Prelude — 4

Prelude: Chapter 4

Ai Qing was sharing a room upstairs with the other girl from Dt’s team.

Tossing and turning, she just couldn’t fall asleep in the middle of the night. Afraid that she’d wake up her roommate, she simply walked out of the room. She walked to the staircase and sat down. From this angle she could see the ocean.

The ocean lapped onto the beach, wave after wave in the darkness.

Suddenly, her arm felt ticklish. She looked down, two cats had come from who knows where. They sat quite elegantly right next to her. When she looked over, they also looked up at her at the same time. Ai Qing chuckled and whispered, “Are you brothers? Sisters? Or lovers?”

The two cats looked at her for a while, then turned to look at the sea……

These seaside cats…… What characters.

Ai Qing grinned, turned her head back up to look into the darkness with the cats.

A short while later, the sounds of footsteps grew near. “Is the view good?”

The voice felt very familiar. She turned around and saw Dt already kneeling behind her. He gazed at the cats and used his fingers to tickle them.

“Are you asking me or the cats?”

“You.”

He sat down on the other side of the step, shoulder to shoulder with Ai Qing with the two cats in the middle.

“The seaside at home is much better. After you are tired of looking at the sea, there’s all kinds of BBQ to eat.” She spoke casually. “Today, did you get disconnected, or did you back out of the game on you own? Are you afraid of close hand-to-hand fighting with a girl?”

Toward the end of the skirmish they just played, she saw from her tab key[1] which indicated that there were Dt and another person left in the game.

In her headphone, she could hear footsteps coming from two different directions. But after she headshotted one of them, the other set of footsteps suddenly disappeared……at the same instance, the game notified that he had left the game.

He looked away. “I got disconnected.”

Because of the direction of the moonlight, his whole face was shadowed by his cap. She couldn’t make out of any expression on his face; but it seemed, maybe, to be a smile.

Ai Qing didn’t take any offense; after all, most boys who play video games are either talkative or withdrawn. She’s used to it.

“I watched the video of that game,” just as Ai Qing was giving up carrying the conversation, he began to speak, “that game three years ago when you were still a CS player. I’m still wondering, all this time, the reason why your team disbanded.”

Such a long, long sentence.

Ai Qing was amazed that he, at the age of 12, already followed these kind of competitions. She chuckled. “You were only 12 at the time? Don’t tell me that you started down this path of no return of video games because you worshipped me.”

Dt glanced over at her.

……

Perhaps because she lost to him before, she was subdued by his intense aura and stopped joking with him. “You should have seen some of the discussions on various forums and the gossip. There is actually a simple explanation. Solo fell for Warcraft III.[2] Just like his name, Solo, he doesn’t like to play with a team. He prefers fighting alone. Without the captain, our team had no choice but to disband.”

In the past, people always said that Solo was the soul of the team. If a team had him, total victory was ensured.

So this explanation should be acceptable to everyone. It’s quite reasonable, isn’t it?

Solo.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Ai Qing pursed up her lips. She remembered that he is the person always with a gentle smile. She stroked the cat next to her. “Too bad your focus is on DotA. Though if you played Warcraft III, he would be the last person you’d want to fight against.”

“The WCG world champion, both last and this year?”

Ai Qing nodded. “Basically, he doesn’t play these Asian Tournaments. After this competition is over, there should be several international games in the latter half of the year. Maybe you will meet him then.”