Chapter Text
When Shi Guang exited the team office after a day of training, a few young women crowded around him, pressing small bags and boxes into his hands with choruses of “Happy Valentine’s Day!” and “I’m such a fan of yours!” He thought he even heard one say “You’re so adorable, like a steamed piggy bun!”
He only had time to squeak out “Uh, thank you,” before they left like a whirlwind as they had come. He heaved a sigh of relief, looking at the colorfully wrapped packages, and then noticed one woman still waiting.
“Hi?” Shi Guang ventured. She made a small smile. She looked a little older than most of the fans present a moment ago. Perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties, although Shi Guang was definitely not an expert on estimating women’s ages from their faces.
“Hello. I’m a fan of you and Yu Liang. Would you have a moment?”
“Yeah.” He reexamined the pile in his arms, afraid one would fall to the ground by his clumsiness, when she pulled out a small reusable bag from her purse.
“It’s just one of those bags from the one-coin store, so please go ahead and take it.”
As he placed the gifts into the bag, she said, “I saw you two on TV for the Beitou Cup last year.” She paused.
“I’d never seen weiqi before, but I had the TV on all day, and it came on. I’d just gotten out of an unhealthy relationship, and I knew it was a good choice for me, but I was so drained I couldn’t do anything other than stare at the TV from my sofa.”
Shi Guang intimately knew that feeling when someone who’d always been around was suddenly not there. Empty. Hollow.
“In your pair game, whenever the camera showed your expressions instead of the board, you two shared looks of such trust and understanding. The analysts said it was rare to see a team so in sync.”
Even though they were standing outside in the February evening air, Shi Guang could feel his cheeks warming. “Thank you…”
Until this point, Shi Guang hadn’t really thought about everyone else examining the interactions between him and Yu Liang, but of course, they were in the public eye. All those moments (looking at each other for confirmation of a move, the nods of agreement, the tiny upward curve of Yu Liang’s mouth when Shi Guang placed a stone exactly right) had actually been broadcast to the world.
“I read your post-game interviews in World of Weiqi as well. Both yours and Yu Liang’s. I didn’t understand any of the technical details, but I could read between the lines all the trust and affection you have for each other, in the way your answers to the same questions fit together seamlessly.”
The woman had started the conversation very soft-spoken, but now, she waved her hands for expression, each word tumbling out of her mouth after the next. Besides, Shi Guang was feeling too awkward to say anything at this point. At least the special training before the previous Beitou Cup had really done its job; the two had become excellent weiqi partners, with much more than tacit understanding. In contrast, there would be no special training this year, only the normal kind (and thank goodness, because Shi Guang did not want to share a bed with Mu Qingchun).
“I was feeling hopeless about love before watching your game on TV, but you have inspired me again.”
Love. What a strong word she chose, and a little strange in this context, Shi Guang thought. But yes, Shi Guang and Yu Liang shared their love for weiqi. They had proven that love in their beautiful pair matches.
She reached into her purse and pulled out a small box wrapped in red paper, topped with a black and white dotted ribbon and a tag proclaiming a high-end chocolate brand that even Shi Guang recognized. She offered it to him with both hands.
“Please share these chocolates with Yu Liang. The bond between you two is special, and I hope you know how precious something like that is.”
The woman looked straight into his eyes with an expression of quiet determination that reminded him so much of Yu Liang. “That day, I promised myself I am going to find someone who looks at me the way Yu Liang looks at you.” She bowed her head and left, her boots making dull sounds against the pavement.
Shi Guang furrowed his brows, looking at her receding form and then at the package still in his hands. “She made pair weiqi sound so sappy… how am I supposed to give Yu Liang half of these chocolates without feeling embarrassed?”
And besides, “how Yu Liang looked at him”? What was that all about?