Chapter 44 – Your Whole Family Are Backup Plans
“AAAAHHHHHH… mmph!”
Annoyed by the early morning racket, Jiang Ranan stormed in with a dark face and stuffed youtiao and sweet bean buns into the two gaping mouths.
The two chubby guys puffed up their cheeks and began chewing noisily, chomp chomp chomp.
After finishing, they wiped their oily mouths and were just about to start shouting again—
Only for Shao Zhan to cut in coldly: “Yell one more time and I’ll throw both of you in the tr*sh.”
When the chubby one tried to act up again, Shao Zhan narrowed his eyes. “Try me.”
The blue fatty trembled and slowly crawled off Tangyuan with a pitiful expression. “How… how did I end up here?”
“Oh, now you’re the victim, huh?” Tangyuan patted his squishy chest, glaring at the human-shaped blue imprint on his T-shirt, and wailed dramatically,
“I’ve guarded my precious flower for twenty years—and you just picked it like it was nothing! And now you’re upset?!”
Shao Zhan, rubbing his throbbing temples, smacked his own team’s fatty on the head. “You’re awake—quit performing.”
The pouty fatty muttered insults under his breath.
Good-natured Jiang Ranan took hold of his pudgy little fist and patiently explained what happened last night.
“No way. Absolutely not.” A fully awake Tangyuan denied everything, his player energy returning full force.
Blue Fatty chimed in too, wagging a chipped-painted finger. “That. Is. Not. Possible.”
“Let’s go.” Shao Zhan flicked his own chubby team member on the forehead.
“Go where?” the fatty grumbled.
“To relive your tragedy from last night,” Shao Zhan growled through clenched teeth—though in truth, he was just taking them all to breakfast. He couldn’t just leave their out-of-town guest alone, stuck in bed thinking too hard.
In the hallway, the cleaning auntie was tidying up the mess they made earlier.
The group strolled along, chatting and laughing, until—
Creak.
The middle door in the hallway swung open.
Yang Sa stepped out, fully dressed and as cold-faced as ever.
In an instant, all the Xinghai members exchanged looks—they got it.
Qin Chuan’s face turned beet red. He suddenly felt a few gazes land on him—some of them carried a faint trace of… pity?
LAP’s two not-completely-hungover teammates also noticed that Yang Sa was coming out of a different room than the one he’d gone into the night before. They weren’t sure exactly what had happened, but something was definitely off.
Tangyuan sobered up on the spot. He threw an arm around the still-confused little Blue Guy and declared with a grin, “Come on! Big Brother Fatty’s treating you to breakfast!”
The rest of the group tacitly agreed to pretend they hadn’t seen anything, diving right back into their conversation with renewed enthusiasm.
Only one person looked out of place—Little Blue, swept along by the crowd, reached out to his brother with a desperate signal: “Sa… save me… Sa…”
The cleaning auntie straightened up, saw the kid who’d just come out, paused for a second, and pointed behind Yang Sa. “That’s… Xiao Zhan’s room.”
Silence fell instantly.
Shao Zhan: Thanks, Auntie. Really.
There goes this month’s bonus.
Fat Tangyuan and Jiang Ranan began frantically winking and gesturing, their faces tense. But the older cleaning lady didn’t catch on at all. Still mopping away, she asked casually, “So you two slept together last night?”
Her tone couldn’t have been more natural—like a mom asking about her kid having a sleepover.
Shao Zhan cleared his throat. “Yesterday…” He glanced around at the team, then locked eyes with their manager, Qin Chuan.
“I slept with Qin Chuan last night.”
Pure-hearted Jiang Ranan was reading a message from Du Changcheng on his phone: “Captain, Coach said he’s been trying to call you all morning and you’re not picking up. He wants you to answer your phone.”
“Oh… I probably left my phone in Qin Chuan’s room,” Shao Zhan said, unfazed. “I’ll go grab it now—”
At that exact moment, Yang Sa, who had just pulled a phone from his pocket—the same one he’d casually grabbed from the nightstand—froze in place like he’d been turned to stone.
Jiang Ranan, caught awkwardly in the middle, moved like a robot as he took the phone and handed it to Shao Zhan: “Captain… the phone you left in Qin Chuan’s room…”
“…is a backup.”
As Shao Zhan spouted blatant nonsense in the hallway, Qin Chuan could feel the pitying gazes aimed at him growing deeper and more heartfelt.
Before he could respond, Shao Zhan casually pointed at Fat Tangyuan’s round face and said to the LAP captain, “We’re on our way to check out the scene of this guy’s crime. Wanna come?”
Fat Tangyuan stared at Shao Zhan’s sharp profile. “…Are you the devil?”
The entire group, each with their own inner drama, made their way downstairs in a chaotic march.
Only then, breathless and lightheaded from rage, did Qin Chuan finally snap back to reality. He jumped up and shouted after them, “Shao Zhan, you sneaky LYB1! You’re the backup! Your whole family are backup plans!!”
…
In front of the base’s entrance, scattered feathers lay messily around the landscaping.
Under the evergreen cypress trees, a small patch of turf had been dug up, revealing a palm-sized pit in the soil. In the middle of the soft earth, three cigarette butts—clearly squashed and twisted—were awkwardly stuck into the ground like makeshift incense.
Fat Tangyuan crouched down and picked up the piece of sod that had been pried loose. It felt oddly familiar—the shape, the texture.
A breeze blew past, lifting the brown chicken feathers into the air in a slow flutter. As they danced in front of his eyes, memories suddenly came rushing back, and an unknown wave of emotion welled up in Tangyuan’s chest.
At the same time, Little Blue, still haunted by fragments of last night’s chaos, called out with feeling, “Fatty…”
Fat Tangyuan immediately yanked him into a hug, clutching his not-blood-related-but-closer-than-a-brother comrade. “Good brother… I—I—I almost forgot you after just one nap…”
“Good brother…” Little Blue echoed hoarsely, his voice full of tragic camaraderie.
The parrot that usually strutted around the base like it owned the place caught sight of them coming down and instantly scrambled off, feathers flying. It was now hiding in a bush at the other end of the garden, scared stiff by their dramatic wailing. As it sprinted wildly away, it dropped an egg with a splat right on the lush green grass.
Fat Tangyuan pointed at the stumbling, flapping figure in the distance. “That’s our other sworn brother.”
“My chicken brother…” Little Blue burst into tears again, though no one knew where he was even getting the tears from.
Wiping his face, Fat Tangyuan solemnly introduced: “That thing’s the base’s mascot. With the kind of energy this place has, even a hen gets forced to crow like a rooster…”
Note :
- “LYB” is internet slang in Chinese (“老阴比”), short for someone who’s extremely scheming or sly. It’s untranslatable literally but works as “sneaky bastard” or “slimy schemer” in tone. ↩︎