Yu Pengkai dropped his rock of a backpack to the ground with a thud before settling uncomfortably into the seat between the two beaming high schoolers.
"What are you guys doing?" Yu Pengkai could barely mask the horror in his voice. He took another glance at the schedule he had tucked into his pocket. It read straight and clear: "Computer Science Principles."
"Kevin, you really weren't kidding when you said Kai lived under a rock!" the boy sitting to the left of him commented.
If the so-called Kevin at least looked familiar, Yu Pengkai couldn't even find any vague recollections of this one.
If anything, he remembered a pony-tailed girl who had carried him on all of his computer science assignments. He glanced around the room, hoping to find her existence to prove that he had not gone insane.
Casually scanning the other tables for that familiar hairdo, his gaze accidentally locked with a pair of chocolate-colored eyes from across the room. He quickly broke the awkward stare, looking down and scratching his neck as if nothing had happened.
So it wasn't his imagination. She really did exist.
"Wait, do you guys even sit here?" He found himself asking with an expression of doubt.
"Pshh...of course not!" Kevin chuckled. "But arranging for a quick seat swap in the Weed's class ain't anything tough, am I right? It is pretty much a free period after all."
At the front of the room, his teacher was furiously typing something on his laptop, his hands flying across the keyboard at a speed that rivaled professional eSports players. As he did so, his head bobbed up and down rhythmically to the music he played from his bright red headset.
Although he was bald, the hairstyle was obviously a stylistic choice and not due to age. He looked to be about thirty, someone Yu Pengkai's actual age. In Yu Pengkai's mind, his new teacher's fashion style and narrow frame merged with a familiar face, and the uncanny similarities reminded him of a former teammate. He glanced at the tucked schedule again, muttering to himself, "Mr. Weid." The name was not familiar, and he shook the thought out of his mind.
Seeing Yu Pengkai's incredulous look, Kevin added jokingly, "Hey, we're doing you a favor here. We're trying to culture you, Young Grasshopper!" He tapped on the computer screen, his eyes sparkling, "This here is the best thing that will ever happen to you."
When Yu Pengkai snapped out of his trance, he found that the two boys were sitting poised in front of their computers, headsets already snapped into place.
"Kai, Josh and I are about to teach you some real cool stuff and moves," Kevin beamed like a child waiting to shred open Christmas presents, spamming his mouse's left click for fun. "I can't wait to show off my new Joan of Arc skills."
"We logged you in using Kevin's brother's account, and we'll teach you the ropes of the game as we go along!" The other boy, Josh, added.
Yu Pengkai searched for the most polite way to deny the two overly eager kids, but socializing was never his strong suit, and the words became knotted at the tip of his tongue.
"Yeah, don't worry about being bad! We can definitely carry you!" Kevin patted his left chest proudly. "So you see that red button there that reads "S T A R T? Just push it!"
Yu Pengkai wanted to facepalm himself. Even if he actually didn't know how to play the game, it wasn't like he didn't know to read either. His fingers rested so naturally on the computer mouse per muscle memory, and the mouse pointer instinctively hovered over the start button.
No, he couldn't succumb to the temptations. Just when he was about to click, Kevin and Josh's friendly smiles morphed into devious smirks, and in his eyes, they became the demons who were trying to tempt him back into a path towards hell.
He scrambled for a valid excuse. "Uh, how about I just watch for one round?" The insincerity was obvious, even to him, and he coughed to hide his intentions. "You know, to familiarize myself with the gameplay? Plus, I have a bit of homework to catch up too."
That statement wasn't entirely a lie, or at least the last part wasn't. He knew next to nothing about chemistry, and he somehow had to make up for the failed quiz today in math. In fact, now that he reconsidered his current predicament, the term catching up was certainly too light. The work ahead of him was definitely closer to a marathon than a quick jog.
After a brief moment of hesitation, Josh shrugged, nodding. And while Kevin looked a little bit crestfallen, he too relented. "Let me copy chem after you're done?" Seeing Yu Pengkai nod in reply, he started his two-person queue.
Yu Pengkai took out his chemistry book, determined to relearn gas laws. From the corner of his eye, he could see that they were already on the champion select screen.
It was a blind game. No counter-picking. No bans. Just pure luck and skill.
He shook his head, trying to focus on his work and forcing his eyes to be practically glued onto the portrait of Robert Boyle.
He read the line: "The absolute pressure exerted by a given mass of an ideal gas is inversely proportional to the volume.."
Click.
He read the same line again.
Tap.
And again.
Clickity tap.
He clasped his hands over his ears.
Tap. Tap. Tap!
The familiar sounds gnawed at his heart, and he snuck another glance to find them already spawned at the red base along with three others.
"Ok, so I called mid, which is this lane right here!" Kevin turned and began explaining, gesturing to the path. Only, the minute he stopped looking at his screen, his champion began running headfirst into the enemy jungle. "Oops!" He dragged his champion back into place.
Yu Pengkai was the one to breathe out a sigh of relief but soon realized a more glaring error. Why was an ADC going to the mid lane, and why was no one else concerned about this?
Kevin must have taken his confused expression to mean something else because he immediately began to remark on other aspects of gameplay.
"So this right now is the amount of gold I have. I have 500 to start the game with, so I'm saving it for my first item! This way, I only need one thousand five hundred more gold!" He exclaimed happily.
Yu Pengkai closed his eyes, wondering if he should tell the kid that items could be upgraded into better ones for the same net cost.
He glanced at Josh, who had just taken an enemy turret shot for no apparent reason.
Before the game had started, it had already ended for Kevin and Josh.