When an Alpha is Marked by One of His Own Kind

Chapter 31

The sun was rising, and the heat of the sun was starting to scorch the earth once more. Discussions about the vote Shen Qiao had cast last night were starting to boil over as well. While Shen Qiao had been lost in dreamland, gossipy netizens of the esports circle had already sent him up the trending topics list.
#ShenQiaoVotesForWolfDog#

The call was still connected. Shen Qiao was completely awake by now. With his phone connected to wifi, he started to load up Weibo.

A flurry of notifications cascaded across his screen. His private messages and comments notifications were all in the three-digits range, and the number of likes he'd received simply read '999+'—

Once his cell phone finally calmed down, Shen Qiao laid eyes on the Weibo landing page and felt a tremor run through his heart.

He took a deep breath and opened his own Weibo page. The latest post had been made after he cast that vote:

[I just voted in the 'What do you think the ship name for Lu Zhe and Shen Qiao should be?' poll. You should cast a vote too!]

Shen Qiao calmly stared at this message for a few seconds. Then he calmly got up and went to the window. Then he calmly opened the curtains with a—

WHOOSH!

The view from DG's third floor was pretty nice. A large red cotton tree stood right outside the dorms. Its bristly trunk was quite dark. The younger spines on the trunk were still sharp while the older ones had already become worn and rounded down with age.

Underneath the tree, a lush green lawn sprawled out. Even if a gardener didn't regularly tend to the lawn, the grass would stay green and healthy all year in the weather of Hua City. The only difference between having a gardener and not having one for that field would be in how unbridled the grass grew.

However, right now, these weren't the details that drew Shen Qiao's attention.

He gazed out the window with only one thought passing through his mind:

Would all my problems go away if I just jumped from here right now?

……

On the other end of the line, Lu Zhe could tell from that deathly silence that Shen Qiao had received a devastating blow to his own sense of self-respect. Then, hearing the sound of curtains being ripped open, Lu Zhe could more or less guess what Shen Qiao was thinking. Lu Zhe didn't say anything else to embarrass him even further.

He only said, "Just kidding. I was only teasing you. Not all that many people have seen it, actually. It's not too late to delete it now."

As he spoke, his cell phone lit up with a few more red dots—alerts telling him that new messages were spilling in from various friends.

Shen Qiao had received a timely reminder from Lu Zhe. He thought, in hindsight:

That's right.

Before killing yourself, you should destroy the evidence first.

He picked up his cell phone and instantly went to delete the incriminating post. At just that moment, another idea rose in the sea of his mind:

Should I also say I was hacked?

That moment of hesitation didn't stop him from getting rid of the post from last night first. After making sure no other bizarre posts had popped up on his Weibo page, Shen Qiao started to feel like maybe he hadn't completely disgraced himself. He could at least take a peek at his private messages now…

Fuck.

Before he even opened up any of his new messages, he could already see from the previews that the very first one read: