Chapter 73: Super Clingy Beagle
[What are you doing, what are you doing!] [Holy shit, holy shit, so close! Lu Gou definitely guessed it was Teacher Xie, right?] [Obviously. If he hadn’t guessed, how could he possibly make a move?] [How did he guess? Teacher Xie didn’t even make a sound.] [Could it be that he guessed because the neck-squeezing felt very familiar?] [Emmm, if it’s Lu Gou, it’s not impossible.] [How did he get to enjoy himself again?!] [Teacher Xie wearing wolf ears is so appetizing. How can Lu Gou’s life be so good?] [Lu Gou can’t see Teacher Xie wearing wolf ears, but we can, hehe.] [Teacher Xie looks like a kitty (licks lips).]
Xie Shibai held his breath, his long eyelashes trembling slightly. The hand planted beside Lu Ciheng exerted some force, barely managing to maintain the distance between them. He looked at Lu Ciheng, his brows slightly knitted.
Lu Ciheng felt the resisting force against his arm. Wearing the blindfold, he tilted his head slightly. The hand wrapped around Xie Shibai’s waist tightened, and he curled his lips into a wicked smile, unwilling to let the person go. “Trying to run away after being caught?”
The Werewolves had a limited amount of time to make a kill. A ticking countdown could be heard in the background.
Xie Shibai coldly shoved Lu Ciheng’s hand away. He stared at him for a few seconds, forcibly suppressing the urge to slap Lu Ciheng right across the face.
Lu Ciheng waited for a few seconds. He could still smell the faint, fresh fragrance lingering on Xie Shibai. The scent was strongest when the person leaned in close. As it rushed against his face, it was slightly cool, smelling so good it was addictive.
If it weren’t for the game’s restrictions, Lu Ciheng really would have wanted to lean in and sniff him a bit longer.
Xie Shibai didn’t even have the habit of wearing perfume, and because they were recording a show, they were using the exact same toiletries. Yet, that fragrance was still distinctively wonderful.
Participating in the game allowed him to receive Xie Shibai’s proactive closeness, even though the objective was to kill him.
However, hindered by the game, even if he acted in ways that would usually earn him a beating, he couldn’t get what he wanted.
Lu Ciheng felt a bit annoyed. Xie Shibai’s hands were cold and soft. When those hands touched his face, the fragrance seemed to drill right through his nose; the touch on his face was incredibly comfortable. Yet right now, just reaching out to hook that slender waist triggered his headset to frantically warn him of a foul.
It was so loud it made his ears hurt.
The staff backstage were already speechless. Before the game started, they had explicitly reminded everyone that physical contact was forbidden for anyone other than the Werewolves, as it made exposing one’s identity far too easy.
“Foul, foul, foul!”
Lu Ciheng turned a deaf ear to it. He trailed his fingers over the wolf ears, still regretting that the expected slap to his face never landed.
Could he get a raincheck on that later?
Xie Shibai left the room before the countdown ended. He wiped the fake blood off his hand. Following the rules, he thoughtfully returned to his room. Before putting on the headphones and blindfold, he already had a rough model in his mind for the daytime banishment vote.
Lu Ciheng, who already knew his identity, was the biggest problem.
But it wasn’t too big of a problem.
A staff member’s voice echoed through the headset.
“Witch, please open your eyes.” “He is the one who died. You have a bottle of antidote, do you want to save him?” “You have a bottle of poison, do you want to use it?”
After the Witch’s turn ended, it was the Seer’s turn.
“The Seer has chosen the player they wish to check.”
As the voice in the headphones shifted back to background music, Xie Shibai’s ears twitched. He heard the sound of his own door opening.
The headphones’ noise-canceling effect was excellent. He could only hear subtle noises; anything more was hard to distinguish.
In the next second, Xie Shibai sensed someone approaching his bed, accompanied by the sound of breathing very close to him.
Lu Ciheng curled his lips into a smile and brushed against Xie Shibai’s fingers.
[Oh ho!] [Lu Gou is actually the Seer!] [LMAO, I thought Teacher Xie had a disastrous start, but it turns out both of you have special roles!] [Alright, now neither of them is losing out.] [Once it’s morning, if Teacher Xie isn’t voted out, it’ll be Lu Gou’s time to die (knife).] [You two are playing Werewolf with your cards laid out!] [Hahahahaha, it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s just a casual entertainment game where off-table reading is fine.] [The little couple loving and killing each other!] [It’s so exciting to watch them face off against each other!]
Touched out of the blue, Xie Shibai’s fingers curled instinctively. Almost instantly, he realized it was Lu Ciheng.
Lu Ciheng squeezed his fingers. His phone received the role icon sent by the staff: it was a Wolf. He reached out again, touching Xie Shibai’s face, brushing a stray lock of hair that clung to Xie Shibai’s cheek aside.
His touching and probing made Xie Shibai’s cheek itch, but he never tired of it. It was as if he were playing with a beloved doll he couldn’t bear to put down, determined to dawdle right up until the last second.
Xie Shibai pursed his lips. His face itched from being rubbed, and he subconsciously tilted his head to avoid it.
A faint, almost imperceptible chuckle rang in his ears.
Xie Shibai: …
Fine, not even trying to hide it.
Lu Ciheng stroked Xie Shibai’s head. The wolf ears had long been taken off and hidden away. He felt a bit of regret that he didn’t get to see what Xie Shibai looked like wearing them.
Just as he wanted to touch him a little longer, the utterly fed-up Xie Shibai reached out and smacked Lu Ciheng’s hand away with a loud Smack!
“Scram.”
Concise and to the point.
[Lmao, got hit!] [Got scolded, huh? That’s what you get for being naughty.] [Teacher Xie, don’t hit him! Hit me! Hitting him is just rewarding him!] [I’m new here. Wasn’t lch a cool guy before? How come he’s smiling like that after getting hit?] [He’s a massive pervert. Just get used to it.] [You haven’t seen the trending topics, have you? He’s a double-standard simp. Just wait until you see how he treats Li Lechi and Su Xingran later; it’ll be the same old flavor.] [Feels like they already know each other’s roles. How do they even play now?] [We’ll see how they play when dawn breaks.] [Simple. During the day, Teacher Xie will be voted out. At night, Lu Gou gets killed. Unless Lu Gou doesn’t claim a hit during the day.]
Lu Ciheng’s fingers tingled from the smack. The corners of his lips quirked up, his mood growing even more delightful, as if the slap he missed earlier had finally landed right at this moment.
After the staff urged him through the headset numerous times, Lu Ciheng returned to his room right at the final second.
The setup for the eight-player game was very simple: three Wolf cards, three God cards, and two Villager cards. Aside from the Seer and the Witch, the remaining God card was the Idiot.
Once the night phase ended, the eight people headed to the banishment voting area following the production team’s instructions.
The group sat down in order of their seats. Under the staff member’s moderation, they decided whether to run for Sheriff.
Xie Shibai shot Li Lechi a look and chose to run.
Li Lechi hesitated for a few seconds before hesitantly raising his hand, also choosing to run for Sheriff.
He pondered over Xie Shibai’s intention for a moment. When it was his turn to speak in an early position, he claimed to be the Seer. Out of caution, he didn’t issue a kill-claim like he planned last night. Instead, he gave a ‘Golden Water’ to Mu Zhenzhen, who was in a later position.
Mu Zhenzhen was a veteran player and clearly knew how to play. She wasn’t overly thrilled to receive the Golden Water and didn’t claim any special role. She merely maintained a neutral stance, stating she only ran for Sheriff just to play along, worried that the Sheriff badge would be torn up if no one ran.
In total, four players ran for Sheriff.
It was Xie Shibai’s turn to speak.
He glanced at Lu Ciheng, the corners of his lips curling up slightly, a hint of malice hiding in his cold eyes. Since he was already found out, he didn’t bother hiding it at all. He drawled slowly, “I am the Seer. I checked number eight last night; he’s a Wolf.”
Lu Ciheng looked at Xie Shibai, his brows raising slightly. He hadn’t expected Xie Shibai to be the villain complaining first.
[Teacher Xie actually chose to drop a kill-claim on Lu Gou, woohoo!] [The Witch knows who was killed last night, right? Can aggressively faking Seer work?] [It’s just that the two of them know each other’s identities. Others might not necessarily believe it. The Witch can totally be convinced that it was a Wolf self-killing to bait the antidote. After all, Werewolf is a psychological game. Whoever gets more people to believe their words wins. Right or wrong, true or false, it doesn’t matter.]
Xie Shibai swept his gaze around the group and said, “There was no specific thought process behind who I checked. I simply found him an eyesore. I didn’t expect to find out he was a Wolf. His purpose for running for Sheriff is already obvious. I hope not to be interfered with. My Sheriff badge flow will be to check number 3 first, then number 4, in that order.”
Number three was Li Lechi, and number four was Su Xingran.
The word “eyesore” sounded very pleasing to Lu Ciheng’s ears. “Eyesore” was just an excuse; only the two of them knew the real reason.
[Eyesore, hhhhh] [More like he was annoyed rather than finding him an eyesore, hahahaha!] [Why does it feel like lch is just like a dog, wagging his tail just from being looked at? He’s actually so happy to be called an eyesore.] [That’s how simps are.]
When it was Lu Ciheng’s turn to speak, the live chat was very tense. They were worried his love-struck brain would take over, directly confirming the accusation and abandoning his own Seer identity, causing the Good camp to collapse.
Lu Ciheng said, “I am the real Seer. Last night I checked number seven; he is the Wolf who cried foul first. As for my thought process behind checking him, there wasn’t one. I just wanted to check him. I know issuing a kill-claim from a late position doesn’t carry much weight, but there’s nothing I can do; the Wolves are too cunning. If the Good camp wants to win, you have to see the situation clearly and not be led astray. My Sheriff badge flow will be numbers 1 and 2.”
[Lu Gou actually dropped a kill-claim too!] [I thought he’d let his love-struck brain take over and say nothing.] [Doesn’t this turn it into a little couple’s confrontation match?!] [Just love watching them go against each other!]
With two Seers immediately throwing kill-claims at each other right off the bat, Lu Ciheng, speaking from a later position, inevitably had lower credibility than the first one.
Moreover, with a single sentence, Xie Shibai had painted Lu Ciheng’s bid for Sheriff as having an ulterior motive. In the end, Xie Shibai won the Sheriff badge by a one-vote margin.
During the voting, Xie Shibai paid attention to the voting pattern, locking onto two people who likely held special roles.
The only one with a special role who knew Lu Ciheng had died last night was the Witch.
The voting pattern could always reflect a person’s truest thoughts.
Right before the banishment vote, Xie Shibai felt something brush against his calf.
He turned his head to glance at Lu Ciheng beside him. In the next second, his finger was lightly hooked again. Meanwhile, Lu Ciheng was still looking at the camera with a placid expression, but underneath, his hands were far from behaving.
As if infected by skin hunger, he laced his fingers together with Xie Shibai’s under the table.
Xie Shibai looked at him and gave his hand a tug.
Lu Ciheng looked completely innocent, but he didn’t let go.
The two of them were hurling kill-claims at each other in the game, yet in private, their fingers were glued tightly together.
[Why does it feel like the leopard and cat are sitting so close together?] [Yeah! Their arms are touching.] [Didn’t they just throw kill-claims at each other and look ready to fight?] [Are they holding hands?] [Do you two really have to be this clingy?! You’re rivals right now! You’re about to fight! How can you hold hands?!] [Rivals are rivals. I don’t know what happens in the middle, but anyway, a rival is meant to be made into a wife!]
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