Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ye Xiu had been in the middle of a solo dungeon run when his computer chimed cheerfully, informing him that he had received a QQ message. Considering that he was in the habit of muting his QQ while training to avoid distractions, he knew that the message could only be from one of two people he deemed important enough to leave unmuted.

And really, there was no question of who this message could have come from, since one of those people was sitting next to him, chomping away on her sunflower seeds, and watching the new romance drama that Chu Yunxiu had recommended.          

He clicked his tongue in mild annoyance but nevertheless navigated his avatar to a quiet corner of the dungeon, and switched tabs to check the message. “This guy is so persistent, still messaging me after so many years”, Ye Xiu muttered under his breath. He always immediately opened any messages this person sent, even if it took him weeks to respond.

Su Mucheng had been absorbed in her drama, but when she noticed the distinctive rhythmic tapping of a dungeon run had stopped, she craned her head around to shamelessly stare at his screen. It only took her a second to skim over the messages and see why Ye Xiu was so taken off guard.

She had seen their chat history before and knew that it consisted mostly of messages from Ye Qiu, who sent a block of ever more creative insults every few months. Very occasionally, there were snippets of sensational gossip about their family and mutual acquaintances.

But this latest batch of messages didn’t fit the established pattern.

goldenLeaf (Ye Qiu): Annoying brother I haven’t heard from you in ages, are you dead?

goldenLeaf (Ye Qiu): If you’re still alive then come get lunch with me

goldenLeaf (Ye Qiu): I’m in City H next week

“You haven’t seen him in person since you left, have you? Even though I can tell you want to.”

Here Su Mucheng hesitated for a second before continuing, “We could all go out for lunch together, I’d like to meet him.”

Ye Xiu tossed her an aggravated look and promptly minimised the chat window so he could start moving through the dungeon again. To anyone else, it would have seemed like Ye Xiu was finished with the conversation, but Su Mucheng knew better. She waited patiently until Ye Xiu spoke again.

“If our parents were dead, Ye Qiu would have already shown up on my doorstep. But he isn’t here yet, so I know they’re fine. It’s nothing important, he just wants to try and get me to go home again.”

Su Mucheng didn’t miss Ye Xiu’s usage of the word ‘home’. Even after so many years, he still thought of City B as his home. For him, Excellent Era was just a short pitstop before he returned home.

He had been famously reticent about his family and heritage to everyone else, but Su Mucheng was practically his younger sister and that made her Ye Qiu’s sibling as well. It may have seemed like a tenuous connection, but it was enough to give her a fairly good understanding of Ye Qiu.

Ye Xiu seemed to believe that his twin had sent those messages either out of boredom, or just to aggravate him, but Su Mucheng didn’t think that Ye Qiu would break their unspoken agreement to remain apart without good reason. Besides, Ye Xiu’s position in Excellent Era was the furthest thing from a secret, and Excellent Era’s headquarters location was a matter of public record; if Ye Qiu had wanted to drag his brother back to the family, he could have found him within a minute flat.

“I think he misses you.”

Ye Qiu stared at Ye Xiu with suspicion.

Su Mucheng stared at Ye Qiu with curiosity.

Ye Xiu stared at his pack of cigarettes and wished that he could smoke in the restaurant without being chewed out for it by his lunch companions.

Out of the three of them, one’s metaphorical hackles were raised as he bristled with palpable nervousness like an irritated cat with its fur standing on end. One was poised and still like an elegant marble statue. One was slumped so sloppily in his chair that he would have oozed all over the floor if he had become any more boneless.

This odd tableau held until Su Mucheng masterfully demonstrated that her title of Glory’s Greatest Launcher was well earned, and that Glory skills were indeed transferable to the real world. She made the first move by launching into conversation with explosive ease, pleasant chatter bridging the gap between her and Ye Qiu with the precision of a heat-seeking missile, knocking down the awkwardness between them like a cannonball.

By the end of the meal, Ye Qiu was in an exponentially better mood as he exchanged embarrassing stories about his brother with Su Mucheng. The two left the restaurant laughing so uproariously that they had to hold onto each other for balance.

“I can’t believe that someone proposed to my useless brother”, Ye Qiu wheezed.

“Haha so since Ye Xiu never shows himself, they couldn’t even ask him directly. He jumped out of the crowd and ran up the stage to kneel in front of our vice-captain and asked him to pass on the message. He had started reciting love poetry before security managed to tackle him and carry him away.” Su Mucheng gleefully shared this story with Ye Qiu, delighted to have found someone she could gossip about Ye Xiu with.                                                                      

Ye Qiu was overcome with breathless laughter but eventually he managed to lock everything away under his perfectly self-possessed businessman mask.

“Anyway, we should stay in contact. I need to know if you end up dead in a ditch somewhere because then you can’t take over the company.”

“Aww I knew you cared”, Ye Xiu cooed mockingly, even as Ye Qiu scoffed and half-heartedly tried to kick him, which was their way of saying goodbye to each other. Ye Qiu then smiled pleasantly at Su Mucheng and waved politely at her before leaving.

But precisely one week went by and Ye Xiu appeared to have forgotten that the meeting ever happened, remaining as resolutely radio silent as ever, even as his pile of unread messages grew bigger. Ye Qiu had tried resolving the situation nicely, and he had tried resolving it peacefully, but Ye Xiu hadn’t responded though and so he could only take things into his own hands. Given that the only self-imposed constraint Ye Qiu had to abide by was to stay anonymous, there were a lot of ways that he could complete his quest to install Ye Xiu back into his life.

After all, his brother had (implicitly) promised to stay in touch this time round. For years and decades after, until the end of his days, Ye Qiu would insist that his annoying older brother was the one at fault here and who started everything that came after. Ye Xiu of course, insisted on the complete opposite.

Everyone else just grabbed their popcorn.

Right after Season 3, when Feng Xianjun first took over the position of Chairman of the Glory Professional Alliance, he had been innocent and full of hope. His predecessor had stared at him with dead eyes and mumbled something about that “unmarketable infuriating brat Ye Qiu” during their handover meeting, but he’d brushed it off with bright shining optimism at establishing a new era of growth for the Alliance. Of course, soon enough, he started mirroring his predecessor’s hopelessness after failure upon failure to establish a popular face of the Alliance.

But there was a brief shining time at the beginning where he had plans for all sorts of initiatives to increase the popularity of Glory, and one of them was starting the practice of pro player live-streaming over the off-season. Fans got to interact with their favourite pros, pros got extra opportunities to improve their profiles, clubs got more publicity for their team; everyone was happy.

These live-streams had even gotten so popular over the next few years that a non-Glory fan like Ye Qiu had heard of them, and he jumped onto this virtual stage with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop.

The first time it happened was on Zhang Jiale’s stream. He was a fan favourite when it came to streaming because he neither spoke too much nor too little and was always up for taking requests that viewers shouted in the chat in the most impressive way possible.

In contrast, many of his fellow pros didn’t quite get the hang of streaming. Zhang Xinjie once infamously manoeuvred his smurf onto a rocky ledge in a masterful show of skill in the first few seconds of entering the dungeon. But then he stopped there for 20 minutes while he explained what he did, how he did it, why he did it, and all his possible alternative actions. By the time he finished talking, his viewer count had dropped by at least a quarter, and he never figured out why people didn’t appreciate him helpfully explaining everything with painstaking detail.

And then there was Zhou Zekai, who once tried to advertise a new mouse but only said one word “feet” at the start of his stream and didn’t speak for the rest of it. He sent his fans into such a frenzy trying to figure out what he meant that no one noticed the mouse. He wanted to say, “look carefully at the character’s feet to see how the movement skills chain together very smoothly because of my new mouse” but got stuck so he only said one—very confusing—word before he gave up. Feng Xianjun cried a little when he heard about that mess and the sponsoring company wasn’t pleased either. Since then, Zhou Zekai and Jiang Botao did all their streams together.

But back in Zhang Jiale’s stream this evening, when it happened, he wouldn’t have even noticed it amongst the flood of all the other messages in the chat if it hadn’t been for the price tag attached to it.

goldenLeaf: + Gift ¥10,000! Tell EE’s captain he’s so annoying

Zhang Jiale was internally screaming in confusion about why a stranger would give him so much money just to complain about Old Ye. But as a professional he had dealt with a lot of weirdos online and in the end had simply laughed dryly and promised to pass on the message, before continuing with the dungeon.

He kept an eye on the chat but apart from his regular fans yelling about this mysterious sponsor who had now gone silent, there was nothing unusual, and soon enough everyone put it out of their minds, thinking it was probably just a Tyranny fan and God Ye hater making a nuisance of themselves.

The second time that it happened, it was with no less drama than the first time.

It was on Yu Wenzhou’s stream this time. Zhang Jiale had briefly mentioned some crazy kid throwing money around on the pro player group chat, but Yu Wenzhou hadn’t paid much attention. Even when it happened on his stream, he didn’t connect the dots until afterwards. He had brushed off the commotion and continued his dungeon run while his chat roiled in excitement underneath.

Some people had heard of what had happened in Zhang Jiale’s stream and there was even one person in the chat who had been watching live when the incident happened. For a few minutes, they were catapulted into the spotlight and regaled everyone with an embellished version of events but soon enough the fervour faded, and everyone shifted their focus back to Yu Wenzhou. After all, the popularity of Glory was great enough that such keyboard warriors with mighty wallets weren’t a scarcity anymore, so while what had happened was certainly unusual, it definitely wasn’t an impossibility.

But then it happened again. And then again. And again.

goldenLeaf: + Gift ¥10,000! Tell EE’s captain he’s so annoying

goldenLeaf: + Gift ¥10,000! Tell EE’s captain he’s so annoying

goldenLeaf: + Gift ¥10,000! Tell EE’s captain he’s so annoying

Ye Qiu did all of this within the span of days, so the excitement didn’t have a chance to calm down before it built back up again into a fervour that engulfed all of Glory. Once was barely worth mentioning, twice was kind of interesting, but now? This was gossip worthy.

People noticed quickly that whoever was doing this always refused to address God Ye by name, and there were wild conspiracy theories about this. On Ye Qiu’s part, he was busy furiously cursing at his brother and grinding his teeth. He refused to use his own stolen name that everyone knew his brother by, but using his brother’s real name would be revealing too much and calling him by such a respectful title like Captain Ye or God Ye left a bad taste in his mouth, so he could only say something like “EE’s captain”.

When it happened on Han Wenqing’s stream, people were ready. This mysterious God Ye hater had been fairly regular over the past few days and a huge crowd showed up at each live stream in anticipation of his appearance.

And everyone was especially on alert when it came to Han Wenqing’s stream. The legions of Tyranny fans had practically reached boiling point and wanted to see their captain smack down this attention-seeking idiot. Or maybe they hoped that the idiot would turn out to be a fellow Tyranny fan and they could bond over their shared hatred of their eternal nemesis. They didn’t really care what happened as long as it was interesting, so they arrived in droves and settled down to wait for the fireworks.

goldenLeaf: + Gift ¥10,000! Tell EE’s captain he’s so annoying

“Who are you?” Han Wenqing asked, when the now familiar message arrived. “What is the point of this?”

He was the first player to directly confront goldenLeaf and press the issue, even stopping his character entirely, his brawler standing stock still as the entire chat held their breath in anticipation of the reply. The other pros certainly asked questions and hypothesized along with their audiences about what was happening, but no one had tried to force an answer before. In the camera view, Han Wenqing’s expression was intense, and it felt like the sun would die and the stars would dim before he relented and let this moment slip by. Relentless as always. He was never one to step back from any sort of confrontation.

Ye Qiu had been enjoying the mess he was causing for his brother while he himself was sheltered by the veil of anonymity, but he now felt a hit of real fear. His fingers trembled above the “Gift” button again, almost as if they were drawn towards tossing his money at Han Wenqing again. He didn’t manage to restrain himself in time and accidentally hit the button. Han Wenqing’s wallet face aggro drawing skills were just too strong. Ye Qiu didn’t even meet him in person, and he was still susceptible to the attack.

As the chat erupted again about the new gift, Ye Qiu ran away quickly, embarrassed about the slip. Who knew a gamer could be so intimidating?

Ultimately even the great Han Wenqing failed to provoke a response after that and when it became clear that he wasn’t getting a reply, he somehow managed to resume his gameplay without seeming like he had conceded.

Luck was not on Ye Qiu’s side though, because the next live stream he stumbled across belonged to Huang Shaotian.

During Huang Shaotian’s streams, he was in the habit of rambling on in his customary long-winded and brain-melting style while his Blade Master ran around in a dungeon. To the untrained, listening to Huang Shaotian made them lose braincells. The effect was like if a person left their character sitting defenceless in a beginner’s levelling area while being attacked by a Level One slime.

-1

-1

-1

The damage of each attack was low, but the health bar slowly sapped away over time. And it was even more painful when they came back and realised that of all things, they had been killed off by a slime.

This may have been the feeling of the general population, but Huang Shaotian’s fans were a special hardy breed of Glory players who all had some special trash talking powers of their own and tried their best to emulate their god. As a result, his stream chat was always extremely chaotic, with him and his armada of fans all talking about 10 different topics all at once.

Today he was telling his stream about how he needed to go grocery shopping later and was listing items that he wanted to buy. This was liberally interspersed with game discussion and chanting random attack names that didn’t match up to the attacks he was actually using. Anyone who glanced at the chat found that Huang Shaotian was also spamming that— he once claimed he was practising his hand speed—with more or less the same nonsense.

The overall effect was something like this:

“Triple slash! Upwards slash! Turnips! Pocky! Beef-flavoured instant noodles! I think I need more toothpaste as well! Someone remind me to get some later, okay? Formless phantom blade! Hahaha these monsters can’t do anything with me here! Usually I prefer the seafood flavour but this week I really feel like the beef one and I’ll even put an egg into it for extra deliciousness—YES YES YES—take that you idiot vampire!”

MoonlitRiver: Wow! Was that a z-shake? Did our family’s Huang Shao just pull off a z-shake?!?!

BabblingBrook: Too strong!!!

TsunamiWave: God, what brand toothpaste do you use?

RisingTide: I want to know too!!!

HuangShaotian: There’s an activated charcoal toothpaste I want to try

HuangShaotian: Oh shit shit shit where did that arrow come from??? Who dares shoot at me?

HuangShaotian: And captain made me eat so much okra at lunch today

HuangShaotian: Because he said I had been so unhealthy recently

HuangShaotian: One wave rush let’s go!!!

HuangShaotian: But how does he even know what I’m snacking on?

HuangShaotian: Is he going through my trash like a raccoon???

AnnoyingDrizzle: (sweatdrops)

CalmSkies: (sweatdrops) +1

StormClouds: (sweatdrops) +2

“HEY why’s everyone sweatdropping at me? Here I am working my butt off to entertain you lot with this crazy solo dungeon run and I’m even telling you fun stories about my day and you’re so ungrateful! Slash! Slash! Slash! Iced green tea! Spicy tofu!”

People sometimes wondered how Huang Shaotian didn’t take psychic damage from his own trashtalk, but it was like asking why garbage didn’t poison a vat of toxic waste. It was simply impossible, and it only created more toxic waste.

Anyway, it was in the middle of this toxic waste landscape that Ye Qiu showed up.

goldenLeaf: + Gift ¥10,000! Tell EE’s captain he’s so annoying

Huang Shaotian exploded when he received the notification ping for the gift and saw the note.

“What the hell? What the hell? Do I look like Old Ye’s secretary? Do I? Do I? Do I? Who are you? Are you a creepy stalker? No one can tell this Sword Saint what to do! Unless you’re captain, I guess. But captain would never be this creepy and tell me to talk to Old Ye like this. Also captain would never throw around that much money… Unless I don’t know him as well as I think I do, and you are captain? Captain why have you become this creepy? You’re going to scare off Old Ye if you keep going like this—”

goldenLeaf: I’m not your captain

If Ye Qiu had been hoping that his message would stem the tide of verbal diarrhoea being flung at him, he was sorely mistaken. All he managed to do was invite another flood of trashtalk.

goldenLeaf: … just tell him to reply to his messages

Huang Shaotian even managed to get a third message out of Ye Qiu, which really was a demonstration of his skills. He might give the impression of being loud and careless, but it hid a mind as tenacious as a bloodhound underneath. But afterwards, no matter how much he coaxed and begged and shouted, he couldn’t elicit any more responses because Ye Qiu had run away after realising that he couldn’t possibly out-argue this guy.

TroublingRain (Huang Shaotian): Okay okay okay I can see everyone’s online even though you’re all so shamelessly being silent!!!! I know everyone wants to talk about it so I’ll start because I’m the best and you sheep would all be lost without my awesome leadership. What’s happening with Old Ye’s weird hater???? The goldenLeaf person??? Fuck how does he have this much money to throw around? Everyone share everything you know about him and then captain can put all the pieces together and figure out what’s happening. I’ll start, this guy is rich as hell and apparently has been messaging Old Ye??? But then when I asked Old Ye about it, he just said it was someone who was annoying like me. SO RUDE!!!

Vaccaria (Wang Jiexi): He’s not wrong

TroublingRain (Huang Shaotian): you!!!!! Be quiet!!!!

DazzlingHundredBlossoms (Zhang Jiale): wow the irony of Huang Shaotian telling someone else to be quiet

DoubtfulDemon (Fang Rui): the irony +1

Vaccaria (Wang Jiexi): the irony +2

CryingDevil (Li Xuan): the irony +3

TroublingRain (Huang Shaotian): fight me fight me fight me

Vaccaria (Wang Jiexi): maybe he’d tell you more if he liked you better

Vaccaria (Wang Jiexi): he told me that he’s known them since childhood

ImmovableRock (Zhang Xinjie): I heard from @FangRui who heard from @LiXuan who heard from @ChuYunxiu who heard from @SuMucheng that “Ye Xiu has a fun rivalry thing going on with goldenLeaf”

WindyRain (Chu Yunxiu): hey who called me

WindyRain (Chu Yunxiu): finished backreading, what I want to know is who thinks Old Ye is worth spending THIS much money on!

DoubtfulDemon (Fang Rui): if I stopped showing my face like Old Ye, do you think I could get my fans to drop this much money on me?

CarvedGhost (Wu Yuce): Nah if you did that you’d lose all your fans and get fined a fortune for breaking your sponsorship commitments and then you’d probably get kicked out of your club and banned from playing Glory forever :)

DoubtfulDemon (FangRui): :(

CloudPiercer (Zhou Zekai): ?

EmptyWaves (Jiang Botao): no Captain don’t do that! Samsara would go bankrupt within the week if we stopped using your face to make money!

CloudPiercer (Zhou Zekai): :(

DazzlingHundredBlossoms (Zhang Jiale): I asked him about it too and he just laughed and told me to enjoy the money

CryingDevil (Li Xuan): when I asked he said it was some shameless kid

DazzlingHundredBlossoms (Zhang Jiale): wait you guys know who’s the most shameless person ever?

TroublingRain (Huang Shaotian): ??????

DazzlingHundredBlossoms (Zhang Jiale): Ye Xiu

DazzlingHundredBlossoms (Zhang Jiale): What if this is just one of his evil plots!?!?

TroublingRain (Huang Shaotian): He could be trying to distract us so he can steal a bunch of wild bosses while we’re all sat here arguing about him!!!!!!!!

CarvedGhost (Wu Yuce): He wouldn’t do that… oh wait actually he would.

DoubtfulDemon (Fang Rui): he would

CloudPiercer (Zhou Zekai): yes

LifeExtinguisher (Xiao Shiqin): that would fit his character…

The pro players were blessed with boundless intellectual curiosity and a detail-oriented mindset that gave them the edge to succeed in such a competitive environment. Or in other words, they were nosy as hell and gossiped worse than a bunch of old fishwives. So with this tasty morsel of gossip dangling in front of them, they obviously began to pick it apart with great gusto.

They had an inside joke that the world could end without Zhang Xinjie changing his schedule, because undoubtedly, he would already have blocked out a slot for it. So it spoke volumes of the sheer chaos when Zhang Xinjie unexpectedly spent that evening trawling through live stream chat logs. He was trying to calculate the probability of this being a new scheme set up by Ye Xiu to distract everyone while he snapped up wild bosses for EE’s silver weapon development.

The cost benefit analysis of spending that much money vs. the slight edge from the guilds potentially being distracted was all skewed up by the Ye Xiu shameless factor and the Ye Xiu chaos coefficient. Zhang Xinjie eventually gave it up as a bad job and went to bed early.

With so many pro players equipped with hand speeds leagues above ordinary mortals, the chat moved at a million miles per second. In the blink of an eye, Ye Xiu had been summoned by half a dozen different people. In another blink of the eye, everyone gave up on getting a response from this guy who never used social media and they summoned Su Mucheng instead for questioning.

Su Mucheng appeared immediately, clearly having been following the chat and easily admitted to having some insider knowledge about the situation. There was soon heated discourse about how reliable her information was and whether she would say such things because she wanted to enjoy the clamour of everyone begging her for news, or whether she didn’t actually know anything and was just bluffing, or perhaps she was double bluffing, or even triple bluffing.

While Su Mucheng was whipping the pros into an even greater frenzy, Ye Xiu was preoccupied with his own conversations.

YeXiu: *sigh* Little brother you’re so annoying, what did I ever do to you?

YeQiu: WHAT DID YOU EVER DO TO ME???

YeQiu: I mean apart from running away from home with all of my stuff, do you not remember ignoring my messages for the past few weeks???

YeQiu: AGAIN!!!

YeQiu: but if you come home now I’ll stop

YeXiu: no

YeQiu: then I’ll keep going

YeXiu: If you don’t stop I’ll make life annoying for you

YeQiu: pfft as if you could

Chapter Text

When Ye Qiu arrived at work on Monday morning, he didn’t have any particular expectations for how his day would go. However, if pressed, he would probably have said something along the lines of, arrive at the Ye Tower, make small talk with his colleagues about the weather, what they thought of last Saturday’s GPA matches, what they did over the weekend. Then he would get caught up in countless meetings and never-ending paperwork, until he could finally go home, rolling his eyes at the Glory related posts on his social media feed and the Glory related adverts on billboards throughout the city.

What actually happened was that he arrived at the Ye Tower and promptly dropped his phone in shock.

As he walked into the building, he saw the 10m long floor to ceiling banners of that season’s All-Star characters hung proudly against the marbled walls of the lobby, while cardboard cut-outs of All-Star players were dotted around the reception area. As he hurried through the corridors, he noticed that all the office TVs were showing clips of the Glory victory sequence in between news items and that there were pro player body pillows on all of the sofas in the communal areas.

A lot of his employees were dressed up in team jerseys and chattering excitedly. A couple of them waved at him as he passed by and called out “this is a great Mr. Ye, you should host more Glory themed events in the future!”.

Ye Qiu had no idea what they were talking about, so he only smiled and nodded as he rushed away but he was beginning to have some suspicions. He might be the director of strategy in the Ye family business, but he knew one person who could have sneakily managed something like this under his nose.

Even when he reached the safety of his office, he found that he still wasn’t free from the Glory-themed explosion that had happened overnight. He stared grimly at all the pro team logos mocking him up across the glass walls of his office and the character figurines lined up on his desk.

In the past, Ye Qiu may have made a lot of noise about how much he wasn’t interested in e-sports, but he secretly paid very close attention. The effects could be seen around the workplace, even though Ye Qiu would insist that they had nothing to do with him. Just as there were table tennis tables in the communal spaces, there were Glory readers on every desk for people to enjoy some casual gaming during their lunch breaks.

Every year, groups of employees formed teams to compete in the Challenger League and their matches were even broadcast on the office TVs in a show of company spirit. There was actually quite a bit of rivalry between them and the teams from other companies in their industry who also participated in the competition.

Inevitably this led to the formation of an annual inter-company Glory tournament, which was in the spirit of industry-wide co-operation and networking opportunities, and whatever other buzzwords the organisers like stamping all over the event fliers. In reality it was just an excuse for people to leave work early, make fun of their work friends whenever they lost a match, and have some drinks.

So even though Ye Qiu had allowed Glory to infiltrate his life and work, this was beyond the level he was equipped to handle. He decided that he was going to strangle his brother the next time he saw him—no, that wasn’t quite right. He was going to shove him off a cliff. Or a tall building. He wasn’t picky.

Ye Qiu was interrupted from his homicidal musings when his assistant arrived, and then he was unceremoniously thrown into the next catastrophe.

“Mr. Ye, your delivery of Team Samsara merch has arrived. We’re setting up the stalls in the canteen so everyone can grab them when they go down for lunch today. You’ll need to record a voice message thanking everyone for participating in this Glory event, and we’ll circulate it internally before the end of the day.”

“What?” Ye Qiu had so many questions.

“The draft of your speech has already been prepared and approved by all the stakeholders. Take a look now and see if you want to change anything. And the marketing department have compiled a series of Zhou Zekai birthday posts for the company Weibo which will tie into the company’s Glory event.”

“What???” Ye Qiu had even more questions now.

“If the response is positive then Samsara’s management team will give us the go ahead to launch the limited-edition Cloud Piercer product line to capitalize on our current publicity. We’re already trending on Weibo, so they want to keep the momentum going.”

“…” Ye Qiu.exe had stopped working. Preparing for system shut down.

Ye Qiu only crawled out of his daze when a videocall notification popped up on his computer screen and he saw that his bosses were calling. They were the last people he wanted to speak to, but he knew he couldn’t dodge this forever.

“Good morning, mother, father—"

“Hello?” Ye Xiu’s words were slightly muffled by the cigarette dangling lazily between his lips.

“YOU SHAMELESS BASTARD, WHY DOES EVERYONE AT MY COMPANY THINK I HAVE A CRUSH ON ZHOU ZEKAI NOW?” Ye Qiu’s dulcet tones rang through Ye Xiu’s headset so loudly that Su Mucheng, who was sitting next to him, looked over in interest.

“Well he is Glory’s most handsome, so at least you have good taste little brother”, Ye Xiu replied, his lazy tone contrasting with the incendiary nature of his words, as he obligingly changed the audio settings of the call to play on his computer speakers so Su Mucheng could listen in more easily.

“MY ASSISTANT KEEPS TRYING TO START CONVERSATIONS WITH ME ABOUT HOW BEAUTIFUL HIS EYES ARE. WHAT DID YOU DO? THIS IS PAYBACK FOR THE LIVE-STREAM STUFF ISN’T IT?”

“Ahh this is no good Ye Qiu, you shouldn’t accuse me of things with no evidence. You might hurt my feelings”, Ye Xiu demurred, playing innocent even though he knew exactly what Ye Qiu was talking about and Ye Qiu knew that he knew exactly what was happening.

“AND WHY IS THE COMPANY TRENDING? OUR PARENTS ARE SO PROUD OF MY ‘INNOVATION AND BUSINESS ACUMEN’ AND GETTING ‘A FOOTHOLD INTO THE LUCRATIVE ESPORTS INDUSTRY’. I TRIED TO TELL THEM THIS WAS ALL YOUR WORK SO THEY SHOULD MAKE YOU COME HOME TO BECOME OUR HEAD OF PUBLICITY. BUT NOW THEY THINK THAT ESPORTS WASN’T A HUGE WASTE OF TIME AND YOU SHOULD STAY THERE FOR LONGER. ASSHOLE COME HOME RIGHT NOW SO I CAN SCREAM AT YOU IN PERSON.”

Ye Qiu was on a roll now but even he had to breathe, and Ye Xiu quickly cut in when there was a momentary pause, giving up on his innocent pretence as curiosity won out.

“Oh? Our parents found out?”

“THEY FOUND OUT THIS MORNING WHEN OUR DUMBASS MEDIA DEPARTMENT DID THAT PUBLICITY STUNT AND POSTED SOME BULLSHIT STORY ABOUT HOW I WAS ZHOU ZEKAI’S NO.1 FAN AND WANTED TO CELEBRATE HIS BIRTHDAY IN STYLE. WHY ARE A BUNCH OF TEAMS APPROACHING US FOR COLLABORATION? MOTHER AND FATHER ARE SO IMPRESSED THEY EVEN SAID THEY WERE CONSIDERING LEAVING ME IN CHARGE OF THE COMPANY. I REFUSE TO DO THIS.”

“Tut tut tut you would turn down such a promising opportunity just because of your own personal biases? How immature little brother, you still have a long way to go”, Ye Xiu taunted, delighted by this development.

His brother had become so respectable and admired by everyone in the company, even their parents were starting to see the merits of having Ye Qiu as the heir. And separate from that, this was his revenge on the little brat for all of the goldenLeaf live-stream chaos. It was wonderful when all his plans aligned, and everything went according to expectation.

“YOU IDIOT I KNOW YOU DID THIS ON PURPOSE, HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME SO SUCCESSFUL? COME BACK RIGHT NOW IT’S MY TURN TO RUN AWAY NOW.”

“How about you consider this my birthday present to you?” Ye Xiu asked, insufferably smug.

“NO THANK YOU. AND MY BIRTHDAY IS 9 MONTHS AWAY???”

“Ah I forgot.”

“WE HAVE THE SAME BIRTHDAY WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU FORGOT?”

“Anyway this wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t started that mess with the live-streams… It was so troublesome. You caused such a big wave that club management started interrogating me about it and I had to make up all sorts of excuses. And then all of the pros kept pestering me about it and even reporters were asking my teammates about it in the post-match conferences, and they came to annoy me about it”, Ye Xiu sighed disapprovingly.

He was shameless enough to make it sound as if Ye Qiu had caused him some life-destroying misfortune instead of the very mild inconvenience that he had actually been subjected to. In fact, in Ye Xiu’s daily life, he drew more aggro just by existing and breathing, than all of Ye Qiu’s concentrated efforts managed over the past few weeks.

“YOU STARTED IT.”

“Oh no I think the line’s breaking up. My signal isn’t very good, I can’t hear you.”

“DON’T YOU DARE HANG UP—”

One month earlier.

Since Su Mucheng had plans to go to City B for a few days for some sponsorship commitments, it made perfect sense for Ye Xiu to quietly tag along with her. And then when she invited Ye Qiu out for lunch with the excuse that she was in town and wanted to catch up, no one noticed when Ye Xiu slipped off for a few hours.

Otherwise if anyone had seen him, they definitely would have wondered if they were hallucinating. Ye Xiu had washed his face, brushed his hair properly and was even wearing a well-fitting suit with matching dress shoes. It was so out of character that people would have immediately assumed that he had been kidnapped and replaced by an alien, or was being threatened by the mafia, or had amnesia, or any other reasonable explanation like that.

It had been many years since Ye Xiu was last there, but he still confidently waltzed into the architectural monstrosity that was the Ye corporation headquarters in City B. He thought back to the arguments he and Ye Qiu used to have as children about it—what do you mean eyesore? It’s stylish and elegant, Ye Qiu had insisted. Ah, you really have no class, Ye Xiu had sighed, and then all conversation broke down into angry squawking and a flurry of flailing fists.

Just as he remembered, there were a row of entry turnstiles in the lobby each guarded by a biometric scanner, restricting access to the rest of the building, with busy employees swiping in and out as they rushed about. Ye Xiu didn’t bother with them, despite knowing that his fingerprints would definitely be registered in the system. After all, it would send all sorts of pesky alarms off to people he didn’t want knowing about his presence if he did that. But if he calculated things correctly, as he ambled through the lobby then—yes, just like that—one of the security guards on duty jumped to attention and politely tapped him through with a smile and a nod.  

From there, it wasn’t hard to find Ye Qiu’s office. After all, it would obviously be on the top floor, and he had seen more than enough good morning posts on Weibo with photos of the sunrise from that office window (yes unfortunately his brother was one of those people) to figure out the general direction. And the pretentious gilded characters on the office door told him the rest.

As he sat himself down at the desk and booted up the computer, an unnameable feeling washed over him. It was strange to think this could have been his desk and his office and his life. He had made a decision almost ten years ago and he went west while this life went east, and their paths diverged. But this was not the time to contemplate such things and he forcibly turned his mind back to the login screen.

Ye Xiu was sure that his little brother had graduated to a stage of computer literacy beyond using “password” as his password, or even “password123”. It’d be far too shameful if a director of a tech company didn’t even know that much; his IT department would have murdered him long ago.

What kind of person had his brother become, and what kind of password would he set, Ye Xiu wondered as he surreptitiously rooted through all the desk drawers, hoping for a convenient sticky note with the answer to his questions. When that didn’t rustle up anything useful, he started to try out random passwords. This was a lot harder than all the detective movies made it look, but Ye Xiu had one final trump card in his hand if this didn’t work. He would shamelessly use his face as his fast pass ticket to con his brother’s employees into helping him.

But aha! That was the password? It was a good thing that Ye Qiu had not changed since he was fifteen except for becoming slightly louder, as denoted by the exclamation mark at the end of his teenaged self’s password.

Time to get to work.

Most of what Ye Qiu said was filtered out by Ye Xiu, since it was mostly half-hearted scolding about running away and how it was Ye Qiu’s turn to leave now. Ye Xiu’s brain had even formed a special high-speed direct rail between his left and right ears to send Ye Qiu’s words whooshing straight out the other side.

One day the high-speed rail had been undergoing maintenance work, probably due to signalling issues or staff shortages, so there was one thing his brother said that managed to stick around in his brain: the Ye Corp had lofty ambitions for the cutting-edge hologram technology they had spent the past few years developing but they were struggling to reel in a big client to partner with them.

The company had approached a couple of film and music industry titans but so far, the response had been lukewarm. Everyone had been too cautious to invest in something big like this and they all adopted a wait and see attitude, wanting to see someone else take the risk of investing in hologram tech before they committed themselves.

Ye Xiu may not have been lauded for being the number one opportunist in the Pro Alliance, but he could still sense the golden opportunity that glimmered here. He knew that the GPA had big plans for revolutionising the audience experience at their live matches, while the Ye Corp had big plans for their hologram tech. Even if the participants didn’t know it yet, this was a match made in heaven.

It was the work of a few clever emails that nudged the two organisations into each other’s line of sight, and the rest, as they say, was history. After all, only the GPA was bold and crazy enough to try something completely new like holographic live matches, while only the Ye Corp had the technical ability to do something that would make such a big splash in the e-sports industry. Ye Xiu was sure that sooner or later the two would have found each other, so he just hurried the process along a little. That it helped him with his personal agenda was just the cherry on the cake.

Ye Xiu finished his task quickly, knowing that his emails would soon be buried in the endless flood of correspondence Ye Qiu received on a daily basis.

The trouble only began when he tried to leave and got off the elevator on the wrong floor. Next thing he knew, he was stuck in a conversation with a group of employees lingering in one of the communal areas on their lunch breaks. He could only be grateful that there were a few thousand people working at the Ye headquarters, so he wasn’t expected to recognise the vast majority of them. Everyone wanted to chat with their boss though and when every other sentence was directed at him, Ye Xiu couldn’t escape easily.

These days, Glory was a good conversation starter. Even in the most awkward situation, someone could say “hey bro did you see the match last week?” and suddenly everyone would be chatting away about their favourite teams and players, and gossiping about training camps and transfers like they had known each other for 10 years. Ye Xiu wasn’t sure exactly who moved the conversation onto the topic of Glory, but he was sure that he must have done something terrible to them in a past life.

The conversation was so lively that he got sucked back in every time he tried to leave, and he needed to escape before Ye Qiu came back from lunch. He was confident in being able to talk himself out of most things, but trying to pass himself off as Ye Qiu when the real Ye Qiu showed up was pushing the limits of even his skill.

Ye Xiu was racking his brains for escape ideas but couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t shameless and didn’t involve annoying everyone into leaving him alone. He hoped his brother appreciated the effort he had put in to not damage his reputation at work.

“Mr. Ye, I’d love to hear your thoughts about any future product lines you’re considering.”

Ah and everyone was looking at him again. His life was so hard even though he tried to be so low-key, Ye Xiu thought mournfully. Everyone was always hanging onto his every word, he was always the centre of attention, and nobody wanted to leave him alone.

“Well, given the current explosive growth of e-sports, we should put something into the pipeline for Glory themed products. I was thinking of something along the lines of holographic projection merch of popular pro characters doing some high-level moves. That will impress a lot of Glory fans.”

Ye Xiu had randomly suggested this, so he didn’t expect the intense looks everyone suddenly started shooting each other and him.

“That’s… actually a really good idea.”

“Quick, is anyone from the marketing or sales divisions here? I want an opinion from those teams—"

“From an engineering perspective, we only need to make some minor tweaks to one of the current designs to make this viable—”

“If we draw up the draft proposal now, we could be doing client demonstrations as soon as next month—”

And everyone quickly dispersed, chattering excitedly. A few people were already on calls, shouting for people to join as they ran off. Ye Xiu took this opportunity to run off himself before someone decided that he need to join those calls as well.

(Next season, the first time Ye Xiu sees the One Autumn Leaf holographic figure doing Dragon Raises Its Head, he’s unbearably smug about it. Everyone thinks it’s because he’s proud that his character looks so impressive, and he doesn’t bother correcting them.)

Ye Xiu had been so close to reaching to the main doors that he could see the outside world before his hopes of escape were dashed again. Just as he was about to hurry out, two people walked in and made straight for him.

The elder of the pair greeted him with a friendly smile, “Well isn’t this Ye Qiu? It feels like I’ve blinked and you’ve already grown into such a capable young man in charge of your own department. Your parents told me that you were working here with them, thanks for coming down here to meet us.”

“Mr. Lou, it’s good to see you again”, Ye Xiu replied after a brief pause.

He remembered this uncle from his childhood, he was a family friend his parents had fallen out of touch with after he and his entire family had moved across the country. This uncle was visiting City B for the first time in who knew how many years and Ye Xiu had the misfortune to bump into him. And the other man was still talking.

“This is my son, do you still recognise each other? Haha I didn’t expect you to remember, both of you would have been very young the last time you played together. No worries, you can make friends again today. Come on, introduce yourself now”, Mr. Lou coaxed the surly teen at his side who looked like he wanted to sink into the floor.

“I’m Lou Guanning”, his son said and stopped talking after that.

“What a grumpy kid”, Mr. Lou laughed. “He’s feeling a bit shy, but I’m sure you two will get on well once you get to know each other. Ye Qiu, if you’re not too busy, how about you show Guanning around for a bit while I go up and see your parents?”

“Actually—”, Ye Xiu interjected before he was cut off again.

“That’s great, I appreciate this. Guanning play nicely with big brother Ye, I’ll come find you two later.”

And in a flash, he had disappeared into the lifts and left the two of them behind, cutting through Ye Xiu’s protests like rice paper, with the well-honed ease of a parent on a mission to drag their reluctant kid out to make more friends.

Ye Xiu was already running through ideas in his head to ditch the kid so that he could make his escape before Ye Qiu returned from lunch. Su Mucheng had been performing admirably up until now, but eventually Ye Qiu would get suspicious if she hung on to him for too long. They hadn’t reached a critical point yet, but Ye Xiu didn’t have the luxury of taking his time here.

“… So Lou Guanning, is there anything you want to do in particular?” Ye Xiu asked, subtly keeping one eye out to see if there was anyone nearby that he could pawn his unwanted charge off onto, but it seemed that luck had really abandoned him today.

“I don’t care. Dad just wanted me to meet you because he wanted me to stop spending so much time playing Glory and you’re meant to be a good influence on me.” Lou Guanning replied sullenly and was startled when this elicited a choked bark of laughter from Ye Xiu.

“There was something stuck in my throat”, Ye Xiu threw out this weak excuse while he was internally hysterically cackling. The real Ye Qiu might have been a nice responsible role model with a nice respectable job, but Ye Xiu was sure that he was more or less the opposite of everything Mr. Lou was looking for.

He just needed to hold back from corrupting the kid while he was distracted enough for Ye Xiu to slip out and Ye Qiu could come back to be a good influence with no one the wiser.

“Shall we go play some Glory then?”

“I want a rematch!”

“No way let’s go again!”

“I’m really gonna win this time!”

“Another!”

Lou Guanning had the potential to one day become a pro team captain and Berserker player who could stand at the peak of Glory, but right now he was just a cocky teenager who had run roughshod over all the casual players in the online game with his friends. Against a real opponent like Ye Xiu, he stood no chance.

“How did you beat me so easily?” Lou Guanning demanded.

“You have to promise to keep this secret, but I guess you could say I’m a hidden boss in Glory. You’ve reached a level where it’s probably not that fun anymore beating up noobs in the game. Have you considered becoming a pro player?” Ye Xiu suggested sagely, feeling like he was helping the next generation find their will of fire, or something noble like that.

“Everyone who plays Glory dreams of going pro, right? But it’s completely unrealistic… Besides, my dad would have a heart attack if I told him I wanted to give up school to play games.”

“Don’t say you’re going to play games all day, of course your dad isn’t going to be happy with that. You just need to frame it right. What you’ll actually be doing is building up an organisation composed of a professional team and support departments, which under your leadership would break into the e-sports industry and compete in a national level league. Doesn’t that would sound a lot better?”

Yx sounded as sleazy as a used car salesman, but Lou Guanning still stared up at him wide-eyed.

“You think I’m good enough to do it?”

“I’ve only known you for a short time so it’s hard to say, but I can already tell that you don’t not have the potential. What happens next is up to your own determination. Work hard kid, and maybe you can make it happen.”

“I’m not a kid! But I will work hard and you’ll see me on stage one day!”

“Haha I’m sure I’ll see you soon.” Ye Xiu said, and although even his hardened heart twitched a little at the thought of abandoning his enthusiastic new protegee, he still mercilessly staged a quick and speedy exit the moment Lou Guanning was distracted by someone else challenging him to new match. Encouraging the new generation was all well and good, but Su Mucheng had started sending him warning messages about his brother’s imminent return and his need to escape was becoming dire.

A couple of employees started gossiping as Ye Xiu left.

“Wow I didn’t realise our boss was so knowledgeable about Glory.”

“It’s impressive how well-rounded he is, it feels like he’s spent the past few years playing Glory professionally.”

“Haha that’s a crazy thought.”

“Haha yeah. Anyway let’s get back to work!”

Years later, when Lou Guanning met Ye Xiu in the Heavenly Domain, he’d think ‘Ye Qiu Ye Qiu ah this name sounds familiar.” Everyone else would laugh at him for forgetting about One Autumn Leaf and God Ye, but he was thinking of the Ye Qiu who he met on that day, who gave him the motivation and the strength to become a pro player.

Back to the present day.

Ye Qiu had felt a lot better after yelling at his brother and he was fairly hopeful that the publicity stunt would soon fade into the obscurity of corporate background noise.

This would just be a momentary annoying blip, and then it could return to normal, ignoring the elephant in the room that was his company’s burgeoning high-profile and high-stakes relationship with the GPA.

He had barely even formed that optimistic thought when he was proven wrong.

Ye Qiu had kept a low profile over the years, but even his best efforts couldn’t completely prevent the occasional photo of him in the background at some work event or conference escaping onto the internet and people were unearthing them now.

And then people unearthed blurry photos of a man looking like Ye Qiu sneaking around backstage at pro matches over the years and his social media exploded again, while the company’s public relations department was inundated with endless questions from reporters. No one was even remotely close to the truth but that didn’t stop the company shareholders and investors from trying to figure out Ye Qiu’s history with the GPA and how that would affect their collaboration.

Ye Qiu’s life used to be so quiet and peaceful before he decided to get back in contact with his brother. He rather regretted inviting all this chaos back into his life.

(He had endured an awful and lonely few years before he finally fixed it. Ye Qiu doesn’t regret anything.)

The thing is, once they’ve been set into motion, some things can’t be controlled. Like a stone tumbling down the side of a mountain, gaining momentum and picking up speed, nothing could stop it following the pull of gravity. The mess that the Ye twins kicked up was like that.

It started with Ye Qiu’s livestream madness, and then Ye Xiu raised the stakes with his GPA holographic technology collaboration craziness.

And it didn’t stop there.

During the Ye Corp’s quarterly earnings review, the financial department was delighted to announce that their revenue had jumped up by 10% and their share price had also similarly peaked. Business was thriving, employee turnover had fallen, everyone’s crops were watered, and their skin was clear, all improvements directly credited to Ye Qiu.

It made him roll his eyes so hard it was a miracle he didn’t develop eye strain.

On the other side of the coin, Ye Xiu was also facing some serious success. His popularity had soared after all the free publicity he had received from Ye Qiu’s live-stream antics, and to his dismay, he was winning the pro player popularity contest with an overwhelming majority. The club was raking in a fortune from the sales of his One Autumn Leaf holographic figures, which put EE management in a good mood, an almost impossible task.

Ye Xiu wanted to dig a hole and hide from everyone, especially upper management who kept disturbing his gaming to ask irritating questions about his recent boost in fame that he didn’t want to answer.

“I need revenge on that guy for making me go through all of this”, both twins thought about each other, and thus, the plotting started all over again.