The Road Home

Chapter 5

One hand? Left hand?

Gui Xiao was competitive. Figuring that her odds of winning were very high, she did not play coy anymore and took the cue from him.

She liked cues that were slightly heavier so there was strength to it when she held it in her hands. The one Lu Chen selected for her was just right.

Lu Chen was not very particular when it came to himself. She reckoned that he truly was planning on going easy on her, for he simply took the cue closest to him. Holding it in his right hand, he pulled the billiard balls out from the pockets with his left and tossed them onto the table. With the sudden development of this little drama, everybody, having sat here for an entire afternoon already but not seen Lu Chen show any indication that he wanted to play, all enthusiastically gathered around.

The sheer curtain was sucked out the window by the wind, then carried back on the air that blew in, tickling the now-empty seat that he had been sitting on just earlier.

Gui Xiao circled around half the pool table. "I'll break?"

"Of course," Hai Dong answered for Lu Chen. "Chen Ge is already giving you such an advantage. Do you really think he's not going to let you have the break, too?"

Pulling her lower lip in, she bent at the waist, narrowed her eyes, and took aim. Her arm pulled back, then thrust forward. A crack! resonated out. She had a huge run of good luck. Her shot sank three balls.

Those several dropout students behind her clicked their tongues, exclaiming, "Awesome!"

Hai Dong held up a cigarette and stuffed it between Lu Chen's lips. "You're going to lose to my little sis-in-law, eh."

Biting down on that unlit cigarette, Lu Chen ran his right hand over the rail of the pool table and swept a cube of deep-green chalk back with it. He rubbed the chalk against his cue's tip a couple of times, giving a smirk. "You think that's possible?"

Sadly, after pocketing on the break, the positions of the remaining balls were not good.

Her second shot did not sink anything.

Once Lu Chen's turn came, she did not get any more opportunities to take a shot again. At the very end, when there remained only the white cue ball and the black 8-ball, Meng Xiaoshan finally was unable to keep watching this. "Chen Ge, don't pick on our Gui Xiao like this, eh."

Following suit, everyone began heckling him, telling him to go easy and just throw this shot. The few girls there, on the other hand, were not so agreeable to the suggestion and muttered, "He's already using just his left hand, and you still want him to go easy? You might as well just have Gui Xiao use her hands to drop the balls into the pocket and let things be at that."

Lu Chen was not fixated on winning. Pressing his palms against the torn, dark-brown rail of that pool table, he leaned over slightly and looked at her. A smile touched the corner of his lips as he asked, "Want me to let you win?"

"No need." Gui Xiao felt even more humiliated with this question. She set her pool cue into the rack, voluntarily conceding defeat.

Lu Chen did not say any more. His arm pulled back and then his cue shot forward. The ball was practically flying as it rolled towards the pocket and dropped in.

He won.

Based on the number of balls that had been sunk, she would not be considered to have suffered a crushing defeat. But the other party had played with only one hand, and furthermore, it was his left one. The only additional thing he could have done was to tie both his hands behind his back and just let her win.