I opened the door and saw Liz and Lenna looking at some of my stuff and decorations.
They noticed I had someone else with me so they instantly straightened their back and stood up.
"Mom, these are my friends Elizabeth Miles and Lenna Taylor. Guys, this is my mother," I introduced them to each other.
"My my, aren't you kids gorgeous!" My mother cried out.
"Thank you, You look beautiful as well Mrs. Katyusha" Liz replied respectfully.
"And polite too it's hard to believe my daughter made such wonderful friends like you girls. I was skeptical at first when I heard she had her friends here. She never bought any of her friends home, you girls must get along pretty well."
I don't like the way this conversation is going. My instinct is telling me to cut off their conversation. But it would be quite rude, so doing that would be out of the question.
"Well, we're pretty grateful to Kat too, she's dependable and always takes care of us." Liz politely said.
"That's good to hear, ohh you can have some cake I bought whenever you're hungry. It's Kat's favorite cake from a famous bakery back at Ardmore."
"It.... is? I thought she didn't like sweets?" Liz asked dubiously
Oh yeah, I remembered telling them that back at the cafe to look more mature.
"Oh of course she does. I bought two cakes since she can easily finish 1 whole cake all by herself. She always eats a lot whenever she sees sweets. She also likes it more if they have some sort of cute designs on them."
My face instantly flushed. To be fair, their serving is not that big so I can eat it by myself, also having a good visual presentation for a food makes it more desirable right?
I can hear Lenna snickering in the background. Thanks, Mom you always were really good at embarrassing your own daughter unknowingly, It might even be called a talent at this rate.
"Ohh you girls want to see some photos of Kat when she was younger? She was so adorable back then!"
Ok, that's enough, drastic times call for drastic measures. I have to do something now that it's come to this. My image will be in shatters if this keeps up, I have to salvage whatever's left of it somehow.
"M-Mom, we're going to watch the match now. You can just bother us later." I cut her off.
I pushed my mother (quite gently if I might add) out of my room to prevent any further destruction of my well-maintained image.
"Ohh alright, you girls have fun! Remember to call me if there's any problem, I'll just be in the living room watching TV.
I shut the door after my mother left my room. looking right behind me I can see both Liz and Lenna smiling at me playfully.
I sigh
"Let's just watch the game."
-------------------------------
The three of us are lying in my bed with Liz sandwiched in the middle of me and Lenna, luckily the bed is quite big and can fit us three though it is still a little cramped so we're compressing to fit. We spent the time talking about school-related stuff and watching random videos on my and Liz's laptop. I took a look at the time at the bottom right side of my laptop. it is 2:58 already so the match should be starting soon.
"The match is about to start. let's open the streaming site."
Liz apparently noticed it too since she had already opened the site on her laptop.
"I want to eat some snacks while watching" Lenna chimed.
"No eating in bedrooms, especially mine." I admonished
"But I'm hungrrryyy, please just this one time?"
I sigh.
"Fine, I'll go grab some chips and whatever mom bought, but try not to make a mess while eating," I warned
"Yes! Thanks Katherine you're the best!"
"Yeah, yeah"
I went to the kitchen to pick up some of the snacks my mother bought. I picked a couple of chips and packaged caramel popcorn (one of my favorites) then went back upstairs.
"This is Lumen your host along with my 2 panelists for this game to help us break down the intricacies of this match. Dr.AnaList and Rainstorm."
I heard the introduction of the panelist signaling the start of the live stream match. I haven't followed the pro scene that much for more than 2 years but I remember Lumen and Rainstorm. Lumen is in the mid to late 20s and is a beautiful streamer that has quite a lot of followers for her outspoken and polite personality. Rainstorm on the other hand is a sponsored pro player from the days I was active, I even fought him once in the 1st Andartha Cup. He has medium-length hair, a serious-looking face, and a pale white complexion contributed by the fact that he probably seldom goes out into the sun and only plays VR as most pro gamers do. He must have retired recently and become a panelist talent.
"Kat, come fast! It's starting" Liz excitedly called out.
I lay down on my bed and then handed them the snacks which they both gratefully accepted. After that, we listened to the panel's take on the match.
"Let us first ask the question that the viewers would like to know, who do you think will win?" Lumen asked her co-workers.
"Personally, I would like team NG to win. We all know that I've been rivals with Tactical ever since I can remember and I can confidently say that I know how dangerous his strategies can be. But considering their recent declining past performances and their concurrent lackluster individual and mechanical skills, a good strategy can only take you so far. Also considering team Atelier's stellar improvement this season, I bitterly have to give my vote to team Atelier for this one." Rainstorm explained.
"I have to agree with you there Rainstorm, There is a saying that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Even if team NG has a tactical advantage, if they get outplayed individually and fail to execute their strategy then things will easily fall apart for them. Also, I do not want to bet against team Atelier's rising ace Murasame who is undoubtedly the best female pro gamer this season. People even call her the next Yuusha, although she will have to win an Andarta cup title under her belt for both of them to be even comparable." Dr.AnaList analyzed
That got me intrigued. Team Atelier is a fairly new team before I quit playing. I can recall that they were created for the sole purpose of marketing idol streamers and pro gamers so all their members are attractive and quite famous among the CoA fanbase. I remember they didn't do very well when they debuted and lost most of their matches but still garnered a very high fanbase because they are all popular female streamers. I didn't pay much attention to their roster but I can confidently say that they didn't have this 'Murasame' player back then.
"Who is this Murasame?" I asked Liz
"You don't know her? She's Murasame 'The Unseen Blade'. Her Real name is 'Aoi Yamamoto', 22 years old. She was the Japanese women's kendo champion before she became a pro gamer. Her slashes are so fast that you won't even be able to follow them! Her hobbies are tea ceremonies and gardening. She also likes listening to relaxing music. She's soft-spoken but can be very blunt sometimes. Her three sizes are-."
"Wait, wait, wait! How do you even know all this stuff? Are you her stalker or something?" I eyed Liz dubiously.
"That is suspicious. I didn't think you would stoop so low to be a stalker. As your best friend, I'm so disappointed I wasn't able to correct you on the right path, boo-hoo." Lenna fake cried.
"I'm not a stalker! You can find all of their public information on Team Atelier's site. And besides, she's a streamer too, I need to know who my competitors are and also take notes from them." Liz denied my accusation with a somewhat reasonable counter-argument.
"She's a streamer too?" I asked
Judging from what I heard about her personality, she doesn't seem to be the type to do streams.
"Team Atelier's organization requires their players to stream so she streams sometimes but she rarely talks even on stream and just plays PVP. She still has the second highest stream followers next to Yuna though." Liz recounted.
"Before we start, here is a quick advertisement from one of our sponsors."
Suddenly a well-crafted commercial advertisement played in the stream. All the while the stream chat is spamming sellouts and the like. Likely mocking the ads. After the advertisement, Lumen continued.
"Keep in mind that 20% of the sales of our products will go directly to the prize pool of this year's Andartha's Cup. So what are you guys waiting for? Buy as many figurines, t-shirts, and merch of your favorite pro players as you can so that you will also be supporting them at the same time!" Lumen advertised.
"And now let's head over to our casters DJ Riot and ParaTrooper for the start of the match!" Lumen announced.