Halfway through the third round, the battle was deadlocked.
Kiana put down the phone.
She shifted her posture, her legs subconsciously pressing together, rubbing against each other in a somewhat unbearable manner. That bowl of piping hot soup from dinner, combined with the large cup of soda from before, was currently transforming into immense pressure inside her body through biological circulation.
She glanced at the System panel in the corner of her vision.
That "30-Minute Freedom Time Card" had long been exhausted during the accident at the clothing store, and there were still long, dragging hours before the refresh tomorrow.
Endure.
As a Valkyrie, endurance was a required course. But physiological reactions were honest. The sensation of heaviness and bloating in her abdomen grew stronger and stronger, as if an over-inflated balloon was squeezing inside.
Kiana bit her lower lip and looked at the figure with his back to her.
Su Yu was wearing over-ear headphones, his whole being immersed in handling the endgame of the match, completely cut off from outside sounds.
"Su Yu..."
She called out tentatively. The voice was so small she could barely hear it herself. No response.
"Hey..."
Still no response.
On the screen, Su Yu was holding a sniper rifle, pre-aiming at a corner, holding his breath. That sense of urgency, like a dam about to burst, meant Kiana could no longer sit still. Shame was defeated in the face of physiological limits.
She crawled up from the floor bed and almost shuffled to stand behind Su Yu. She extended a finger and gently poked Su Yu's shoulder.
Su Yu was staring intently at the crosshair. Feeling the touch, he subconsciously turned his head and took off one side of the headphone earmuffs.
Kiana leaned in close.
Because of that despair-inducing distance limit, she had to get very close. Close enough that Su Yu could feel her slightly rapid breathing, close enough that... her lips were almost touching the pickup of that microphone.
"Su Yu..."
The girl's voice carried a tremor of embarrassment, pressed very low, yet captured by the high-performance condenser microphone, it was as clear as a whisper in everyone's ear.
"I need to use the bathroom..."
These few words. These words, carrying a warm breath, and even a hint of sugary nasality born from endurance. Traveled through the electric current, along the network cables, and within split seconds, exploded in the headphones of hundreds of thousands of viewers in the livestream room.
The world went quiet for an instant. Then, the bullet comments went crazy.
[?????????]
[Holy crap?! A girl's voice?!]
[Am I hallucinating? I'm definitely hallucinating!]
["I need to use the bathroom"... This is too...]
[This voice sounds way too good! No, the point is, why is there a woman in Brother Su's house?!]
[And it sounds like she's right next to my ear! She must be right up against the mic!]
[In the middle of the night, a lone man and woman, she has to report going to the bathroom?]
[Brother Su! You betrayed us! We agreed to walk the path of the single dog together!]
[Hidden mistress confirmed!]
[This tone... sounds so soft... Brother Su, you beast!]
Su Yu stared at the bullet comments instantly covering the screen, his entire body frozen in the chair.
His crosshair drifted. His in-game character was headshot by the opponent. Game Over.
Su Yu's hand gripping the mouse froze in mid-air, like a Terracotta Warrior just unearthed and not yet weathered. In that instant, he felt as if he could hear the death knell of his "social death" ringing in his ears—loud, with echoes that lingered.
He turned his head extremely slowly, like a rusted machine.
On the floor bed behind him, Kiana was completely cooked through, her face so red it could drip blood. She curled up holding her knees, her heterochromatic eyes filled with "I didn't mean it" and "Can I find a crack in the ground to crawl into."
He turned back.
The waterfall of bullet comments on the right side of the screen was moving so fast the words were blurred. He could only see a dense mass of white characters scrolling madly, occasionally interspersed with a few eye-catching red SCs, all reading "???" and "!!!".
Finally, his gaze had to land on that pink connection window.
There, that Miss Pink Elf was resting her chin on one hand, her smile as brilliant as a man-eating flower blooming in a cluster of Spider Lilies. Those beautiful eyes were frighteningly bright; it was the look of an apex predator smelling blood.
"Su Yu-chan~"
This call was excessively sweet, as if coated in three layers of lethal frosting, piercing precisely into Su Yu's trembling eardrums.
"Who was that voice just now~? Is there a cute girl by Su Yu-chan's side~♪"
[Ellie has started!!]
[It appeared! Miss Pink Elf's SSS-rank gossip radar!]
[Brother Su, you're done for, seriously, Jesus couldn't save you, I said it!]
[Leniency for confession, severity for resistance!]
"That was... anime."
He took a deep breath and spoke in a flat tone that even he didn't believe, attempting a desperate last stand.
"I just alt-tabbed to watch an anime series and forgot to mute it. Anyway, I'm going to the bathroom. Call a timeout for me."
[Hehe]
[Do I look like I believe you?]
[Which anime heroine's line is a breathy 'I need to use the bathroom'?]
[Brother Su, can your excuse be any lamer? Do you take me for a fool or take Ellie for a fool?]
[Ellie! Get him! Interrogate him!]
Su Yu didn't dare look at those soul-piercing bullet comments again, nor did he dare look at Elysia's meaningful expression. He directly pressed the mute button, yanked off his headphones, and sprang up from his chair as if fleeing a disaster.
The world was quiet. But not completely quiet.
Although he couldn't hear the sound, he could see Elysia on the screen holding up a finger, her lips moving, seemingly conducting some kind of highly inflammatory deductive speech.
In the livestream room, Elysia had already begun her "analysis."
"Let's use a simple process of elimination~ First, with Su Yu-chan's 'never sit if you can lie down' sloth-like personality, he would absolutely never actively invite a girl to this kind of... room filled with bachelor vibes~"
[True]
[Too real]
"So it's impossible that he invited a girl home~"
[Makes sense!]
"Then there's only one possibility—that girl came to find him on her own!"
[Sherlock Holmes possessed!]
"And listening to that voice, so soft and sweet, it absolutely couldn't be Su Yu-chan's mom or an older relative~ Oh my, could Su Yu-chan be playing the legendary... 'Golden House' game of hiding a beauty~?"
[Brother Su, you scumbag!]
[We've been deceived!]
[The leader of the Single Dog Alliance actually has a girlfriend!]
[Where is the FFF Inquisition? We need to burn this normie!]
Su Yu couldn't bear to watch.
He turned his back to the screen and faced the instigator.
Kiana had her face buried in her knees, the tips of her ears exposed and glowing a translucent red. Hearing footsteps, she cautiously lifted her head, her voice muffled as if coming from inside a jar.
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