Chapter 32 part 1
◎ Sooner or Later I’ll Kill That Wolf Cub ◎
Berlin changed his shoes and fumbled to turn on the hallway light.
As the light flickered on, he saw his four teammates sitting or standing, looking towards the door with complex expressions—clearly waiting for him to come home.
Berlin was startled by the four sudden gazes. He stepped into his cotton slippers and threw his bag onto the sofa. “Why are you guys sitting in the living room without turning on the lights instead of sleeping?”
Wu Hengyao wrinkled his nose, leaning close to sniff him. “You waited for that kid to walk home together again? What’s the deal with him? Don’t give me that senior-junior stuff; you never used to wait for other trainees to leave together.”
“Correct.” Han Yuzhe leaned back against the sofa, resting his head on his arms. “You wouldn’t even teleport or take a car with us, just to walk back with him.”
Jiang Shuiran’s voice carried a bewitching yet resentful tone, sighing softly, “Clearly, we are your teammates.”
Hua Yan, speaking last and unsure what to add, simply nodded and concluded simply and crudely: “Correct!”
Berlin: “…”
He unwound his scarf and hung his coat on the rack, correcting them. “Incorrect. Clearly, the junior waited for me at the company door, not me waiting for him.”
Berlin shot a disapproving glance at Han Yuzhe. “And it was because we were all doing extra practice together that it ended so late.”
He phrased it delicately, but essentially, all of Skye had stayed to accompany Han Yuzhe for extra practice.
Han Yuzhe, the straggler in the wrong, fell silent: “…”
Berlin’s way of thinking was simple and unhidden, open and frank. “Cecil messaged saying he was waiting for me at the door to go back to the dorm together. Knowing he was waiting outside, of course I had to go out the main door. I couldn’t let him wait for nothing.”
His teammates hadn’t detected any supernatural aura on Cecil, so for now, Berlin treated Cecil as an ordinary human like himself.
Hua Yan was very observant. “I saw him in the cafeteria yesterday. He had your photocard on the back of his phone case. What’s that about?”
Berlin revealed a very smug smile at the mention, his dimple appearing on one side. “You didn’t expect that, right? He’s my fan! I gave him that photocard, haha!”
Hua Yan was skeptical. “…Fan? Him?”
Berlin nodded. “He said so himself. He heard Skye’s songs in an ice cream shop, liked my part, and that’s why he signed up for the GNK audition.”
The living room light was warm. The ginger glow fell on Han Yuzhe’s profile as he propped his head up lazily and narrowed his eyes.
He lowered his gaze, lost in thought. There could be many reasons for a fragmented soul. Being scared by an unclean spirit shortly after birth, getting lost in deep mountains for two days before being found, locking eyes with a black cat possessed by something dirty at night, or having a part devoured by something… Even Han Yuzhe couldn’t be sure which one it was, nor could he be certain if it would recover over time.
Han Yuzhe stared at the hallway, his gaze fixed.
A mere door couldn’t block his vision.
He could sense that the overseas trainee named Cecil was still nearby, not having gone far.
After just a few days of inattention, despite the change being microscopic enough to ignore, Han Yuzhe noticed that his soul was slowly recovering.
Why?
For Cecil, the only change was probably his brief contact with Berlin.
Han Yuzhe’s eyes darkened.
This meant that Cecil meeting Berlin at the company was definitely not their first encounter.
Even if he couldn’t determine the cause of the soul loss, Han Yuzhe was certain of one thing: karmic loops. Only the direct cause of the soul’s loss could facilitate its restoration to wholeness.
Just like the old saying among humans in this country: To untie the bell, you need the person who tied it.
Cecil appeared human now. Before this, he had lived in Ouhai City on the other side of the world. How did he get involved with Berlin?
Han Yuzhe curled his lips in interest, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the sofa.
“Since he’s your fan.” Amidst the shocked stares of his teammates who couldn’t understand, Han Yuzhe spoke slowly and breezily, “Tomorrow noon, invite him to eat with us.”
His pitch-black eyes showed no emotion, yet his expression was friendly and casual. “We’ll be seeing a lot of him in the future; might as well get to know him.”
Berlin was a little surprised, but happy to hear Han Yuzhe say that. He agreed without a second thought. “Sure!”
Hua Yan exchanged a look with Wu Hengyao.
Hua Yan frowned and whispered in a frequency Berlin couldn’t hear: ‘What is Han Yuzhe playing at?’
Wu Hengyao frowned and replied in a low frequency: ‘Why bring playing into this?’
Hua Yan: “…………”
He gave up communicating and turned to walk away.
He cursed furiously in his heart with a dark face: This stupid wolf! Idiot wolf! Big dumb wolf!!
The cunning human had already used “fan” as an excuse to approach Berlin and used “walking back to the dorm” as a reason to occupy Berlin’s time and energy, pressing step by step. And this wolf didn’t even understand simple human internet slang! How could he fight Cecil!
Thinking of this, Hua Yan laughed in anger.
He sneered internally as he mulled over the word: Fan?
Only a ghost would believe that.
But humans were indeed cunning to the extreme. This Cecil hinted to Berlin that he was a fan—the kind who chased him into the industry—attracting Berlin’s attention while openly putting Berlin’s photocard on his phone case, walking around without hiding it.
After all, fans were like that. Using an idol as a phone case was no big deal. Precisely because they weren’t peers from the same generation but separated by a massive gap in status, even if Berlin’s fans found out later, they would at most suspect Cecil of leeching heat. Many fans would still see him as a fellow fan and naturally feel goodwill. At least they wouldn’t say anything openly.
Ninety percent of Hua Yan’s phone storage was occupied by Berlin’s pictures and Douyin videos, but he couldn’t even use a photo of Berlin as his lock screen—he had done it once before, and the CP fans went ballistic. At the time, Weibo still had Super Topic rankings; overnight, their ranking shot up sixty-five places, rushing passionately from the bottom into the top three, looking like it was about to hit number one.
However, immediately after, his solo fans and the CP fans clashed over the issue, tearing each other apart in darkness. The massive fan war caused the accounts of both fandoms to lose weight, and half of the seven or eight side accounts held by each fan perished tragically.
It finally alerted the management company, who held an emergency meeting to discuss how to calm the situation. In the end, they released news through an assistant’s side account claiming that the phone Hua Yan was holding belonged to a staff member who was a fan of Berlin. Only then did the arguing stop, barely turning the page on that incident.
Since then, the manager strictly forbade members from using each other’s photos as screensavers. It didn’t matter which member, and it didn’t matter how good their relationship was.
Thinking of this, Hua Yan loathed Cecil’s act of “fake fan” behavior.
Shameful. Too shameful.
Basically—Hua Yan: Damn it, he has a legitimate reason to use Berlin as a phone case. I. Am. So. Envious.
So the next morning, Hua Yan pushed open his custom-made vertical coffin, aggressively put on big sunglasses, chose the most flamboyant red floral shirt, and sat at the dining table staring at Berlin’s door, waiting for him to wake up so they could go to the company together.
He would absolutely not give the two of them a chance to be alone again.
In his sleep, Berlin, who was talking to the older version of Cecil, sneezed.
During these few days, he didn’t spend much time in the dream, telling Cecil everything that happened in reality.
Judging by Cecil’s expression after listening, he didn’t know what was going on either.
Neither could make heads or tails of the situation, but they weren’t anxious.
After all, for now, while there seemed to be no advantages, there were no disadvantages either.
It probably didn’t matter.
“There’s always a way out when you reach the mountain.” Berlin was in a good mood from sunbathing and had a good mindset. “If we run into problems later, we’ll just work hard to solve them. Let’s not think too much for now.”
Cecil silently repeated the first sentence twice. He roughly understood the meaning from the literal words and liked it very much.
“If anything happens, I will help you.”
Berlin woke from the dream, shifted his thinking, adjusted to the dim light in the room, and got up to do his Eight Section Brocade exercise (Ba Duan Jin).
He didn’t know Hua Yan was waiting in the living room. After finishing a set, covered in a thin layer of sweat, he took a shower and came out feeling refreshed. Pushing open the door, he locked eyes with Hua Yan’s big sunglasses and froze for half a beat.
Berlin blinked. “Uh, morning?”
Even through the dark sunglasses, Berlin could feel Hua Yan’s ghostly stare. “Morning. Want noodles?”
Berlin shook his head. “No thanks. If I eat carbs in the morning, the manager will nag me endlessly. A carton of milk is fine.”
He looked at Hua Yan curiously. “Why? Were you planning to cook noodles for me?”
“Whatever. Up to you.” Hua Yan shrugged. “I dare to cook them; you might not dare to eat them.”
Berlin: “…………”
Never mind. Self-reliance, self-reliance.
Usually, the teammates either teleported or took a car; they rarely walked.
Berlin had a habit of morning exercise. He liked sports; he didn’t like sitting or lying down. The distance from the dorm to the company wasn’t far, so he would jog there as a warm-up.
For the past few days, Cecil waited for him at the dorm entrance in the morning and at the company entrance at night. They trained separately during the day and only met at lunch, but they arrived and left together.
Today, Hua Yan didn’t plan to let this human cub cultivate feelings with Berlin anymore.
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