Chapter 6: Photo and Team Flower

Blushing furiously, Yun Duo began ignoring Tang Yi-Bai and company, pretending to fiddle with the camera.

Qi Rui-Feng was somewhat bemused, but as an idol, he did not plan to give his fans too much of his time. As such, right after the photos were taken, he led his brothers away with him.

Yun Duo seized the moment to pull away from them as well, snapping several shots with her camera. Regardless of whether the photos taken could be used, she could at least console herself that their ambush here had not been completely pointless.

Sending off the pantheon of swimmers with their gazes, Teacher Sun asked Lin Zi curiously, "Why didn't you ask Tang Yi-Bai for an autograph just now? It should be easier now. If you wait till he becomes famous, it'll be too late if you want it then."

Lin Zi's expression was still as placid as before. His eyebrows were slightly drooping, making him look very listless. Speaking of which, he seemed to have been like this the whole 10 minutes they had known him, as if his body was waiting for his spirit that had been away wandering in a different dimension to return. Registering Teacher Sun's words, he shook his head and replied, "I'm getting it for my younger sister. Having just Qi Rui-Feng's is enough for her."

Yun Duo was rather surprised. "Your sister didn't come with you to watch the competition?"

He sighed, "She couldn't come."

Yun Duo noticed he looked rather down, as if troubled by some personal matter, so she did not continue asking.

Lin Zi drove Yun Duo and Teacher Sun back to their hotel and the two sides went their separate ways. Yun Duo carted all the flowers back to her room, and the room that had not been that spacious to begin with was soon almost filled to the brim. That done, she began working on her draft before her computer, surrounded by the fragrance of flowers. "Sports Weekly" was published twice a week; additional publications were possible when major competitions, such as the Olympic Games or the World Cup, were being held. Of course, the 'National Swimming Championships' was obviously not yet at the level where additional publications were deserved.

Tomorrow at the latest, she and Teacher Sun would have to send their manuscripts on the competition these past two days back to the editing centre. Yun Duo browsed through the photos she had taken these last two days, trying to find several useful shots.

Looking back and forth, in the end, her gaze settled upon the batch of photos she had quickly captured earlier this afternoon.

Speaking of which, the first person she had interviewed was Tang Yi-Bai, but there was only just this one shot of Tang Yi-Bai in her camera ... she really had no idea what her pig-brain was thinking back then.

This particular batch of photos had been taken from a pretty good angle, one of the shots having been taken at a perfect moment. In the photo, the lines of Qi Rui-Feng's profile was chiselled and well-defined. He was standing tall and confident, while Tang Yi-Bai, who had been walking beside him, had his head bowed slightly, a faint smile playing at the corners of his lips. The autumn sunlight shone through the golden leaves of the surrounding oriental plane trees to fall upon them. The proud and confident one glowed even brighter under the sunlight, while the gently smiling one seemed even more mellow and humble under the soft lighting. In one photo, two personalities were presented clearly before one's eyes.

Yun Duo could not help but cup her jaw and sigh — what a perfect candid snapshot!

The main characters in this photo were these two — as for the rest, they were fine as long as they did not do anything too disturbing. Yun Duo scanned the picture, and then she saw — on the side of Qi Rui-Feng's body that was further away from the camera, half a body and a head were sticking out. As the focus was not on that person, his face was blurry, but Yun Duo was still able to identify him with one glance. It was that shota-face who had been hanging close to Qi Rui-Feng yesterday.

The shota-face had one hand on Qi Rui-Feng's shoulder, lending balance from it. He was stretching his body back to look at the camera, grinning as he waved at the lens. Yun Duo could see that his cheek was puffed up, and a thin and narrow white object was hanging from his lips. At first, she thought it was snot or drool, but it would be too miraculous for his bodily fluids to flow so straight ... resting her chin in one hand, she magnified the picture to take a closer look. Combining this new view with his bulging cheek, she realized instantly that the punk was eating a lollipop!

Whose wild child was this?! She really wished she could photoshopPhotoshop is an image editing software. It is very common for Chinese people to use it like a verb when they refer to image editing. So here, Yun Duo wants to edit the ‘wild child’ out of the picture. him out of the picture ...

Yesterday, Yun Duo had already found out what shota-face's name was. He was called Ming TianThis person's name shares the exact same characters as the word 'tomorrow', I kid you not. It can be confusing at times within the raws. (>.<), and his specialization was breaststroke. In fact, this name had appeared in Yun Duo's previous research prep for this assignment. However, there were a lot of names she had had to remember, so she often had difficulty matching the names to the faces. Ming Tian was not yet 16, still a minor, but he had already participated in several national level competitions, even obtaining a bronze medal in this summer's World Swimming Championships. Achieving such results at such a young age was impressive in its own right.

Due to the interference of this lollipop boy, the entire feel of the picture was subtly changed. Upholding her professional integrity as a journalist, Yun Duo restrained her darker impulses and did not photoshop that wild child out in the end.

She sent the photo to Teacher Sun. Let the experienced old man worry about this.

************

Tang Yi-Bai had dinner with his teammates. He was relaxed and was speaking freely, not at all affected by the events that transpired earlier that afternoon. His mood infected his teammates, so much so that none of them tried to console him — because it looked like that would not be necessary.

Even after they were done eating, they were not allowed to fool around casually; they all returned to their respective rooms.

There were about 500 members taking part in the swimming championships this time, and they were spread out across two different hotels. In general, athletes are registered on a provincial basis, but the national team trumps the provincial team. As such, although members of the national team such as Tang Yi-Bai and Qi Rui-Feng were here representing different provinces, they were still managed under the national team. Consequently, during the allocation of rooms, Qi Rui-Feng and Tang Yi-Bai were assigned to share a room.

As soon as they returned to the hotel, Qi Rui-Feng fell into his bed, fished his handphone out from below his pillow and began playing with it. Tang Yi-Bai did not flip his pillows, because there was no handphone under his pillow to begin with ... he looked somewhat enviously at Qi Rui-Feng's phone, but quickly looked away before the other could notice, nonchalantly turning on the television.

Suddenly, someone knocked at the door. Before either of them could react, the person outside had already pushed open the door and entered.

Only a coach would ignore the privacy of athletes like this.

The visitor was Tang Yi-Bai's coach, Wu Yong. Wu Yong had a sturdy figure, a pair of intense tiger eyesi.e. fierce eyes, and a beard. Such a fearsome appearance often drew the attention of the police in these peaceful times.

"Coach Wu," said Tang Yi-Bai, "Are you looking for me?"

Wu Yong nodded and said loudly, "Yi-Bai, come here."

He called Tang Yi-Bai over to the doorway, first praising Tang Yi-Bai's performance at the pool today, before changing gears to say, "Your attitude during the interview today wasn't very good. You will very easily offend the reporters. Take care in future."

"Yes." Tang Yi-Bai nodded once without offering any argument.

Seeing him act like this, Wu Yong did not have the heart to criticize him any further. He merely sighed and said, "I know you feel wronged, but you're a man, you need to be able to let things go. The reporters are all sharp-tongued. If they are displeased, you don't know how they're going to depict you behind your back. Right now, you still don't have any results yet. No results means no backing. Qi Rui-Feng can be so arrogant because he has an Olympic gold medal in hand. You don't have that. At most, you have an Asian Games gold medal, and it's from the butterfly to boot. That's fucking useless." Wu Yong became more and more agitated as he spoke, finally revealing his true colours with an expletive.

Tang Yi-Bai smiled, "I know all this, Auntie大妈: Here, Tang Yi-Bai calls Wu Yong 'auntie' to tease him for his motherly nagging. Wu ..."

"You!" Wu Yong acted as if he was going to hit Tang Yi-Bai, and Tang Yi-Bai ducked his head. But Wu Yong only laughed and put down his hand. "Brat!"

"Coach Wu ..." Tang Yi-Bai looked at him and hesitated.

"What's the matter?"

Tang Yi-Bai gathered up his courage. Eyes bright, as if trying to sell his cuteness, he asked, "Can I play with my handphone for a while? I'll give it back before I sleep."

"Dream on!" Wu Yong rolled his eyes at him. "Give it up. I can only give your phone back after the competition ends."

"But—"

"No buts. I've already said not to learn from Qi Rui-Feng. He's already beyond saving. You're still salvageable."

Tang Yi-Bai could only slink back sulkily to his room. Qi Rui-Feng heard Tang Yi-Bai's footsteps, and with his eyes still trained on the screen of his phone, without even lifting his head, he said, "Just now, the team flower队花: The word 'flower' is often used to refer to girls. When a unit is placed before 'flower', it usually means the prettiest girl within the unit. So, the team flower is the prettiest girl in that team, while 'school flower' would refer to the prettiest girl in school. of the artistic swimming team花游队: So, this is the synchronised swimming team. Apparently, the sport has been renamed to 'artistic swimming' by the official governing body FINA since 2017. asked me to ask you why you weren't wearing the swimming goggles she gave you in today's competition."

"Just tell her the truth," Tang Yi-Bai replied airily, returning to sit on his bed to watch TV again.

"Oh, okay," answered Qi Rui-Feng, and he began reading out as he typed, "He ... gave ... it ... to ... sister ... Egg ..."

"..." Tang Yi-Bai's brows twitched. He swiftly turned around, and with a swipe of his long arms, he had stolen Qi Rui-Feng's phone from his hands. As expected of an athlete — his reaction time and movements were all very quick. By the time he had grabbed the phone, Qi Rui-Feng had just finished typing out those words but had yet to send out the message.

Tang Yi-Bai quickly deleted the sentence and changed it to: Yesterday, he randomly gave it to a stranger right after the finals.

He then sent it before returning the phone to Qi Rui-Feng.

Qi Rui-Feng read the reply Tang Yi-Bai had sent out and chuckled, "What difference does this make? Mine was even more concise than yours. But I actually guessed correctly. You're trying to reject her, aren't you?"

Tang Yi-Bai laughed softly, "Anyone on Earth would have been able to guess that right."

Qi Rui-Feng looked disdainfully at Tang Yi-Bai. "Then why did you agree to her request in the first place? So unnecessary."

"In front of so many other people, we must leave some dignity for ladies," Tang Yi-Bai explained.

He could not help but think back on the situation then. It was the afternoon of his birthday. He was eating lunch at the cafeteria with some of his teammates when the team flower had just walked right up to him to give him a present — a pair of swimming goggles. She expressed the hope that he would wear those goggles at the upcoming swimming championships and had offered her well wishes.

If he had refused directly, the girl would have been left in a difficult position, but Tang Yi-Bai also did not want to give her any false hope. Therefore, as soon as he had finished the promise, he had swiftly passed the goggles to someone else. His meaning could not be more evident.

A few minutes after the team flower received that reply, she replied to Qi Rui-Feng: I understand. Thank you, Brother Feng.

Qi Rui-Feng sighed. "I find that you and your charming face ... you really know how to refuse a girl gently."

Tang Yi-Bai sat primly on his bed watching the television, as calm as ever, a beast in human clothing. "No special reason. Practice makes perfect."

"What does that mean?"

"..." Tang Yi-Bai decided to ignore Qi Rui-Feng, focusing on the remote control to surf channels. The TV screen shifted rapidly, all sorts of sounds coming from it in fits and spurts.

Qi Rui-Feng spoke up again, "But, you and Sister Egg are not really strangers anymore, right? ... She's a pretty righteous person."

The fingers dancing swiftly on the remote paused abruptly. Tang Yi-Bai was silent for several seconds, and then he suddenly turned his head to look at Qi Rui-Feng with locked brows and said, "She's called Yun Duo."

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Previous: Chapter 5: Autographs and Teasing
Next: Chapter 7

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