"I'm starting to ship you two." Chi Li showed none of the embarrassment of being caught. Instead, he casually offered his approval.
The two most fake people in the room went all out when they put on an act together, losing themselves in their roles.
To some extent, they really were a good match.
Zhou Yang froze, then secretly rejoiced.
Sure enough... Chi Li was jealous.
"What are you talking about..." Xie Weishui looked shy and bashful. "Stop teasing us. Let's keep playing."
Fang Jin was the dealer for the second round.
Before the numbers had made it all the way around, the bomb went off at Gao Yuan's turn.
In the third round, Wei Xuan was the dealer, and Xie Weishui drank.
In the fourth round, it was Shen Xunye's turn to deal. He casually entered a number.
After it was shown, the guessing started with Chi Li. "19."
Shen Xunye's brow rose slightly. "...How did you guess it so accurately?"
Chi Li hadn't expected to get it in one guess either. He poured himself a drink and explained casually, "My age."
"So young." The corners of Shen Xunye's lips moved slightly.
Chi Li hadn't mentioned his age over the past few days, so this was his first time learning it too.
Nineteen... really was a reckless age.
"Mm..." Chi Li tipped his head back and drained his glass. "You should be marveling at my ability to pick one out of a hundred, not my age."
Shen Xunye chuckled. "Or perhaps we could marvel at how we're on the same wavelength?"
"That works too." Chi Li set down his glass and spun it a few times with his fingers.
"Oh my god, I'm starting to ship you two."
Watching the pair interact as though no one else were there, Gao Yuan voiced the same sentiment Chi Li had.
Strangely enough, seeing Xie Weishui engage in this sort of flirtatious interaction with someone made him feel as sick as if he'd swallowed a fly.
For a while, he'd thought he simply hated men selling a ship, but watching these two across from him interact... the words "good match" popped into his head for the first time.
Their looks matched, their heights matched, even the way they talked matched...
Meow, how could two men be such a good match!
"You'll ship anything. You must have some tough teeth," Zhou Yang sneered.
With him around, Chi Li could forget about getting flirty with another man.
"Right, right." Jiang Lele immediately chimed in. "You can't just ship people at random."
"..." Gao Yuan was speechless. "What a buzzkill."
Xie Weishui cut in at just the right moment. "Let's keep playing."
In the fifth round, Chi Li was the dealer.
After Gao Yuan and Jiang Lele had guessed, the range narrowed to between 39 and 98.
Brimming with confidence, Zhou Yang guessed a number. "91!"
He believed Chi Li must have put some thought into choosing his number.
And ninety-one was the number of days they had officially been dating.
"39 to 91." Chi Li had no idea what Zhou Yang was so excited about and announced the result coldly.
Unable to hide his disappointment, Zhou Yang ran through numbers representing their birthdays, ages, the date they'd started dating, and so on, but all of them were too small and had already been ruled out...
There were other numbers with special meanings. Could it be-
"52." Xie Weishui called out precisely the number on his mind.
Zhou Yang: "!"
Chi Li: "39 to 52."
Zhou Yang: "..."
No one noticed his private anticipation and disappointment.
The bomb went off when Fang Jin said "44."
Over the next three rounds, Jiang Lele, Zhou Yang, and Fang Jin drank in turn.
Shen Xunye and Wei Xuan were lucky enough not to hit a single mine.
"All right, it's getting late. How about we play one more game before calling it a night?" Xie Weishui kept a firm grip on the proceedings.
Chi Li had wanted to observe these people up close in the first place, so naturally, he had no objections.
And those who had already been here wouldn't embarrass Xie Weishui either.
The new game was simple. It was called "I have, you haven't."
Everyone held up five fingers, and each person named something that "only I've done, and none of you have." Anyone who hadn't done it folded down a finger.
The first person to fold down all five fingers had to drink three glasses. The second and third had to drink two, while the fourth through seventh had to drink one.
Going first offered an obvious advantage in this game, so for fairness, the ultimate winner of rock-paper-scissors would speak first.
"I'm over 1.9 meters tall." Shen Xunye won the first turn and immediately dealt everyone an indiscriminate blow.
"I feel like it wasn't just my finger that got bent, but my pride too..." Gao Yuan gave Shen Xunye a resentful look.
Jiang Lele teased with a laugh, "...I'm really curious whether the air you breathe at 190 centimeters is different from ours."
Zhou Yang curled his lip in displeasure. "What could be different? Even if you've never worn height-increasing shoes, haven't you stood on a stool?"
He was only 1.9 meters tall... only good-looking...
Shallow! Chi Li wouldn't care about those things!
Xie Weishui said, "I'll stand on a stool later and experience the air up there~"
"My turn." Chi Li ended their chatter. Taking inspiration from Shen Xunye, he launched another indiscriminate AOE attack. "I'm under twenty this year."
"You two have hurt me so deeply..." Gao Yuan folded down another finger and said weakly, "Being tall and young really is something, huh..."
Wei Xuan looked a little worried. "Am I going to lose before I even get a chance to speak...?"
Jiang Lele said, "At this rate, that's very possible."
"Gao Yuan, do me a favor and don't go so hard on us," Wei Xuan called out to Gao Yuan.
...Who wants to do you any favors?
Gao Yuan couldn't be bothered to respond and simply said, "I've confessed to someone and been rejected."
Most of the people sitting here were standouts among their peers, so few of them were likely to have confessed to someone and been rejected.
And besides... those who'd had the same experience might not be willing to admit it.
Gao Yuan was sure this attack would take down quite a few people.
What he hadn't expected was that, apart from himself, two others actually kept their fingers up.
Those two were Zhou Yang and Fang Jin.
[Hiss... my shipper brain is acting up. Have these two really confessed to Xie Weishui?]
[Fanfic material +1]
[↑Get help.]
"Now I'm really curious..." Jiang Lele's gaze moved between the two of them. "Under what circumstances were you rejected?"
A faint smile appeared on Zhou Yang's face. "Because he thought I was joking."
Jiang Lele said, "Oh, that sort of misunderstanding should be cleared up pretty quickly, right?"
The misunderstanding had indeed been cleared up quickly, but they hadn't gotten together until six months after that.
Still, their relationship wasn't something he could readily admit to.
Zhou Yang gave Chi Li an apologetic look. "It was cleared up, but there was no need to get together anymore."
"What kind of logic is that..." Wei Xuan couldn't resist commenting. "If it really happened the way you said, wasn't the real reason that he had no feelings for you but didn't want to hurt you, so he just found some excuse to turn you down?"
Zhou Yang hurriedly denied it. "Who are you? Who asked you to analyze it?"
"His analysis makes a lot of sense," Chi Li added lightly.
Back then, they had only known each other for three months when Zhou Yang had rushed to confess.
Chi Li had thought he was far too frivolous and rejected him.
Later, when Zhou Yang asked why he'd rejected him, he'd casually made up that excuse.