Jian Rong hadn’t slept well at all the night before. Even after he woke up, the very first thought that entered his mind was—how should he interact and communicate with his romantic partner.

But now, there was another problem.

Were he and Lu Boyuan considered to be dating?

Jian Rong knew absolutely nothing about this sort of thing. After he was killed for the third time and his screen went gray, Jian Rong couldn’t help but take out his phone to contact his most experienced friend in terms of love—

[R-ong: Are you free? Want to ask you something.]

[Shiliu: …don’t you never look at your phone when you’re gaming? What’s up, it must be urgent.]

It was true that Jian Rong didn’t tend to check his phone while gaming. However, he was playing support this time, and support Annie’s only purpose was to engage, so it didn’t really matter if he chatted a bit.

He swiftly typed.

[R-ong: I just wanted to ask, what kind of relationship should two people have to be considered dating.]

[Shiliu: ?????]

[Shiliu: Aren’t you in the middle of high intensity training? You still have time to get in a relationship?? With who?]

[R-ong: I’m not sure if we are in a relationship]

[Shiliu: How can you be unsure about that? How far along are you two? Hugging? Holding hands?]

[R-ong: …]

[R-ong: Haven’t hugged.]

Shiliu was about to reply, “If you haven’t hugged, how could you be dating.”

[R-ong: We held hands for probably two seconds, and then]

[R-ong: Kissed once]

Shiliu held his phone and went silent for a moment.

[Shiliu: Aren’t you being too scummy]

[R-ong: ?]

[Shiliu: You already freaking kissed the girl, and you’re still saying you don’t know if you’re dating or not??]

Jian Rong: “…………”

Jian Rong decided not to explain.

After playing two games in a row, Jian Rong finally realized that his concerns were completely unnecessary—although he and Lu Boyuan were together every day, their other three teammates were also in the practice room with them, so they basically didn’t have any time alone with each other.

Even in the game, there were eight other random players with them.

And also…

Xiao Bai roared, “P-baby! I need heals!! Give me some milk give me some milk—niceee, L – O – V – E I only love P-baby!!!”

Jian Rong expressionlessly stole the enemy’s blue buff.

And also, with this ge next to him serving as a foil, his and Lu Boyuan’s conversation seemed that much more unremarkable and normal.

They queued together all the way until the afternoon, before the five of them moved to the practice match room.

They only had three practice matches scheduled for today and ended up finishing before eight PM without losing a single one.

Once they were done with the practice matches, Jian Rong serenely decided to go downstairs to continue queueing when Ding-ge opened the door and came in.

“You guys played pretty well tonight.” Ding-ge leaned next to the door. “What are your plans for the evening?”

Lu Boyuan said, “Play ranked.”

Ding-ge nodded. “Speaking of which, I have something to tell you all. The new patch is about to come out on the Korean server, so starting from tomorrow, you guys should go play over there.”

Actually, regardless of whether it was for ordinary training or streaming, the professional LoL players all liked to play on the Korean server. Patches came out faster on the Korean server, and their higher tiers were of better quality. Meanwhile, the Chinese server was different. Although the “Super Zone” server had been specially established for players who were Diamond 2 or above, there were still a lot of actors and trolls.

The only reason why everyone had trickled back to the domestic server was because of the recently announced official rank requirement. But at this point, all the players’ ranks were above the passing line.

“Fantastic.” Xiao Bai slumped back in his chair. “I’m about to lose it over those actors.”

Jian Rong gave an impartial evaluation. “You’re also one of them.”

Ding-ge laughed. “Especially you, Jian Rong, you seem to really enjoy playing on the domestic server. Does your Korean server account still exist?”

Jian Rong collected his peripherals. “Who knows, it was locked some time ago, I’m not sure if it was ever unlocked.”

Ding-ge: “…it was locked? Why.”

Jian Rong: “For insulting someone.”

Ding-ge: “…………you’re even capable of insulting someone on the Korean server?! I thought you didn’t know Korean?”

Jian Rong: “I used English.”

Xiao Bai was shocked. “You know English?”

“Machine translation.”

Xiao Bai gave him a big thumbs up. “You’re incredible.”

Understanding dawned on Ding-ge, and he said, “Then you should check your account and see. If it hasn’t been unlocked, I’ll set one up for you.”

Jian Rong let out an “en” and picked up his keyboard. Pretending to act very natural, he turned his head. “Do you… still want to queue together in a bit?”

Lu Boyuan looked at him. “Yes.”

“Hang on, let’s not practice any more tonight.” Ding-ge suddenly said, “How about we go watch a movie together?”

Everyone was startled, and they all couldn’t help but wonder if their coach had been possessed by a ghost.

“Why’re you all looking at me like that? You’re making it seem like I’m usually extremely harsh towards you guys…” Ding-ge cleared his throat. “I just thought that you’ve all been working pretty hard these past two weeks. Also, this is a League movie produced by Riot, and it’ll stop showing in theaters tomorrow. I asked the other teams and found out that their players had all seen it already, so I was considering if I should take you guys to watch it too. I just checked when the nearby theater’s last showing is, and it starts forty minutes from now. There are still spots remaining, just tell me if you guys want to go or not.”

Twenty minutes later, TTC’s five members finished getting dressed and fumbled their way onto the team’s car in the dark.

By the time they arrived at the movie theater, it was already getting close to the start of the movie. Ding-ge randomly handed them each a ticket. “Go go go, hurry up and get inside.”

After entering their assigned theater, Jian Rong pinched his ticket as he glanced at Ding-ge, who was sitting between him and Lu Boyuan, and felt conflicted.

Ding-ge was quite sensitive, and he instantly turned his head to ask, “Something to say?”

Before Jian Rong could think of an excuse to switch places with him, the person sitting on Ding-ge’s other side patted his shoulder.

The movie hadn’t begun yet. Lu Boyuan was standing next to Ding-ge. “Let’s switch places.”

Ding-ge was confused. “Why? Isn’t your seat more in the center.”

Lu Boyuan jerked his chin up. “I’m sitting with him.”

Ding-ge: “…”

He looked back and forth between their jungler and mid laner numerous times before he moved over to the empty seat beside him, his face filled with doubt.

Jian Rong did his best to maintain a poker face in front of Ding-ge, but once Lu Boyuan sat down, he couldn’t resist ducking his head, tugging at his hair, and twisting his fingers together, full of small movements.

This was a blockbuster movie, telling the story of over a hundred champions in Runeterra. The game company had invested much capital into the movie; after so many years of the game’s popularity, the company had finally created this movie, which contained an astonishing amount of detail.

Upon seeing his favorite champions come to life on the big screen, Jian Rong swiftly became entranced.

Even so, when someone gripped Jian Rong’s hand for a brief moment, not too lightly or heavily, he still immediately snapped back to reality.

The people on the right were in the middle of whispering and discussing the movie’s plot, making the left side seem particularly quiet in comparison.

Lu Boyuan’s right hand was propped up under his chin, and he appeared to be watching the movie attentively. In reality, his other hand was currently hooked around their mid laner’s fingers.

Jian Rong’s heart was thumping even faster than the beat of the background music. The magnificent scenes in the movie turned into still frames before his eyes.

It was completely dark in the theater. Afraid of them being recognized, Ding-ge hadn’t allowed them to take off their hats.

It felt like Lu Boyuan was massaging his hand for him. He slowly kneaded the two fingers Jian Rong used to click his mouse a few times, before he started to withdraw his hand.

Jian Rong reacted quicker than his mind could catch up; he flipped his hand over and latched onto Lu Boyuan’s.

Damn.

Why the hell did I grab his hand.

Under the brim of his hat, Jian Rong licked his lips, his scalp tingling as he pondered over what to do next.

Lu Boyuan calmly let him hold his hand for two seconds, and then he laughed. That laugh easily vanished into Xiao Bai’s “goddamn, Yasuo almost looks half-decent like this.”

Jian Rong felt like he was holding Lu Boyuan’s hand in an extremely stupid manner. He was about to relax his grip slightly when Lu Boyuan moved his hand upwards and pressed their palms together.

It was humiliating to say it: he was someone who could typically play ranked for an entire day and passionately interact with eighty actors without batting an eye or feeling his heartbeat quicken, but at that current moment, his palm was somewhat sweaty.

Jian Rong couldn’t help but prod an elbow into Lu Boyuan very gently, causing Lu Boyuan to lean towards him a bit.

Jian Rong’s voice was very quiet, like he was committing a crime. “My hand is sweating.”

He tried hard to exhibit a worldly, experienced demeanour as he negotiated with Lu Boyuan in a way that he thought was extremely natural, “How about I wipe it off first, and then we can hold hands.”

Lu Boyuan hummed.

Right as Jian Rong was about to draw back his hand, it was gripped instead. Lu Boyuan picked up a corner of his jacket and helped to wipe Jian Rong’s palm, before he laced his fingers back through and closed them tight around Jian Rong’s.

The movie finished.

As they were walking out of the theater, not even the mask could muffle Yuan Qian’s voice. “Holy shit, those special effects were way too amazing, my heart was beating wildly for the entire two and a half hours!”

After he said that, he couldn’t resist looking for agreement. As a result, he looked at the person closest to him. “Right?”

Jian Rong said truthfully, “Right.”

“It was pretty good.” Xiao Bai clicked his tongue. “But the couple sitting next to me was so annoying.”

Jian Rong’s footsteps paused.

Xiao Bai: “Did they have to hold hands even while watching a movie? What, do they usually not have any chances to touch each other? If I wasn’t sitting right next to them, I bet they would’ve kissed too! And that guy kept explaining the champions to his girlfriend, it was so noisy…”

Jian Rong heaved a silent sigh of relief before he guiltily stooped over and swiftly got in the car.

On their way back, the first few rows of the car held an extremely enthusiastic discussion about the contents of the movie.

Xiao Bai: “My Thresh is so freaking handsome, I’m gonna find that shot of him throwing out his hook and make it my computer wallpaper.”

Yuan Qian: “Aatrox was pretty cool too.”

Ding-ge: “I was more surprised that LeBlanc and Katarina actually showed up as well, and they made it past the cut too¹… did Riot use the power of money?”

Jian Rong hid his hands in his sleeves as he thought absent-mindedly—

Was Aatrox in the movie? And Katarina? What was the plot of this movie again… he didn’t have any impression of it whatsoever.

Ding-ge’s voice floated over from the front. “Jian Rong, a staff sent me the Korean server account. I’ll forward it to you, if you can’t log into your account tomorrow, you can play using this one.”

Jian Rong snapped out of it. “Okay.”

Half a minute later, Ding-ge frowned. “Why did you change your profile picture on WeChat? It took me so long to find it.”

Xiao Bai yawned and asked casually, “Wasn’t his profile picture my ge’s pig? What did he change it to?”

Ding-ge said, “An orange cat.”

“…” Jian Rong stared out the window. “I just felt like changing it, so I did.”

It was dark inside the car, so when Lu Boyuan’s phone screen lit up, Jian Rong subconsciously glanced over at it.

He saw Lu Boyuan open his chat history with the animal clinic and randomly select a photo sent over of the little female cat before downloading and saving it. Then, he made it his WeChat profile picture.

Jian Rong tugged down the brim of his hat and stiffly retracted his gaze, stuffing both hands in his pockets as he sat up very straight.

Yes, they were dating, he thought.

Wei: omggg it’s OFFICIAL official T^T also the matching profile pics are SO CUTE