Book 1 — 20

Book 1: Chapter 20

When they arrived at the hotel, 97 happened to come out of a taxi; it appeared that they had arrived at the same time.

97 looked at them with great interest and smiled good-humouredly. “I was thinking how come I can’t find you? It turned out that you left with Gou Gou.” Dt didn’t respond.

It seemed that her sister had just came back to the room when she walked in.

“Did you see Grunt?”

She took off her jacket; after staying at the stadium for a whole day, there were all kinds of smells on her. When she was taking off her skirt, her sister finally nodded smilingly. “Ai Qing, I have decided to play esports.”

She carefully looked her sister up and down, she didn’t seem to be joking. “Sure, you can use my computer to play later.”

“I mean, I also want to be a professional player.”

She walked into the bathroom, took down the shower head, and began adjusting the water temperature.

“Even Dt is not a professional.” The water was still cold, she turned the hot water side on more. “At best, he’s quasi-professional. To be a professional, one has to come on top at various competitions, win some championships, then get accepted by the professional circle and wait to be signed onto a club.”

“So even you couldn’t be counted as one before?”

“No.” Ai Qing closed the shower door. “I didn’t sign on with any club.”

While she was taking a shower, her sister stayed outside still all fired up and kept speaking of her sudden burst of passion for esports. Ai Qing assumed that she was just losing her head over all the excitement. She remembered about Grunt’s forfeit today and asked out of curiosity, “What’s the reason this time that Grunt gave up the competition?”

“He said……he overslept.”

“So, is he going to give up this year’s WCG?”

“No, he said there’s still the last stop. He will just compete there.”

“Chengdu?”

Her sister said, “en, I already booked the tickets. We are going to Chengdu.”

……

“Can I go home first?”

The answer was of course not.

So, when Ai Qing stood at Shuangliu Airport, she suddenly felt the illusion of returning to the old days, a life of stopping at different airports and living in all kinds of hotels. But at that time, it was for all the competitions and now, she was accompanying her sister to chase after a man……

It looked like Grunt was from Sichuan, he knew about almost everything in Chengdu.

After they signed in at the hotel, he took them to a place to eat, where there were all kinds of snacks.

The five of them circled around a table eating, dipping their kebab into a hot spicy sauce. It didn’t take long for all the sticks to pile up. 97 could see that there’s something going on with Grunt and Ai Jing, he uneasily moved closer to Dt. “Somehow I feel that we are the extras here. We’re not even competing at the Chengdu stop. We should have fun at Guangzhou for a few more days then go to Shanghai for the finals directly.”

Dt took a sip of beer.

Seeing one only had eyes for a girl while the other just didn’t pay any attention to him, 97 was bored and turned to Ai Qing. “Gou Gou, how about we find an internet cafe to play some games? We may be able to meet some good amatuer players out there.”

Ai Qing wasn’t too interested.

But Ai Jing got excited right away. “Alright, I’ve never played in an internet cafe before.”

“Yes, you have.” Ai Qing corrected her. “When our internet goes down at home, you always go there to play matching games.”

It’s been torture these past few days for Ai Qing keeping her sister company.

Her sister insisted that she teach her how to play Warcraft since Grunt’s event was Warcraft this time. Since Warcraft was a strategy game, there’s no way one could learn it in one or two days. In the end, Ai Qing had no choice but let her sister use her VS account to play DotA. “DotA is created by a Warcraft player; it’s totally derived from Warcraft. One map, two teams each with 5 players battle with each other. It’s easier.”

Her sister played in high spirits the whole night and the whole ordeal was being killed, then revived, being killed again……

Even though it was her alternate id, it still had many followers. When her sister first got on, it caused quite a stir, but as the winning rate kept going downwards……finally everyone decided that the account had been hacked.

Ai Qing couldn’t help but share the story with the other three when she recalled it.

97 happily pointed to Dt and said to Ai Jing, “Eh, your sister lost to Dt. Dt was the champion of both the Chinese and Asian Tournaments that year. You should learn from Dt if you want to play DotA.”