Chapter 87:
The regular season was finally over and the team rankings were already fixed. The playoffs adopted the bubble game system. As the regular season’s first team, Free’s semifinals game won’t be until half a month later. Zhou Huo and Old Qiao were feeling a rare sense of relief for once and gave everyone the night off.
When they got home that day, they didn’t need to do training and they could do whatever they wanted.
“Evil, are you okay? I saw you were sweating in the game just now.” They had just finished eating dinner and had gotten back at the base. Zhou Huo saw Shi Luo and felt a bit worried. “It’s pretty cold today and the wind was pretty chilly when we were waiting for the car. Won’t you catch a cold?”
“It’s okay.” Shi Luo said indifferently, “I haven’t caught a cold in years.”
Two hours later, Shi Luo touched his hot forehead. He thought long and hard but couldn’t figure it out. Everything was going fine. Why did he have to feed himself poisoned milk?
They’ve been training hard these past days. Zhou Huo said that he could clearly see that the players were all thinner. They finally got one day off from training and Zhou Huo wouldn’t allow them to stay cooped up playing games in the training room. He had already shoo-ed them all back to their dormitories. Shi Luo knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep and didn’t want to disturb Yu Sui while he caught up on sleep. And so, he didn’t allow Yu Sui to come to his room.
After washing up, Shi Luo lay on his bed, playing on his phone. The more he played, the more he felt uncomfortable. Shi Luo originally believed that he felt uncomfortable because he’d been too focused during today’s game that his muscles had been strained. When he was too focused on the game, he would overdraw his physical stamina. This sort of thing was not uncommon. After half an hour, Shi Luo realized that something wasn’t right. He touched his forehead, it was as hot as the computer motherboard.
Shi Luo put on his jacket, got up and went downstairs. In the living room on the first floor of the base, there was a small medicine box with almost all the commonly used medicines.
At the moment, all the team members were resting in their dorm rooms. The first floor was empty. Shi Luo found the small medicine box and sat on the sofa. He fished out a box of cold medicine. Shi Luo was struggling with his burning eyes. He tried his hardest to identify the expiration date. After confirming that it had not expired, he pushed out a pill and threw it in his mouth. He went to the kitchen and took a gla.s.s of water to swallow down the pill. As soon as he turned around, he saw Chen Huo standing in the dark. He had no idea how long he’d been standing there.
Shi Luo was taken aback, “What?”
“I was suddenly hungry… I ordered a takeaway. I’m waiting for the delivery.” Chen Huo looked Shi Luo up and down, “What are you hiding in your mouth? Are you sick? Did you really catch a cold?”
“I don’t have a cold…” Shi Luo drank a few more sips of water and said perfunctorily, “I’ve just got excessive internal heat. I just took some medicine for it. Don’t tell Yu Sui.”
“Why the h.e.l.l would I tell him about your excessive internal heat?” Chen Huo looked at Shi Luo, somewhat worried, “Why’d you even get excessive internal heat? You smoked too much?”
“En…” Shi Luo finished off his gla.s.s of water. “Don’t make a fuss. If Zhou Huo finds out, he going to fuss like a mother hen.”
Chen Huo nodded, “I know. I also ordered yogurt. Want it?”
Shi Luo shook his head, packed away the medicine box and went upstairs to his room.
Shi Luo wasn’t completely inexperienced in dealing with colds. He would take some cold medicine, drink a gla.s.s of water and sleep. Come the next day, he would be fine. It was just a one night matter, he didn’t want to worry Yu Sui about it. He went back to his dorm room, coc.o.o.ned himself in his quilt and while waiting for him to sweat it out, continued to play on his phone.
It’s been such a long time since he’s had a cold that when he suddenly started burning up, Shi Luo was also surprised.
Under the covers, Shi Luo looked through Weibo. The grouping for the playoffs each year was fixed according to their regular season rankings. The grouping had basically been determined after Free’s final regular season game. The official blogs of both Saint and NSN were quite courageous, exchanging messages to each other; feeding each other poisoned milk. Saint asked NSN to be merciful this time and NSN begged Saint to stop making new strategies this time. The official blogs of both side were already ‘crying grandfather‘ in advance and it made the atmosphere which quite joyous.
Shi Luo wanted to comment using his main account. But while the emperor stays calm, his eunuchs were teetering on the edge. He and Chen Huo had nearly mentally collapsed today.
Before the game, Shi Luo’s emotional state really wasn’t quite right; he’d been affected too much.
Since entering Free, Shi Luo has become more and more likely to empathize with others.
Every family goes through its problems.
Shi Luo wasn’t a believer in universal brotherhood and he was no angel either but after finding the road he was treading growing narrow, when he sees others approach edge of the cliff, he can’t help but want to scoop them out.
Not to mention that NSN really had helped him out back then.
Shi Luo has always remembered this kindness. So after Wawa joined the NSN, he paid particular attention to teaching Wawa. At that time, Wawa had just started playing professionally. He was very grateful to Shi Luo, this great G.o.d who though a team outsider was so very kind. Wawa, feeling restless, had once discussed with Gu Gan how to repay Shi Luo.
Gu Gan didn’t let Wawa do much. He only told Wava that he himself had once been indebted to FS. Now, Wawa need only to keep the goodwill of others in his heart.
Shi Luo’s fever was starting to make him feel dazed. His thoughts, flying all over the place, remembered this and he suddenly realized that the reason Gu Gan had taken care of him so well in the first place, might be because he was paying back some kind of favor.
In other words, when he was in NSN, he was still being taken care of by Yu Sui. Thinking even deeper…
“Sorry to trouble you. Please wait a minute.”
Shi Luo’s train of thought was suddenly interrupted. The door to him room was opened and the lights were suddenly turned on. Shi Luo blocked his eyes from the brightness.
“Are you wearing clothes?” Yu Sui glanced at Shi Luo up and down. He then turned his head towards the door and said, “Come in.”
Shi Luo’s forehead was flushed red from the fever. It took effort to open his eyes wide. He couldn’t react for a moment. “What’s the matter?”
Yu Sui ignored Shi Luo and asked Free’s team doctor to enter the room. He whispered, “It might be a cold. We’ve been training a lot recently. He was a bit tense during today’s game and he was buffeted by cold winds after the game…Please take a look to see if there are any other problems.”
Free’s team doctor was basically a private doctor who takes care of Yu Sui’s stomach problems. He doesn’t usually live at the base and doesn’t have much contact with the other people. After being taken to Shi Luo’s dorm room, he sat politely to one side and took out the thermometer, handing it Shi Luo. He asked amiably, “Have you taken some medicine? What did you take?”
Before Shi Luo could answer, Yu Sui handed a box of medicine to the team doctor. “This one. Did you take one tablet?”
Shi Luo put the thermometer in place. Feeling inexplicably guilty, he answered honestly, “I took just one tablet.”
The team doctor nodded. “Okay. Let’s check the temperature first. How long since you took it?”
“About…” Shi Luo hesitated, “more than half an hour ago.”
The team doctor nodded and waited. Shi Luo sat on the bed with a thermometer in his mouth and a quilt covering him. He glanced at Yu Sui, and whispered, “Chen Huo told you? I told him not to make a fuss about it…”
Yu Sui’s expression was faint, “If you hadn’t specifically told him not to, he might have not sold you out.”
Shi Luo saw that Yu Sui was a bit angry. He wasn’t willing to have Yu Sui admonish him in front of others. He honestly bowed his head, shut up and waited for the temperature reading.
At the same time, he was praying hard that the temperature wasn’t too high.
Five minutes later, Shi Luo took out the thermometer. Before he could take a look, Yu Sui had already taken it. Yu Sui took a look and handed the thermometer to the team doctor, “37.6 degrees.”
The team doctor took a closer look and smiled, “It’s 37.5… Are you called Evil? How old are you? Are you already an adult?”
“He’s an adult. Barely.” Yu Sui was very specific in his answer “In fact, he’s still shy of nineteen years old.”
“Okay.” The team doctor looked at Shi Luo’s throat again. He handed Yu Sui a pack of heat-removing stickers for children, and gave him a bottle of medicine. “The heat-removing stickers are for his forehead. If he’s willing, you can stick two more on his chest and back. Since he’s already taken cold medicine, he won’t need to take this medicine for now. Take another tablet if his temperature exceeds 38 degrees, have him take another one. Get him to drink plenty of hot water. Don’t stay up late for the next couple of days.”
The team doctor stood up and said gently, “There’s nothing wrong. It’s not the flu season recently. His const.i.tution just declined because of the change in seasons. Let him rest first. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Sorry to trouble you.” Yu Sui nodded, “I’ll send you out.”
Calling the doctor to come take Shi Luo’s temperate in the middle of the night, Yu Sui himself was feeling quite apologetic. He threw the stickers that the team doctor had just handed to him to Shi Luo’s bedside and went out. He saw the team doctor out the door and went upstairs. The stickers were still left by the bedside. Shi Luo was laying down with his eyes closed, his face a lot more haggard than it had looked just now.
It wasn’t difficult for Slag Man Yu to guess the thinking of a certain barely-adult striker. Yu Sui stood at the door and glanced at Shi Luo, “Did you listen to what the doctor said?”
A certain not quite nineteen year old striker looked as though he had really gone confused from the fever. He opened his eyes laboriously and looked at the stickers beside the bed. He said vaguely, “I did but I didn’t catch it very clearly. What is this? How… how do you open this? Where should I stick it?”
Yu Sui said expressionlessly, “You stick one on your forehead and another between your legs.”
Shi Luo: “…”
Shi Luo tried his best to pretend he couldn’t hear clearly, “I have a fever and my ears are ringing…How do you open this thing…”
Yu Sui didn’t want to delay his treatment for too long. He walked to Shi Luo’s bed and tore open the heat-removing sticker. He pasted a sticker on Shi Luo’s forehead, pressing it gently with the palm of his hand, He opened another sticker. Looking at Shi Luo, he said, “Stick this one to your chest.”
Shi Luo moved with much difficulty and he frowned. “Chest? How? Straight or slanted? My ears really are ringing…”
Yu Sui took a deep breath and wasn’t in the mood to play with Shi Luo. He was afraid that Shi Luo was already sweating and did not dare to lift the quilt, lest a draft get inside. So he squatted on the side of Shi Luo’s bed and reached into the quilt with the opened heat removal sticker. Inside, whispered, “Open your pajamas. I’ll stick this to the middle of your chest…”
Under the quilt, Yu Sui felt Shi Luo hold onto his wrist, looking for a position for him. Two seconds later… Yu Sui’s hand stopped moving.
Yu Sui: “…”
In this situation, Slag Man Yu really didn’t want to be subjected to Shi Luo’s low-level routines.
But the sensation on his fingertips still caused Yu Sui’s face to slightly change.
His tone also unconsciously became a bit breathy.
Yu Sui, a deep look in his eyes, turned to look at Shi Luo. His lips moved slightly and he said in a voice that only the two of them could hear, “Is this right in the middle?”
Yu Sui saw that Shi Luo’s originally flushed cheeks had gone even redder.
He heard Shi Luo sigh once again and whisper, “Don’t be angry. I don’t want to quarrel with you over a fever that will be fine by tomorrow.”
Yu Sui himself had concealed his stomach problems from Shi Luo before. Because of this experience, he knew more about the hidden dangers of sickness. If he could hide minor illnesses and pains now, then wasn’t he more likely to hide it when he felt unwell in the future?
Originally, he really had wanted to look stern and have a proper talk with Shi Luo, but now…
The sensation in his hand was conveyed straight to his brain in real time and it made things absolutely unbearable. Yu Sui closed his eyes and said, “You can let go of my hand first!”
“I won’t.” Shi Luo moved a little, trying to tease Yu Sui while also being very unskilled. After he worked hard for a long time, he whispered, “Don’t- Don’t lecture me…”
Yu Sui looked at Shi Luo, inwardly he told himself that telling the other off would be a simple matter.
This routine of Shi Luo’s that simply made him unable to get angry was really impossible not to fall for.
Yu Sui broke away from Shi Luo’s hand, neatly stuck on the heat-dissipating sticker and withdrew his hand. He opened up another sticker and skillfully and nimbly stuck it on Shi Luo’s back.
“I’m not angry anymore.” Yu Sui took off his coat, “Scoot farther in. I’m sleeping here today.”
Translator’s note: How’d you like the chapter? Next chapter will be on Nov 4 (Wed). I’m sorry but I’ve been a procrastinating as* and things have finally caught up with me. I’ll need the break to handle things IRL. See you next week!