Tong Yao stood up, nervously gathering her hair behind her ears, and hesitantly said, "But I'm sleepy."
The group of young men exploded in a commotion-- --
Little Fatty: "She turned Cheng Ge down, she turned Cheng Ge down!"
Old Cat: "She didn't want to be partnered with Cheng Ge. She doesn't want to win."
Old K: "She refused the invitation from the god, she's refused the chance to get back up to Challenger."
Lu Sicheng was silent for a while, "Are you a pig, sleeping right after you eat?"
"Girls shouldn't stay up at night. You don't understand." Tong Yao earnestly replied.
"No girl goes to sleep with a full stomach."
"What do you know about girls."
"Oh."
Lu Sicheng turned his head to glance at Tong Yao while he clicked up for solo queue and waited to find a game-- --In early 2016, League of Legends introduced the pre-selection system; the player, while waiting to play a ranked game, could choose the position he, or she, most prefered to play along with their second preferred position. This allows the servers to match players into a team with their preferred positions.
Lu Sicheng's first choice was ADC; the second was Jungler.
Tong Yao watched beside him for a while, "Your second choice is Jungler? Then, tomorrow, if you get Jungler, we can play Mid and Jungler."
It was then that the ex-Mid, Ming god, leisurely strolled into the living room with hands in his pockets and a cracker in his mouth. He laughed when he heard Tong Yao's suggestion, "You want to play Mid with Cheng Ge as your Jungler?"
"What's wrong?" Tong Yao, who's experience with Little Fatty was so traumatizing, instantly turned her head, "Is there anything I should know, just like how 'ZGDX Bot should never play duos'?"
"You'll know after you try it tomorrow." Ming god mysteriously patted Tong Yao's shoulder. "Good night."
"..."
Tong Yao, with an uneasy feeling, picked up Dabing and went back to her room to sleep.
She had a nightmare that night. In her dream, she dropped from Challenger to Diamond one the first day she played duos with Lu Sicheng. Lu Sicheng was so furious at the string of losses that he pushed a pillow onto her face, suffocating her-- --
"Wuuuuu..."
Tong Yao struggled and woke herself up. She spat out cat hair from her mouth to discover that Dabing had somehow moved from her feet to sleep on top of her neck. Her paw was placed over her mouth.
Tong Yao pushed the cat away and got up. It was day break already. She shivered from the nightmare about Lu Sicheng…..
By the time she got up, showered, changed clothes, and went downstairs, it was nine o'clock in the morning. There was no one at the first floor. Tong Yao turned on her computer to check Lu Sicheng's ranking and found that he played solo since last night till 6 o'clock this morning. He had gone afk a few more times and pretty much staggered around Diamond one going up and down in a 20 point range...
"..." Tong Yao visually checked the closed doors of each of her teammates' rooms upstairs. They obviously just went to bed after playing whole night.
-- --The daily lives of typical internet addicted teenagers.
Tong Yao yawned and opened a can of cat food for Dabing who trailed closely behind her. While Dabing began to eat, she turned around and opened the refrigerator in the kitchen, trying to find something to eat herself…...The housekeeper that the base employed happened to walk in from outside and saw Tong Yao staring at an empty refrigerator-- --
"How are you. I haven't seen you before. Which player is your boyfriend?"
"Oh, no. I'm the new player who came yesterday."
"Oh, wow, young girls can play games now?'
The housekeeper entered the room in amazement and put down the grocery she had just bought. Then she cooked a plate of fried rice for Tong Yao using the leftover rice in the rice cooker. It was 10:30 in the morning by then. Tong Yao looked at her watch and asked, "Aunty, are you going to cook lunch now?"
Aunty: "Lunch? These are ingredients for lunch but those kids just went to bed and won't be up for lunch…...There's no day time for esports. You should go rest after you eat. They won't get up to play games with you until the afternoon."
Tong Yao: "..."
Tong Yao kept eating silently. After she ate, she curled up in the couch to send messages to her family back home. Then she used her cell phone to watch some American TV dramas. Finally, it was 12:30 pm.
Tong Yao stared at the ceiling, "So boring."
With the cat in her arms, Tong Yao sat on the couch, facing the empty training room, and began to realize how irregular a professional team's daily routine looked like during the off season...
Two o'clock in the afternoon, the first sleeping beauty woke up.
Little Fatty walked out of his room with only his undies on. He leaned on the handrail to look down and was shocked to see two pairs of eyes, a girl and a cat, looking straight at him. He paused a second, then screamed as he rush back into his room, flinging the door shut.
Tong Yao: "? ? ?"
Twenty minutes later, a well dressed Little Fatty came downstairs, "Tong Yao! You're up so early!"
Tong Yao looked at the clock on the wall which showed three o'clock. She stroked the cat as she responded, "I've been up for almost 6 hours."
Little Fatty, who was squatting down in front of the refrigerator searching for food, turned to look at Tong Yao as if she was an alien.
Tong Yao: "...Your Ultraman undies are pretty nice."
Little Fatty: ".......You're making fun of me. I'm going to tell Rui Ge to deduct your salary!"
...
The one who got up at 3:30 pm was Old Cat.
At 3:45 pm, it was Old K who shared the same room with Old Cat.
By 4:30 pm, Lu Sicheng showed up at the first floor looking refreshed. With water dripping from his wet hair, he said to the girl who was curled up in the couch watching American dramas while stroking the cat, "Hey."
Tong Yao put down her cell phone, dropped the cat, and brushed off the cat hair off her. The fat cat jumped onto Little Fatty's lap and laid down seemly satisfied with the softness of his lap.
Tong Yao started to play duos with Lu Sicheng.
...
The first round.
Lu Sicheng played Jungler. At first, they played peacefully, each doing their own thing. Until the seventh minute mark, while Tong Yao was in the middle of an intense fight with the enemy's mid, she suddenly heard his low voice, "Do you want blue?"
-- --Blue was shorthand for "blue buff", a buff that a special creep on the map gave to whoever dealt the finishing blow to it. It's a buff that increases mana regeneration and a +10% cooldown reduction to their abilities. Usually, the Jungler would give the Mid the first blue buff so the Mid would have an advantage in lane.
-- --There's a "red buff" on the map which is earned the same way as blue buff. The buff increases a champion's damage and slows any enemy struck by the owner of the buff…...The blue buff belongs to Mid, the red buff belongs to ADC.
Both buffs can be obtained by killing a special creep or the enemy who's carrying the buff.
Tong Yao: "Yes."
Just as Tong Yao moved her champion closer to the blue buff as she replied only to hear Lu Sicheng say, "Forget about it."
Tong Yao: "What the hell are you talking about. Blue is the bottom line of a Mid's honor-- --"
Before she could finish speaking, a flash shone on the blue buff creep. Right before she moved in front of the blue buff, Lu Sicheng used Smite (a Summoner Spell that deals a large amount of damage to creeps, usually carried by Jungler) to kill the blue buff creep.
Tong Yao: "........"
Lu Sicheng: "The enemy's Mid has it."
Tong Yao: "......"
Lu Sicheng: "Go get it yourself."
Tong Yao, angered by her teammate, single handedly killed the opposing Mid and took the blue buff. Her breakthrough encouraged her teammates to win the round through sheer momentum…...The moment they pushed the enemy's base, the Jungler even sarcastically commented, "See, if I don't force you, you would've taken your time farming minions. You can kill the enemy by yourself, don't you want to win?"
Tong Yao: "Shut up."
...
The second round.
Lu Sicheng got to play as ADC.
At the exact same moment as the last round, at the seventh minute, Tong Yao moved her champion slowly from mid to bot to form a team of three with Lu Sicheng and their team's Support. With the advantage of three to two, they fought with the two enemy champions at bot…...After a small scale fight, they got two kills. Lu Sicheng happily went back to the base.
When his champion returned to base, he noticed their own Mid had jumped next to the red buff. Lu Sicheng: " ? "
[ZGDX chessman remind you to back away]
[ZGDX chessman remind you to back away]
[ZGDX chessman remind you to back away]
A series of bright yellow exclamation marks showed up next to the red buff. Yet, Tong Yao acted as if she was blind and deaf to all the warnings, quickly using her abilities to take red buff for herself.
Lu Sicheng: "You want to die?"
Tong Yao: "Enemy's ADC has it."
Lu Sicheng: "..."
Tong Yao: "Get it yourself."
Lu Sicheng: "..."
This round ended at the 23rd minute amid the exclamation of Old Cat, "Cheng Ge hasn't gone afk." The round ended when their team cleared the enemy's bot-- --By the time the game was over, the ADC had 22 kills, 0 death, and 3 assists. He even got a pentakill-- --
This time it was Lu Sicheng, who was angered by their Mid, that performed excellently.
At the same time, there was a post on a famous esports blog with the title: [what the hell, I just saw Cheng Ge and the new ZGDX Mid girl playing duo on OB (an online viewing system)!]
The post instantly rose to the top with hundreds of comments.
...
Meanwhile, Tong Yao and Lu Sicheng started their third round.
This time, Tong Yao chose a champion which she hadn't used for years, Yasuo. This is a champion that would make their teammates want to back out of the game. As expected, Tong Yao ended with 0 kills, 5 deaths, and 0 assists.
Lu Sicheng: "I really want to unplug your internet."
Tong Yao: "Don't. Wait till I get the hang of it, then you can take over the game later."
As she was talking, her screen turned black once more, she got killed again.
-- --During a game, if one player keeps being killed and doesn't contribute to any kill, the reward money for killing said player would be gradually deducted from 300 gold downwards. In the end, that person would be a worthless ATM machine, which was what Tong Yao was at the moment.
Lu Sicheng: "...Stop feeding."
At the fifteenth minute, after Tong Yao got a black screen again, Lu Sicheng finally couldn't stand it anymore. He gave up defending bot's first inhibitor turret and moved to mid. After a confusing team fight, Mid's stats finally changed from 0/7/0 to 1/7/0-- --
Tong Yao: "Good, I got a head! I'm going to fly now!"
Lu Sicheng: "You're not going to fly at all. You're just worth something again."
Tong Yao: "..."
...
After all three rounds had ended.
Lu Sicheng: "Get off."
Tong Yao: "Gladly."
The two went separate ways, playing solo on their own.
Tong Yao took over her cell phone and typed silently.
One minute later, there was a new Weibo posting coming from "Smiling"-- --
[Smiling: has become completely estranged from ZGDX chessman (=_=)]