My Mr. Mermaid

6. Photo and Team Flower

Blushing furiously, Alanna began ignoring Nickolay and company, pretending to fiddle with the camera.

Nyle was somewhat bemused, but as an idol, he did not plan to give his fans too much of his time. As such, right after the photos were taken, he led his brothers away with him.

Alanna seized the moment to pull away from them as well, snapping several shots with her camera. Regardless of whether the photos taken could be used, she could at least console herself that their ambush here had not been completely pointless.

Sending off the pantheon of swimmers with their gazes, Teacher Sun asked Enzo curiously, "Why didn't you ask Nickolay Tan for an autograph just now? It should be easier now. If you wait till he becomes famous, it'll be too late if you want it then."

Enzo's expression was still as placid as before. His eyebrows were slightly drooping, making him look very listless. Speaking of which, he seemed to have been like this the whole 10 minutes they had known him, as if his body was waiting for his spirit that had been away wandering in a different dimension to return. Registering Teacher Sun's words, he shook his head and replied, "I'm getting it for my younger sister. Having just Nyle's is enough for her."

Alanna was rather surprised. "Your sister didn't come with you to watch the competition?"

He sighed, "She couldn't come."

She noticed he looked rather down, as if troubled by some personal matter, so she did not continue asking.

Enzo drove her and Teacher Sun back to their hotel and the two sides went their separate ways. Alanna carted all the flowers back to her room, and the room that had not been that spacious to begin with, was soon almost filled to the brim. That done, she began working on her draft before her computer, surrounded by the fragrance of flowers. "Sports Weekly" was published twice a week; additional publications were possible when major competitions, such as the Olympic Games or the World Cup, were being held. Of course, the 'National Swimming Championships' was obviously not yet at the level where additional publications were deserved.

Tomorrow at the latest, she and Teacher Sun would have to send their manuscripts on the competition these past two days back to the editing center. Alanna browsed through the photos she had taken these last two days, trying to find several useful shots.

Looking back and forth, in the end, her gaze settled upon the batch of photos she had quickly captured earlier this afternoon.

Speaking of which, the first person she had interviewed was Nickolay, but there was only just this one shot of him in her camera... She really had no idea what her pig-brain was thinking back then.

This particular batch of photos had been taken from a pretty good angle, one of the shots having been taken at a perfect moment. In the photo, the lines of Nyle Qi's profile was chiseled and well-defined. He was standing tall and confident, while Nickolay Tan, who had been walking beside him, had his head bowed slightly, a faint smile playing at the corners of his lips. The autumn sunlight shone through the golden leaves of the surrounding oriental plane trees to fall upon them. The proud and confident one glowed even brighter under the sunlight, while the gently smiling one seemed even more mellow and humble under the soft lighting. In one photo, two personalities were presented clearly before one's eyes.

Alanna could not help but cup her jaw and sigh — what a perfect candid snapshot!

The main characters in this photo were these two — as for the rest, they were fine as long as they did not do anything too disturbing. She scanned the picture, and then she saw — on the side of Nyle's body that was further away from the camera, half a body and a head were sticking out. As the focus was not on that person, his face was blurry, but Alanna was still able to identify him with one glance. It was that young-face who had been hanging close to Nyle yesterday.

The young-face had one hand on Nyle Qi's shoulder, lending balance from it. He was stretching his body back to look at the camera, grinning as he waved at the lens. Alanna could see that his cheek was puffed up, and a thin and narrow white object was hanging from his lips. At first, she thought it was snot or drool, but it would be too miraculous for his bodily fluids to flow so straight... resting her chin in one hand, she magnified the picture to take a closer look. Combining this new view with his bulging cheek, she realized instantly that the punk was eating a lollipop!

Whose wild child was this?! She really wished she could photoshop him out of the picture...

Yesterday, Alanna had already found out what young-face's name was. He was called Elliot Ming, and his specialization was breaststroke. In fact, this name had appeared in her previous research prep for this assignment. However, there were a lot of names she had had to remember, so she often had difficulty matching the names to the faces. He was not yet 16, still a minor, but he had already participated in several national level competitions, even obtaining a bronze medal in this summer's World Swimming Championships. Achieving such results at such a young age was impressive in its own right.

Due to the interference of this lollipop boy, the entire feel of the picture was subtly changed. Upholding her professional integrity as a journalist, Alanna restrained her darker impulses and did not photoshop that wild child out in the end.

She sent the photo to Teacher Sun. Let the experienced old man worry about this.

************

Nickolay Tan had dinner with his teammates. He was relaxed and was speaking freely, not at all affected by the events that transpired earlier that afternoon. His mood infected his teammates, so much so that none of them tried to console him — because it looked like that would not be necessary.

Even after they were done eating, they were not allowed to fool around casually; they all returned to their respective rooms.

There were about 500 members taking part in the swimming championships this time, and they were spread out across two different hotels. In general, athletes are registered on a provincial basis, but the national team trumps the provincial team. As such, although members of the national team such as Nickolay and Nyle Qi were here representing different provinces, they were still managed under the national team. Consequently, during the allocation of rooms, both swimmers were assigned to share a room.

As soon as they returned to the hotel, Nyle fell into his bed, fished his handphone out from below his pillow and began playing with it. Nickolay did not flip his pillows, because there was no handphone under his pillow to begin with... he looked somewhat enviously at Nyle's phone, but quickly looked away before the other could notice, nonchalantly turning on the television.

Suddenly, someone knocked at the door. Before either of them could react, the person outside had already pushed open the door and entered.

Only a coach would ignore the privacy of athletes like this.

The visitor was Nickolay's coach, Daniel Wu. He had a sturdy figure, a pair of intense tiger eyes, and a beard. Such a fearsome appearance often drew the attention of the police in these peaceful times.

"Coach Wu," said Nickolay, "Are you looking for me?"

Wu Yong nodded and said loudly, "Nick, come here."

He called him over to the doorway, first praising his performance at the pool today, before changing gears to say, "Your attitude during the interview today wasn't very good. You will very easily offend the reporters. Take care in future."

"Yes." Nickolay nodded once without offering any argument.

Seeing him act like this, Daniel did not have the heart to criticize him any further. He merely sighed and said, "I know you feel wronged, but you're a man, you need to be able to let things go. The reporters are all sharp-tongued. If they are displeased, you don't know how they're going to depict you behind your back. Right now, you still don't have any results yet. No results means no backing. Nyle Qi can be so arrogant because he has an Olympic gold medal in hand. You don't have that. At most, you have an Asian Games gold medal, and it's from the butterfly to boot. That's fucking useless." Daniel became more and more agitated as he spoke, finally revealing his true colours with an expletive.

Nickolay smiled, "I know all this, Auntie Wu..."

"You!" Daniel acted as if he was going to hit him, and he ducked his head. But Daniel only laughed and put down his hand. "Brat!"

"Coach Wu..." Tang Yi-Bai looked at him and hesitated.

"What's the matter?"

Nickolay gathered up his courage. Eyes bright, as if trying to sell his cuteness, he asked, "Can I play with my handphone for a while? I'll give it back before I sleep."

"Dream on!" The coach rolled his eyes at him. "Give it up. I can only give your phone back after the competition ends."

"But—"

"No buts. I've already said not to learn from Nyle. He's already beyond saving. You're still salvageable."

Nickolay could only slink back sulkily to his room. Nyle heard his footsteps, and with his eyes still trained on the screen of his phone, without even lifting his head, he said, "Just now, the flower* of the artistic swimming team asked me to ask you why you weren't wearing the swimming goggles she gave you in today's competition."

"Just tell her the truth," Nickolay replied airily, returning to sit on his bed to watch TV again.

"Oh, okay," answered Nyle, and he began reading out as he typed, "He... gave... it... to... cupcake... sister..."

"..." Nickolay's brows twitched. He swiftly turned around, and with a swipe of his long arms, he had stolen Nyle's phone from his hands. As expected of an athlete — his reaction time and movements were all very quick. By the time he had grabbed the phone, Nyle had just finished typing out those words but had yet to send out the message.

Nickolay quickly deleted the sentence and changed it to: Yesterday, he randomly gave it to a stranger right after the finals.

He then sent it before returning the phone to its rightful owner.

Nyle read the reply his friend had sent out and chuckled, "What difference does this make? Mine was even more concise than yours. But I actually guessed correctly. You're trying to reject her, aren't you?"

Nickolay laughed softly, "Anyone on Earth would have been able to guess that right."

Nyle looked at him disdainfully. "Then why did you agree to her request in the first place? So unnecessary."

"In front of so many other people, we must leave some dignity for ladies," Nickolay explained.

He could not help but think back on the situation then. It was the afternoon of his birthday. He was eating lunch at the cafeteria with some of his teammates when the team flower had just walked right up to him to give him a present — a pair of swimming goggles. She expressed the hope that he would wear those goggles at the upcoming swimming championships and had offered her well wishes.

If he had refused directly, the girl would have been left in a difficult position, but he also did not want to give her any false hope. Therefore, as soon as he had finished the promise, he had swiftly passed the goggles to someone else. His meaning could not be more evident.

A few minutes after the team flower received that reply, she replied to Nyle: I understand. Thank you, Nyle.

Nyle sighed. "I find that you and your charming face... you really know how to refuse a girl gently."

Nickolay sat primly on his bed watching the television, as calm as ever, a beast in human clothing. "No special reason. Practice makes perfect."

"What does that mean?"

"..." He decided to ignore Nyle, focusing on the remote control to surf channels. The TV screen shifted rapidly, all sorts of sounds coming from it in fits and spurts.

Nyle spoke up again, "But, you and cupcake sister are not really strangers anymore, right? She's a pretty righteous person."

The fingers dancing swiftly on the remote paused abruptly. Nickolay Tan was silent for several seconds, and then he suddenly turned his head to look at Nyle with locked brows and said, "She's called Alanna Graham."

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*Flower here means the prettiest girl in the artistic swimming team.