"What happened next? Didn't she get touched by that?" Lin Gaoyuan picked up a bite of food, shoved it into his mouth, and asked.
Wang Chuqin glanced at him and continued, "Then the next day, Lin Yun-ju, Xiao Mo, and the others happened to come see Shasha. Shasha suddenly said she wanted to watch me play, and dragged me to the hospital's Training Hall. Xiao Lin, Xiao Mo, and the rest of us played a few rounds, and we played for quite a while."
That day, the group had started out just casually sparring, but as they played, they got more and more competitive. Wang Datou's competitive streak flared up, and in the end, he beat every single one of them.
Shasha had been watching from the sidelines the whole time, and she was happier when he won than he was himself.
"But three days later, Shasha told me to go back to China. She said she could take good care of herself over there, and with the team doctor, Coach Yang, Jiajia, and the others around, I was of no use there."
As he spoke, Wang Chuqin started pulling at the hair on his head. "I really don't understand. Just a few days ago everything was fine, and suddenly she was upset again. She was never like this before. You guys tell me, could there be some side effect from the medicine at that hospital that made her out of her mind?"
As some of the smartest and most worldly men in the sports world, they exchanged a glance, silently acknowledging that they actually had no way of understanding women.
Only Datou was left there rambling on. "She said her biggest hope is to see me win a Grand Slam, and if I didn't want to let her down, I'd better get right back to training and prepare for the World Table Tennis Championships next year. I couldn't neglect regular tournaments either. I wanted to stay and keep her company, but she chased me away."
It was always like this; she was always the one calling the shots. In the end, Wang Datou got a bit irritated and flew back by himself.
"I see you dropping the ball at the crucial moment. When a woman says no, she means yes; when she tells you to leave, she actually wants you to stay. But if it's Sun Yingsha, when she tells you to leave, she probably really means it," Lin Gaoyuan continued casually, popping another bite of cold food into his mouth.
Ma Long and Xu Xin indicated that they could no longer keep up with the logic loops of young people's romantic brains.
Datou paused to catch his breath and continued, "As a result, the very next day after I got back, I saw photos of her and Xiao Lin out eating on Weibo. She chased me back to China, only to turn around and go out to eat with someone else, and at an Italian restaurant of all places—she doesn't even like Western food."
"Brother Long, you tell me, was she doing that on purpose to piss me off? In that photo, she was even smiling with Xiao Lin. What was so funny?"
"I think Xiao Lin is young, good at table tennis, and has a great personality. It's totally normal for Sun Yingsha to hit it off with him. It's not like she's only allowed to smile at you," Lin Gaoyuan said, his mouth moving as he swallowed his food and took a sip of orange juice.
Oh right, he was allergic to alcohol, so he had been drinking orange juice all night. The liquor was all being drunk by the other three.
Xu Xin waved a hand and covered Gaoyuan's mouth. "Yuanzi, shut up. Stop provoking Datou."
"What's so young about him? He's only a year younger than me. Good at table tennis, my ass—can he beat me? He looks like a beanstalk, how could Shasha possibly fancy him? Where am I worse than him? I'm better than him at everything!" Datou was super agitated, his voice two notches louder.
With his mouth covered, Gaoyuan couldn't speak, so he had to say in his heart: She can only fancy you, sure enough—your head is a whole circle bigger than his. No wonder his wife said only Sun Yingsha could put up with this childish ghost. Datou really was a king of jealousy.
Everyone already knew what happened next without him having to tell them. Just the day after he returned to China, the media leaked that Sun Yingsha had gone out dining with friends including Lin Yun-ju during her recuperation abroad, and they had been chatting happily.
He called to interrogate her, only to be given the cold shoulder by Sun Yingsha. In his anger, he smashed his phone in the dorm, scaring Coach Long—who happened to be walking by—so badly that he dropped his thermos, shattering it.
"When I saw the news, I was really angry, so I called to ask her about it. She said that was just how it was, nothing to explain. In my anger, I blocked her."
By the time Datou calmed down the next day and wanted to add her back, he found out that Shasha had already blocked him.
Datou slapped his own head twice hard and continued, "I was angry too, so I called her again to argue and told her to block Xiao Lin. She said I was being ridiculous, and then she blocked my phone too."
Next came even more wild antics from Wang Datou. Every three days he would send Shasha text messages, call from different numbers, leave comments, and send direct messages.
Finally, just a few days ago, Sun Yingsha took the initiative to call him, telling him to stop making a fuss, focus on training, prepare properly for the competitions, and even telling him to change partners.
"She actually told me to get a new mixed doubles partner next time. All these years, we've partnered all the way through, weathering every strong opponent and storm of rumors. Even when the coaching staff forcibly broke us up back then, we never gave up. No matter how they split us up, as long as there was a chance, our first choice would always be each other. But now she actually tells me to change partners next time."
The alcohol was getting to Wang Chuqin, and his voice gradually grew lower, bordering on a sob.
Xu Xin rubbed the back of his head with a mixture of helplessness and embarrassment. He was actually a party involved when it came to this matter of the mixed doubles partner.
The breakup of the mixed doubles team back in 2019 had indirectly caused the first major conflict between these two kids. Although it was precisely because of this incident that their feelings heated up in the end, he was truly a matchmaker in the truest sense of the word.