SITS CH44

Chapter 44: Coming to Watch the Match?

In any case, that meal still ended up being eaten.

With the World Championship concluded, the only remaining fixture on this year’s competitive calendar was the end-of-year All-Star event. Suddenly, everyone had plenty of idle time.

Shen Man launched a live stream for the first time in ages.

Marching forward in the first square of the chat parade were the gentle, doting mama fans: [Baby SLOW, how’s your hand? Why are you still wearing a T-shirt in such freezing weather, you’re going to catch a cold, baby!]

Hot on their heels were the hyper-critical armchair esports elitists: [SLOW’s blunder in Game 4 was genuinely massive. Total post-game damage output of 9,112. If FEST hadn’t pulled a miracle out of his ass, you guys would definitely be swimming back right now.]

The power of the shipping CP fans was equally formidable: [Kiss FEST on the mouth! Kiss FEST on the mouth! Kiss FEST on the mouth!]

Bringing up the rear were the tireless spam bots: [+V: gidfuids for full spicy videos…]

This wild, untamed chat ecosystem was practically a primeval jungle. Before even delving in, one already felt a disorienting dizziness akin to being lost in the wilderness.

Glancing at it for a few seconds, Shen Man figured it would shave years off his lifespan and decided to give up: “Injury isn’t fully healed, can’t play ranked. But I can stream something else.”

The chat responded saying anything was fine, just please don’t boot up Plants vs. Zombies.

Considering himself a very reasonable person, Shen Man said, “Since everyone dislikes Plants vs. Zombies, I’ll just play something else.”

Ten minutes later, having finished downloading the latest trending horror release, Shen Man announced, “Then let’s play Chat vs. Zombies.”

The chat erupted with furious strings of question marks.

This newly released horror title was actually quite well-crafted: the plot, visuals, and audio design were all stellar, with simple controls to boot. The sole prerequisite was having the sheer guts to boot it up.

Zhao Rui had spearheaded the guinea-pig run by streaming it just yesterday. While still in the tutorial menu, his shrill, unholy shrieks could be heard throughout the entire base, grating on the team boss so badly that she dropped a Super Rocket into his stream chat just to tell him to swap games immediately and stop disturbing the peace.

Loading into the game, the player spawned inside an eerie, dilapidated dormitory. Beneath dim, flickering lighting, a corpse hung suspended mid-air, swaying gently in the draft.

Under this exact ambiance, the protagonist had to scour the dormitory for keys to escape.

It was ten at night. Everyone else on the team had gone out on break, leaving Shen Man all alone. For atmospheric immersion, he considerately switched off the room lights. On webcam, the monitor’s glow washed over his expressionless face, lending him a distinctly sinister air.

Searching the room, he discovered the final key hung from a wind chime right beside the swaying corpse.

Controlling his character, Shen Man climbed onto a stool to pull the key from the wind chime. Yet just as he reached for it, the in-game protagonist noticed something deeply wrong… The wind chime hanging beside the corpse hadn’t rung once in the wind, so why on earth was the corpse swaying back and forth…?

The protagonist turned his head, only to see the hanging corpse tilt its head at the exact same unnatural angle, locking eyes dead-on with him.

On webcam, Shen Man suddenly looked up, muttering in a bewildered, deadpan cadence: “What on earth is kicking my head?” He paused, his tone dropping into something spine-chilling: “Couldn’t be the dangling feet of a hanged ghost, could it?”

[AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!]

[AHHHHHH! WTF!!]

[SW, ACT LIKE A DECENT HUMAN BEING PLEASE AAAAAHHH!]

If the chat could emit audio, the room would be drowning in a chorus of blood-curdling screams. It even drew a prompt from the platform moderator: [Streamer, please conduct standard gameplay and refrain from deliberately creating horror panic.]

Shen Man let out a faint scoff: “Can you guys handle it or not? Want me to keep playing?”

Viewers were used to the chat startling streamers; they had never seen a streamer deliberately terrify their own chat. Recovering from the fright, they cursed Shen Man for being utterly shameless, asking how he could treat his bread-and-butter viewers with such cruelty.

“I’m truly not scared,” Shen Man said. “Did someone actually get spooked?”

[There’s someone behind you.]

The chat spammed the message relentlessly.

Refusing to buy it for a second, Shen Man scoffed dismissively: “Right, right, the freshly hanged corpse is standing right behind me.”

[Bro, there is ACTUALLY someone there! Turn around and look!]

The chat went completely berserk.

Shen Man said, “You think I’ll fall for your tricks and turn around?” Clicking the stream link, he opened his own broadcast window: “Since you guys can see someone, I should be able to see it too.”

The smirk froze on his lips the moment the stream window loaded. Through his webcam preview, standing not far behind his chair, a figure was indeed standing there. Bathed in shadow, the person’s features were obscured, discernible only as a vague, looming silhouette.

Shen Man: “…”

Chat: [AAAAAAAH HIS FACE CHANGED! HOLY SHIT THERE REALLY IS SOMEONE AAAAAAAAH!]

Shen Man didn’t look back. He felt that turning around right now would make him look like the doomed protagonist of a horror flick, getting his head lopped off the very next second. Pulling out his phone, he quietly shot a message to Xu Zhouye:

— Where are you? — What’s up, ge? — Need your help with something. — What is it? — Feels like another weird person broke into the base.

The message had barely sent when Shen Man saw the figure standing behind him move. Live streams had broadcast latency; countless horrific scenarios flashed through his mind, even dragging up the memory of the stalker standing by his bedside wielding a blade.

Shen Man didn’t fear ghosts, but he genuinely feared another psycho breaching the base.

The silhouette now stood squarely behind his chair. Shen Man’s entire body seized up taut. Before he could react, a gentle hand rested softly on his shoulder.

“Ge, what are you doing looking so tense?” That familiar voice instantly melted the stiffness from Shen Man’s frame.

Sure enough, the person standing behind him was Xu Zhouye.

Helpless, Shen Man turned around: “Why were you standing behind me without making a sound?”

Holding an ice pop in his mouth, Xu Zhouye looked thoroughly innocent: “Got a craving after showering, so I grabbed an ice pop from the kitchen. Saw you still in the training room, so I stood behind you to watch for a bit, afraid of disturbing you.”

Reasonable. Far too reasonable. The sheer airtight logic left Shen Man completely speechless.

“Aren’t you scared playing this in the dead of night?” Xu Zhouye asked.

“Not scared,” Shen Man said. “Are you?”

Xu Zhouye: “Uhm… it’s alright, I guess.”

Shen Man said, “The viewers are complaining that I’m not scared enough. How about you take the controls, and I’ll watch from behind?”

Xu Zhouye agreed generously: “Sure.”

The chat could clearly tell the two shared a stellar relationship, grumbling sourly that SLOW must have subjugated poor FEST through brute violence, rendering him incapable of rebellion.

Other viewers disagreed: [If he subjugated him with anything, I bet SLOW used his face. That explanation makes far more sense.]

[Forget the face, the body works just as well.]

[Just sitting right on him until FEST can’t move, right?]

[Where are the mods? How did I suddenly get merged onto the highway express lane??]

As it turned out, Xu Zhouye possessed plenty of courage as well, offering zero comedic jump scares. The two even casually began debating where to head out for late-night snacks later.

Terrorized for half the evening, the chat ground their teeth in bitter frustration.

Naturally, some found pure bliss: who could begin to fathom the sheer ecstasy coursing through the Man Tian Bian Ye CP fans right now?

[AHHHH! MY SHIP IS CANON!!]

[MAN TIAN BIAN YE! LOVE HAS NO COUNTERPLAY!]

Having terrorized his viewers for a few hours, Shen Man felt his karmic debt was satisfied and prepared to happily sign off.

Infuriated, the chat threatened to report his stream. Shen Man asked what they could possibly report him for, and the chat declared they would report him for “coercive forced-romance with Xu Zhouye.”

Shen Man: “…” Where on earth do you people learn such feral terminology?

Whether the reports would succeed Shen Man neither knew nor cared. In any case, his mandatory streaming quota for the month was officially met.

ACE hoisting the trophy was an unexpected, glorious triumph.

Consequently, everyone enjoyed an explosive surge in followers. While that might be an unmitigated blessing for others, for Shen Man, it wasn’t necessarily so.

Following the team owner’s visit, security personnel at the base were bolstered once more, expanding from four guards to six.

The manager joked that Shen Man could rest easy now; the facility looked less like an esports base and more like the Umbrella Corporation, fortified to the teeth, unable to let even a stray mosquito slip through.

Zhao Rui sneered at such rhetoric, remarking that he had been bitten by a mosquito just yesterday.

Shen Man treated his words as thin air.

Winning the championship brought a deluge of commercial endorsements in its wake. But Shen Man’s contract was unique; to keep him on the roster back then, the owner had excluded mandatory commercial obligations from his deal. He took what he liked and declined what he didn’t.

This resulted in Shen Man carrying the fewest commercial commitments on the entire squad—he was simply too lazy to leave the front door.

His teammates voiced harsh condemnation toward this blatant disregard for making money.

Simultaneously, other organizations began making covert moves. While the official transfer window hadn’t opened yet, teams customarily initiated informal contact with coveted targets well in advance.

Everyone knew poaching Shen Man from ACE was a lost cause, but upon discovering that Xu Zhouye’s monthly salary was a mere twenty thousand yuan, he instantly became the premier prize pursued by every major club in the league. The feeding frenzy bore an uncanny resemblance to Qin Yixing’s post-championship market back in the day.

The only difference was that Qin Yixing hadn’t resisted the allure of sky-high wages.

This wasn’t Shen Man’s concern. Xu Zhouye was an adult with full freedom to come and go. Though he had promised never to leave, promises were only guaranteed to be true in the exact second they were spoken.

Without expectations or longing, there would be no room for disappointment.

This was the steadfast code Shen Man had always lived by.

Naturally, the boss desperately wanted Xu Zhouye to stay, pulling him aside for private talks several times. Judging by her satisfied demeanor, negotiations had gone rather smoothly.

Autumn departed in a hurry. By late December, winter had firmly set in.

Snow rarely fell in their coastal city, leaving the climate dry and piercingly cold.

Shen Man’s hand injury had recovered remarkably well. According to the doctor, he could resume regular practice once the Spring Festival passed.

He didn’t mind the heat, but was notoriously vulnerable to the cold. The practice room had air conditioning without central heating, and the dry draft from the heating units irritated him, prompting him to bundle into a heavy down parka early on. The coat was exceptionally bulky and oversized, making his already compact face look even smaller.

Returning from outside, Xu Zhouye saw his captain curled in his chair like a squirrel preparing for hibernation, idly tugging at strands of his hair.

“What are you looking at?” Xu Zhouye asked.

“Hair’s getting long. Need to find time for a trim,” Shen Man said. “When are you heading out for the All-Star event?”

The year concluded with the fan-voted All-Star tournament. Shen Man had sat out the voting due to his injury, leaving Xu Zhouye to be elected with an overwhelming landslide of votes without surprise.

Elected alongside him was Qin Yixing.

“Next week, probably,” Xu Zhouye calculated the dates. “Ge, come with me.”

The All-Star venue was hosted in a northern city currently shrouded in endless blizzards.

Shen Man silently burrowed deeper into his down jacket, thoroughly amusing Xu Zhouye: “What are you scared of? They have central heating up there.”

Central heating?! Shen Man’s eyes lit up.

“Deal,” Shen Man agreed on the spot.

The All-Star format was quite entertaining: the two most popular players were voted team captains, each taking turns drafting five teammates from the remaining top ten candidates.

The schedule featured not only a formal BO5 series, but also 1v1 solo duels and a variety of novelty game modes.

Watching others battle without having to play oneself made it infinitely more amusing.

The two arrived in the host city three days ahead of schedule.

Stepping off the plane, Shen Man was armed to the teeth with a mask, beanie, scarf, and earmuffs—even sporting windproof goggles. Anyone unaware would have assumed he was gearing up for an extreme wilderness survival expedition in the arctic tundra.

Yet even bundled like this, the ride-share driver managed to recognize him.

The driver had been eyeing them through the rearview mirror the entire ride. Before Xu Zhouye could speak, the driver broke the ice: “Are you guys ACE’s SLOW and FEST?”

Xu Zhouye laughed: “You can recognize him even like this?”

Recognizing himself wasn’t shocking, but spotting Shen Man beneath that fortress of wool was genuinely impressive.

“I’m a hardcore SLOW fan! Are you here for the All-Star matches?” the driver asked. “Didn’t SLOW sit this one out?”

“He’s keeping me company,” Xu Zhouye said.

“You two really are close,” the driver remarked in surprise.

Xu Zhouye merely smiled without answering.

In truth, everyone had been deeply shocked by Shen Man’s decision to accompany Xu Zhouye here. The manager in particular had nearly had his eyeballs pop out of their sockets upon hearing that Shen Man was willing to vacate his nest, asking if Shen Man had some terrible blackmail held over him by Xu Zhouye, offering to help if so.

Shen Man had retorted: “If I told you, wouldn’t my leverage just fall into your hands instead?”

Manager: “…” Hard to argue with that logic.

Shen Man was not only willing to leave the house, but willing to travel far across the country into a frozen wasteland of ice and snow. How was that any different from the sun rising in the west?

Xu Zhouye, the very sun that had risen from the west, dragged their rolling luggage along: “Let’s go, ge.”

Trailing unhurriedly behind him, Shen Man walked off, leaving the manager behind to pick his eyeballs off the floor.

Inside the homestay, the central heating blazed at full blast.

Shen Man stripped off his mountain of winter gear. Xu Zhouye had assumed he was exaggerating, only to discover that across that brief outdoor trek, Shen Man’s face was drained stark white with only the tip of his nose flushed red, looking terribly pitiful.

The room was sweltering hot. Sniffling, Shen Man tossed his down parka aside.

“Want something to drink?” Xu Zhouye asked. “I’ll run downstairs to grab it.”

“Hot cocoa,” Shen Man said, shaking out his hands. Walking to the window, he watched heavy snow swirling outside, creating a stark contrast with the warmth of the room.

Vehicles, pedestrians, and the rustling hush of falling snow left the world feeling simultaneously noisy and profoundly serene.

Shen Man rubbed his itchy ears with fingers still tinted pink from the chill.

Xu Zhouye returned swiftly, handing over the hot cocoa Shen Man requested. Cradling the warm cup in his hands, Shen Man finally thawed out. Taking a sip, he asked Xu Zhouye what time he had to head to practice.

Checking the time, Xu Zhouye noted it was two in the afternoon.

“Go ahead,” Shen Man said. “I’ll wait for you back at the homestay…”

The practice and tournament facilities shared the same venue, barely a ten-minute walk from their lodging. Yet in this weather, forcing Shen Man to walk outside for ten minutes was practically equivalent to demanding his life.

Xu Zhouye said, “Alright then. I’ll bring dinner back when I return.”

Shen Man: “Mm…”

Claiming he came along for a vacation was inaccurate; it was more like swapping cities just to bask in central heating. The radiators felt infinitely more comfortable than air conditioning. Barefoot on the warm floorboards, Shen Man opened a match VOD to watch, gradually growing drowsy as the video played.

Night fell early in the north; the sun dipped below the horizon before six.

Streetlights flickered on, casting an amber glow over the swirling dance of snowflakes drifting through the air.

When Xu Zhouye returned, Shen Man was already fast asleep. Pushing the door open, he saw Shen Man lying barefoot across the mattress, his T-shirt hitched up slightly to expose a pale stretch of his waist and abdomen.

His slightly overgrown hair spilled messily over the bedsheets. With his eyes closed, he reminded Xu Zhouye of the fairy-tale princess waiting for a prince’s kiss to awaken.

Xu Zhouye walked softly to his side, but before he could utter a sound, Shen Man woke up.

Following that incident back at the base, his sleep had grown very light, waking at the faintest rustle. Opening his eyes, Shen Man saw Xu Zhouye standing over him with dusted snow clinging to the tips of his hair.

“Back?” Shen Man mumbled groggily.

“Yeah,” Xu Zhouye set the takeout down. “Asked the tournament staff, they said the tripe from this spot is amazing. Give it a try.”

Shen Man dragged himself upright to eat.

“How was it?” Shen Man asked about the scrims.

“Just standard,” Xu Zhouye said. “It’s an exhibition tournament, everyone is pretty relaxed.”

Shen Man took a bite of the tripe: shredded tripe tossed with sesame paste and chili oil, rich and fragrant, matching his palate surprisingly well.

“Are you coming to watch on match day?” Xu Zhouye asked him.

“Depends on the weather,” Shen Man said.

Xu Zhouye nodded, not pressing the matter.