In order to help Tang Yi-Bai practice his oral English, Yun Duo did plenty of homework. She sorted out the common English journalist questions athletes often encounter and made a native English compilation. She then sent it to Tang Yi-Bai for him to try it out. After that, she herself recorded the common answers to those questions and sent them to him as well, asking him to learn by example. She also marked the more difficult terms for him to memorise.
'With this, it should all be fine,' she thought.
However, ideals were lovely, but reality is harsh. Completely unexpectedly, Tang Yi-Bai became both ignorant and incompetent. During their discussions, he would often stray off topic, persisting until even the tips of Yun Duo's ears were red. Yun Duo was rather annoyed by it.
Qi Rui-Feng was even more annoyed — his roommate was showing off, being lovey-dovey every day, blinding his poor single-dog eyes. Please tell him how he could kill off his roommate without anyone being the wiser!
And so time passed by, slowly and leisurely, and before they knew in, it was already time for the Winter Championships. Thinking back to a year ago, Tang Yi-Bai had still been an unknown athlete. His fumble during the press conference had been interpreted by the media as 'a small fry trying to challenge the world champion for some fame'. But now, just in a year's time, he had proven himself to the world. He was the national idol of the Chinese, as well as the hope of Asian swimming.
Since becoming famous, Tang Yi-Bai had accepted two interviews. One for a television broadcast, and the other for a trendy fashion magazine. As the saying goes, "entertainment knows no borders" — well-known athletes would always receive attention from the entertainment industry and fashion industry as well. Tang Yi-Bai was blessed with a superstar face, and his figure was also much better than many idols. His personal image was also excellent — in particular, in some people's eyes, his profession as an athlete was much more noble and wholesome than the messy throng of gossip-burdened superstars. Therefore, Tang Yi-Bai had recently attracted significant attention from the fashion industry. Some had even invited him to attend fashion shows, but this kind of requests had been directly rejected and filtered out by the swimming team's management and so had not even appeared before him.
Due to his popularity, there had been many requests from the media for exclusive interviews, but the team felt that too many interviews would affect training. Besides, Tang Yi-Bai was somebody now — not just anyone could interview him whenever they wanted.
Well, except for one person — Yun Duo could interview him whenever she liked...
Yun Duo herself was a little surprised by this. She could not stand Director Liu's nagging all day, so she asked Tang Yi-Bai whether he could accept a second exclusive interview with Sports Weekly. She had only intended to ask just to get the director off her back, but unexpectedly, Tang Yi-Bai agreed straightaway.
Yun Duo was a little worried. "Isn't that a little troublesome? It's okay even if you don't agree..."
"It's no problem." No matter what one's girlfriend asks for, it was a good boyfriend's basic duty to meet the difficulty head-on. Tang Yi-Bai told himself this.
And then, he sought out Coach Wu and told him why he needed to accept the interview request from Sports Weekly: "Yun Duo is my girlfriend. If I refuse, we will have problems with our relationship. The emotional problems would affect my training, and my training is disturbed, I won't be able to swim well and get good results."
Wu Yong glared. "Why do I get the feeling that in order for you to get a gold medal, the whole nation needs to support your relationship?"
"No need to bother the whole nation. It's enough for the team to be a little more understanding."
"True. You have too many wives. All the single ladies in the country are your wives."
Tang Yi-Bai's face turned black when he heard this. Looks like everyone was aware of how his crazed fans all called him "hubby"... so sad.
Did Yun Duo know? Will she be angry when she finds out? Will she be jealous?
It was hard to imagine how she would look like when she was jealous...
Although Coach Wu mocked Tang Yi-Bai, he still dutifully helped him to apply for an exclusive interview with Yun Duo's agency with the team management. When the management heard of Tang Yi-Bai's 'relationship theory', they found it quite reasonable. After all, athletes were all young and hot-blooded — it was very likely for a bad relationship wo have a negative impact on their performance. Moreover, Tang Yi-Bai had accepted very few interviews thus far, so there was still room for him to accept a few more.
Thus it was decided.
Yun Duo was stunned by the result. "It was approved?"
"Mhm."
"That simple? That's unbelievable. Are you or are you not a national idol?"
"I'm first your boyfriend, then an idol."
Yun Duo was moved. "Oh, oh, oh, Tang Yi-Bai, thank you!"
"Yun Duo, what I want to hear isn't thanks."
"Then what do you want to hear?"
"Hehe."
His soft chuckle was like a feather brushing across her heart, making her face turn slightly hot. She steeled herself and gave a loud kiss towards her phone.
After that embarrassing thing was done, she lifted her head and just so happened to see Director Liu standing right before her, his expression gobsmacked.
Yun Duo was so startled she almost threw her phone away. "Director Liu... you, you scared me."
"You're the one who scared me." Director Liu huffed. "Not working properly. It's still office hours but you're here... hmph. Have you heard back about Tang Yi-Bai's interview?"
"Yes, yes, he has agreed."
Director Liu stared blankly, clearly surprised by the result as well. She had been able to accomplish such a difficult matter, so Director Liu could not find it in himself to criticise her any further. So, he said "work hard" and then left to supervise elsewhere.
Yun Duo patted her chest and said to Tang Yi-Bai, "My leader saw me earlier. Okay, let's stop talking. When are you free? I'll come find you."
"Probably the day after the Winter Championships end. I'll go find you."
"No need for the trouble. I'm a reporter, so it's easy to go find anyone. The agency reimburses me for the costs, you know!"
Tang Yi-Bai did not allow her to refuse though. "I will take a holiday on that day and come find you."
"Okay."
When Qi Rui-Feng found out that Tang Yi-Bai was going to go look for Yun Duo at her agency, he was rather puzzled. "Why didn't you let Yun Duo come find you?"
"You don't know," Tang Yi-Bai's eyes narrowed. "There's a bastard in that agency who is forever after my girlfriend. I need to present myself every once in a while, otherwise that punk might take me for dead."
It was very rare to hear Tang Yi-Bai swear, so it was obvious how much he despised that 'bastard'. Qi Rui-Feng felt some sympathetic enmity and said, "A day off is not enough for me to go home, and you are going off to find Yun Duo. Where should we go play?"
"You can do some extra training on your own."
"Hehe."
Even the most hardworking athlete needs to rest — Qi Rui-Feng would definitely not do extra training. Moreover, he had already promised Xiang Yang-Yang and the others they would go out and play, so after some thought, Qi Rui-Feng's eyes lit up. "Why don't we go with you to play with Yun Duo?"
Tang Yi-Bai smiled coldly. "Hehe."
The Winter Championships were held at City-D. In this kind of unimportant event, many athletes chose to register for their secondary specializations. Leaving aside Qi Rui-Feng who was dead-set on challenging Tang Yi-Bai, Tang Yi-Bai himself had also registered for the 100-metre butterfly and would be racing with Zheng Ling-Ye. Tang Yi-Bai's time in the butterfly was very good, once able to compete with the Japanese swimmers — although his main event was now the freestyle, his skill in the butterfly was still there, so there were many people who expected him to win the race.
In the race, Tang Yi-Bai indeed swam at his usual standards, but the champion was Zheng Ling-Ye in the end.
Even Tang Yi-Bai was rather surprised. It was not to say that he was narcissistic; it's just that Zheng Ling-Ye had always had very, very steady results. Whether it was a major event or a minor event, his results changed very little. But now, Zheng Ling-Ye had performed much better than he had ever before. His time had improved by 0.2 seconds. This was not a very large improvement, but when this number was applied to Zheng Ling-Ye, it was really quite astounding.
This was a breakthrough.
Tang Yi-Bai was keenly aware of this. He felt comforted and also a little curious. He asked Zheng Ling-Ye, "How did you do it?"
Zheng Ling-Ye pursed his lips and replied, "Big bro Bai, I don't want to drag you guys down anymore."
Tang Yi-Bai was enlightened. Although they had won the gold medal in the medley relay in the Asian Games, their situation had not been promising. Ming Tian was still alright — at least the deviation of his times was considerable, so there was the chance of him performing extremely well — and if Zhao Yue could keep the decline in his skills in check, he was also capable of putting up a fight. However, China's time in the third leg, the butterfly, was relatively weak. On a major stage, they were pretty much just targets for bullies. Zheng Ling-Ye had realised this and was doing his best to improve his time. As for how he managed to do so... there were no shortcuts to improving one's time. This improvement must have been born out of hard training and steadfast determination.
Tang Yi-Bai patted Zheng Ling-Ye on the shoulder. "Good luck."
Between brothers, not much needed to be said.
The highlights of the competition this time were not only in the arena, but also outside of it. In particular, the hungry eyes of Tang Yi-Bai towards one young female reporter during an interview. The eyewitnesses at the scene all said: If this fool did not have any intentions towards Yun Duo, I would eat my microphone/camera/voice recorder...
Luckily, the sports journalists still retained some modicum of honour and would not construct a press release purely based on imagination without any evidence. But that lingering way Tang Yi-Bai had looked at Yun Duo as he left caused another wave of chaos among the onlookers.
Reporter A: "Hey, what do you all think that look means?"
Reporter B: "Wash up well and wait for me in bed."
Reporters DEF: "..."
One answer put an immediate end to the conversation! How could they continue happily discussing after that?! Do you even know how to hold a conversation?!
In order to help Tang Yi-Bai practice his oral English, Yun Duo did plenty of homework. She sorted out the common English journalist questions athletes often encounter and made a native English compilation. She then sent it to Tang Yi-Bai for him to try it out. After that, she herself recorded the common answers to those questions and sent them to him as well, asking him to learn by example. She also marked the more difficult terms for him to memorise.
'With this, it should all be fine,' she thought.
However, ideals were lovely, but reality is harsh. Completely unexpectedly, Tang Yi-Bai became both ignorant and incompetent. During their discussions, he would often stray off topic, persisting until even the tips of Yun Duo's ears were red. Yun Duo was rather annoyed by it.
Qi Rui-Feng was even more annoyed — his roommate was showing off, being lovey-dovey every day, blinding his poor single-dog eyes. Please tell him how he could kill off his roommate without anyone being the wiser!
And so time passed by, slowly and leisurely, and before they knew in, it was already time for the Winter Championships. Thinking back to a year ago, Tang Yi-Bai had still been an unknown athlete. His fumble during the press conference had been interpreted by the media as 'a small fry trying to challenge the world champion for some fame'. But now, just in a year's time, he had proven himself to the world. He was the national idol of the Chinese, as well as the hope of Asian swimming.
Since becoming famous, Tang Yi-Bai had accepted two interviews. One for a television broadcast, and the other for a trendy fashion magazine. As the saying goes, "entertainment knows no borders" — well-known athletes would always receive attention from the entertainment industry and fashion industry as well. Tang Yi-Bai was blessed with a superstar face, and his figure was also much better than many idols. His personal image was also excellent — in particular, in some people's eyes, his profession as an athlete was much more noble and wholesome than the messy throng of gossip-burdened superstars. Therefore, Tang Yi-Bai had recently attracted significant attention from the fashion industry. Some had even invited him to attend fashion shows, but this kind of requests had been directly rejected and filtered out by the swimming team's management and so had not even appeared before him.
Due to his popularity, there had been many requests from the media for exclusive interviews, but the team felt that too many interviews would affect training. Besides, Tang Yi-Bai was somebody now — not just anyone could interview him whenever they wanted.
Well, except for one person — Yun Duo could interview him whenever she liked...
Yun Duo herself was a little surprised by this. She could not stand Director Liu's nagging all day, so she asked Tang Yi-Bai whether he could accept a second exclusive interview with Sports Weekly. She had only intended to ask just to get the director off her back, but unexpectedly, Tang Yi-Bai agreed straightaway.
Yun Duo was a little worried. "Isn't that a little troublesome? It's okay even if you don't agree..."
"It's no problem." No matter what one's girlfriend asks for, it was a good boyfriend's basic duty to meet the difficulty head-on. Tang Yi-Bai told himself this.
And then, he sought out Coach Wu and told him why he needed to accept the interview request from Sports Weekly: "Yun Duo is my girlfriend. If I refuse, we will have problems with our relationship. The emotional problems would affect my training, and my training is disturbed, I won't be able to swim well and get good results."
Wu Yong glared. "Why do I get the feeling that in order for you to get a gold medal, the whole nation needs to support your relationship?"
"No need to bother the whole nation. It's enough for the team to be a little more understanding."
"True. You have too many wives. All the single ladies in the country are your wives."
Tang Yi-Bai's face turned black when he heard this. Looks like everyone was aware of how his crazed fans all called him "hubby"... so sad.
Did Yun Duo know? Will she be angry when she finds out? Will she be jealous?
It was hard to imagine how she would look like when she was jealous...
Although Coach Wu mocked Tang Yi-Bai, he still dutifully helped him to apply for an exclusive interview with Yun Duo's agency with the team management. When the management heard of Tang Yi-Bai's 'relationship theory', they found it quite reasonable. After all, athletes were all young and hot-blooded — it was very likely for a bad relationship wo have a negative impact on their performance. Moreover, Tang Yi-Bai had accepted very few interviews thus far, so there was still room for him to accept a few more.
Thus it was decided.
Yun Duo was stunned by the result. "It was approved?"
"Mhm."
"That simple? That's unbelievable. Are you or are you not a national idol?"
"I'm first your boyfriend, then an idol."
Yun Duo was moved. "Oh, oh, oh, Tang Yi-Bai, thank you!"
"Yun Duo, what I want to hear isn't thanks."
"Then what do you want to hear?"
"Hehe."
His soft chuckle was like a feather brushing across her heart, making her face turn slightly hot. She steeled herself and gave a loud kiss towards her phone.
After that embarrassing thing was done, she lifted her head and just so happened to see Director Liu standing right before her, his expression gobsmacked.
Yun Duo was so startled she almost threw her phone away. "Director Liu... you, you scared me."
"You're the one who scared me." Director Liu huffed. "Not working properly. It's still office hours but you're here... hmph. Have you heard back about Tang Yi-Bai's interview?"
"Yes, yes, he has agreed."
Director Liu stared blankly, clearly surprised by the result as well. She had been able to accomplish such a difficult matter, so Director Liu could not find it in himself to criticise her any further. So, he said "work hard" and then left to supervise elsewhere.
Yun Duo patted her chest and said to Tang Yi-Bai, "My leader saw me earlier. Okay, let's stop talking. When are you free? I'll come find you."
"Probably the day after the Winter Championships end. I'll go find you."
"No need for the trouble. I'm a reporter, so it's easy to go find anyone. The agency reimburses me for the costs, you know!"
Tang Yi-Bai did not allow her to refuse though. "I will take a holiday on that day and come find you."
"Okay."
When Qi Rui-Feng found out that Tang Yi-Bai was going to go look for Yun Duo at her agency, he was rather puzzled. "Why didn't you let Yun Duo come find you?"
"You don't know," Tang Yi-Bai's eyes narrowed. "There's a bastard in that agency who is forever after my girlfriend. I need to present myself every once in a while, otherwise that punk might take me for dead."
It was very rare to hear Tang Yi-Bai swear, so it was obvious how much he despised that 'bastard'. Qi Rui-Feng felt some sympathetic enmity and said, "A day off is not enough for me to go home, and you are going off to find Yun Duo. Where should we go play?"
"You can do some extra training on your own."
"Hehe."
Even the most hardworking athlete needs to rest — Qi Rui-Feng would definitely not do extra training. Moreover, he had already promised Xiang Yang-Yang and the others they would go out and play, so after some thought, Qi Rui-Feng's eyes lit up. "Why don't we go with you to play with Yun Duo?"
Tang Yi-Bai smiled coldly. "Hehe."
The Winter Championships were held at City-D. In this kind of unimportant event, many athletes chose to register for their secondary specializations. Leaving aside Qi Rui-Feng who was dead-set on challenging Tang Yi-Bai, Tang Yi-Bai himself had also registered for the 100-metre butterfly and would be racing with Zheng Ling-Ye. Tang Yi-Bai's time in the butterfly was very good, once able to compete with the Japanese swimmers — although his main event was now the freestyle, his skill in the butterfly was still there, so there were many people who expected him to win the race.
In the race, Tang Yi-Bai indeed swam at his usual standards, but the champion was Zheng Ling-Ye in the end.
Even Tang Yi-Bai was rather surprised. It was not to say that he was narcissistic; it's just that Zheng Ling-Ye had always had very, very steady results. Whether it was a major event or a minor event, his results changed very little. But now, Zheng Ling-Ye had performed much better than he had ever before. His time had improved by 0.2 seconds. This was not a very large improvement, but when this number was applied to Zheng Ling-Ye, it was really quite astounding.
This was a breakthrough.
Tang Yi-Bai was keenly aware of this. He felt comforted and also a little curious. He asked Zheng Ling-Ye, "How did you do it?"
Zheng Ling-Ye pursed his lips and replied, "Big bro Bai, I don't want to drag you guys down anymore."
Tang Yi-Bai was enlightened. Although they had won the gold medal in the medley relay in the Asian Games, their situation had not been promising. Ming Tian was still alright — at least the deviation of his times was considerable, so there was the chance of him performing extremely well — and if Zhao Yue could keep the decline in his skills in check, he was also capable of putting up a fight. However, China's time in the third leg, the butterfly, was relatively weak. On a major stage, they were pretty much just targets for bullies. Zheng Ling-Ye had realised this and was doing his best to improve his time. As for how he managed to do so... there were no shortcuts to improving one's time. This improvement must have been born out of hard training and steadfast determination.
Tang Yi-Bai patted Zheng Ling-Ye on the shoulder. "Good luck."
Between brothers, not much needed to be said.
The highlights of the competition this time were not only in the arena, but also outside of it. In particular, the hungry eyes of Tang Yi-Bai towards one young female reporter during an interview. The eyewitnesses at the scene all said: If this fool did not have any intentions towards Yun Duo, I would eat my microphone/camera/voice recorder...
Luckily, the sports journalists still retained some modicum of honour and would not construct a press release purely based on imagination without any evidence. But that lingering way Tang Yi-Bai had looked at Yun Duo as he left caused another wave of chaos among the onlookers.
Reporter A: "Hey, what do you all think that look means?"
Reporter B: "Wash up well and wait for me in bed."
Reporters DEF: "..."
One answer put an immediate end to the conversation! How could they continue happily discussing after that?! Do you even know how to hold a conversation?!
