002

'It's so heavy.'

'It smells like someone poured a bottle of vodka on my sheets.'

Xu Wei groggily turned in his sleep and wrapped his arm around what he thought to be a warm pillow.

'Wait, warm?' His eyes shot open and he glanced around, only to find himself in the middle of the two siblings like ham in a sandwich. Both men had one arm hooked around his waist and chest, and Shin Bao even had the audacity to try to play tug of war and pull Xu Wei closer to him.

Xu Wei tried to wiggle out but he had to admit, while he was taller than the two of them and had a fairly decent six-pack - it was obvious that they went to the gym at least three times a week. He put in all his strength to lift Shin Bao's arm up, but it just caused Shin Han's grip to tighten around his waist.

'Fuck, I'm going to get bruised.'

'It looks like I just had a threesome.'

He groaned and laid back down with a pissed-off expression, yet didn't bother trying to wake them up. He didn't know about Shin Han, but Shin Bao was a notorious sleepwalker who would crawl into others' beds and cuddle them. The worst part? He could sleep through anything.

During the first two years of university, 5 out of 10 times he'd wake up either in Shin Bao's arms as if they'd been entangled in a romantic candlelit dinner the night before, or squished up against the wall due to two people having squeezed into the bed. He could swear up and down that he never moved, it was Shin Bao who kicked him to the edge! He even had bruises to confirm!

Xu Wei liked cuddles as much as the next person but not with his childhood friend!

That, along with what happened last year and the strict school rules, drove him to rent an apartment near the school without telling his family.

Shin Bao knew his situation better than anyone else so he helped cover things up.

It's not that Xu Wei had a bad family, he didn't.

It was the fact that his family was too good, too protective of Xu Wei.

Xu Wei came from a rather poor background, his mother was a single mother who had to raise two kids on her own after his father skipped town with another woman.

No matter how beautiful and lovely his mother was as a person, nothing could help the fact that she had dropped out of school before graduating high school and had no educational backing due to having to take care of her sick older brother who sadly passed before she had Xu Ya.

That's all to say, Xu Wei's mother worked as a receptionist at a dry cleaner for the past twenty years just above minimal wage while raising her two children.

Although she tried to give them the best life, they lived in the 'rough' part of town in an apartment complex that was nearly falling apart so she could put food on their plates, and even then, he knew that she often went without two meals a day let alone three. Sometimes, she'd even eat their leftovers instead of cooking enough for three.

Xu Ya grew up faster than Xu Wei, being nearly a decade older, and as soon as she was able to - she began taking over babysitting duties for him and Shin Bao, whose mother was in a similar situation after being scammed and left by his father.

As a child, Xu Wei was picked on a lot due to using hand-me-downs from other, older kids in the apartment complex because it was so obviously used clothes. Either they were ripped, faded, or too big due to him being so thin. Xu Ya quickly put a stop to that when Xu Wei walked through the door one day covered in bruises, even going as far as beating up those kids' older siblings if they had any as a warning to those younger kids.

If they were financially stable, Xu Wei was sure that his older sister would have been a master in multiple martial arts.

He felt guilty. By the time he began making money, she'd already left for university on a scholarship and he had no chance to give her a childhood or make her dreams come true. Instead, he found himself unable to tell his family about his streaming career or that he was technically a multimillionaire.

Xu Wei didn't realize that he'd fallen back to sleep until he woke up and both siblings were dutifully cleaning up the empty cans left around the apartment with some low music coming from a phone on the counter.

He sat still for a while, then blinked and dazedly tilted his head. "Good… Morning?"

Shin Bao glanced over at the owner of the apartment he was cleaning and waved his gloved hand with a smile. "Good morning boss!"

Shin Han nodded politely. "Good morning, thanks for letting us crash here last night…"

Xu Wei remembered what happened this morning and sighed. "No problem, next time keep your hands to yourself. Did your father have this habit, is it why both of you crawled into my bed and hugged me as if I was your little secret plaything?"

Shin Han shifted his eyes and pretended to wipe the table while Shin Bao just laughed. "You're our secret lover?"

"I don't know, you tell me."

Shin Bao just waved him off. "Sorry, you know my habit."

With a sigh, Xu Wei pushed himself off the bed and threw his shirt into the hamper, then glanced down and pointed. "You see these bruises? When you send money later, remember to add a fee for 'emotional damage' and 'physical injury'."

The brothers glanced over and it was as he said, there were a few rather large bruises from their tug-of-war session with the rope being Xu Wei. Both of them shamefully agreed and Xu Wei tugged an oversized sweater on, followed by a quick swap into sweatpants.

Shin Bao pointed at his hair. "Remember to comb, I'm going to send Shin Han back and go try to find someone to bum class notes from yesterday off."

Xu Wei yawned and ran his hand through his hair. "Sure sure, make sure to close the door on your way out then. I'll get started on the game after I get some coffee."

"Thank you for agreeing." Shin Han bowed politely, his ears the lightest shade of pink.

Xu Wei looked at the star from last night, the reason he decided to agree in the first place. he stood still for a while and then smirked. "Don't worry about it, I have some beef with that guild anyway. Actually, I have beef with 83% of that server while the rest have beef with me, ah."

Shin Bao hummed in agreement. "That's true, this guy has been on so many hit lists it's crazy. Besides he also -"

"Shut it." Xu Wei reminded Shin Bao in a lazy tone.

Shin Bao stopped mid-sentence and sent an apologetic look Xu Wei's way as he pulled the other brother out of the apartment.

He almost let it slip.

As soon as the door shut, Xu Wei turned and hit his forehead with his palm while cursing. "Such an idiot."

After over a year of saying no, he just had to be the good guy and decide to say yes and there was no way he could go back on his words, not after knowing what he did now. He'd just be the scumbag that let down a friend and his brother!

He could be an absolute asshole to anyone besides His mother, Shin Bao and Xu Ya.

Xu Wei turned and plopped himself down on the, admittedly, neglected computer chair and sighed as he powered it on for the first time in likely months.

He had a perfectly good laptop that was able to run most of the software he needed for his courses since he was in accounting, and it was much more convenient to download the apps there since he could bring them with him to class or the library.

As he waited for the game to update, he created a new account on the website with one of the emails he'd created in high school to create dummy accounts to secretly browse social media without the search history interfering with his other accounts. Then, he leaned back in his chair and propped one leg up, and crossed his arms as he thought about his next actions.

To build a character that could at least destroy a guild… That would take some time. 

He could easily buy a top-level character, but he was worried about their reputation and any connections they might have. It was better to make a new character, he could build it how he wanted from the beginning, and a new character would give him time to remember everything, get caught up on new content, and find a suitable group.

Xu Wei was also painfully aware that taking down a top guild wouldn't be his only task.

What the hell was Shin Bao thinking? Even if the police are lazy, his destroying a guild wouldn't fix the fact that Shin Han was doxxed. 

He needed to make a bigger scandal, one involving that… What was her name?

Xu Wei pulled up the forum and clicked his tongue as he found his answer in three of the top ten posts.

Lillly, Grey, and Spider. 

Spider.

Xu Wei stared at the name for a long moment. 

'With a brother like that, no wonder his sister turned into a fucking bitch.'

He silently scrolled through the posts, but most of it was repeating what he'd already seen on Shin Bao's phone the night before. Except, Shin Bao deliberately left Spider's name out of it, and downplayed the guild situation - there were technically four guilds involved in this. One was Grey and Lilly's home guild, another was Spider's guild which would likely be full of top players on the server, and both guilds had separate alliances.

'What a fucking pain.'

He had played Legends of Xia, commonly known as LOX for six years, ever since its beta period. At the time, he was finishing up middle school and stumbled across the game. Ironically, he hadn't been looking for a new MMORPG to play after his failed hunt in the summer before his first year, but it found him through an advertisement.

LOX was known as the perfect MMORPG. It had PVP, PVX, PVE, a functional guild system, events led by both the company and GS/GMs who were chosen by the players, guild battles, character customization, and dressing up.

Most importantly, the art was stunning. It wasn't hyper-realistic, but not fully anime either. The developers didn't neglect it one bit. As the industry software improved, they also improved the art.

Needless to say, he joined this time-sinking game and dragged the unenthusiastic Shin Bao down with him.

The two created their guild together, leveled up to max level, and began recruiting little new players to join alongside them. Alongside this, Xu Wei was making his name known in the PVP arena as his ranks gradually became among the top five in the PVP leaderboards and the first place on the assassin leaderboard.

After a while, he created an account online and began streaming his games from an alt account where he rose to rank #2 and became one of the go-to streamers for LOX despite not speaking much nor showing his face.

That marked the beginning of his downfall.

Technically, Shin Han's position right now is also his fault - if he never found the game, Shin Bao wouldn't have still been playing. If he hadn't quit, Shin Bao wouldn't have dragged Shin Han into that mess.

At this point, shouldn't he be apologizing to his ancestors?

The game finally opened and Xu Wei swept away his thoughts as he watched the familiar silver sword fill up before asking him for his login information. He almost laughed, seeing his old account automatically filled in, before deleting the email and logging into his new account.

Tap, tap, tap.

Xu Wei stared at the character creation without any expression and began lazily creating his character.

[Player name, Fearless, is available.]

Xu Wei smirked and clicked 'Create Character'.