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Huang Shaotian was a fast person. Too fast, people would always say. He spoke too fast, moved too fast, lived too fast, and a hint of disdain curled around people’s mouths as they said it.
That boy, he goes too fast. He needs to learn how to slow down and do things right.
Huang Shaotian thought they were a bunch of hypocrites. He did think things through, he just did it a hell of a lot faster than them, so what? Learn how to use your brain, but not too well? Wouldn’t want to stand out too much? A bunch of idiots, what did they know. If they didn’t want to talk to him, they could have just said. They were just bitter that they couldn’t keep up, outstripped by a child.
His soulmate understood, though, he was sure. He sent his soulmate a stream of things, anything on his mind, really, and his soulmate sent them back—or didn’t—with just as much speed. Huang Shaotian wasn’t too fast, the world was too slow, and his soulmate surely felt the same way. His soulmate sent back what he didn’t like and kept what he did without a hint of hesitation, even when there was no real need for speed. It was just how they were. Huang Shaotian paid attention, though, to what came back and what didn’t, even if most things he sent were still worthless things his soulmate was sure to return—a worn desk eraser, a half-dead leaf, his used pencil with lead still out, ready to write. Every now and then, though, he saw something he knew his soulmate would like, or picked out something a little more personal. Those gifts would take time to come back, if they ever did.
Generally speaking, they didn’t, but he could tell his soulmate thought about them a little more, and he liked that. His soulmate never decided to write off his gifts as entirely pointless frivolity, not even when they were over 90% of the time. His soulmate was paying attention, and his soulmate was fast.
Huang Shaotian tapped his fingers on the table, restless with the class he was forced to sit through, taking away time from his games. The people there would appreciate his speed, even if his teachers never could.
(Yu Wenzhou got the feeling his soulmate was a little lonely. Items transferred between soulmates weren’t necessarily gifts, but they usually did serve some kind of purpose. From what Yu Wenzhou could tell, the only purpose here was to check that Yu Wenzhou was still there, still paying attention. He sent back objects obviously meant to be returned without a second thought, cataloguing their features to consider later what kind of person his soulmate was, to have such things on hand. A student, a somewhat comfortable family, his soulmate never lacked for trinkets to send, even if Yu Wenzhou did tend to send them back. Searching for something, maybe: Most things sent were the kinds of small and out-of-the-way things that wouldn’t necessarily stick out in a store.
His favorite by far were the ones that his soulmate had clearly thought out. Every now and then, a gift that perfectly matched his taste would come through, one very obviously nothing like the usual gifts that came with such frequency. Even if it didn’t match, he’d be inclined to keep it a little longer; so much could be understood from the things others put thought into. And, a little, the mere fact of his soulmate’s genuine attention and effort made the gifts worth holding to him.
Yu Wenzhou tended more toward the practical himself; what he sent his soulmate were usually snacks, the type that would last a while and could be eaten anywhere. His soulmate was somewhat picky, returning many foods almost before they could send, but Yu Wenzhou didn’t mind.
When it came to likes and dislikes, he could always learn.)
Huang Shaotian had developed an aversion to slow people, who dragged him back and failed to understand him and then blamed him for their own inadequacies. He didn’t like that Blue Rain let Yu Wenzhou stay round after round, as if preparing well enough to pass their arbitrary elimination tests mattered at all if he still wasn’t any good. The real world wouldn’t give him any time to set up. The real world was made of instants of opportunity—how could this boy ever expect to capitalize on them when he just couldn’t keep up?
Honestly, though, no one really kept up with Huang Shaotian. No one understood what he saw in battles, no one got what he was trying to say, and most of the trainees didn’t react or didn’t even listen in the first place when he spoke. All they did was uselessly watch him, the prodigy of the training camp.
Huang Shaotian didn’t often send things to his soulmate in public anymore, half because with so much time spent on the computer he didn’t have too much he could send, half because their transfers weren’t a show for these trainees to gawk at. The only good thing about the slowest of their trainees was that he didn’t give Huang Shaotain any of that unwarranted attention, nor those blank silences.
In his room, though, Huang Shaotian still sent things to his soulmate, every single night now, random things, candies or pens or papers he’d drawn abstract designs on while forced to sit through the more boring of trainees’ “classes.” Every night they came back, but for the random designs—as always, for something Huang Shaotain made, his soulmate kept it.
(Yu Wenzhou no longer received so many random gifts throughout the day, which was good for his concentration but not as reassuring for the status of his soulmate. Objects still came in a flood in the evening, but they were limited in scope; many more random designs done in sharp pen appeared as well, a study in frustration. Each little drawing had been torn from the rest and sent separately. To give his soulmate more things to send? To hide them once he’d finished?
Or just because he needed something to tear?)
The deadlast in training camp rendered him speechless, catching in a moment the thing Huang Shaotian had been not thinking about all this time—how did Troubling Rain actually fit in a team onstage? Huang Shaotian’s style was too individual, so he could never really get behind Ye Qiu’s somewhat hypocritical words. Glory isn’t supposed to be played alone, then why did Ye Qiu so often burst into situations on his own, leaping upon opportunities to tear his opponents apart? If there wasn’t anyone standing with him, where did he find the presumption to say victories required a team?
Huang Shaotian’s talent couldn’t be used properly in a team, and he would still be an excellent player. He would, so this whole teamwork thing was obviously nonsense. If it was nonsense, Huang Shaotian didn’t need to think about it.
But.
If he were onstage, what could he have done to break through Blood and Blossoms with Wei Chen? Could he have found space to help?
If he were on the field, would things really have been different?
Yu Wenzhou acknowledged and questioned his ability in a single statement and then left before Huang Shaotian could give a proper answer.
Yu Wenzhou didn’t seem to care about Huang Shaotian’s status as a prodigy, but definitely didn’t look down on him either. He basically never got angry no matter what anyone said, nor particularly excited about any of the games, always noting things down in his little leather book and giving rational responses to Huang Shaotian’s impassioned monologues. When it came time for the trainees to sit in the audience and watch the matches together, Huang Shaotian found using this mood dampener as a buffer between him and everyone else pretty useful.
He couldn’t have expected the other boy’s obscure notes about the match to draw another trainee’s attention instead.
A Witch player from Tiny Herb, likely a successor, struck up a conversation and showed off his plans to counter Ye Qiu’s overwhelming attack onstage by drawing in Yu Wenzhou’s notebook. Yu Wenzhou understood and replied to the other’s plan immediately, and for the first time Huang Shaotian felt like he was the one who had to keep up.
He found he didn’t like this other team’s player much.
Huang Shaotian showed off his own understanding of how to overcome the situation, completely confident that he could do as he said, even though he could tell the two others had to wait for the slow motion replay to discern that this opportunity even existed. He and Wang Jiexi set forth their challenge to meet onstage in the following year, and it was only then that Huang Shaotian remembered Yu Wenzhou couldn’t join them there. Somewhere in the heat of the fast-paced conversation, Yu Wenzhou’s physical shortcomings had been, in his mind, pushed aside.
They were relevant, though, in a game like Glory. How fast someone could think wasn’t the only thing that mattered there.
Yu Wenzhou pointed out that a single moment’s ability wasn’t enough, either, and in that moment Huang Shaotian finally understood what he was lacking. The speed of his mind and his hands, if it was only a momentary flash of brilliance—how could that be enough to win?
Yu Wenzhou said that he believed himself not yet ready.
Not yet.
For the first time Huang Shaotian considered if Yu Wenzhou was the type to work at something pointless. Could he think and prepare fast enough to make up for slow movement?
What would that kind of decision-making look like if physicality didn’t hold him back? Was it possible to be so instantly decisive? Did the world contain someone who could really work with Huang Shaotian’s speed?
Had Huang Shaotian seen such a thing before?
(Yu Wenzhou had always been the type to analyze others.
Huang Shaotian was fast enough to notice and be confident in seizing an opportunity so minute even Yu Wenzhou could only catch it on the slow motion replay. Yu Wenzhou was already well aware that he thought faster than most of the population himself; in this, at the very least, Huang Shaotian must be faster than almost anyone Yu Wenzhou had ever seen.
So fast, maybe, that the rest of the world didn’t seem to fit?
Huang Shaotian seemed outgoing and confident but there had always been a sense of distance. Arrogance, maybe.
But maybe, too, isolation.
Frivolity in cover of loneliness—Yu Wenzhou had almost certainly seen such a thing before.)
The amount of time Yu Wenzhou needed in order to come up with a winning strategy was shrinking: It was possible. Just those few rounds between Wei Chen and the other rookies, and Yu Wenzhou won against their captain three times in a row, in three different ways.
Granted, he must have studied Blue Rain’s captain extensively; there was certainly the material for it, and Wei Chen didn’t lack the skill to be an ideal example. Maybe that was the only reason Yu Wenzhou could gain success, but Huang Shaotian wanted to try a round with him anyway.
He wanted to see how well, so far, Yu Wenzhou knew him.
(Yu Wenzhou hadn’t taken his vague speculations to heart, and it hadn’t changed anything about how he acted. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, either way a name had no bearing on anyone’s core qualities. If his soulmate was Huang Shaotian, then he simply hadn’t understood Huang Shaotian well enough before. If it wasn’t, he still had to understand Blue Rain’s future ace if he wanted to make his own future there.
Huang Shaotian wasn’t just fast and loud and arrogant and talented, no. He was smart, too, and most of all ruthlessly decisive. Anyone who could capitalize on a split-second’s opportunity had to be. Recently Huang Shaotian’s playstyle had begun to show it, too, not a change so much as an unsheathing of a blade that had always been there. The center of Huang Shaotian’s serious play had always been efficient, predatory. Everything else was distraction.
Yu Wenzhou had thought over their interactions up to then, and realized—ruthless and efficient. Yeah, it was about right.
The chatter had nothing to do with it, other than proof of his speed; when Huang Shaotian truly moved, his actions were always clear.
A million little trinkets, and occasionally a perfect gift.
Perhaps.)
Wei Chen left. Huang Shaotian raged, and then, in light of its uselessness, didn’t speak. His soulmate’s gifts came as always, the only thing in his life left completely unaffected. Huang Shaotian couldn’t think what to send back. But they were all his favorite snacks, anyway, so why would he?
Huang Shaotian’s uncapped pen came back thirteen times before the speed of the responses slowed down. In another ten transfers the pen returned with an artificial cap in place, a simple thing made of folded paper.
Huang Shaotian’s soulmate had never done that before, in all the time he’d sent over useless materials. Surely his soulmate knew Huang Shaotian had the cap right next to him.
But it came like that anyway, capped so Huang Shaotian wouldn’t have to do it himself. Saving his ink from drying, even though it didn’t really matter at all.
Huang Shaotian couldn’t understand why he almost didn’t want to change this pointless fake cap out for the real one.
(Whether or not Wei Chen had stayed, Yu Wenzhou knew he wasn’t ready to debut yet. Huang Shaotian had, in the end, decided the same. Their training ran long and intense, and by the time he returned to his room at night Yu Wenzhou was often too worn out to really think. Every night after he returned, though, a pen would come—just once. One time, and Yu Wenzhou would send it back, and he’d go to sleep tired but satisfied and a little bit warm.)
Huang Shaotian actually got his own Silver weapon, largely mitigating his melancholy at their delayed debut and Blue Rain’s early end to the season. He transferred a pile of paper scraps like confetti, and was unreasonably amused when they didn’t come back.
Maybe his soulmate was celebrating too.
(Yu Wenzhou debuted as captain of Blue Rain, the leader of the Warlock and Sword Master dual core their team had been planning for years. It wasn’t a conventional dual core, two characters fighting together in close proximity, but it worked for them. Yu Wenzhou would make his plans, and Huang Shaotian would show up when he was needed. He never doubted Yu Wenzhou’s arrangements, and Yu Wenzhou never asked him to constrain himself to a certain set of actions; since Huang Shaotian believed in his analyses, if he stepped outside of them he’d obviously seen a genuinely better option.
As for Huang Shaotian’s rambling walls of trash talk and communication that bewildered so many, Yu Wenzhou had no issue. When it came to filtering through what should and shouldn’t be paid attention, and to finding the meaning within it—
Yu Wenzhou had been practicing his whole life.)
No one was supposed to know that Huang Shaotian had snuck out, but Yu Wenzhou had always been an exception. Yu Wenzhou knew everything, especially when it came to Huang Shaotian.
“Can you pick up a journal for me on your way back?” the message read, without any question that Huang Shaotian was, indeed, elsewhere. “I ran out of pages in the middle of copying down a plan and can’t leave yet.”
“Right now?” Huang Shaotian replied, a little put out. He wasn’t actually nearby, and far closer to on his way out than on his way back.
“Yes,” was Yu Wenzhou’s next message, without any prevarication or allowance. For him to be so blunt, he probably did really need it.
Huang Shaotian bought a blank leather journal like all the others Yu Wenzhou had used and transferred it over without a second thought before continuing on his way. If Yu Wenzhou actually just didn’t want Huang Shaotian to go out, he should have properly said something.
When he returned much later, Yu Wenzhou was writing diligently in a new notebook.
“You’re good?” Huang Shaotian asked, coming up behind him.
“Yeah, thanks,” Yu Wenzhou replied absently. He half-turned to smile up at Huang Shaotian, though his eyes were slow to pull from the page where he was finishing up his sentence, and Huang Shaotian took that moment to lean in for a split-second kiss.
Yu Wenzhou’s pen paused, but Huang Shaotian was already headed back to practice with a far too pleased grin. Yu Wenzhou turned back to his writing with a subtle smile of his own at his vice-captain’s penchant for seizing the slightest of opportunities.
A casual kiss, like they’d done it a thousand times before. And they had, almost—a thousand exchanges of lightning casual affection, a thousand “I’m here”s, a thousand “thank you, I’m with you”s. A thousand interactions, and this just one more.
One more of another thousand and more to come.