice even exist anymore?? A big company cheating its customers, I see how it is!]

[Damn hahahaha little dumbass you’re really freaking shameless!!]

[The child is you, the parent is Road?]

[From now on, don’t play ‘Good Luck’ anymore, it’s not half as effective as you going straight to Road’s doorway and singing ‘Mice Love Rice.’²]

This was also Jian Rong’s first time doing something like this. His face flushed red, and he gritted his teeth. “…shut up.”

Yan: Just wanted to thank everyone who’s commented so far on the translation~ we don’t always have time to like or answer everyone’s comments but we do read them all and they’re very lovely!!

Also totally didn’t expect so many people to play Genshin o.o praying everyone’s Zhongli comes home for them!!! Taking down my UID now just to be safe but in case anyone would like to add me, you can message here and I’ll get back to you with my UID~ very open to new friends!