My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 111

The CP I Ship…

“Ren Chenxi, I won’t like you anymore.”

This was clearly the exact outcome Ren Chenxi had wanted all along. From the very beginning, hadn’t she wanted to keep things plain and simple with Mu Ning, treating each other as strangers or ordinary teammates? Yet, now that Mu Ning had said those words herself—that she would never like her again—what was this sudden, overwhelming wave of sorrow flooding her heart?

            

Ren Chenxi’s lips trembled. She opened her mouth, but it took a long moment before she whispered, “Then this time, I’ll give all the crystal cores to you. I know these cores still aren’t enough to repay you for saving my life…”

“No need…” Before Ren Chenxi could finish, Mu Ning took a weary step back and said in a very soft, quiet voice, “In truth, you’ve saved me several times too, haven’t you? If it weren’t for the shield you gave me, I would have died back during the 8th-order mutated octopus attack. And just now, with the falling carcass of the 8th-order mutated bird, it was thanks to your Shield Card that I wasn’t crushed to pieces. So, Ren Chenxi, we are even. You don’t owe me anything anymore… Let’s distribute those crystal cores the way you originally said.”

“Then… alright.” She and Mu Ning were completely even now. She should be happy, shouldn’t she? But why was it that, far from feeling pleased, the sorrow in her heart only seemed to pile up heavier and heavier? Ren Chenxi forced a bitter twitch of her lips, but she couldn’t summon even a trace of a smile. Giving up in resignation, she withdrew the crystal cores from her inventory—one 7th-order crystal core and two 8th-order crystal cores.

            

This time, Mu Ning didn’t push them away. She didn’t say anything about storing the crystal cores in Ren Chenxi’s space, either. She simply and directly took the cores from Ren Chenxi’s palm, turned around, and walked back to her room without looking back.

Ren Chenxi stared blankly at Mu Ning’s retreating figure. Only when the wooden door closed between them did she slump back onto the sofa. She picked up Tantan—who was still fast asleep—and gently stroked the cat, as if trying to soothe the inexplicable ache in her chest.

It was fine. Let it be. It was just a game, after all.

            

Lost in a daze on the sofa, Ren Chenxi stared blankly at the television screen, unable to process a single bit of the plot. She remained entirely unaware that while she and Mu Ning had been sorting out the crystal cores, a slender figure had stealthily slipped back downstairs from the doorway.

This sneaky, suspicious figure was Tang Ying. She was currently heartbroken and desperate to find someone to vent her feelings to when Zhang Tongqi happened to spot her and call out.

“Hey, Yingying, didn’t we ask you to go upstairs and get Xi-jie? Where is she? And… Oh my god! Yingying, what’s with all the blood on your face? Why are your eyes so red? It looks like you’ve been crying!”

            

Zhang Tongqi’s questions instantly unlocked the floodgates of Tang Ying’s emotions. She flung her arms around Zhang Tongqi and began to weep, crying, “Waaaah!” in deep, agonizing sorrow.

“Aaaagh! The CP I ship¹ went BE again! Why?! My heart hurts so much!!!”

Tang Ying was truly feeling an unbearable sting in her heart. Just how thrilled she had been moments before when she saw Mu Ning and Ren Chenxi intimately holding each other was exactly how devastated she was now, seeing them cold-shoulder each other and turn away. Going from heaven to hell really was just a matter of an instant.

            

Because she had been too busy drowning in sorrow and wiping away her nosebleed and tears, Tang Ying hadn’t heard clearly what Mu xuejie had murmured afterward in that soft voice. But even without hearing the words, she could tell that Mu xuejie seemed to be truly letting go of Xi-jie.

Why? Both of them clearly cared so much about each other, and their relationship had obviously been getting better and better. Why did things suddenly turn out this way when everything was going so well?

“Aaaagh! I’m hurting so much! Mu xuejie and Xi-jie are such a perfect match, why can’t they just be together?!”

            

Holding Tang Ying with a helpless sigh, Zhang Tongqi listened to her continuous wailing and could only try to gently comfort her. “Actually, wasn’t our Boss never really involved with Xi-jie in the first place? The one our Boss loves is her boyfriend, after all! Xi-jie is just the boyfriend’s younger sister. Now that he’s back, it’s only natural for the Boss’s heart to return to her boyfriend…”

As Zhang Tongqi spoke, her words trailed off. Judging by the Boss’s attitude toward her boyfriend over the last few days… her mind hadn’t returned to him at all!

Meanwhile, Tang Ying was too wrapped up in her own grief to hear a word of Zhang Tongqi’s consolation. She did, however, catch the word “boyfriend,” which only made her wail even louder.

            

“Aaaagh! Ren xuezhang and Mu xuejie don’t match at all! Compared to Ren xuezhang, I’d still way rather have Mu xuejie be with Xi-jie!!!”

“…But you used to say Ren Muhui and the Boss were a perfect match. You even shipped them before!” Du Tian couldn’t help but roast her from the side.

“I was blind back then! How could I have been so blind?! How could I have ever thought Ren xuezhang was handsome and gentle? Xi-jie and Mu xuejie are clearly a much better match, okay?!”

            

“…” Watching Tang Ying get so worked up over her ship that she was even cursing her past self, the other girls had no idea how to console her anymore.

The boys, on the other hand, watched Tang Ying speechlessly, casting sympathetic glances at Ren Muhui, whose expression was rather complicated. Finally, Chen Gu spoke up to defend his good buddy.

“Yingying, that’s a bit out of line! No matter what, our Ah Hui is the Boss’s official boyfriend, isn’t he? Besides, you keep acting like there’s something going on between Xi-jie and the Boss, but they’re both women! How can you be imagining all these wild scenarios between two women?”

            

“Hey, hey, hey! What’s wrong with two women?” Chen Gu’s words made Tang Ying instantly forget the pain of her ship sinking. She turned on him in a huff, ready to argue her case. “Love knows no gender! Are you actually discriminating against sexual orientation? Besides, it’s the apocalypse now! Who cares if you’re with a man or a woman? Haven’t you seen those people running that kind of business in the base? Even men go to patronize other men!”

“You’ve actually seen men patronizing men? How long have you even been at the base!” Chen Gu stared at Tang Ying with a bizarre expression. This young girl was so youthful, yet she wasn’t focusing on proper things—why was she specifically looking at such strange things? She had probably filled her head with too much of this odd stuff, which was why she had developed the absurd notion that the Boss and Xi-jie had something going on.

“Pfft! We’ve seen it plenty of times, okay?!” Under Tang Ying’s heavy influence, Song Xin and Chang Ling had actually been swept up in the shipping craze as well. Hearing Chen Gu dismiss their favorite ship had already left them highly displeased, and Song Xin shot right back. “Those guys walk around the base arm-in-arm in broad daylight, and one man will even pinch the other’s butt! We originally thought they were just an ordinary male-male couple, but then Xiao Tong told us that one of them was running that kind of business!”

            

Wu Tong, whom Song Xin had just named, nodded at Chen Gu to confirm she indeed told them about these dirty details in the base. “You steel straight men² usually don’t pay any attention to what’s happening around the base, do you? Couples of the same gender are already out in the open here! Just like Yingying said, it’s the apocalypse. Nobody cares about your sexual orientation anymore. And it’s not just same-sex couples, either—don’t you know? There’s a man in the base who got his heart shattered when his wife betrayed him, and now he’s living together with his mutated pet dog!”

“…” Wu Tong’s revelation blew open the doors to a very bizarre new world for the boys.

It took a long while before Chen Gu cleared his throat awkwardly, offering a rather weak counterargument. “Fine, even if… even if men, women, and dogs can all be together in the base now, still… isn’t this relationship between the Boss and Xi-jie just wild speculation you girls made up?”

            

“How is it wild speculation?!” Tang Ying angrily wiped her nose again. Finding that the bleeding had finally stopped, she continued, “When I went upstairs to look for Xi-jie just now, Mu xuejie was hugging her!”

“That doesn’t mean anything. Don’t you girls hug and cling to each other like that every day anyway?” Chen Gu was quite dismissive.

“B-but… Mu xuejie and Xi-jie were actually kissing!” From Tang Ying’s angle, Mu Ning had grabbed Ren Chenxi by the collar, and then the two of them had ended up kissing!

            

“Oh my gosh~ Really?!” The girls all turned to Tang Ying with sparkling eyes.

“So what if they were? Don’t you girls usually like to kiss each other in that cheesy way all the time anyway?”

At the thought of how girls usually acted all lovey-dovey and affectionate with each other, Chen Gu and the other boys rubbed their arms, trying to soothe the sudden layer of goosebumps.

            

“You… you guys!” Seeing her ship denied over and over, Tang Ying lost her temper and shrieked, “You don’t know shit³! Xi-jie and Mu xuejie were kissing on the mouth!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! They really kissed on the mouth? It wasn’t just on the cheek?!” At first, when they heard Tang Ying say Ren Chenxi and Mu Ning had kissed, the other girls had also assumed it was just a casual peck on the cheek. Who could have guessed they actually locked lips! Instantly, they crowded around Tang Ying in excitement, waiting for even juicier gossip—like whether they had ended up in the bedroom while kissing. At the same time, they secretly lamented: if they had gone up with Tang Ying to call them down, wouldn’t they have been able to watch such an explosive scene live on the spot?

Being surrounded by the girls immediately snapped Tang Ying back to her senses. Although she had been incredibly thrilled and excited while secretly watching them, afterward… her CP had gone completely BE! The grief she had temporarily suppressed due to the distraction rushed back into her heart. Thus, under the burning, gossipy stares of the girls, Tang Ying covered her face, turned around, and bolted upstairs. She ran all the way to the fourth floor; as for the second floor, she was in no mood to face her newly ruined ship for the time being.

            

Although the boys still didn’t buy Tang Ying’s ship, every single one of them had quietly pricked up their ears, waiting for the explosive gossip. And yet, this was the result! How could the source of the leak just run off in embarrassment like that?! Just how passionately were those two kissing upstairs to make you so flushed that your ears looked ready to bleed?! And what happened next?! Why didn’t you finish the story!!!

“Are you young girls nowadays all so… so bizarre?” Chen Gu stared speechlessly at Zhang Tongqi, feeling quite frustrated himself. Honestly, hearing only half of the gossip was pure torture!

Zhang Tongqi shot an annoyed glare back and snapped, “You boys are way weirder, okay? We see you putting your arms around each other’s shoulders and slapping each other’s butts all day long. Who’s to say there isn’t some secret affair going on between you guys too!”

            

“W-what kind of nonsense are you talking?!” Chen Gu’s face instantly flushed crimson. Not wanting to keep bickering with the girls, he quickly changed the subject. “What do we do now? All this mutated bird meat has been processed. Who’s going to go up and call Xi-jie down again?”

“We’ll go! We’ll go!” Before Chen Gu’s voice even faded, the girls excitedly scrambled over one another to run upstairs.

The boys exchanged glances. Although they desperately wanted to follow and join in on the fun, they were held back by the impropriety of intruding into the girls’ territory, leaving them with no choice but to wait downstairs.

            

Growing bored as they waited, they noticed Ren Muhui sitting on a small wooden stool, staring toward the second floor with a deeply miserable face. In an instant, they crowded around him, dragging him into their gossip. “Hey, buddy, why don’t you fill us in? Does our Boss really have something going on with Xi-jie?”

“…”

How can you bunch of people be so utterly heartless? Do you really have to keep rubbing salt in my wound again and again, reminding me that the one who actually conquered Goddess Mu was my own younger sister?!

            

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The author has something to say:

Xixi: My wife doesn’t like me anymore…

Mutou: Wait, wait, wait! Don’t go leaving out words!!!

            

Tang “Dream Crystal” “Tool Person⁴” “CP Chief⁵” Ying: Waaaah… The CP I ship went BE…

Mutou: Why are you joining in on the chaos too?! Don’t just go deciding our ending on your own!!!

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