SITS CH27

Chapter 27: Eve of the Tournament

The World Championship was slated for autumn, but preparatory work had already commenced.

The tournament venue was in Europe, meaning visa issues had to be tackled first. It seemed simple at first glance, but hiccups occurred frequently; there had been accidents before where a player’s visa was denied, forcing the team to forfeit.

The coach mentioned they were already contacting foreign teams to schedule more scrims. Players also needed to grind ranked on both the CN and Asia servers, as the Asia server held considerable competitive value.

On Tuesday morning, Shen Man woke up feeling as though he had forgotten something.

Sitting in his chair, he pondered for a long time but couldn’t recall it. Xu Zhouye returned from his morning run and brought him steaming hot steamed buns. Knitting his brows, he took a bite.

“What’s wrong, not good?” Xu Zhouye asked, noticing his grave expression.

“No, it’s pretty good.” Shen Man liked steamed buns, especially the local soy-braised pork buns—savory and sweet with a rich soy aroma, made with hand-kneaded old dough, entirely different from pre-packaged frozen ones. Sticking the rest of the bun into his mouth, he mumbled, “I think I forgot something.”

Xu Zhouye asked, “What is it?”

Shen Man: “…Wouldn’t be forgetting if I knew.”

Xu Zhouye couldn’t help bursting into laughter.

The feeling of having forgotten something was truly agonizing. Shen Man tried hard to recall, but failing to do so, he had to give up.

It wasn’t until past six in the evening when Shen Man’s phone suddenly rang that the name on the screen finally reminded him of what he had forgotten—he had promised to see Lu Ni off.

Shen Man: “…” Crap.

Shen Man answered the call. Lu Ni’s voice came through, asking him where he was.

Though his butt was still glued to his gaming chair, Shen Man displayed the psychological fortitude befitting a professional esports player. Calm and collected, he replied, “Mm, on my way.”

Beside him, Zhao Rui was currently grinding ranked without his headset on. A thunderous “TRIPLE KILL” blared from his speakers.

Lu Ni asked suspiciously, “Why did I hear ‘triple kill’?”

Shen Man: “You must have misheard.”

“QUADRA KILL”—before he could even finish, another announcement rang out. Zhao Rui slapped the table: “Beautiful! Quadra kill!”

Awkward silence.

Lu Ni said faintly, “What a pity. Short one kill for the penta.”

Shen Man: “Sorry, it’s been too busy these past few days. I forgot…”

Lu Ni: “Heh, men.”

Knowing he was in the wrong, Shen Man admitted his fault: “I am truly sorry.”

“Forget it. My flight is at eight, you wouldn’t make it in time if you headed over now anyway.” It was past six, right at the peak of rush hour traffic; getting to the airport would take at least an hour and a half, so he definitely wouldn’t make it. Lu Ni forgave Shen Man’s slip-up, actually breaking into a laugh. “Alright, alright, it’s no big deal, don’t take it to heart.”

Shen Man thought for a moment: “I should be heading over to your area around October.”

Coincidentally, the World Championship finals venue was located in the very country where Lu Ni had settled.

“You’re willing to come see me?” Lu Ni was somewhat pleasantly surprised. She had been following the tournament and naturally knew where the finals were held, but given Shen Man’s personality, she hadn’t expected him to spare time out of his competitive schedule to visit her.

“Mm,” Shen Man said. “Treat it as compensation for missing your send-off.”

Lu Ni smiled, smiling quite happily: “I’ll take you around then. You must come, okay?”

Shen Man: “Definitely. I won’t forget this time.”

Lu Ni said, “It’s fine. If you forget this time, I’ll remind you.”

Hanging up the phone, Shen Man breathed a sigh of relief.

Beside him, Zhao Rui was still hollering like a maniac: “Who told you to play Phantom, watch me hook you to shreds—”

Shen Man: “…” He let out a sigh.

The scent of summer was freshly sliced watermelon, plum-flavored ice pops, and the bouquet of daisies placed in his room.

On the day the daisies withered, Xu Zhouye brought a new bouquet—two sunflowers.

Bought during another night run, costing another ten yuan. Shen Man didn’t refuse, arranging them into his vase. The vase was a new purchase, a simple, plain-colored design that matched his room’s aesthetic perfectly.

Shen Man’s room was very monotonous: white curtains, black bedsheets, like a black-and-white sketch. Within this frame, the only splash of vivid color were those two dazzling sunflowers.

Xu Zhouye was quite like these vibrant flowers. He seemed to possess an endless supply of happy things, smiling radiantly every day, unburdened by worries.

Of course, even with such an excellent temper, occasionally during VOD reviews, he would still get a bit heated.

This week, they scheduled scrims with foreign teams, playing matches on overseas servers while tanking high ping. Whether due to the abysmal ping or simply failing to adapt to the opponent’s playstyle, they lost both matches.

Thus, the coach convened a meeting, arriving at the universally beloved VOD review segment.

“I said we needed communication! Why did nobody follow when I invaded the enemy jungle?” Showing a rare flush of anger, Xu Zhouye pointed at the replay and said, “I said I was invading to steal their camps. zoop, shouldn’t you have come over to check?”

zoop—Zhao Rui snapped back: “When have I ever not come over when you called me? I didn’t hear you call me at all!”

Xu Zhouye said, “I did!”

Zhao Rui: “You didn’t!”

Both heads swiveled in unison to look at Shen Man.

The patriarch Shen Man was currently eating a banana. Taking a bite, he said, “Why are you looking at me? We have the stream recording, check the replay.”

So the progress bar was dragged back for the replay.

“Look, look, look! I told you I said it!” In this round, Xu Zhouye claimed victory.

Zhao Rui said, “Fine, then I didn’t hear it… but your early-game tempo really had some issues…”

Arguing during VOD reviews was entirely normal; every team experienced it unavoidably. Only through summarizing flaws could there be improvement.

After arguing until their mouths went dry, Shen Man considerately asked if they each wanted an ice pop.

“I’ll take one to cool down,” Zhao Rui raised his hand.

Shen Man grabbed a handful of ice pops, tossing them onto the table for them to pick.

“TKR and UN reached out again wanting to scrim with us,” the coach said. “I scheduled the times for tomorrow and the day after. No taking time off.”

With the playoffs concluded, the World Championship seeding slots were finalized.

With ACE taking first seed, everyone was eager to seize the time to scrim with ACE and elevate their own team’s form.

After all, going into the World Championship, they were technically brothers representing the same region; they had to unite against foreign opponents.

“Sure.” Nobody had any objections.

After ACE secured the Summer Championship title, Shen Man’s popularity surged yet another wave. Lately, clips of him hoisting the trophy could be found everywhere on social feeds. God only knew how the algorithms worked; every time Shen Man swiped past one, he hit “Not Interested,” yet it kept aggressively pushing them to him anyway.

Being pushed those was one thing, but he also kept stumbling upon bizarrely edited videos.

Such as the one right before his eyes—

The video featured solely him and Xu Zhouye. From exchanging smiles, to hoisting the trophy together, they even edited in the clip of Xu Zhouye helping him carry his keyboard. Paired with melancholic, emotional music, if Shen Man hadn’t been one of the parties involved, he would have genuinely believed he and Xu Zhouye were dating.

The most terrifying part was that this fan-edit video already had hundreds of thousands of likes—more than Xu Zhouye’s actual follower count.

Recalling that photoshopped image in his comments from a while back, Shen Man gritted his teeth, snapping off a large chunk of his plum ice pop with a crunch.

“Yo, shipping your own ship now?” Zhao Rui, a slacker at work but forever at the front lines when it came to eating melons and watching drama, leaned over.

“Shipping what?” Shen Man didn’t understand.

“You don’t know?” Zhao Rui said. “Your ship with Xu Zhouye!”

Shen Man: “…” Why could he understand every single character individually, but stringing them together made zero sense?

Seeing Shen Man’s bewildered face and realizing he was clearly out of touch with internet culture, the master surfer Zhao Rui painfully took it upon himself to educate Shen Man on what ‘shipping a CP’ meant.

With the ice pop in his mouth, Shen Man’s expression shifted from confusion to serene calmness as Zhao Rui explained. In the end, unable to hold it in, he asked a single question: “Do you have a ship?”

Zhao Rui gave a sheepish grin: “No.”

Shen Man asked, “Why don’t you have one?”

Zhao Rui said, “They find me too trash at the game.”

Shen Man: “…” And you can still smile saying that.

Shen Man and Xu Zhouye indeed had a ship; not only did they have one, they even had a dedicated Super Topic on Weibo. Reportedly, the full ship name was Man Tian Bian Ye (Shen Man x Xu Zhouye).

Shen Man didn’t dare click into it, fearing the sheer heat of summer would make him spontaneously combust.

Because of this interlude, Shen Man looked at Xu Zhouye with a somewhat peculiar gaze that evening.

Living up to his title as the Jungle King, Xu Zhouye practically foraged outside every day. Tonight, god knew where he sourced it from, he brought back two boxes of extraordinarily delicious shredded chicken cold noodles.

Though Shen Man liked spicy food, what he actually loved most was a sweet-and-spicy flavor profile. He hadn’t even realized this himself, but Xu Zhouye had quickly picked up on it, flawlessly targeting Shen Man’s exact preferences every single time he brought food.

“Delicious.” These two words were the highest praise for any food. Shen Man asked, “Which place did you buy this from?”

“Quite a distance away,” Xu Zhouye said. “Had a friend bring it over.”

Xu Zhouye had only been here for a month and already had friends delivering food for him; truly a social butterfly.

“By the way,” Xu Zhouye said. “The security guard asked me to pass a message, saying you shouldn’t go out recently. There are weird people wandering around the area again.”

Hearing this, Shen Man, whose mouth was still stuffed with noodles, stopped chewing. At the words people wandering around, his cheeks bulged and his eyes widened slightly.

Finding this look adorable to death, Xu Zhouye couldn’t resist reaching out and poking Shen Man’s cheek.

Poked, Shen Man looked up and mumbled, “Wht are yu doing?”

Xu Zhouye remained utterly composed: “You had a piece of green onion on your face. Got it off for you.”

Shen Man: “Oh.”

Swallowing the noodles, Shen Man said, “Alright, I won’t go out for the next few days.” He laughed self-deprecatingly, “Seems Zhao Rui wasn’t joking when he said ACE’s abysmal results the past few years saved my life.”

It truly wasn’t a joke. During his very first year in the HCC, he hoisted the World Championship trophy. Shen Man’s popularity skyrocketed to a terrifying degree, and accompanying that popularity were extreme stalker fans. During that period, Shen Man didn’t dare step out the base’s front gates at all. The one time he went out alone, he hadn’t walked fifty meters before discovering two or three people tailing him, brandishing their phones and furiously snapping photos of him.

It was only when unexpected accidents occurred, Qin Yixing left the team, and ACE’s results plummeted that things cooled off.

A blessing in disguise, perhaps; otherwise, had he won two more championships, Shen Man would have been torn to shreds by those rabid fans long ago.

Hearing this, Xu Zhouye didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, thinking to himself: Is this what they mean by ‘misfortune is what good fortune leans on, and good fortune is where misfortune hides’?

The only silver lining was that Shen Man inherently disliked going outside anyway, and with the sweltering heat, it hardly affected him at all.

Scrims proceeded with intense fervor. After several series, ACE managed a sixty-forty win rate against TKR, and seventy-thirty against UN.

With every game played, whether from the opponents’ perspective or their own, everyone once again clearly grasped the sheer magnitude of Xu Zhouye’s potential in this game. Within a few short months, he had completely melded into the competitive tempo. His hero pool was a bottomless abyss, frequently pulling out pocket picks that caught people completely off guard.

Normal training usually concluded in the afternoon. In the evening, they sometimes had two-hour VOD reviews, and on nights without meetings, Shen Man would start a stream to idle the time away.

Being busy lately, he hadn’t streamed much. The moment he went live today, he was enthusiastically welcomed by the chat.

[Yo, isn’t this Shen Man, the captain of our HCC Summer Champions, ACE? How’d you find the heart to stream today?]

[A whole week without a stream, thought the man had passed away.]

[Look at that complexion of his. If you didn’t know better, you’d think someone was pointing a gun at the back of his head.]

[Hehe, just love the look of him being forced to clock in with a dark expression on his face.]

Of course, there were also gentle comments.

[SW, missed you so much baby, did you eat well today?]

[Are you getting along with fest, stop beating him up okay?]

[Why do you look like you lost weight again? Is ACE starving you guys?]

[Heard from Zhang Chaoyun that you guys went to an escape room last week and you even cross-dressed!]

[SLOW IN WOMEN’S CLOTHES??? Who has photos, I’ll pay ten thousand—]

[I’ll pay a million! If anyone’s actually selling, pretend I didn’t say that.]

[Honestly, I really want to see it too.]

…

Holding his thermos, Shen Man took a sip of the traditional Chinese medicine inside—which had already become his staple streaming beverage, primarily serving to cool internal fire. He spotted the comments regarding the escape room, thinking to himself that Zhang Chaoyun’s mouth was truly getting bigger by the day.

However, no photos meant no evidence. Too lazy to care, Shen Man queued up for a game.

Luck was poor; he ran into a literal animal of a teammate. God knows what was going through their head, but as the fifth pick filling the Support role, they locked in an utterly abstract hero. How to describe it? It was like running a relay race, passing the baton to your teammate, only to discover the teammate taking the baton insisted on running the second half of the race on stilts.

Shen Man didn’t rage, but he definitely made the stream chat rage.

There was no helping it. Playing the Marksman role meant inevitably facing all sorts of horrifying teammates; solo queue was an extreme endurance test for both one’s mental state and lifespan.

Shen Man had successfully conquered the challenge. Though his current KDA was 0-2-0, his eyes hadn’t flickered in the slightest.

Chat said: [Looks calm at first glance, but if you look closely, the man has already been dead for a while.]

[He doesn’t even blink, looks so cold-blooded.]

[I suspect if he murdered his teammate and blood splattered across his face, he wouldn’t even wipe it off.]

Ending the game with a 0-5 record, Shen Man downed the last gulp of his Chinese medicine and said, “Hold on, swapping accounts.”

Chat asked him why he was swapping accounts.

Shen Man gave a hollow smile: “Because this account got muted for six months, still hasn’t expired yet.”

Chat: […]

Shen Man: “Joking. I’m a professional player, how could I violate professional ethics and curse people out?”

As he spoke, a voice suddenly drifted in from off-camera: “Ge, help me cut off this tag, it’s scratching my neck and hurts.”

The moment everyone heard the voice, they instantly recognized it: none other than Xu Zhouye.

Over on the other side, freshly showered Xu Zhouye walked over with his head bowed. His hair was still dripping wet, wearing a brand-new T-shirt. Walking up beside Shen Man, he lowered his head to let him snip off the tag from the new shirt, which was positioned right at the nape of his neck, scratching him terribly.

Shen Man said, “Come here. Where are the scissors?”

“Couldn’t find them,” Xu Zhouye mumbled. “Will nail clippers work?”

“Works too,” Shen Man said. “Give them to me.”

Thus, hundreds of thousands of viewers in the stream watched as Xu Zhouye practically buried his head into Shen Man’s chest, while Shen Man lowered his eyes and used nail clippers to snip the tag off for him.

“Done,” Shen Man said. “Not scratching anymore?”

“Much better.” Xu Zhouye twisted his neck comfortably. “Thanks, ge.”

Lifting his eyes, he glanced at the chat and couldn’t hold back a pfft of laughter.

At this moment, the chat was entirely flooded with a single sentence:

[Thanks, ge~]

[Thanks, ge~]

[Thanks, ge~]

Shen Man couldn’t help laughing either: “Are you people sick?” Being so passive-aggressive.

[Ge~ Why is it that when he does it he’s your good little brother, but when we do it we’re sick~]

[Ge~ My neck hurts~]

[Gege~ If you cut the tag for him, won’t jiejie get mad~]

Smiling, Shen Man said, “You guys truly know how to stir up trouble.”

It was rare to see him this happy, making the entire chat actually feel a bit sheepish, wondering what was going on and how they managed to passive-aggressively tease a genuine smile out of him.

[SW’s smile is so sweet. Last time I saw him smile this sweetly was the last time.]

[Honestly, this kind of genuine, heartfelt smile is completely different from his usual hollow smiles.]

[I’ll be honest too, I still prefer that look where he stares at people like they’re trash.]

[I told you FEST was a little boyfriend slow handpicked himself, and you didn’t believe me.]

[Haha, handpicked my ass. You guys should really go watch the VOD of fest dying to a jungle creep in Week 1, and see the look in slow’s eyes staring at him like he was looking at a corpse.]

[What the fuck do you guys know? Having contrast makes it even sweeter!]

Shen Man was already thoroughly accustomed to the mental state of his stream room, simply treating their chaotic banter as thin air.