One week after Sun Xiang moved to Samsara, Du Ming asked, “How long have you been growing your hair out?” and Sun Xiang scowled, leaning away from Du Ming. His new teammate didn’t take the hint; Du Ming batted at Sun Xiang’s half-bleached bangs, which fell past his cheeks, and kept talking. “Did you grow out of your edgy phase and forget to cut your hair back after?”
“Fuck off,” Sun Xiang snapped. He slapped Du Ming’s hand away, maybe more forcefully than it warranted. His face burned. “It’s not your hair.”
Du Ming shrugged and performatively shook his hand, checking each individual finger. “Whatever, dude, but it looks tacky.”
“Your face looks tacky.” Sun Xiang stood up and turned around. He’d been trying so hard not to argue with Samsara’s members and to be a good team player, and maybe that was working if Du Ming thought this was friendly teasing, but— “Stuff it, okay?”
“Take a break,” Jiang Botao said, and for all the pleasant smoothness of his tone it was clearly an order. He didn’t try to touch Sun Xiang, though, for which Sun Xiang was grateful; he was pretty sure he wouldn’t try and punch his vice-captain but he didn’t want to risk it.
Sun Xiang grunted, and was about to stomp away when Jiang Botao’s eyes, sharp in contrast to his endlessly affable smile, fixed on his. “Talk to me about this later,” Jiang Botao said. For a moment, Sun Xiang thought he saw a frown wrinkle Jiang Botao’s forehead, but it disappeared so quickly it must’ve been a trick of the light. “I don’t want my team upsetting each other.”
“Yeah,” Sun Xiang said. “Whatever.”
He knew Jiang Botao meant it. There was nothing of the slime of Liu Hao’s ineffectively encouraging words, nothing of the stone-walling blankness that had hovered behind Su Mucheng’s media-perfect smiles, nothing of the frustration that Sun Xiang had thrown at Xiao Shiqin again and again as if it would help anything.
Sun Xiang also heard Du Ming asking, “What did I do?” in helpless confusion, and he slammed the door behind him before he could hear Jiang Botao’s answer. He wanted nothing less than to hear his all-too-insightful vice-captain’s analysis of his outburst, especially since Sun Xiang had a sickly feeling that Jiang Botao might be able to explain it better than Sun Xiang himself could.
Samsara’s headquarters had, among other amenities, an open-air courtyard in the middle. Sun Xiang liked it; especially right now, as summer thickened the air, it was a good contrast to the carefully climate-controlled building. He stepped outside, pulling his Samsara jacket from his shoulders before he overheated, and tilted his face up to the sun.
His hair slid over his shoulders. He tied it back, a lot of the time, but today he hadn’t wanted to, and look where that got him. Angrily, Sun Xiang gathered it in his hands, yanking it into a ponytail and tucking the end in as he tied it off, making a shitty excuse for a bun. A few strands fell into his face anyway, and Sun Xiang muttered a curse as he shoved those back behind his ear.
It was just hair. He didn’t need to get so defensive about it. Sun Xiang threw himself onto one of the backless benches, staring up at the sky. His parents had said that every time he’d whined about a haircut growing up. It’ll grow back, they said, completely ignoring the way he didn’t want to wait for it to grow back out.
Sun Xiang had bleached his hair the day he’d signed the paperwork to join Conquering Clouds. He hadn’t quite dared to let it grow out until he’d joined Excellent Era, when he’d just been too busy learning One Autumn Leaf and a new team to care. When he’d gotten the time, he’d stared at himself in the mirror and thought, What if I let it grow?
He’d had so little control of his life.
It was a rebellion, but also a pleasure to watch the bleach-blond ends grow out, marking the passage of time and growing ragged. Liu Hao had hated it, and Su Mucheng had defended him there—poison on her lips but it wasn’t for Sun Xiang—and everyone else had kept their mouths shut about the whole issue while Sun Xiang put on headphones and tried to ignore them.
He’d started wearing earrings again in Challenger League, though, studs that gleamed on his earlobes and weighed cold on his skin when winter hit.
He’d thought—
“Ah, fuck.” Sun Xiang covered his eyes with his arm. “This is stupid.”
“What is?”
Sun Xiang sat up, startled; he hadn’t realised anyone else was here. Especially not Zhou Zekai. Fuck, he wanted to give his new captain a good impression of him, not… whatever he currently was.
Zhou Zekai tossed Sun Xiang’s jacket to him—Sun Xiang had forgotten he’d just let it drop to the ground—and repeated the question.
It wasn’t like Sun Xiang was the only person on Samsara with longer-than-average hair. Zhou Zekai’s dark hair curled around his chin, carefully managed so that the waves accentuated the lines of his jaw and cheekbones. Sun Xiang’s hair was a mess in comparison. Hell, all of him was a mess in comparison. Sun Xiang curled his hands into his Samsara jacket. “Nothing.”
Zhou Zekai might not speak well, but his expressions were eloquent. He raised his eyebrows and glanced back towards the training room.
Sun Xiang drew his legs up, feeling like a child who’d been caught out. “It’s stupid, as I said. Just… Du Ming was making fun of my hair.”
“Mm.” Zhou Zekai sat down on the bench next to Sun Xiang. He didn’t look at Sun Xiang. That made it easier, Sun Xiang thought.
“Do you think it’s stupid?” Sun Xiang asked in a rush. He didn’t know if he was asking Is it stupid to be upset about this or Is my hair stupid. He wasn’t sure it mattered.
Zhou Zekai shook his head firmly, and ended with his eyes meeting Sun Xiang’s. “No,” he said, the word firm. “It’s not.”
Sun Xiang breathed out, mad that his eyes were prickling and hot. “Thanks,” he said, and then stood, feeling long and gangly and made of too many angles compared to Zhou Zekai. “I— Yeah. Thanks.”
“We’re a team,” Zhou Zekai said, as if it was really just that simple.
Maybe it was. Maybe there was a wealth of layers beneath that which Sun Xiang couldn’t interpret. Either way, he paused at the door and glanced back. “Yeah,” he said, the corners of his mouth lifting. “I like that.”
Zhou Zekai smiled too, and that warmed Sun Xiang even as he returned to the air conditioned halls.
“Hey,” Du Ming said at dinner. “Sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“I know.” Sun Xiang kept his eyes on his plate.
“If you like your hair, that’s what matters.”
Sun Xiang snorted and looked up. “Did you come up with that yourself, or is that the vice-captain?”
Du Ming scowled at him. “I can be polite all on my own, thanks!”
“Children,” Fang Minghua said, “is this really necessary?”
“Yes!” Sun Xiang and Du Ming spoke at the same time.
The whole table was silent for a moment, and then Wu Qi started snickering. Soon, everyone else was laughing too.
Jiang Botao took Sun Xiang out on a walk two days later.
“I would prefer not to be blindsided by things that upset you,” Jiang Botao said after four blocks of talking about nothing in particular. “Is it just your hair, or…?”
Sun Xiang shoved his hands in his pockets and wished there was any way out of his conversation. There wouldn’t be; Jiang Botao was too good at this. “I dunno.” He kicked a piece of gravel out of the way. “Do you, like, know what bugs you before it happens?”
“Some people do.”
“I don’t.” Sun Xiang hunched his shoulders. It would be nice if that were going to be the end of it. Or if he could just wrap himself up in a hoodie that was too warm for summer but would at least let him withdraw.
“May I make some guesses?” Jiang Botao asked, horribly calm.
His words were still a knife in Sun Xiang’s gut, held steady only by Sun Xiang’s knowledge that Samsara held team camaraderie as one of the cornerstones of success; Jiang Botao would in no way intentionally hurt him the way other people who tried to guess what set him off had done.
Sun Xiang swallowed. They’d walked down half of another block while Jiang Botao waited for his answer. The scent of fried food drifted from a restaurant door. Music rang from a loudspeaker. Sun Xiang mumbled, “Not while other people are around.”
Jiang Botao nodded like that was an absolutely reasonable response, and then resumed his meaningless chatter about Shanghai, places Samsara often went as a team, and what parts of it he thought Sun Xiang might like. It was almost enough for Sun Xiang to relax before he realised that Jiang Botao had led them to one of the more deserted areas of a city park. The trees provided shelter from the sun, and a screen from the few other people strolling around in the middle of the week.
They stopped under an arching willow, and Jiang Botao gazed up at the thin branches waving in the nearly non-existent breeze. Sun Xiang mostly just looked at Jiang Botao, his easy grace and the loose waves of his brown hair curling around his ears before fading into a thin buzz at the nape of his neck. That was the trick, with Jiang Botao; he looked so normal and unassuming, right up until he didn’t anymore.
“You still cool with me making some guesses?” Jiang Botao asked, nonchalant and still not looking directly at Sun Xiang.
“Ugh,” Sun Xiang said, which definitely wouldn’t pass muster as a response. He leaned against the willow’s trunk, not exactly taking comfort in the rough bark, but reminding himself where he was with the sensation. “Yeah.”
Jiang Botao nodded. He spent another moment in silence, despite how Sun Xiang was certain he’d had his thoughts lined up since he decided to take Sun Xiang on this interrogation of an outing. “You’re sensitive about your hair, obviously. Samsara PR will want to talk to you about styling it, but we can tell them that the length isn’t negotiable. If you want to bleach all of it, that can also be arranged.” He paused, idly running a willow frond through his fingers. When Sun Xiang didn’t reply, he continued. “Your earrings?”
Sun Xiang reached up to grab at them, which is probably an answer in itself. “They’re just studs.” Nothing distracting or elaborate.
“Nobody will tease you about them, xiao-Sun,” Jiang Botao said, very gently. His eyes glinted, luminous, as he glanced at Sun Xiang. “Not unless you enjoy the teasing.”
His eyes were hot, which was unfair when the day itself was so still and warm. “I don’t.” Sun Xiang leaned his head back until his skull rested against the tree trunk, and he stared up at weaving greenery like it could keep Jiang Botao from noticing the lump in his throat. “Anything else?”
A thoughtful hum, then, “Is there anything else you would consider ‘girly’?”
Sun Xiang could hear the air-quotes. They were almost enough to overlay the rattling panic in his chest. “Fuck this,” he growled, pushing himself away from the tree. He stomped past Jiang Botao, shoulders hunched. “I’m heading back for more practice.” He wasn’t the best at directions, but retracing his steps is fine. He’d been paying enough attention for that, at least.
Jiang Botao didn’t follow him. Which was great, because Sun Xiang didn’t actually want to head directly back to Samsara HQ. He wanted to—
Punch something, maybe. Start running and not stop until his body forced him to. Go to a bar that played music too loud and would give him drinks that tasted like shit and cost too much. Something that would take his mind away from Jiang Botao’s entirely too pointed words.
In the end, Sun Xiang didn’t do any of that. He just stormed around the park in a long loop, then made his way back in time for the team’s afternoon practice session.
Nobody said anything about the faint sunburn on his cheeks or the sweat on his back or the way his hair was tied up in a shitty bun to keep it from sticking to his neck. Sun Xiang almost wished they would, so that he could get pissed at someone other than himself.
Practice went well. He even relaxed by the end of it enough to return Jiang Botao’s smile and Lu Boyuan’s fist-bump. Zhou Zekai squeezed his shoulder as he passed, too, but his captain’s message had been clear from the precise beauty of the plays they’d run:
No matter how prickly Sun Xiang might be, Samsara wanted him to be here.
That, too, made Sun Xiang’s eyes burn.
Sun Xiang entered the therapist’s office with every intention of hating it.
He was, therefore, surprised to find that it was actually pretty nice. The woman sitting across from him looked very ordinary, wasn’t much older than him, and seemed like she could be any one of the support staff making sure Samsara ran smoothly. “Sun Xiang, Samsara’s newest and highest-profile transfer,” she said, extending a hand for him to shake. “Nice to meet you. I’m Zhao Que.”
“Do you work with everyone on the team?” Sun Xiang asked, instead of the polite response he supposed he should give. She had a firm grasp, and didn’t linger too long before sitting down and gesturing for him to do the same.
Zhao Que laughed. “No. Quite the opposite, in fact, because if all of you saw one person, it’d be too easy to breach confidentiality.”
“Do you think we’re going to talk about confidential stuff here?” Sun Xiang waved a hand at the room. The landscape paintings. The soft blue walls. The window, currently closed to keep the AC-cooled air in. “Like, I don’t know anything that I need to keep secret from my team.”
“Not about Glory, maybe, but personal stuff?” Zhao Que raised her eyebrows. She had, Sun Xiang was quickly learning, a very expressive face. “I don’t think you want to tell your teammates all about your feelings.”
“And you think I’ll want to tell you about them?” Sun Xiang shot back, crossing his arms over his chest. “When I’ve known them far longer?” Not as close teammates, sure, but Sun Xiang was quite aware he was the youngest member of Samsara; he’d played against everyone for years.
Therapists were supposed to be nice, Sun Xiang was pretty sure, but Zhao Que’s smile was sharp. “Sure,” she said. “Because you can be absolutely certain that the only thing I’ll do with your feelings is help you.”
“And you’re going to do that by arguing with me?”
“Samsara interviewed half a dozen therapists about working with you.” Zhao Que’s eyes softened behind her glasses. “They told me I was their first choice because I was ‘willing to engage with Sun Xiang at any volume’, which is my favorite way I’ve ever been told that I’m an opinionated loud-mouth willing to argue with her clients.”
Sun Xiang blinked. Then, slowly, he felt himself start to smile. “Great,” he said, because if Samsara required its team members to see mental health professionals at least once a month, he wanted his sessions to be with someone he could have fun with. “How does this work?”
“Tell me about yourself,” Zhao Que said, settling back in her chair. “Anything you want. I’ll take notes. And then you can ask me about myself, if you’d like, though I might not answer everything you ask.”
“Alright,” Sun Xiang said, and started talking about the thing forever closest to his mind: Glory.
Zhao Que, as she said she would, listened attentively and even made sarcastic comments at appropriate times. Sun Xiang laughed, and then made her tell him about her own Glory accomplishments (which were best summed up, he thought, by taking a full month to reach the Heavenly Domain).
By the end of the hour, Sun Xiang was surprised by how fast time had gone. “Same time next week,” Zhao Que said crisply as they stood. “We’ll be weekly throughout the summer, so we get to know each other. We’ll talk about how often to meet during the season once it arrives.”
“That makes sense,” Sun Xiang said, grateful that this was something he didn’t need to plan for himself. “Great. Thanks, I guess.”
She grinned at him. “See you next time, Sun Xiang.”
Sun Xiang remembered his manners just enough to say, “Have a good week, Zhao Que,” as he went through the door.
Halfway through summer, when Sun Xiang had finally gotten used to his teammates liking him, Fang Minghua came knocking at Sun Xiang’s door in the middle of a free morning. Out of the team, Fang Minghua was the only one who used summer vacation time with any consistency; he’d disappear for a week out of every month, and often only spent half the day in the building to begin with. “I’ve got a wife,” he’d say, laughing. “She likes seeing me around more.”
So it was a surprise when Sun Xiang opened his door—dressed in a tank-top and boxers, because fuck getting more dressed in the middle of summer when he was hanging out in his own room—to see Fang Minghua there. “Uh,” Sun Xiang said, belatedly considering that he maybe should’ve put on pants. “Hi?”
“My wife has been doing some cleaning,” Fang Minghua said, and he had the courtesy to look mildly bullied. “She asked me to bring you a few things she thought you might like.”
Sun Xiang had met his wife—Wang Changxi, though the team all called her saozi—exactly once, and she had treated him like a little brother in a way that was sweet, embarrassing, and terrifying. She treated everyone in the team that way, except for Fang Minghua, who she was just sickeningly in love with. Sun Xiang didn’t know how they managed it. So this wasn’t exactly weird, even if it was unexpected.
“Please convey my thanks to her,” Sun Xiang said automatically, because he had internalised a lot more PR lessons than people seemed to think. “But, uh, what are they?”
Fang Minghua proffered a small box. “She says that all her friends have plenty of jewelry and hairpieces as it is, but you might want something new.”
Reflex allowed Sun Xiang to accept the box. Politeness meant he said, “That’s very kind of her.” Self-preservation followed that up with, “I, uh, should maybe get dressed. If I’m going to try any of them.”
“Sure.” Fang Minghua smiled at him, easy and cheerful as ever. “She’s going to badger me for more details about what you like in a week or so, though, so please do give me something to pass on to her.”
Sun Xiang nodded, then shut the door in Fang Minghua’s face before his senior’s eyes got too misty with affection. Or before the vast confusion about being gifted jewelry overwhelmed him too much. He had two pairs of earrings: silver studs and gold studs. He hadn’t even thought about anything fancier for his hair than a plain black tie to hold it out of his face.
The box, when he finally unfroze enough to open it, had a post-it inside reading, Don’t worry, xiao-Sun; I sterilized all of the earrings before packing them up for you. :) Enjoy! <3. Sun Xiang stared at it for a moment. He never would’ve even thought to worry about that. But he supposed it was good, since earrings went in his ears.
There was a whole bounty inside. Simple hoops. More studs, decorated with colored glass or flowers. A few dangling earrings that jingled when Sun Xiang picked them up. A set of feather-shaped earrings that didn’t jingle, but would hang down from his earlobes in a way that couldn’t be hidden. Some combs and hairpins; nothing fancy, but more than Sun Xiang would have ever bought for himself. A few bracelets, too; simple things, plain items Sun Xiang was pretty sure were mostly worn by teenage girls.
He slid one on his wrist anyway. It hung there, cool against his skin, strangely fancy when—despite his words to Fang Minghua—he hadn’t bothered getting dressed first. Sun Xiang stared at it, trying to imagine what it would be like to just… wear it. To not worry about reactions, but just have something glinting on his body while he was cracking jokes with his team at dinner.
Fang Minghua wouldn’t have given him these to mock him. Jiang Botao wouldn’t let anyone call him names. Sun Xiang clasped his hand around the bangle, trying to ground himself in the hard metal as his chest got too tight.
This was, his therapist would tell him, a panic attack. This was also, his therapist would point out, evidence that Sun Xiang was challenging the trauma he’d been enmeshed in during his time at Excellent Era. Or maybe even before that, since he’d been given shit for liking girly jewelry way before he started playing Glory professionally.
Sun Xiang did not enjoy Zhao Que’s words ringing in his head, but fuck if he was going to let shitty instincts win against what he wanted to do.
That evening, Sun Xiang joined his team for dinner with feathers hanging from his ears and a thin gold band tight around his wrist. When he sat down, Fang Minghua nodded at the earrings and said, “Nice, I’ll let my wife know how pleased you are with her gift.”
Du Ming leaned across the table and asked, “Hey, why does xiao-Sun get gifts from saozi and I don’t?”
“Did you want jewelry?” Fang Minghua grinned at Du Ming and pulled out his phone. “I can text her right now; I’m sure she has more she could hand out.”
“Ah, Fang-ge, thank you.” Du Ming gave an overwrought bow more appropriate for an old court drama than the cafeteria. “It’s not necessary.”
“I appreciate her thoughtfulness,” Sun Xiang said, eyes fixed on the noodles in front of him. He should eat them instead of cutting them to shreds. “It was unexpected.”
Fang Minghua patted his shoulder. “Again, let me know when you figure out your favorites.”
“Yeah,” Sun Xiang said, words almost drowned out by Wu Qi and Lu Boyuan’s burgeoning argument about local basketball teams. “I will.”
The first match of Season Ten was a game that only Sun Xiang thought of as a rematch.
It was surreal, anyway, to walk down the corridors and out onto a stage to shake Happy’s hands. He’d done this mere months ago, surrounded by different people and on a smaller stage. Now, the whole arena roared, the voices of Samsara’s fans tearing through Happy’s supporters. Sun Xiang moved in step with his team, back straight and refusing to worry about the potential for dirty talk; Happy can’t touch him with Samsara here.
Ye Xiu’s only words were, “I’m looking forward to seeing you on the stage.” It sounded like he meant it, too, especially with his easy smile.
“I’ll trash you this time,” Sun Xiang growled back.
“Go ahead,” Ye Xiu said, already moving on. “I want to see you try.”
The annoying thing about Ye Xiu, Sun Xiang thought as Su Mucheng greeted him, was that he was always so sincere. There was nothing to dig at and under, just confidence and an obnoxiously genuine delight about the idea that someone was going to try and unseat him.
It fired Sun Xiang up, made him want to fight even harder. It also meant he didn’t quite realise that Wei Chen was next until he heard his voice.
“Hey, xiao-Sun, what’s with—”
“None of your business,” Jiang Botao snapped, grabbing Wei Chen’s arm and cutting him off. Sun Xiang almost crashed into his back. “If you’re going to trash talk, don’t do it about appearance, old man.”
Wei Chen gaped at Jiang Botao. Then he scratched behind his ear with a chuckle and pried Jiang Botao’s hand off. “So protective! He really is the team’s baby, huh?”
“Call me a baby to my face,” Sun Xiang demanded, grabbing Wei Chen’s hand and shaking it more firmly than necessary. “I’ll tell Lu Hanwen and he’ll laugh his ass off at the idea that I’m a baby.”
“Ooooh,” Wei Chen cooed, “the little lion boy has some fangs!”
“More than you, geezer.” Sun Xiang smiled faux-pleasantly, as he’d been taught, and moved on, trying not to think too much about the idea that Wei Chen had been about to taunt Sun Xiang about his appearance. It felt incredibly hypocritical of him, considering the next person in Happy’s own line.
“Nice hair, man,” Bao Rongxing said, utterly sincere in this as everything else. He squinted, then said, “Hey, those earrings are Glory studs, right? Where’d you get them?”
“Uh,” Sun Xiang managed. “The Glory merch store?” How the fuck had Bao Rongxing, who always wore some kind of weird shiny nonsense in his ears, not realised this? But it was Bao Rongxing, who was confounding even for Happy, so Sun Xiang didn’t waste time thinking about it.
“Oh, hell yeah.” Bao Rongxing pumped a fist in the air. “Gotta get some of those!”
Behind him, Luo Ji—the least fielded player on Happy, but still there even if he seemed useless—rolled his eyes and pushed at Bao Rongxing. “Keep moving, Baozi,” he said quietly. “Or else we’ll never get to play.”
“Right, right,” Bao Rongxing said, quickly extending his hand to Fang Minghua. “It’s gonna be a good game today!”
“I’m sure it will,” Fang Minghua said, quite pleasantly, but with a veiled threat clear to Sun Xiang’s ears. He didn’t know how much of Happy heard it; he also didn’t care.
Besides, Samsara crushed Happy.
It was a great start to the season.
“Did I ever tell you about Bloody Dance?” Sun Xiang asked, which absolutely wasn’t what he was probably supposed to talk about after the first match of the season. Whatever. Zhao Que was employed by Samsara now; no doubt she’d seen the footage of their match; she’d know he felt good about it.
“Is that a Glory account?” Zhao Que replied.
Sun Xiang nodded. He toyed with a length of rope, winding it around his fingers as he thought. “Bloody Dance is one of my oldest accounts,” he said, eventually. “Probably the oldest one I’m still active on. Definitely the oldest one that isn’t formally connected to my name, at this point.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because nobody would expect me to have a female alt, I guess.” Sun Xiang shrugged, pulling the rope tight around his wrist for a moment. “I wanted to see what all the armor and stuff would look like on a female account, so I made her. She’s a Berserker, same as No Mercy.” His first account. Shitty build, but he’d been nine when he started playing Glory, so he hadn’t known better or cared about anything other than beating monsters up with a giant sword. Sun Xiang smiled wistfully. “It’s nice to just play the game and not have anyone give a shit about who you are, you know?”
“You’ve got other alts,” Zhao Que noted. She flipped back through her notebook. “Split the Seas, Resounding Fury, Lightning Strikes Thrice, Heaven’s Kebab”—Sun Xiang snorted; Excellent Era had given him that account to practice Battle Mage on—“and probably half a dozen more you haven’t told me about yet.” Zhao Que met Sun Xiang’s eyes with a practiced tilt of her head. “You don’t talk about any of them as an escape.”
“Yeah, ‘cause they’re all accounts I used for pro-level practice at some point, right?” Sun Xiang stood up and started pacing the little room. He’d never had to explain this before. He’d never wanted to. “Bloody Dance has never been for anything other than my own fun.”
Zhao Que nodded, twisting around to keep him in sight. “Is it weird to play Berserker on your alt when you main Battle Mage now?”
Sun Xiang leaned against the windowsill, staring out at the busy street below. “Not really?” he said after a while. “I think it helps with the separation.”
“Would you want to make a female Battle Mage alt?”
Sun Xiang’s first reaction was to laugh. His second, when Zhao Que waited in silence long enough to make it clear he was supposed to think about his response, was, “I don't know.” Sun Xiang glanced back at Zhao Que, who looked obnoxiously thoughtful. “I guess it would feel kind of like a betrayal of Bloody Dance to do that?”
“A betrayal?” Zhao Que made a note, then said, “You sound very attached to her.”
“Hard not to be, when you’ve had an account for a decade.” Sun Xiang winced, thinking now about One Autumn Leaf. There were things he didn’t want to talk about, and things he really didn’t want to talk about, and Ye Xiu topped the latter list right now. “I wouldn’t want to do that to her.”
“Excellent Era didn’t have any such compunctions,” Zhao Que observed, because she was horribly good at her job and knew some things about Sun Xiang’s Ye Xiu-related hang-ups.
“Excellent Era,” Sun Xiang spat, “was a piece of shit.”
Which got them off the topic of Bloody Dance, at least, because Zhao Que was always happy to let Sun Xiang talk about his Excellent Era feelings. It was good for him to vent, she told him, and to have those feelings validated.
Sun Xiang didn’t care about the psychology behind it, but he did leave her office feeling lighter than he had in a while.
Sun Xiang did not, as a rule, read about himself on social media.
Sun Xiang could not, unfortunately, completely avoid knowing about what fans said.
“What’s the point of all this?” he asked Liu Xudong, the person Samsara had assigned to run most of his social media and brief Sun Xiang about anything he needed to know was being said about him. Or, more to the point, to ensure that the worst comments were deleted and everyone generally played nice. Liu Xudong was a rigorously organized man, which was great, but right now Sun Xiang wished that he had papers to rifle through instead of swiping along a tablet.
Liu Xudong shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Look,” he said, with an air of great patience, “you’re too good for them to insult your skill at Glory. You’re too obsessed with Glory for them to grumble about you spending too much time on other pursuits. The only thing left for upset fans to complain about when they’re mad at you is your appearance.”
“I hate it,” Sun Xiang said, and he didn’t even curl into a ball as he said it. He let the venom in his voice out, seething through his chest and coiling through the room. “I’m not— It’s not going to change my presentation.”
“I know, xiao-Sun.” Liu Xudong sighed and pulled his tablet back. “We’re taking care of the worst offenders. We can’t remove all references to your appearance, however, and we can’t guarantee that reporters won’t ask about it. I just want you to be prepared.”
“I’m prepared, alright,” Sun Xiang muttered, shoving his chair away from Liu Xudong’s desk. “Prepared to kick some ass.”
“Just don’t hurt your hands,” Liu Xudong said.
Sun Xiang laughed and ran his hands through his hair. It fell almost to the bottom of his shoulder blades now when he let it loose. “Yeah, I know, they’re my best asset.”
For a moment, he thought Liu Xudong was going to make a joke, like one of his teammates might. But then the older man just smiled and said, “That’s all for today. I’m looking forward to your game this week.”
Sun Xiang grinned. “Misty Rain won’t know what hit them.”
All-Stars was good, mostly. It was nice to see everyone again. It was weird to realise that the rhythm of this was familiar now, and that he’d missed it last year when Excellent Era was in relegation. It was just that, by the time All-Stars came around, Sun Xiang had moved beyond being upset about references to his hair and jewelry choices and into being annoyed about them.
“There are just so many better things to talk about, you know?” Sun Xiang said to Zhang Jiale, who was definitely the person most likely to understand his current trials.
Zhang Jiale leaned against the wall. He looked tired. His hair, a light red-brown, fell across his shoulders, longer even than Sun Xiang’s. “I mean,” he said, “if people wanted to comment on my hair? I’d welcome it. Like, fuck, at least being teased about looking like a girl would be a change from being called a traitor cursed never to win.”
Sun Xiang winced and tightened his arms around his ribs. He hadn’t expected that point of view. Maybe he should’ve. “Is it really that much better?”
“Yeah?” Zhang Jiale looked at him, confused. “Why should I care if they’re calling me something blatantly untrue? It’s much easier to roll my eyes about being called a girl by people I don’t even know than being shouted at by my old fans for something I actually did.”
“…yeah,” Sun Xiang said, after a pause that felt too long. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
It didn’t stop him from feeling queasy. He couldn’t even figure out why.
It was, ironically, the week after Samsara finally faced Hundred Blossoms for the first time—not even three weeks after All-Stars—that Sun Xiang’s emotions finally came to a head.
It wasn’t even about a match.
It was during a promotional photoshoot for Samsara-styled One Autumn Leaf merchandise. During a break, one of the staff tried to make a joke, and everything went downhill from there.
“Sun-dashen,” the photographer said respectfully, which was a good start. “Are you growing your hair out to be more like Su Mucheng?”
For a moment, Sun Xiang just stared at him. He forgot that he was holding water, or that he was supposed to be polite, and just said, “What the fuck?”
“Ah, no, don’t take it as an insult!” The photographer waved his hands frantically. “I don’t mean it like that.”
“You’d better not.” Sun Xiang took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. Fuck. He shouldn’t make a PR incident out of this. But he couldn’t just stay silent. “Su Mucheng is one of the best players in the Alliance,” he said, which was a great start. “And if you think that me growing my hair out is about being like a girl—” he tried to mimic Jiang Botao’s nasty media smile, the one that never seemed impolite but scared everyone “—I think you’re confused. Su Mucheng’s fantastic, but why would I want to be a Launcher?”
The photographer squeaked. Sun Xiang thought he heard some other staff member on the phone, frantic. His heart pounded in his chest, and now that he’d started talking, he couldn’t stop. “Maybe you should ask if I want to be like Tang Rou, since she’s also a Battle Mage, but—” he laughed, and barely recognised the sound as his voice; it was too high, almost forced “—wait, you can’t do that if you’re talking about my hair, can you? Because Tang Rou’s hair is the proper length for a man’s, isn’t it? And she never wears dangly earrings like I do. Do you wish I looked like her? Or that she looked like me? Would that make things easier for you?”
“Sun-dashen—”
“I don’t care.” Sun Xiang slammed his cup down on the table. He’d drunk most of it, so only a little water spilled out. “I am fucking tired of people thinking that me looking like a girl is an insult. What the fuck. Samsara is the first team I’ve been on without women teammates. Did you know that? Do you give a fuck about Conquering Clouds? Li Jian and Fu Xiaoyun might not be All-Stars, but they’re still pros. They can beat 99% of people in Glory. Su Mucheng can beat 99.9%. She’s terrifying to play against. And, fuck, Excellent Era has had women playing for them since the beginning. You know that, right? Xia Ming helped Excellent Era take their first victory. Women are champions. Stop acting like they aren’t.”
The whole room was silent. Sun Xiang turned towards the door. He was very tired, and extremely done, and absolutely certain that at least one person had recorded that whole rant. More quietly, he said, “If you want to call me a girl, then you’re saying that One Autumn Leaf’s player is a woman. You’re saying that a top All-Star player is a woman. You’re saying that one of the people leading Samsara to victory this season is a woman. Now, does that sound like an insult to you?” He looked around, meeting people’s eyes. “It doesn’t to me. It shouldn’t to you. Stop fucking saying it like it is.”
“Sun-dashen—” A woman—she’d been directing the shoot, Sun Xiang hastily recalled—raised her hand like she might prevent him from leaving.
Sun Xiang shook his head. “We’re done for today.” He swept past her, then turned back to add, “I’m sure you have some kind of recording of that. Do me a favor and send it to Samsara’s PR department.”
“I was just going to say thank you,” she said, and Sun Xiang froze. She smiled at him, eyes a little watery. “I won’t keep you. I’ll make sure we give Samsara a heads-up about what happened.”
“…I didn’t do it for you.” Sun Xiang shook his head, bewildered by this more than anything else. “It had nothing to do with you. Why are you thanking me?”
“I know.” She bowed a little. “But so few men will take the time to defend women like that.”
Sun Xiang winced and waved a hand. “Please don’t mention it.” He’d felt almost calm after finishing his rant. Somehow, those words had riled his stomach up again, which was awful. “I’m leaving now. Bye.”
This time, nobody stopped him.
Sun Xiang became a social media sensation even before he made it back to Samsara HQ.
Jiang Botao fell into step with him as soon as he entered the doors. “Douyin loves you,” he said conversationally. “So does weibo.”
“And PR?” Sun Xiang asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
“I dunno,” Jiang Botao said, but his hand came down on Sun Xiang’s shoulder and squeezed. “But I’m not going to let you find out alone.”
Sun Xiang closed his eyes and murmured a fervent, “Thank fuck,” as they walked down the halls to PR.
It wasn’t as bad as Sun Xiang had thought it would be, honestly. PR sighed at him and then told him to lie low for a few days while they figured out what to do with all the unexpected social media buzz he’d generated.
Therapy after, however, was awful.
“The interesting thing about working with high-profile people,” Zhao Que said conversationally as he entered her office, “is that sometimes social media alerts tell me exactly what the topic of a session is going to be.”
Sun Xiang groaned and faceplanted into the couch. “So you saw the video,” Sun Xiang said, voice muffled.
“If there’s a person in Samsara’s employ who hasn’t seen the video, I’d be impressed.” Zhao Que sounded amused, at least. That was good. “Honestly, I think everyone who follows the Alliance has seen it by now. Su Mucheng shared it with the tag #PlayLikeAGirl. Chu Yunxiu’s dragging you for not telling people how cool she is too. All the other women in the Alliance are talking about it, and a lot of the men are sharing it in support. Zhang Jiale’s at the forefront there, I think, if we aren’t considering your own team.”
“Su Mucheng messaged me about it.” Sun Xiang turned his head so that Zhao Que could hear him. Also so that he can see her, with her casual clothes and glasses and hair up in a bun way neater than Sun Xiang had ever managed. “She said she’s proud of me.”
Zhao Que’s face softened. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
“It’s… weird.” Sun Xiang didn’t want to talk about this, but—as Zhao Que kept telling him—talking about all the things he didn’t want to talk about was what made therapy work. “We were never friends.”
“I can’t imagine why not,” Zhao Que said dryly, which startled Sun Xiang enough to make him laugh. “Excellent Era wasn’t a good environment for making friends while you were there.”
“Yeah, I know.” Sun Xiang made a face. Then, because Zhao Que didn’t say anything, he mumbled, “I don’t even know where any of that came from.”
“It sounded like you’d had it bottled up for a while.”
Sun Xiang’s throat tightened. “I guess?”
Zhao Que paused, cleaning her glasses, which meant she was considering her next words very carefully. Sun Xiang’s heart sped up, but he didn’t have thoughts coherent enough to say anyway, so he waited for Zhao Que to speak.
“I’m going to say something you won’t like,” she said after settling her glasses back on her face. “You are not allowed to respond for a full minute after I say this, so that I know you’ve thought about it at all.”
Sun Xiang pushed himself upright, squinting at Zhao Que suspiciously. She got like this sometimes, and he always hated it. “Okay?”
She met his eyes, hands still on her omnipresent notepad, and said, “How would you feel if people said you looked like a woman and it wasn’t meant as an insult?”
“What the fuck,” Sun Xiang said, which technically meant he was breaking the rule Zhao Que had set, but also she just rolled her eyes at him. Which meant she’d expected that reaction. Which. Fuck.
“One minute of consideration,” Zhao Que reminded him, holding up her phone and resetting the timer. Sun Xiang scowled at her, and she grinned back, unrepentant. “Stop making that face and thinking about me; I want you to think about you.”
Mostly he felt panicky, in the same way he’d felt panicky when asked to think about whether Excellent Era had been a toxic environment. In the same way he’d felt panicky when, at the beginning of the summer, Jiang Botao had asked him if being considered girly upset him. Which.
Well.
He didn’t want to be teased about that. Sun Xiang could hear Zhao Que already going “That’s not exactly the same, you know” in his mind, so he gritted his teeth and tried not to let himself stop there.
But his mind went blank of words, leaving behind only memories. Of wearing earrings and enjoying the way they felt pulling against his ears and brushing against his neck. Of the night Wu Qi had sat down behind him and said, “I’m going to teach you to French braid your hair,” and told Sun Xiang about his passel of younger girl cousins and how he’d had to learn to do their hair as a survival technique at family gatherings. Of Zhang Jiale saying “Why should I care if they’re calling me something blatantly untrue?” and the twist in Sun Xiang’s gut in response.
All of which felt like it should coalesce into something.
Mostly, it coalesced into the incandescent rage that Sun Xiang had come to realise hid fear. Sun Xiang rubbed his face and said, after far longer than the minute Zhao Que had forced him to take. “I don’t know.”
Zhao Que made a note. The scratch of her pen against paper was startlingly loud. “Think about it, then,” she said. “Let me know if you’ve got more of an answer next week.”
Sun Xiang blinked. “Wait, that’s it?”
“We can keep talking about it now, if you’d like.” Zhao Que smiled, which felt like a trap. “We can talk about anything you’d like, Sun Xiang.”
“Why even ask?” Sun Xiang threw his hands up in the air and slouched back into her couch. The rest of her office was neatly professional, with calming colors and landscape paintings on the walls, but the couch was grungy and comfortable because of it. “Like, how do you get from that rant to asking if I want to be a woman?”
Zhao Que raised her eyebrows, and Sun Xiang was pretty sure she was making an effort to keep her face neutral. “That wasn’t what I asked, but it’s interesting that you think I did.”
“Why else would someone call me a woman and not mean it as an insult?” Sun Xiang chewed on the inside of his lip while Zhao Que looked at him with the absolute patience that meant she wanted him to keep thinking or talking or something. He didn’t like that expression. She said it led to his biggest breakthroughs, so she’d keep using it on him anyway. “Like, okay, if you’re going to parallel this with women being called men because they do jobs just as well, that doesn’t work.”
“I’m so glad you’ve internalized so many lessons about feminism and patriarchy that I didn’t set out to teach you.” Zhao Que made another note. “Since you’ve brought it up, sure, let’s follow up on that idea. What if you were a woman? How does that compare to the idea of being a man?”
“Everybody says I’m a man.”
“I’m not asking what people say.” Zhao Que rolled her eyes. “Use your imagination, Sun Xiang; I know you have one.”
The right answer, Sun Xiang knew, was to say that of course it felt weird, maybe even bad, to consider being a woman. He’d been taught that since childhood.
It was unfortunate, then, that if he forced himself to do what Zhao Que asked, Sun Xiang did not feel bad, just terrified. Also kind of weird, yeah, but in the same way it had felt weird to learn all the habits of a Battle Mage instead of a Berserker, when he’d first been approached about signing with Excellent Era and taking over One Autumn Leaf instead of continuing to play Cross Knife for Conquering Clouds.
Considering being a man just felt familiar. No terror. Nothing particularly positive either, though; none of the rush of adrenaline that could be fear and could also be excitement that came with thinking about being a woman.
Sun Xiang scowled at nothing in particular and said, “Feels weird.”
“Good weird or bad weird?”
“How do you tell?” Sun Xiang snapped, which Zhao Que was probably going to think was a helpful answer somehow anyway. “What’s the difference between something feeling weird because it’s wrong or because you’ve been told it’s wrong?”
“I think most people who consider the idea of being another gender and find it weird don’t need to ask that question.” Zhao Que tilted her head to the side. “The reason I asked to begin with is because of how you looked at the end of your rant, as you call it.” She tapped on her tablet for a moment, then held it out.
Sun Xiang took it, looking at the sort of blurry image of his face. He looked… pleased, maybe?
“Men who talk about raising women up rarely say things like ‘If you want to call me a girl’,” Zhao Que said softly. “They say things like ‘Women are not lesser’ and ‘I’m proud of my female coworkers’, or perhaps ‘If you were to compare me to a girl’.”
That sick feeling in Sun Xiang’s stomach reared up again. He swallowed against it.
“So I’m going to say something that I don’t think you’ve been told before, and I want you to listen very carefully.” Zhao Que leaned forward and took the tablet back, so that Sun Xiang had to look at her face. “Sun Xiang,” she said, “you don’t need to be a man. You can be a woman if you want.”
“That’s not how that works.” Sun Xiang shook his head, which didn’t help with the sick feeling. “You’re a man, or a woman, and that’s just… how things are.”
“Sure, people say that, but you don’t need to stick with what doctors told your parents when you were born.” Zhao Que brought something up on her tablet so fast that Sun Xiang knew she had to have prepared this before he’d arrived. She flipped the screen around, showing articles about celebrities coming out as transgender, which was a word Sun Xiang was pretty sure he’d heard before but not like this. “I’ll send you further reading.”
“Great,” Sun Xiang mumbled. “Cool. Can we talk about literally anything else now.”
Zhao Que patted his hand. “We’ll come back to this next week, then.”
“We’re facing Happy this week.” It’s a weak and obvious topic change. It’s also something Sun Xiang knew Zhao Que would listen to him talk about. Sun Xiang turned his mind off and rambled about Happy, talking about his frustrations and concerns and the excitement he was mad that he felt when thinking about how Ye Xiu would experience his growth.
Zhao Que listened, nearly silent, until their hour ended and Sun Xiang got up to leave.
“Remember,” she said as he reached the door. “Read the articles I’m sending you.”
Sun Xiang nodded, then fled.
Sun Xiang didn’t read any of the literature before facing Happy. They had never been easy to beat, and now—halfway through the season, tempered by adversity and still coming up with weird new tricks—Happy was yet more dangerous. Sun Xiang couldn’t afford to be anything less than his best.
Su Mucheng shaking his hand and saying, “Chu Yunxiu’s so mad you like me more than her, but it’s only fair; we were teammates for a while,” was unexpected but easy to take in stride. He’d been getting texts saying as much all week. Tang Rou followed up by smugly saying, “You wish you were me,” however, and that left Sun Xiang speechless.
At least there was no outright psychological warfare.
At least Samsara won.
It was the end of January, and too cold to hang out in the nice garden courtyard, but Sun Xiang ended up there anyway. He slouched against the old oak and stared up at its barren branches, dark against the overcast sky.
Last night, Sun Xiang had read through all the articles and websites Zhao Que had sent him. He’d texted her as he read, mostly strings of question marks and screencaps of sections that sent his emotions into a roiling boil of confusion. She had just replied, “If you don’t think it’s relevant to you, then you don’t need to keep reading.”
He had stared at that message for long enough that his phone’s screen shut off. That shook him enough to set his phone aside, face-down, and return his gaze to the Transgender 101 page still up on his computer. Sun Xiang took a breath, told himself he was only reading it to make sure it wasn’t relevant to him, and kept reading.
And now, in the light of day, Sun Xiang had no idea how to feel about any of it.
There was this whole world that he’d never seen or heard of, because his parents had wanted him to focus on school and he had wanted to focus on Glory, and balancing the two hadn’t left much time for anything else. Once Sun Xiang had signed with Conquering Clouds, he’d had more free time—due to not having school—but the uptick in hours spent practicing and adjusting to working in a team had consumed most of his time and energy anyway.
All of which was to say that, yeah, he knew queer people—it was hard not to, when certain All-Stars flirted with each other constantly—but he’d never done any research about them, and certainly never thought about transgender people.
Sun Xiang scrubbed at his face. Maybe someone else would be able to take all the information he’d absorbed last night and apply it right away, or at least organize it internally. Sun Xiang couldn’t. He just kept thinking about sentences saying things like “Wanting to be a girl is often a sign that you are one” or “Most cisgender people enjoy being the gender they were assigned at birth” and “You’re allowed to experiement.”
None of which was helpful, somehow, for figuring out what the fuck he thought about the whole idea.
Sun Xiang watched gray clouds swirl across white clouds, at a frustrated impasse, until he heard Zhou Zekai’s voice from the door. “Come inside,” he said. “It’s cold.”
Which meant Zhou Zekai was worried about him, and possibly not just because of the temperature outside. “I know,” Sun Xiang said, shoving off the tree and heading over to his captain. “I needed to clear my head.”
Zhou Zekai considered him, then tilted his head in a question.
“I dunno.” Sun Xiang stripped off his coat as the door closed behind him, sealing away the outdoor chill. “I think that my therapist decided she was bored of waiting for me to figure something out and wants to fast-track me to a conclusion.”
Zhou Zekai laughed a little at that, which felt nice, and gestured for Sun Xiang to follow him. Sun Xiang nodded, and wasn’t at all surprised when they ended up in the team’s kitchenette. Zhou Zekai talked more when they were at HQ than when the media was around, but he still didn’t talk much, and he was more conversational when he had something to focus on other than the words.
Sun Xiang tucked himself away in a corner, watching as Zhou Zekai pulled a variety of fruit from the fridge. A smoothie, probably, would be the final result. Zhou Zekai started peeling apples, the skin coming off in clean spirals, and said, “Tell me?”
“It’s stupid.” Sun Xiang kept his eyes on the apple skin and the steady movement of Zhou Zekai’s hands. He’d promised that he’d do his best to talk to his team about anything bothering him, though, and he’d been holding this back half the week already because of their match against Happy, so after another thirty seconds or so, Sun Xiang muttered, “She asked me if I wanted to be a woman.”
Zhou Zekai paused for a moment. He glanced at Sun Xiang, bright eyes half-hidden behind his hair, and said, “We’d support you. If you were.”
Sun Xiang blinked. Not because he was tearing up, but because he’d never even considered what other people might think. “Oh,” he said, because Zhou Zekai was still watching him. “Um. Good to know?”
Zhou Zekai nodded, a slight smile on his lips, and then returned to slicing and coring the apple. “Are you?”
The fact that Sun Xiang hesitated, all the websites and FAQs he’d read last night would tell him, meant that the answer was almost certainly more complicated than “No”. Sun Xiang groaned and slid down the wall, folding himself up until he sat on the floor. “Fuck,” he mumbled, pressing his face into the coat now bundled on his knees. “I shouldn’t need to think about this, should I?”
A moment later, Zhou Zekai’s soft footsteps came to him, and his captain wrapped him up in a hug.
Sun Xiang dug his fingers into Zhou Zekai’s soft sweater, inhaled the light scent of his clothes. Through a tight throat, Sun Xiang whispered, “What if I were?”
“Still teammates. Still xiao-Sun.” Zhou Zekai squeezed Sun Xiang more firmly. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” Sun Xiang said, and finally let herself think about the possibility that Zhao Que was right. “Yeah, I think it will be.”