Chapter 51
Since Free built their own team, Zhou Huo had been fairly conservative in managing the team's external image. Besides firmly clarifying the rumors about Yu Sui's so-called "team-selling" at the beginning, he usually kept a low profile—extremely low. After winning their first regular season match against Wild Buffalo last week, he didn't say much either, just posting a templated statement on Weibo about the match results, lukewarm at best.
Being low-key was about being humble, not about having no temper.
"It's the first time I've ever encountered someone who, after scheduling a practice match, sees they're about to lose and claims there's a power outage and internet failure." Zhou Huo couldn't hold back any longer as he edited his Weibo post. "Aren't they just worried about losing another round and affecting their players' mentality? Fuck, they just finished destroying the medics of two teams in our region consecutively, did they ever consider how that would affect those people's mentality?! What kind of bullshit is this!"
"Are they really treating our region like a pushover? They haven't even won the championship yet, but they think they can come step on our faces." Lao Qiao, who usually didn't like causing trouble, chimed in. "Post it, post it! Only their mentality matters, everyone else's doesn't?"
"Exactly!" Chen Huo said indignantly. "Though I really don't like duo-queuing with Wawa, but objectively speaking, that kid's a decent person. He got brutally destroyed for no reason, and I wonder if he's recovered mentally."
"He hasn't." Shi Luo was slowly scrolling through his friends' feed on his phone with one hand, then said quietly.
Chen Huo looked at Shi Luo. "What do you mean? What happened to him?"
Shi Luo lowered his head to look at Wawa's social media post, then read it without a trace of emotion: "Woke up at noon, took a really long shower. Let the waters of the Yangtze River wash over my body as thoroughly as possible, but I still can't seem to wash away the smell of the holy sword from my skin. I still feel so dirty, crying emoji, crying emoji, crying emoji."
Chen Huo sighed. "Look at this... ugh, my poor kid."
Puppy shook his head. "What a disaster... His stress tolerance really isn't strong enough. But Shi Luo, I have a question I'm really curious about—I can't help wanting to interview the victim."
Shi Luo looked up at Puppy.
Puppy's face was full of curiosity. "Is it that we're shameless, or is it that you guys have too much integrity? Can't your medics learn to bend a little? In those kinds of matches, when you know there's no comeback, when you know the other side isn't playing fair, why not just surrender?"
"Exactly!" Chen Huo's face showed zero concern for others' feelings as he shrugged. "If you had matched our surrender speed in the first game, you could've avoided losing at least one more kill. Hey."
Shi Luo glanced at Chen Huo, then after a moment said, "When I was young, I had a one-track mind."
Yu Sui, sitting nearby, looked at Shi Luo.
After saying that, Shi Luo shook his head and quickly changed the subject. "Let's review the replays."
"Sigh... alright, let's drop it. I'll review the replays too." Chen Huo sighed. "Out of all the medics with names in our region, the only one from our team who hasn't been 'dealt with' yet is Whisper. For the sake of protecting our best Lord Yu, let's train."
Yu Sui didn't look up, saying flatly, "Since when do I need your protection? Who was it today that made me pull off continuous limit plays just to keep my sorry ass alive?"
Chen Huo gave a guilty laugh and went to review his replays on his own.
Lao Qiao nodded. "I need to watch both practice match videos thoroughly twice before I can give you all a proper review, so I don't miss any problems. You should watch the replay footage according to your own situations first. Honestly, even if we'd played a third round, our chances of winning weren't high—there are quite a few problems. We have a tough opponent coming, everyone take this seriously."
"Yes, let's抓紧时间. We have a regular season match against Wanchong Mountain tomorrow, their home arena." After posting his Weibo rant against Saint Sword, Zhou Huo felt much better. He clapped his hands. "We fly to Chongqing in the morning, try to sleep early tonight."
Wanchong Mountain was one of the few teams whose base wasn't in Shanghai—their base and arena were both in Chongqing. Tomorrow was their home game in the afternoon, so Free's members would need to arrive in Chongqing at noon to check in at the arena, which meant they'd definitely have to wake up early.
"Alright..." The thought of waking up early made Puppy's head ache. He walked away with a pained expression to review replays.
Lao Qiao made copies of his practice match notes and handed them out, then went to the conference room next door to start his early review. The players either reviewed replays or solo-queued, each busy with their own thing.
Saint Sword's strategy against Free today was obvious—they exploited the fact that Free's players pushed too aggressively in the early game and played an economy drain game, seeing who would run out of resources first. In the second round, Yu Sui had done his absolute best, but without using any tricks, his team's resource consumption was still higher than Saint Sword's. Yu Sui went into a custom game to run economic projections, which took him two hours, then marked the peak consumption points and saved the data.
Yu Sui rubbed his eyes and stood up, leaving the training room.
On the small balcony on the second floor of the base, Shi Luo was leaning against the railing, smoking.
Yu Sui watched Shi Luo from a distance, thinking about how earlier, when Puppy asked Shi Luo why he hadn't surrendered back then, Shi Luo had said, "When I was young, I had a one-track mind."
Yu Sui looked at Shi Luo's back. For a moment, he suspected that Shi Luo had said that on purpose.
Shi Luo had never liked talking about the past, but recently Yu Sui had quietly noticed that whenever Yu Sui was around, Shi Luo was less hesitant to avoid the topic.
It wasn't Yu Sui being overly sensitive. As early as two years ago, when it came to making Yu Sui's heart ache, Shi Luo had never disappointed.
But thinking that way was too cruel—back then, the person who had killed Shi Luo over and over was Yu Sui himself.
Yu Sui gave a self-deprecating smile. He was the one who'd committed the sins, yet here he was, daring to suspect that others were bringing up old wounds on purpose.
Shi Luo sensed someone behind him and turned to glance at Yu Sui.
They made eye contact for a second. Yu Sui didn't look away; instead, he walked over to the balcony.
For some reason, Shi Luo didn't want to meet Yu Sui's eyes. He dodged his gaze and lowered his head to pick at the cactus on the balcony, making small talk. "I... didn't play well today."
Shi Luo continued talking to himself, head lowered. "Chen Huo makes mistakes all the time, but he can keep up with the team. I still can't fully blend into the overall rhythm, but this just takes time to work through. I told Puppy that after we finish playing Wanchong Mountain, we'll start duo-queuing together and try to coordinate more. And then..."
Shi Luo's words went in one ear and out the other for Yu Sui. He watched Shi Luo and almost confirmed it—Shi Luo had definitely said that earlier for his benefit.
And he'd regretted it immediately after.
That's why he was so awkward now, doing his best to avoid the topic.
Yu Sui silently accepted that Shi Luo was trying to smooth things over and moved on. He warned himself in his heart to accept this kindness and definitely not bring up the past and cause trouble for himself.
Everything was going well now; sometimes you needed to play dumb. Especially when the past was entirely his own fault, and dragging it out for analysis would only be bad for him.
"Then I should practice more with Chen Huo too." Shi Luo was practically talking to himself now. "Then try to fix the problem of always being out of sync with you three before the playoffs. Of course, that's assuming we make playoffs, but that shouldn't be a problem. I..."
Yu Sui watched Shi Luo scrambling to find himself an escape route and thought, fuck it with this smoothing things over.
"Shi Luo." Yu Sui looked at him. "Two years ago, in that practice match—you were killed so many times. Why didn't you surrender?"
Yu Sui slightly frowned. "'When I was young, I had a one-track mind'... what does that mean?"
Shi Luo's lips pressed together tightly. He didn't say a word.
"I originally thought..." Yu Sui paused. "I originally thought you were like Gu Qian—a stubborn one who would rather break than bend. But you surrendered in the first round today."
Shi Luo extinguished his cigarette and kept picking at the cactus needles, pulling out several before quietly saying, "...It was intentional."
"At the beginning, I wanted you to recognize me, so I kept respawning. Even though I'd changed my usual uniform skin and altered my ID, I thought back then that you'd definitely recognize me." Shi Luo looked down at the cactus. "I was the medic you taught personally. We were on the same team for months. I don't believe you couldn't recognize me."
Shi Luo paused, then continued. "But I didn't expect that you really didn't recognize me. Right?"
Yu Sui didn't want to lie to Shi Luo, and he couldn't be bothered to explain how terrible his condition had been back then, so he admitted directly. "Right. I didn't recognize you the whole time."
"I figured that out, so at first I was just fighting myself—keeping respawning, thinking even if I could only move forward two meters, I had to get in front of your character, make you look closely and see who it was. I wanted you to recognize me." Shi Luo's stubbornness showed through. "But then you cut me down until I couldn't even move. I was fighting myself, and fighting you too. I didn't understand—how could you not recognize me?"
Shi Luo laughed bitterly. "Fuck, that's so pathetic."
"But I stopped feeling pathetic pretty quickly. If you couldn't recognize me, you couldn't recognize me. When you'd killed me over twenty times, I came to terms with it. But I was still going to keep respawning and make you kill me."
"Twenty-something times still wasn't enough. I'd make you kill me a few more times." Shi Luo looked up at Yu Sui, his jet-black eyes exactly as they had been two years ago. "If I didn't die enough times, when you eventually found out Evil was me, you wouldn't be in enough pain."
"It was intentional."
"I'm just like that—asking for trouble."
"Telling you that my cousin's family schemed against me, making you feel guilty for unintentionally helping the perpetrators—that was intentional."
"Telling you how unreliable my dad is, saying I wouldn't play professionally and would just keep streaming—that was intentional."
"Telling you about how my mom abandoned me for years without a single word—that was all intentional too."
"You have too many friends around you, and you're so amazing, so busy every day. Your life is the same whether I'm in it or not... I was such an idiot back then, and I had no experience. I couldn't think of any other way to get your attention, to make you care about me."
"Granted, this method probably wasn't the best."
Shi Luo looked at Yu Sui. His gaze was challenging, but his reddened eyes betrayed him. "Yu Sui—did I succeed?"
"When we were in Germany, when you found out Evil was me... did it hurt?"
Yu Sui took a deep breath. His voice was a bit hoarse. "After arriving in Germany, I only got sick once."
"It was the day I found out your new ID."
Shi Luo's eyes trembled slightly. After a long moment, he whispered, "Then I win. Yay."
Shi Luo cleared his throat, trying to calm himself down. "When Puppy asked me today, I said that because I was having another episode. I wanted to get your attention again using this method. Don't worry—I know I'm not a kid anymore. I'll try to be more careful in the future and won't do it again..."
"There's no need to change. Do whatever you want. You didn't do anything wrong." Yu Sui looked at Shi Luo. "You really have my number."
"Since two years ago, that's how it's been."