[V]: The four idiots marched in like they owned my company, demanding I tell them where you are.

[V]: They just left. I told them that your wrists were injured and you couldn’t play, that you went abroad to get treatment.

[V]: I told them that you got into a fistfight the first winter when you left and showed them a picture of you when you were at the hospital back then.

Xiao Yi sat on the edge of his bed, his suitcase left open with the contract he signed lying on top of his clothes. He’d read this contract more times than he’d like to admit, so much so that he could recite it by heart. 

V had some gripes with the contract. Whether it was legal or not, whether there were other ways to break it besides going back in time to win a championship.

It was legal. There were technically three contracts. One for his disownment, one for his team, and one for him. 

The contract for disowning him was just an agreement between the two parties so his parents could officially disinherit him and have nothing to do with him without being looked down upon by the public. It also meant that if Xiao Yi got into controversy and the Xiao family was dragged into it, they could claim that he’d long since left the family name behind.

The contract for the team was signed preemptively to make sure that his parents would release their contracts should anything happen and wouldn’t get in the way of them finding other teams to join. 

The contract for him was a business deal. Technically, Team X was supposed to be disbanded anyway so they were offering him a lifeline to hold onto. It was an investment with conditions and the reason why Xiao Yi couldn’t step onto the stage again was due to the non-compete clause they added in if any conditions were broken.

All legal, although it could be seen as morally and ethically wrong to make a non-compete clause that spanned into his mid-thirties it was also reasonable in the eyes of the court due to the industry. 

A boy took over a team before he was an adult, honed his skills, gained insider information… What judge would believe that he didn’t gain everything he’d had from the company that gracefully gave an olive branch to a young kid?  

As for ways to break it… Xiao Yi wasn’t about to give up his investments to pay that fine. His days in the esports world were long over, and he was okay with it.

V and Xiao Qiu seemed to believe he missed being on the stage. He only missed being on that stage with the particular idiots that stormed into a company building. 

Not the current idiots, but the old ones. 

There was no way that these bastards weren’t scheming something. 

He glanced at the phone with a small smile for a moment, before his eyes widened. 

[X]: You took a picture?

[V]: Is that all you took from what I said?

[X]: En.

[V]: I wanted them to feel bad for what they put you through but you asked me to stay quiet.

Wanted them to feel bad? It was his fault for allowing them to misunderstand him, if he were in their shoes he’d probably have done far worse than what they’d done.

Xiao Yi would have ruined them if they’d done what they thought he did. 

He was a vengeful person. Hell, if his family hadn’t protected themselves so well in that contract…

He reached down to zip up the bag with a bitter smile.

Xiao Yi didn’t have a chance to tell Xiao Qiu he was leaving. The boys went over to another team’s base for a practice match not long after Xiao Qiu scolded him and didn’t come back. 

Yet…

He glanced at his phone once more. [Your driver has arrived at your location.]

‘Well, a text should be fine, right?’

Xiao Yi stood at the door for a moment, suitcase handle in one hand and phone in the other, contemplating. 

Wasn’t he just being a scumbag by leaving like this?

He left the small secondary home and walked along the side yard of the team building, a mix of emotions running through his veins. 

Four years.

He’d been depending on his brother for four years. He’d slept for four years, and hardly did anything aside from investing and playing Valley of Light. 

He hadn’t been a person in four years. 

Now… He had to grow up and fly the coop. He had to become his own person and stop burdening and holding back his older brother.

Despite knowing all of this, as his eyes fell on the black Sudan waiting in front of the building, he suddenly wanted to turn back and find his brother’s shoulder to sleep on.

Xiao Yi paused just before his foot hit the concrete of the sidewalk and took a deep breath.

‘If I continue like this…’

Xiao Yi opened the back of the sedan and carefully placed his suitcase inside, then slid in the back. “Shenzhen Bao’an International.”