Imperial harem

"Why is it so hard to make an appointment with them to play?" Yixing thumbed on the table beside the keyboard.

It was evening, time for their playing together. During the day, because of their different lectures schedule, they had individual plans. All of them.

Yixing was usually leveling up, sometimes Lei would pop in to play together with him, but he was playing from his office mostly. They both gathered loads of material during their quests.

Huobai was cooking meals from some of those ingredients and, god knows how he was making such quality products that Lei had so much money from selling them.

Chao and Yitian were making armors and stuff, killing bosses and thinking and executing new strategies. Their guild was prosperous, and many players wanted to join.

But Chao still had an unreasonable high bar, that only one person was able to join them. But because he was still young, like Shanshan, he wasn't much on.

Chao had the idea that when he finishes college and sets the team, he will let them both join, despite being young, both of them would graduate high school by then, so it shouldn't be a problem.

"Because they are the subunit of the best team in China? And everyone would love to spar with them?" Huobai sarcastically answered Yixing, and Yitian chuckled. Huobai was like, despite his name, water for Yixing's fire. Every time Yixing started to make jokes, Huobai would have a comeback, and that was the never-ending source of amusement for Yitian and Chao.

Chao looked at his phone and raised his eyebrow. He looked around and replied. Yitian was sitting next to him, opposite to Yixing and Huobai, so he leaned to the side.

"What happened?" Yitian asked worriedly, but Chao just frowned. He looked pretty pissed. So Yitian asked once more the same question. But this time he put his hand on Chao's forearm, as a sign that he was there.

As if woken up from a dream, Chao jerked and looked at Yitian, eyes widened. Then he smiled and sighed.

"Sorry, just Lei sent a message," Chao stated, and by the looks of it, it wasn't a nice message at all.

"Can I know?" Yitian asked quietly. Chao was really shocked by that question.

"Of course! Why not? What happened to you? Did anyone bullied you again?" He was getting worried again and now it was time for Yitian to sigh. When Yixing stopped bickering with Huobai and heard the question, he laughed so hard.

"He bullied?" He laughed, even more, confusing Chao, "his Imperial harem would kill anyone coming even close to him…" Yitian covered his face, embarrassed because of Yixing.

"His what?!" Huobai stood up, shocked, looking at Yitian.

"Don't say that word ever again!" Yitian shouted. 'Not in front of Chao…' he thought and looked at said person.

Chao's mouth was hanging open. He had obviously no idea what happened in the past few days on Weibo.

"His surname is Wang, so his fans gave themselves the name Imperial harem, hoping that one of them would someday become Empress." Yixing continued and Yitian wanted to bury himself somewhere.

"Empress?!" Chao exclaimed and stood up too.

"You know, future wife of Mister Wang…" Yixing started to laugh once again. Chao's and Huobai's gazes fell onto Yitian, who was on the verge of crying from the embarrassment. But soon he had enough.

"It is your fault. You made me Weibo and posted pictures there!" He shouted at Chao, still red. Only Yixing was the one having fun with this. But Chao ignored Yitian, somehow, he smirked and looked at Yixing.

"How to become a member of the harem?" he asked, stunning Yitian.

"To be honest, I don't know, I just saw my fans discussing how cool the name was. And how should they name themselves." Yixing shrugged. Yitian wanted to end this conversation pretty soon, so he turned to Chao.

"What did Lei send to you?" he asked, trying to divert their attention from the stupid name.

"Oh, he wanted to know when I'll allow new members to join in. Because soon there will be a new patch with better and bigger guild bosses and we won't be enough to get them," Chao said and Yitian nodded. It made sense.

"When?" Yitian asked, Chao frowned once more, and sat back in his chair. He opened the guild window and looked through the description.

"You know that they can join the guild, but in the team, you will pick up the members? You don't have to have every guild member become a team member." Yitian wanted to help Chao.

He had his mind set already, that he would do whatever it was, to accomplish Chao's dream. Because somewhere in between their first meeting and now, Yitian started to love gaming as much as Chao. And was excited by the possibility of making money from it.

Not to mention being with Chao…

"You are right!" Chao stopped frowning and smiled at Yitian. "What would I do if I hadn't had you. You are awesome." He rushed to Yitian and hugged him. Yitian was stunned for a while but then he hugged him back, smiling.

"See, I told you they are VERY close," Yixing whispered to Huobai. Well, whispered wasn't the right word, because everyone could hear it. And Yitian's worst nightmare came soon after.

Chao pulled himself away and looked at the 'whispering' Yixing. Yitian was really afraid of what would happen next.

'What if he was repulsed by that? What if I am not good enough for him…?' Yitian's mind was again going places of his dark past.

And as if the fear of losing Chao wrecked the wall that was around his heart, his heart started beating so fast, his body trembled and his breathing became heavier. He was having a panic attack out of nowhere.

He was frantically looking around for help and grabbing things around him when he grabbed something. It was something that he was so afraid to let go of.