PUBG Online Romance of the Century

Edited by Noks

Lu Xiuhe hid in the bathroom and then covered the speaker in his cellphone with his bent hand, which made him look like a thief.

"…… How do you have my phone number?" He blinked, the last of his sleepiness already disappearing without a trace.

"I mailed you something before," replied Zuo Zhen.

Lu Xiuhe remembered that two months ago, his earphones had stopped working, and Zuo Zhen had said that he would buy new ones for him, but he had refused to accept it. Later, Zuo Zhen had used the excuse of their upcoming face-to-face meeting to trick him out of his address and cellphone number. He had waited and waited for this face-to-face meeting, but in the end, had only received a pair of earphones worth four digits.

"Oh." Lu Xiuhe scratched his hair and said, "I was just sleeping. What did you want to say?"

"Who works hard?" Zuo Zhen asked.

"Ah?"

"What you just said, who works hard?"

Lu Xiuhe almost immediately recalled the dream he was having just now, and only then realized how fast his mouth had been.

"No one," he said awkwardly. "I was talking in my sleep."

After this was said, the two of them fell into a strange silence.

This was their first time speaking to each other after a span of many days.

The people who used to talk for hours with each other before going to bed had disappeared from each other's lives, as if they had never appeared in front of each other.

After a long while of silence, Lu Xiuhe took the lead in breaking it by saying, "Um, what exactly did you come and find me for ah? It couldn't be that…"

He hesitated for a moment before finishing his sentence, "You came to me to borrow money?"

Zuo Zhen could only hate the fact that he hadn't strangled Lu Xiuhe in the bathroom at that time, for then he wouldn't, in the middle of the night, be getting angered to the point that his temples were starting to throb.

"I'm not short on money." Zuo Zhen didn't beat around the bush with him and asked directly, "What's the matter with your Weibo?"

Lu Xiuhe went stupid for a bit, before becoming flustered and then stuttering out his words, "W-what Weibo?"

Zuo Zhen's tone sounded as heavy as death, "Zuo Family Army, Your Great Lord Lu."

"……"

Lu Xiuhe really wanted to transmigrate back to a few hours ago and beat himself to death.

Thinking of the chaotic fan propaganda he had reblogged on his Weibo and his newly-changed avatar featuring Zuo Zhen, Lu Xiuhe became ashamed enough to explode.

Almost instantaneously, he drew up a plan of attack—to not admit anything even under the threat of death. "What are you talking about ah, I can't understand you."

“Your Weibo is linked to your cellphone number.” Zuo Zhen mercilessly punctured his wall of pretense. “I found you through the address book.”

What kind of dumb thing is Weibo?! Sooner or later, it will fail!

Lu Xiuhe stared at the tiles on the floor and considered the feasibility of hanging up the phone directly.

It's not like he could make an excuse by saying that he had accidentally fallen into the fanclub army, or say that he actually didn't want to help drive up Pz's new songs on the popularity list at all, let alone shift the blame by saying that the Weibo username and things were all forcefully changed by the big-name Zuo Zhen fan, and weren't done out of his own will.

Zuo Zhen picked up the towel on his shoulder and wiped at the sweat on his forehead as he ordered, "Talk."

"Yes." Lu Xiuhe's brain turned very fast, and he quickly picked out some key points from what had really happened, and then explained, "Actually, it's really nothing… I'm just someone who likes to get involved in drama, and I like defending people from injustice."

Zuo Zhen narrowed his eyes and said, "Defend people from injustice?"

"Yes, I can't stand those influencer accounts maliciously slandering people." Lu Xiuhe said, "Bro, don't take it to heart, this is just a problem that has resulted from my boredom. It'll all be fixed in two days when I'm preparing for the big exam. Sorry if it brought you trouble ah."

Later, when he thought about it, he realized that some of his comments on Weibo were also very unpleasant. But he couldn't do anything about that; flaming people was an art, and you had to respect that. It was obvious that those people who said stuff like— "what kind of a son of a biscuit are you" and "stinky house" were just those who were playing at being hoodlums, and were not really flaming people.

He had a strong fighting capacity. Sometimes those stupid antis, who could tell that they couldn't outspeak him, would then just take all of his wordy maliciousness and curses and simply apply them all back onto Zuo Zhen.

"Lu Xiuhe, I'm not your bro," Zuo Zhen asked, "Did you see an influencer's account's Weibo?"

Lu Xiuhe, who had battled countless influencer Weibos all night long, said in a muffled voice, "Just… saw one or two."

Of course, Zuo Zhen knew that his group had been up to its chin in swirling suspicions about the group's internal disharmony. The influencer accounts had been slandering about this issue everywhere recently, and that was precisely the mess they were currently in.

"Defending me from injustice?" he asked.

"Yes ah."

Zuo Zhen asked him, "All of them say that I sell a good image of myself, throw my group members into pits, and collude with the senior management. Since you're so caring, why aren't you defending my group members from such injustice?"

Lu Xiuhe pretty much blurted out, "Because I understand you ah. You wouldn't throw your group members into a pit or collude with senior management, and also I can't see how you're selling any image this way ah…"

Zuo Zhen held his cellphone as he asked, "You understand me?"

Lu Xiuhe froze, only now realizing that he had said the wrong thing. He said naively, "Could count as….a little bit ba."

"Not even a little bit."

"……okay bei."

If you say no, then it's no bei.

"What do you understand about me?" He didn't expect Zuo Zhen to grow more serious and continue speaking, "You didn't even know if I was a man or a woman."

This subject being brought up like that caught Lu Xiuhe off guard. He stared with wide eyes and blurted out, "Wasn't that because you fucking tricked me—"

"Yes, I tricked you."

He didn't expect that the other side would be so forthright and bold. Lu Xiuhe's bellyful of retorts suddenly lost all their purpose.

Zuo Zhen asked, "Who told you to not like men?"

"……"

Lu Xiuhe suddenly felt that Zuo Zhen was more unreasonable than his group of anti-fans.

He couldn't cry or laugh at such a question, and for a while, was at a loss of what to say. He could only reply, "Then what can I do about that ah?"

Now, Lu Xiuhe was already fully awake. He could feel his heart beating very fast, and he guessed that was all because he had been startled by the sudden ringing of the phone ringing just now.

After he said that, the two of them fell silent again.

It seemed that the person on the other end of the phone call had just finished exercising, and the sound of his breathing came across as steady and powerful. Somehow, although the person who had been tricked was himself, Lu Xiuhe was inexplicably filled with a sense of guilt, accompanied with some emotion he couldn't describe.

After a long time, Lu Xiuhe said, "That fan support group, I will leave it, you…"

Before he could finish this sentence, he heard a thump from the opposite side; Zuo Zhen had hung up.

The window set high up in the bathroom wasn't closed. There was something wrong with this window in their dormitory. When it was closed, it rattled super noisily and could wake up all the people in the room, so they kept it open. Hence, in the middle of the night, the cold wind blew into the bathroom.

Lu Xiuhe stood there, stunned, unable to believe that he had been standing here, in this spot, under this cold wind for such a long time, only to finally actually be hung up on.

…… Back when they were dating, Zuo Zhen never behaved like this with him!

During the times Zuo Zhen was buried with work, he would use fewer words to chat with him, but had never just gone through the motions with him. Even when Lu Xiuhe had gotten ill and had a cold, the other party had never said any nonsense about drinking hot water. Instead, he had hired a delivery person and paid him to deliver the medicine to him.

When not busy, Zuo Zhen was really… cute, often pestering him to send voice messages, wanting him to call him baby.

Ever since their face-to-face meeting, Lu Xiuhe hadn't dared to recall the previous moments between them. It wasn't that he was afraid to face these memories, but that he was afraid that he would feel disgusted and repulsed. After all, he was an iron-and-steel straight man, and if anyone else were in the situation of having inexplicably been tricked into acting gay they would also fully object to it.

But he didn't.

Thinking back of the past, Lu Xiuhe still felt that Zuo Zhen was cute.

A cold wind blew in, and Lu Xiuhe sobered up under this gust. His hands curled into fists, and he neither lightly nor heavily hit himself on the head a bit.

…… How easy to trick you are, what's the difference between you and someone who's been sold and is even helping the seller count out the money? —Lu Xiuhe cursed out himself internally.

The next day, Lu Xiuhe turned the matter of quitting the group over and over in his mind.

Quitting the group was a matter of just two clicks, but the reason why he was hesitating was… because one of Zuo Zhen's big fans thought very highly of him. When he had woken up, he had received a series of messages on his cellphone, all from the big fan.

[Lulu, wake up, this influencer account started up again.]

[Ugh, you joined at a bad time, recently it seems like these dog things have all made plans. They all come out and bite Zhenzhen; they can't be cleaned up at all.]

[Your Great Lord Lu: There's another influencer account slandering him? Slandering him about what?]

[They said that when he got a fracture, he sold his misery to suck up more fans, and they also said that the fracture was an excuse for him to be lazy and go on holiday. Shit, these people really can make stuff up, as soon as they open their mouths, it just all comes pouring out.]

[Your Great Lord Lu: ….Fracture?]

[Yes ah, three months ago, while filming, he fell and hurt himself, which led to a fracture. I saw him being carried to the hospital with my own eyes.]

Three months ago was the period when he and Zuo Zhen had been playing games together every day.

At that time, Zuo Zhen had been in a really good mood. He had told him that he had gotten a long holiday and could finally accompany him properly. Lu Xiuhe had even blindly given great thanks to Zuo Zhen's company.

Lu Xiuhe held his cellphone tightly and resisted the impulse to dig up his chat records with Zuo Zhen.

[Your Great Lord Lu: …then was it serious ah?]

[Of course it was serious, he had to rest for several weeks. You have just entered the pit, so you probably don't know ba, but Zhenzhen has suffered many injuries. During Pz's debut song, Zhen Zhen had a dance move that was very difficult, and they say he got injured many times during practice. There was a time where he knocked into something, got injured, and there's still a scar on his back from that. At that time, he had to be absent from a concert because of this, and so was attacked by anti-fans saying that he was acting like a primma donna, saying that he had hurt his other group members and that the lineup should be rearranged… All in all, it was a very dark time.]

[We didn't have much experience at that time. We were controlled by other people until we looked like fucking idiots, and we were so angry that we made a support group overnight. It took a long time for it to develop into its present scale and state.]

[Oh right, you just said you had something to tell me, what's up ya?]

After reading this long string of words, Lu Xiuhe bit the sausage in his mouth in half, crunching heavily on it.

[Your Great Lord Lu: Nothing really, I just want to say that my Weibo account was discovered by my family. It doesn't look good for me to tear into people all day on it, so I'm going to re-register a Weibo account, and so am just letting you guys know in advance.]

[Your Great Lord Lu: What influencer account was it that was slandering him just now? You send me the link, and I'll fucking murder him.]

—

The author has something to say:

I've written it to the point that I can't quite stop the car anymore. I'll try to finish Xiao He in another three or five chapters.

—

Juurensha: It'll actually be closer to 9 more chapters, but you guys are having fun, right? I know I am. Ahhhh LXH, you say you're super straight, but you still fondly look back on your memories with Zhenzhen and say he's cute, even if you know he's a guy. Not to mention instantly leaping to his defense.

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