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You're My Belated Happiness releases every week Tuesday and Thursday at 11am PST.

Monday, September 19, 2016

God's Left Hand - Book 1: Chapter 6

After two weeks full of exams, Ai Qing’s junior year was finally done.
For her senior year, almost all of her classmates were going to intern at jewelry companies or places like the Bureau of Geology.  Since she had no preference, her father had arranged for her to intern at a local jewelry appraisal studio.
In short, she would be looking at a bunch of gold, platinum, agate, and diamond every day.


As her older sister, Ai Jing, had said, she would soon live a life that was even more luxurious than that of a rich lady.
She and her older sister were twins, but they were totally different.


Her sister liked to study; she had a guaranteed admission into the doctoral program of the Chinese Language Department at the end of her junior year.  The only thing that could count as a similar interest between the two was that her sister liked cos[1], going to all the manga conventions.  She especially liked to cos popular male characters……
More than once she was misidentified when she accompanied her sister to manga conventions.
Fortunately, when she was at video game competitions, her sister wasn’t a public figure yet, otherwise, who knew what kind of funny thing would happen.


This summer, the manga convention was at Guangzhou.
Her sister had been saving money a long time since it was announced; she insisted on bringing Ai Qing along.
“This time I will be cos a character from the video game Warcraft.”  Her sister handed over their ID cards to receive their boarding passes.  “So, my Apple Dog has to come with me.”
The airline staff was surprised to hear that and glanced at her sister.  “If you want to check in a dog, you will need to get a health certificate first.”
……
She embarrassingly looked at the staff.  “We don’t have a dog to check in, just these two luggages.”

“The manga convention has an esports exhibition, will there be someone you know?”  Her sister tilted her head and thought for a while.  “Too bad that you retired.  The videoes from those years are gone too.  When they invited me to this convention, I especially asked them whether they knew Apple Dog and they all said no.”
Ai Qing gave her a look like she had gone through a lot.  “See those diving athletes, who still remembers their names except the two diving queens who married into rich families?”
Ai Jing patted her forehead sadly.  “Doesn’t matter.  I remember you.”


When they arrived at the Baiyun Airport, there were even fans of her sister there to meet them.
While her sister was animatedly chatting with her fans, she was quietly followed at the side until one of the fans pointed in a direction.  “That one is here for the exhibition.  What a coincidence, he came in on the same flight as you.”
Her sister looked over out of curiosity and she also took a look.


There was a young man in the crowd who wore rimless glasses, a backpack, and was pulling a huge luggage.
If he took off the glasses, he would probably be mistaken for a girl.
“He’s a Starcraft II player.”  Obviously, this fan of her sister was also an esports fan.  “Didn’t Solo change his event a couple years ago?  Now these two are the top ranking players in Starcraft II in China.  We always felt that he and Solo would make such a good pair~”
…...A fujoshi’s[2] strength was truly powerful.


Her sister answered with an “oh~” and looked at Ai Qing deliberately.  “Speaking of Solo, I knew his ex-girlfriend.”
The younger girls shouted “ah! ah! ah! ah!” and jumped up and down around her sister.  “Really?  Is she good looking?  We’ve seen the picture of Solo’s daughter, she’s so beautiful.  They said that he had his daughter with one of his fans when he’s 18…...is it that person?”
“No.”  Her sister purposely said very, very slowly, “his ex-girlfriend looks very much like me… very similar.”


Ai Qing pretended that she did not hear it.  Out of professional habit, she was interested in that person.  “What’s his name?”
Esport competitions had experienced a surge of popularity in the past two years.  She did not expect to see so many strange faces so quickly.


“Grunt.”  Someone replied.
At the same time, the person in question seemed to sense that he was being watched and glanced over this way, then all of a sudden his eyes stopped on the two sisters.  He looked back and forth between Ai Jing and Ai Qing, as if he knew one of them.
He had a very attentive look.
“Who’s Grunt looking at?”  The younger girls asked her sister surprisingly.
Her sister looked at her puzzled.
“Looking at her.”  She pointed at her sister and said whatever came to her mind, “he has been secretly admiring my sister.”
Whole bunch of young girls were stunned, so was her sister.
Grunt in the distance obviously did not know that a misunderstanding had just been created.  He finally looked the other way and walked out of the airport.







[1]:  This is written in the raws as “cos” in English, which is basically a shorthand for cosplay.  If you don’t know what it is, it’s essentially people who dress up in costumes based on game, manga, and anime characters and attend game/comic/anime conventions.


[2]:  So for those who don’t understand the word “fujoshi,” it basically means yaoi fangirls (though not all yaoi fans are female).  If you don’t know what “yaoi” means it’s another Japanese word that means “Boy’s love” or basically male-male romance that usually gets pretty graphic, probably… More here if you are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi_fandom

Anyhow the raw used the Chinese form: 腐女 which in pinyin is: “fǔnǚ.”  We thought that fujoshi is more commonly known and would be an appropriate English translation.

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