Just a normal evening
"How do you think it will look?" Lili shouted so loudly that Shan heard her even through his headset. He looked at the stairs from where a little person came down.
"Is it okay for her to walk around like this?" he asked Yitian, who was sitting next to him. From behind her appeared Huobai and Yixing, carrying huge boxes.
"Calm down, stress is not good for you," Lili smacked Yixing over his shoulder. With her strength, Huobai had to help him stabilize himself.
"Go to hell. It's your fault, you made them look too flawless and now it's the talk of the town! They should be talking about your abilities, not your looks!" Lili exclaimed again and, with a short breath, stopped. She took a deep breath and turned to Huobai.
"I'm sorry. I'm a bit too sensitive now. I just want you to have a perfect comeback." Huobai nodded and looked at the rest of the team that was now staring at the exchange. The look was clear. Don't argue and don't do anything to annoy or sadden her.
If Shanshan had to be honest, Lili was a sweet person, but lately, it was hell for everyone because of her planning the wedding. Huobai and Yixing slammed the boxes on their tables and opened them up.
"Skincare. Your skin needs to be better. You have a week to make it look normal. If you have acne the day of recording. You should use patches. From now on, your skincare routine will be part of your evening. It's one of the new rules," she said and sat before the streaming computer.
"Skincare?" Hongjie looked confused. And Huobai sighed.
"The PR team airbrushed your pictures. And when the pictures were revealed, well, it became talk on Weibo and Twitter, saying we have the best visuals." Yixing took a bag out of the box. Every bag had a nametag. Every bag belonged to one member of the team. Even the newbies.
Shan put back on his headset and shook his head. This team was becoming more and more chaotic. He hoped that after the wedding, everything would calm down.
"Mei, I have new weapons for you. Oh, and Shan, I borrowed your account to send something, and someone messaged you." Shan furrowed his brows and opened the messaging system. She was right. There was a new message and a friend request. Again, some fans were quite bold and wanted to get close to them through the game. That was one disadvantage of playing with official accounts on both, the stream and official games. He turned down the request, politely thanked the fan for the kind message, and then deleted it too.
"Oh, and in a week, there is the ruffle for the opening game. They decided to pick a few members of every team and put them together. You will be playing a few games like shooting on targets, and hide and seek, and I forgot what else. So be ready," Chao said and turned back to his computer. But then he stopped when his watch rang.
"I think it's time for sleep." He looked around, but the blinds were tightly shut, so Chao had no idea what time it was. And Shan was the same. They all looked at the time at the same time. And it was actually past ten. It was later than anyone thought.
"Don't forget the skincare!" Lili yelled from the computer without even lifting her eyes and teammates, who forgot the bag, immediately came back and took it with them.
Shan had forgotten some of the names. He remembered their in-game nicknames and saw them above the characters, but his memory wasn't so good with names. And sometimes he had even bigger problems assigning faces to names.
"You are not going?" Yuhuai asked, and Shan shook his head.
"I still have to try something. The new patch changed my class a bit," he answered and put back his headset. He was already okay with all the changes. They weren't big. Just one of his abilities had a longer cooldown and the shadow clone could be recast up to ten times, with basic attack prerequisites. He just didn't want to go to sleep. It was easier to stay awake than to fall asleep.
"Shan, you need to sleep," Yitian said immediately when pulling down Shan's headset. He took it down and set it on the holder on the table.
"I know. But we both know that even if I went and lay in bed, I wouldn't fall asleep." Shan's voice sounded tired. And he really was, because it's been a long time since he slept fully. The anniversary was coming near, and that made him restless, scared, and unable to even close his eyes in the shower again.
"Stay with me and let's watch some movies. I came back from Czechia and it will take time for me to get used to the time here again." Lili stood up and Shan hurried to help her because she got tangled in the cables from the headset.
"Okay," he agreed, and let her go. Lili gave him a pleasant smile and followed him into the elevator. When they ended up on the leisure floor after a stop in the kitchen for snacks and drinks, Lili stole the remote controller and tried to find something.
"There is no way in hell I'll be able to read Cantonese subtitles, simplified Chinese maybe, but this… Ugh, I hate streaming platforms." Shan was listening to her rant in English. His brain just turned off. He was watching the screen, listening to the drama Lili put on, but his head just wasn't functioning. The warm tea, the low voices of the people., the cozy pillows and blanket that Lili put over them.
"You will be an awesome mother," he mumbled, his eyes almost closed. He fought to have them open now.
"Nah, I know I will be fucked up later. There is a difference between taking care of you once, and then taking care of children every day. I will surely be fed up sometimes and tired a lot more than dealing with all of you at once," Lili said simply, her voice calm and quiet, as if she was afraid to wake him up.
"Should I tell you a story instead? But it will be in Czech and don't get scared. My voice is a bit different…" she asked and Shan nodded. Lili took the cup out of Shanshan's hands and turned off the TV.
He closed his eyes and listened to the foreign language that he didn't understand, yet the tone of her voice, the melody in which she was reciting, something about it just made him relax.
Soon he drifted off to sleep and, to his own surprise, he slept so comfortably that he woke up the next day after his alarm rang. It was the much-needed sleep with no dreams. The type you need when you are exhausted. The type Shan needed the most now. Because it's been a long time since he had dreamless, or more like, a night without nightmares. Especially that one nightmare. The reality of what he went through. That nightmare was fuel for his sleepless nights.