A week and a half was more than enough time to kill off every last bit of Xi’s respect for the gaming media as a professional institution. They found, no, it was more accurate, more illustrative to say what they hadn’t found.

They hadn’t found a link between Captain Michael Star and the much-despised MrJiong. They hadn’t found actual shots of Xi and Jiong’s fated meeting at Wild Rose Cafe, though they’d turned up a hefty amount of fakes and manips that they insisted were real. They hadn’t found any photos of the way Jiong had manhandled Xi in the toilets at the karaoke club after the big event was over—something Xi was sure was only due to the fact that any video footage in k-club bathrooms typically got junked within a few days for privacy reasons.

Everything else, though, was dragged out and gone over with a fine-toothed comb. Xi’s competition history, Xi’s previous little spats with fellow karaoke nerds and streamers, Xi’s long list of previous lovers, Xi’s fucking school records all the way back to the nasty reports he and Janey had got back in primary school… it was endless.

Xi marked time in a state of careful tension. Most of the stuff that was reported on him was old news, anyway, the seemingly dark things the entertainment media had busied themselves with exposing before as part of their laser-like focus on Janey, so that wasn’t what was bothering him. He wasn’t even bothered (much) by the way the gaming press had spontaneously decided that he and Jiong were secretly planning to get hitched, just based on that one brief exchange between them at the train station.

What was bothering him was the fact that the furore didn’t look like it would be dying down in the usual way. The headlines about Xi’s entrapment of poor Captain Star had fallen in prominence, obviously, relegated to the section where secret team spats and reports of player so-and-so being on drugs resided. But they didn’t fucking stop coming; there was always a new item, a new shocking rumour, a new discovery.

Possibly it was all down to the fact that Xi had been streaming for so long, and had thus racked up all sorts of tangential connections and gotten involved in so many things. Just combing back through the last four years was already enough material for a few weeks of nonsense articles about how such-and-such a person had actually showed up in chat, or how it was rumoured that so-and-so had been to one of Xi’s supposedly infamous private parties. And before the last four years, there were his uni years, and all the messy entanglements therein.

God, how long had it been until now, if he counted all the way back to his first, terribly unprofessional try at streaming, the one where the sound had been flickering on and off, and the only person properly in frame had been the clearly nervous Bertram… They hadn’t yet been at uni, it’d been at least a year or so before that. And he had to deduct the few years that had been lost to that bastard Cameron and the process of recovering from his blight…

[jjcool]: @XiErXi @XiErXi miss me?

[XiErXi]: !! it’s alive!!!!

[jjcool]: haha… _´ཀ`」∠):_

[XiErXi]: hey, how long’s it been? Like, since our first stream?

By his count, it was something like a decade, but he wasn’t sure if he was over- or under-counting.

[jjcool]: you, you fucking traitor, you don’t keep count???

[jjcool]: bengong sees how it is, it looks like Star-nim’s wangfei1 doesn’t care about bengong’s matters anymore QAQ

[XiErXi]: …

[XiErXi]: do you have any shame????

[XiErXi]: your matters, what fucking matters, isn’t it all fucking solved by Sy’s sickening-sweet bullshit news???

As it turned out, Sylina was going to get married sometime this year, to not one but two filthy rich, endlessly amiable suitors, and the only reason she’d made time to swing by the karaoke event was because she’d recently been cutting back on her schedule to squeeze in more time to ‘get to know’ her future husband and wife. It was an arranged marriage, but they’d all known each other for some time, and got along well enough that when said future husband and wife had come to the bar to pick up Sylina that night, they’d all ended up screwing each other senseless in a nearby hotel.

You ask for evidence, heh, there was too much evidence, enough for the top tabloids to roll around in for days. Sylina and her future partners had made out on the way into the hotel, made out in the lift, made out in the room hallway, taken dirty pictures of each other in the room, recorded a drunken statement of their love, etc, etc, etc.

The most revealing stuff wasn’t posted directly, of course, but breathlessly described by reporters that had been shown the images and vids by ‘a trusted source’, as if said same reporters hadn’t all been rushing out speculative articles about just how long Janey and Sylina had been entangled not one or two hours before the new twist had hit. Watching the whiplash-inducing change in the headlines would have amused the hell out of Xi if he weren’t still being plagued by a bunch of arseholes with no compunction about pointing the finger at his shitty marks in modern history.

[jjcool]: even so, hearing that Star wangfei doesn’t even remember how long it’s been, ah, it hurts bengong’s heart…

[XiErXi]: it’s ten years, okay!!! Ten years if I just count my shit, 26 if I count every unfortunate year since I first saw your fucking face

[jjcool]: ah…? [weeping] wangfei remembers, ah…

[XiErXi]: do you have anything of actual fucking use to say??????

[jjcool]: [cough] [cough] [cough], that’s right, almost forgot

[jjcool]: from what Erie tells me, it looks like Andy Bai’s team will be dropping something real soon

[XiErXi]: ………

[XiErXi]: QAQ

[jjcool]: it’s nothing to be sad about, ah, they’re not going to be daft

[jjcool]: they’ll most likely spin it all as bantering between old friends, that kind of thing

[jjcool]: Bai’s one of those that 100% don’t date, that kind of pure, ‘loving only work’ image, he’s not so senseless as to take a dump on it right as his new album comes out

[XiErXi]: what if he’s changing his image, though?

[XiErXi]: If the album’s a different style, think tortured, sensitive, so hurt + angry that he just can’t hold back, I bet his fans would eat it up

[jjcool]: [sweatdrop] um, in that case, you might want to stock up on supplies tonight and hole up for a bit…

[XiErXi]: ……fan-fucking-tastic

He’d tried not to worry too much about what was holding up the news about Bai making a surprise appearance on Xi’s stream a week and a bit ago. He’d inquired about it the only way he could, with polite feelers extended to BaiBeautiful, and then, when those went ignored, with a couple messages slung at Janey and Eric.

Eric had messaged back a couple days ago, apologetic as anything. I asked everyone, and even Viktor got nothing back, Eric had said. You might want to have Jane’s agent ask, I bet she could get something out of them. And then Xi had had to sit on his hands and wait for Janey’s response, because the night before last had been her big, final concert, and even though he’d gone, she’d been so swamped that he’d known there wouldn’t be any time for even a minute to chat.

[XiErXi]: well, I guess this is how it’s going to be for the next two months

[XiErXi]: to think I actually thought it’d be you who was too hemmed in to do another live ( ಥ ╭╮ ಥ )

[jjcool]: come now, come now that’s no way to live [pat] [pat]

[jjcool]: xi-er, my good man, at times like this you embrace the crazy ah

[jjcool]: harvest the rage, ok~? Make his crazy fans work for you

[XiErXi]: yeah, you say that, but, which ‘he’?

[XiErXi]: I’ve already, I mean, some crazy guys have already been warning me not to get in the way of Bai Bai’s love or whatever the fuck, but

[XiErXi]: there’s also this jiong fuck’s fans too…

[jjcool]: simple!!

[jjcool]: have your man and the hussy call in!

[XiErXi]: jj, that’s, have you fucking forgot he’s in playoffs rn?

[XiErXi]: just chatting with him is like digging up a gd mountain

[XiErXi]: and do you really think that fucking Bai Bai will bother getting in touch if I reach out?

[XiErXi]: if he and his PR have any sense, they’ll just wait and cover me in shit

[XiErXi]: and anyone bringing up the issue of a challenge, or just saying we should talk it out can be scolded to hell

[XiErXi]: “you want our bai bai to stoop to that trash’s level?? keep dreaming!!”

[jjcool]: ah, um… [pat] [pat] [pat]

[jjcool]: it’ll all work out? (〃∇〃)?

[XiErXi]: …haha (눈_눈 )

Despite his deliberately dry response, Xi found himself chuckling a little, not relieved, but also no longer so tense. He knew exactly the kind of face Janey would be making at him if he was here, her eyes so wide that her forehead wrinkled a bit, her mouth in something like a pout and a smile at the same time, too cute for words if you didn’t know exactly who was behind that expression.

[XiErXi]: you should come down here, lol

[XiErXi]: share with me ah~

[jjcool]: lol nope

[jjcool]: such cheap press cameras, bengong doesn’t want to pick them up~~

Somehow, though Janey had so blithely refused to come down to Xi’s and share in his press-hounded misery, a few days later, she ended up doing just that, sneaking into his building through the actual fucking front door like the shameless, delightfully devious bitch she was.

Xi, mixing up his sixth batch of shortbread, didn’t think too much when he heard someone keying themselves into his flat. One of his aunts had come by last week to drop off high-grade flour and exchange treats, and had ended up chatting the ear off of one of the more easygoing tabloid cam operators after her visit. Aunt Abena was a five-time county baking champion, and she never let a chance to talk up her favourite flour mill slip by, not when it was run by a beloved friend’s cousin and always supposedly nearly on its last legs.

In any case, no one had posted photos of her, and the only result of her meandering conversation with the cam operator had been the flour mill getting a brief mention in the food section of the tabloid in question. His younger cousins and friends and family connections all knew better than to drop by during an active Press Situation, and of course his former group members wouldn’t show up unless it was an emergency. Xi was so sure that his visitor was another aunt that he called out, “just a moment, auntie, I’m in the kitchen.”

“Are you?” Janey said, from the shadows right behind him, and he almost put his foot through the nearest cabinet. “What, you didn’t see my message?”

“Fucking…” Xi hopped for a second, then stabilized, then turned around to glare, then couldn’t help but stare, open-mouthed, at the disguise Janey had cooked up. “You—you can’t have come in like that…”

Smirking, Janey leaned back against the counter next to him, her short, messy hair still visibly damp, her large, cheap sunglasses and breezy maxi-dress combining with her rugged walking sandals to make her look quite like an idle young madam on holiday. She had barely any makeup on—lipgloss, and maybe some eyeliner—but she was still so recognizable to Xi that he couldn’t believe she’d got away with showing up. “I had a hat,” she said, tipping her head in the direction of the sunhat hanging on the coatrack of his door, then raising the convenience store bag she was holding. “And this.”

“Ice cream?”

“Ice cream.”

“Fuck, but I love you,” Xi said, leaning over to peer into the proffered bag. “Oh what the fuck, coffee?”

“It’s all they had, can’t blame me.”

“Fuck,” Xi muttered, but once the shortbread dough had been shut away in the fridge to chill, he easily accepted his own large tub, digging in pretty much immediately. “Fried yam2 okay, for later?”

“Definitely fine by me,” Janey said, her voice muffled around a hefty mouthful of ice cream. “Ah, ah, ah, I knew he’d do her, that fucking trash. Doesn’t he get tired of roles like this?”

The main screen in his cluttered, tiny living room had Janey’s current favourite drama on, as well as Janey’s current favourite actor looking around as he sneaked out of someone’s bedroom that he evidently wasn’t supposed to have been in. “You could stop watching, you know.”

“What, and miss seeing Ran-Ran in his only drama this year? No fucking way.” As the man onscreen got into a fancy car and drove away, only for the camera to pan over to the distraught face of the partner of the woman he’d just been with, Janey sighed. “He’s so nice in real life, too. That manager of his needs her fucking head checked.”

“You have to admit,” Xi said, after slurping down another chilly, delicious mouthful—coffee wasn’t his favourite flavour of this brand, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth eating— “he really does look like the type.”

“What type? What fucking type, huh?” Janey swallowed with an uncouth gulp, waving her spoon in his direction. “What can you even fucking say, when your guy had an honest-to-god harem.”

Xi couldn’t hold back a gusty sigh. “You saw that?”

“Mm, I caught up on my way here,” Janey muttered. “You alright with it?”

“So long as he’s telling the fucking truth about his only seeing me right now, I’m alright with it,” Xi muttered back. “Fuck, even if he isn’t telling the truth, I’d be all right with it, if that somehow meant they’d zero in on him and leave me alone for a bit.”

“That,” Janey said, her voice muffled again, “mm, ahem, I really think this time, you’ve just been unlucky. Slow news week.”

“But there’s their fucking playoffs, I don’t see why—oh no.”

“Omo, that…ahhh!!” Janey shrieked in surprise at about the same time he did, watching the sudden carnage onscreen, but even though her hand was a vice around his upper arm, she was most definitely not peering at the screen from behind a shaking hand the way Xi was. “Oh no.”

Ran-Ran’s character moaned, then cried out as he was hit again. Xi, catching sight of Janey’s rapt, excited expression, couldn’t keep back a brief grin. As expected, he thought, sitting back a bit, she’s into him because he willing to sign up for this kind of thing… The one commonality all of Janey’s beloved actors shared was the fact that the characters they played often ended up suffering prettily. “Well, I’d better get the yam started, I’ll leave you to it.”

“Mm, yeah, I’m fine. Fuck, that look like it hurt…”

“Should I leave you out of frame?”

“Huh? It’s that time already?” But she was already setting down the ice cream tub, her hands combing through her hair, settling it so it looked a little neater. “Fuck it. Put me in.”

Xi, even though he’d half suspected he’d hear something like that from the moment he’d seen Janey’s smug smile tonight, couldn’t help but feel a bit shocked. “Janey, you don’t have to—”

“What the fuck is the point of me if I don’t?” Confident as she sounded, she wasn’t looking at him, and though her gaze was trained on the scene of her Ran-Ran shivering in a dank-looking cell, she didn’t seem to really be seeing it. “I look alright like this, don’t I?”

“Yeah, but…”

“I didn’t retire so I could go on planning my every move,” Janey said, emphatically. “I want… I know it’ll be a long while before I can just, just walk down the street, and no one fucking cares, but this? This, I can, a stream’s nothing, right?”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Janey nodded, her hands now kneading the fabric of the squashy sofa beneath her. “You don’t mind? I’m not ruining any plans, am I?”

For answer, Xi went right back over to her and pulled her into a quick, tight hug. “You would never.” Which wasn’t quite the truth, but felt enough like it to say so just now, and anyway Janey wasn’t so much a habitual plan ruiner as much as she was a meddler, a complicating factor. “Will you sing?”

A breath went by. “Can I?”

“You idiot,” Xi said, his voice alarmingly shaky. “Yes. Obviously. If you don’t mind not being paid a cent.”

“Aw, come on,” Janey said, as he let go of her, “you won’t even split the ad revenue with me? Huh? Hey!!”

“Now, Janey, this is why you negotiate before the signing,” Xi said, loudly, trying and failing to repress a grin as he swept back toward the kitchen. “You’re on old terms, same as ever, food and board.”

“Ooh, I can stay the night? Wangye3 won’t be jealous?”

“What fucking jealous,” Xi muttered, as he headed to the fridge to grab the yam slices he’d had soaking in there. “Who told him to call me his fucking darling in the street…”

> Xmyrepenting: aiiiiiiiiiiieeeeee omg omg omg omg omg

> Fan C: ( ✧Д✧) OMG! ( ✧Д✧) OMG! ( ✧Д✧) OMG!

> [Fan ZZ is afraid they are dreaming!]

> Nameless God: ah, it’s xmy unnie? How’ve you been?

> Xmyrepenting: I… I’m great ＼（Ｔ∇Ｔ ）／

> Nameless God: good to know [smile]

> Fan ZZ: [roll] [roll] [roll] aahhhhhhhhhh

> newXi: uh, guys…? Why are you all going crazy?

> Nameless God: I’m J.E.M., Xi’s former groupmate [smile] [smile]

> newXi: [flabbergasted]

> newXi: …are you joking?

> Fan Aiya: oh my god, newXi, can you seriously not recognize her?????

> newXi: uh, yeah… I’m low-vision irl [sweatdrop] [smile]

> Fan Aiya: [deflates] ah, then, I guess that makes sense, especially since she hasn’t said anything out loud yet…

> newXi: ah, but, but, isn’t JEM on her final tour????

> newXi: how tf would she be here???

> Nameless God: ah, my child, the universe is full of many mysteries…

“Also known as, she’s doing a runner and hiding out at mine tonight,” Xi couldn’t help but say. “What, don’t look at me like that, isn’t that why you’re here?”

“Ahem,” Janey said, “it’s called taking a brief breather for the sake of my mental wellness. I don’t run from my responsibilities as a light of this sad world.”

> newXi: aahahahahahahahhhh omggggggg

> [newXi is hyperventilating!]

> [Fan C is frantically messaging everyone they know!]

> [fkofe has joined the chat.]

> [sidestander has joined the chat.]

> [fkofe has renewed their subscription!]

> Fan Aiya: [crying] to think! To think that I almost skipped today’s broadcast and went out!!!

> [dayleets has joined the chat.]

> Xmyrepenting: ah ah ah the heavens are taking pity on my cursed life ah…

> [hail-on-me has joined the chat.]

> [hail-on-me has renewed their subscription!]

> [Fan D has joined the chat.]

> …

The login notifications changed from a trickle into a flood, spliced in with a rain of sub renewals and behind the scenes pleading for the ability to speak in chat that meant poor urakilla barely had the time to type out her own squee. Janey went into full-on smiley greeting mode, which just fed the frenzy even more, and left Xi smirking to himself as he drained away most of the salted water the yam had been soaking in.

Sure, she was retired now, but he doubted she’d really refrain from doing any public activities for long. She’d slide into something else, stream on her own, maybe, and have fun riling up her fan base and making the entire singing streamer section curse her name at night.

> Nameless God: sing? Ah, but, bengong doesn’t feel like it~

> GodGod_U: hehe, isn’t it just that you can’t afford to play around and strain your voice?

> fkofe: ( ✧Д✧) FIGHT!! ( ✧Д✧) FIGHT!! ( ✧Д✧) FIGHT!!!!

> Nameless God: aiya, Eric, you haven’t changed at all

> Nameless God: wanting a fight so badly, haha, do you dare fucking step up and challenge me? [smile]

> fkofe: …

wangfei: Chinese, the title given to the official wife of a wang, i.e. a titled prince or king.↩

Fried yam: in this case, Xi is referring to the Nigerian dish of fried yam a la this recipe: https://sisijemimah.com/2015/08/02/fried-yam-dundun-and-ata-dindin/↩

Wangye: Chinese, a title used to address or refer to a wang, which is the word for a king or prince.↩