A Starry Night (Part 4)
The place where Sorkov trained was not where Zhou Zeyu learned to swim. To her surprise, the gymnasium even had an outdoor swimming pool, which was superior to the indoor one in both size and professionalism.
When they arrived, there was only a thin, white-haired old man by the swimming pool. The old man looked at them with a serious expression. Just when Zhou Zeyu thought he was about to be expelled, the old man nodded coldly and greeted Solkov on his own.
“My coach,” he explained to Zhou Zeyu, then said to the old man, “my friend.” He mischievously emphasized the word “friend.”
Zhou Zeyu was speechless and sat quietly to the side drinking coconut juice, watching Solkov quickly take off his clothes by the pool. Before she could even wipe her eyes, a large area of his abs was exposed, and even someone as calm as her couldn't help but take a few more glances.
Although he is not a perfect person, his physique is absolutely perfect. Perhaps sometimes temperament and physique can complement each other. At least now Zhou Zeyu is not so angry when she looks at him.
Sorkov glanced at her, puzzled, while quickly putting on his swimming goggles and cap. Zhou Zeyu shook her head, signaling him to go about his business.
Remembering something, she suddenly wanted to ask him a question, but after hesitating, she still didn't speak. Sorkov had already seen her struggling and starting to pick at her nails, and raised his eyebrows to ask her what was wrong. So Zhou Zeyu thought about it again and again before finally speaking.
She deliberately lowered her voice and subtly pointed to the fierce-looking old man tidying up the equipment beside her, "Is he so fierce because of how you treated him before?"
Perhaps not understanding her meaning at first glance, Sorkov shook his head in confusion, then laughed as if he remembered something. "You mean the guy I kicked down three times?"
Zhou Zeyu nodded, looking at Solkov with a puzzled expression as he suddenly burst into laughter. She felt that this guy's sense of humor was also inexplicable; he would always suddenly be in a good mood or start laughing to himself without saying a word.
“Of course not,” he finally stopped laughing, his voice trembling with laughter. “That guy would love for me to drown, how could he be my coach?” He then looked at the old man’s seat. “Eras is my personal coach.”
Zhou Zeyu said "Oh," and seeing his forced smile, she asked, "So can you tell me why you kicked that person down?"
Sorkov adopted a mysterious expression, "Because I hate him."
Well, it's the same as saying nothing at all; it would have been better not to ask.
“Because I hate him, and he hates me even more,” Zhou Zeyu said patiently, having already decided not to ask any questions. “So I’m going to be fired by him no matter what, understand?”
Now Zhou Zeyu understood. Rather than being forced to wait to leave, he might as well take the initiative to vent his anger first. What a typical Sorkov-like behavior.
But suddenly a feeling of shared misery arose in Zhou Zeyu. He looked at the other person with some sympathy. Putting aside other factors, this situation was indeed unbearable. It was like being given a death sentence, but not knowing exactly when to be shot. He was living in torment every day and night.
To be honest, she used to be like that too.
She sighed, earning a puzzled look from Solkov. "What are you thinking about?"
Zhou Zeyu didn't answer him, but continued to ask, "So you got into a fight because of this?"
“No,” he said firmly, “we just don’t get along.”
oh.
"So what was the reason for the third time?"
Sorkov suddenly stopped what he was doing, looked thoughtful, and said softly, "Because..."
Zhou Zeyu eagerly awaited his answer.
Just as she expected, he stopped himself at the last minute, shaking his head innocently, "This isn't fair, why am I always the one answering questions?"
She was so angry she gritted her teeth. "So what do you want? You're not going to say it's your turn to ask questions now, are you? What do you want to know? When was the first time I wet my pants?"
Sorkov was amused by her, and after giving her one last glance, he went straight into the water, leaving Zhou Zeyu standing there staring fiercely at his back.
It was midday, and the sun was so strong it stung her skin. She quickly moved the deck chair to a shady spot, fanning herself with one hand and holding a drink in the other, leisurely watching Sorkov train.
Although the projects were different, and Zhou Zeyu didn't really understand the training process for swimming, this kind of thing was always uniformly boring worldwide. It seemed like Sorkov was swimming back and forth in the pool the whole time, and her head moved at a steady pace with his movements. Before she knew it, several hours had passed, and by the end, her neck was sore.
Tired of watching, Sorkov started strapping weights to his waist again, standing sprawled on the edge of the pool. Seeing her looking so bored she was about to fall asleep, he casually asked, "Want to swim with me?"
Zhou Zeyu jolted awake, immediately snapping out of her drowsiness. To dispel his thoughts, she quickly changed the subject, "Oh right, do you usually train like this?"
"No." He went back into the water with the weights on. "I usually call this intensive training, and I only do this before important competitions."
She couldn't think of an English expression right away, so she blurted out a Chinese sentence. Solkov looked confused and obviously didn't understand. She didn't think this foreigner could understand what she meant. To her surprise, Coach Elas, who had been silent all along, laughed.
The serious old man's smile seemed out of place, like a ferocious megalodon. The megalodon, hands on its hips, grinned and said to Sorkov in a completely mocking tone, "She's not wrong. You really haven't trained in a long time."
Solkov probably guessed that she had just been careless, and snorted, "Yes, if technology develops rapidly in the future, it would be great to be able to write papers underwater."
Zhou Zeyu made a face, comfortably lay down in the chair and started scrolling through her phone. In fact, there wasn't much to see on the phone; she could only look at old photos. She had always thought it was a great way to pass the time; she could look at more than eight thousand photos in her archive for a whole day and night.
She quickly skimmed through the pages, then suddenly stopped without warning, paused for a moment, and flipped to the previous page.
That must have been her first year in the national team. As a newcomer, she was unfamiliar with the place and the people, and was as timid as a frightened bird. No one in the team paid attention to her. She gritted her teeth and silently endured the loneliness and silence, practicing frantically day and night, hoping that one day she could be appreciated by her seniors.
In that clearly defined world, it was painful to be on the outside. It meant you were weak, insignificant, and dispensable. She didn't want that, and then one day Cen Zheng found her.
Cen Zheng had already made a name for himself and was a pillar of the team, but he had no airs of a senior. He smiled and pulled her aside, magically taking out a small matcha mille-feuille from his bag and wishing her a happy birthday.
Zhou Zeyu cried uncontrollably, eating cake while crying, and finally even burying her face in her shoulder and sobbing loudly. Cen Zheng gently patted her back, listening to her soft sobs, and comforted her gently.
In that kind of scene and atmosphere, Zhou Zeyi felt that Cen Zheng was no different from a god.
In the days that followed, the deity continued to favor her. She took such good care of her, being so considerate and kind that it was impossible not to be moved. She would take her to various competitions, introduce her to different people, watch her with a smile while she trained, and tell everyone that she had a bright future.
Back then, she was practically Cen Zheng's shadow, naturally becoming close to her and sticking to her like a little kid. This led to the media calling her "Cen Zheng's little tail" everywhere. But she was happy to be such a little tail because Zhou Zeyu liked Cen Zheng in a pure and genuine way, without any pretense or pretense.
So she trained like a madwoman, training to the point of not sleeping or eating, single-mindedly trying to prove herself and let others know that Cen Zheng had not misjudged her. She couldn't let Cen Zheng lose face because of her.
But in the end, she couldn't do it, and so everything slowly changed. They might not have parted ways, but they could never be as close as before.
Zhou Zeyu was lost in thought, so much so that he didn't notice when Sorkov sat down next to him, staring at him blankly.
She was startled. "When did you get here?!"
“You’re staring at the screen too intently,” Sorkov commented sarcastically. “You wouldn’t even notice if a mammoth came running by.”
She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "You're a mammoth."
Sorkov glanced at her, shook his head, puzzled, and downed the water in his bottle. "Still thinking about your captain?"
Zhou Zeyu turned his head away in silence, taking it as an admission.
Sorkov glanced at her again, making her feel a chill run down her spine. She mimicked his gaze and glared back at him, but Sorkov didn't get angry; instead, he laughed and said, "Sometimes you overthink things, which only adds to your troubles."
"Do you know what I'm thinking?"
"Is it hard to guess?" He chuckled briefly, concluding with a certainty, "Admiration, envy, mixed feelings, or admiration turning into envy, and envy turning into mixed feelings."
Zhou Zeyu glanced at him sideways, and Sorkov raised an eyebrow: "Did I say something wrong?"
She nodded, then shook her head, and finally hung her head dejectedly. "Maybe, I don't know."
Sorkov hummed in response, but for some reason remained silent. Zhou Zeyu also showed no intention of explaining. The two remained silent tacitly until the break ended, at which point Sorkov got up and walked back to the pool.
"So what should I do?"
He glanced back at her, only to see her sitting there alone, looking sullen. For a moment, he even felt that she was like a little child, standing there helplessly, staring at him, wanting an answer without any rhyme or reason.
"Why does admiration turn into envy?" Solkov pointed out succinctly. "Stop trying to gloss over it and answer me."
Zhou Zeyu lowered his head, gritting his teeth, and didn't utter a single word until his lips turned white. But just a second before Sorkov was about to turn and leave, he heard a few barely audible words, indistinctly coming from between his tightly closed lips: "Because it's unfair."
That's unfair.
He sighed, as if he couldn't bear to leave her there all alone, and took a few steps back. "Because of her, you've suffered injustice, so you're jealous of her. But you also respect her, so you feel guilty because of this jealousy, yet you can't fully trust her. Am I wrong?"
Zhou Zeyu glanced at him silently and said quietly, "You should go train. You've dissected me so thoroughly."
"It's you who won't say anything."
"This isn't fair!" Even after he had walked away, he could still hear Zhou Zeyu's indignant complaint. "Let me analyze you too!"
Sorkov turned around, shrugged indifferently, showing no fear whatsoever, and even had an expression of detachment as if he were watching a good show.
"Neither."
Zhou Zeyu was startled and turned to look at the little old man who had appeared out of nowhere. She even thought he wasn't talking to her, but his words were indeed a reply to her.
The old man didn't look at her. He stood with his hands behind his back, staring intently at Sorkov, who was floating on the water. His tone was a mix of emotion and regret: "He won't just quit because of these things. Poor child, he's suffered too much injustice and blame."
So, like her, it's unfair.
Remembering what Erikev had said, she hesitated for a moment before opening her phone's screen. She awkwardly typed in Sorkov's name and clicked OK.
A photograph popped up, showing Sorkov standing next to another handsome young man with blond curls. The young man smiled brightly at the camera, exuding an undeniable charm that drew almost all eyes to him.
In stark contrast was Sorkov, whose face was grim. He hung his head, glancing sideways at the person beside him, his eyes revealing undisguised contempt and disgust—emotions so profound and clear they could almost be described as utter hatred. She had never seen him look so ugly; his entire face was shrouded in hatred, like a venomous snake about to pounce and tear its prey apart.
...
Zhou Zeyu put down his phone, quietly turned his head, and the calm pool was rippled by Solkov's movements. He swam slowly and steadily in that ripple, as if he didn't care, or as if he was fearless.
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