Yao Yao, I broke up with Ai Jia.

Tong Yao opened WeChat to see a message from her good friend Jinyang. She was taken aback for a moment, before taking a cracker from her desk and bringing it to her mouth to calm herself. She replied after taking a moment to think: Why?

[He’s someplace beyond my reach.]

The five words stared back at her icily, eliciting a small “oh.” After a few moments, she realized that her friend could not hear her reaction — —

Jinyang’s boyfriend, Ai Jia, was a professional League of Legends player, an esports player. Since esports has been recognized by the country as a sports event, their status has gone up a notch.

In essence, most of these professionals are simple-minded teenagers addicted to the internet who can live happily with just a computer — —

But if you date them, it probably isn’t that different from dating a famous movie star.

“...... I said it from the beginning, you shouldn’t have agreed to date a teenager addicted to the internet.”

Tong Yao pinched another cracker and placed it into her mouth. Not knowing how to respond to her angered friend, she decided to wait for her to cool down by opening up League of Legends on her computer. — —

All text on screen suddenly became Korean. She had recently switched to the Korean servers to play since they had a more mature esports landscape. Professional players from all over the world tended to play on the Korean servers for this very reason.

Tong Yao had encountered several such professional players.

After signing in, as she was waiting for a match in queue, a chat window burst from the bottom left hand corner with an English ID. She squinted her eyes, waiting for the message to arrive, before discovering that he was quite direct.

[HI, friend, would you like come to china play game]

…… was he using Google Translate?

Tong Yao dropped the cracker dangling in her mouth from laughter.

Might as well reply — —

[I’m Chinese.]

The other side was silent for a few seconds.

Then sent a flood of “hahahahahah” — —

[You play well. How old are you? Do you want to come and play professionally? I’m part of China’s ZGDX’s team.][1]

She stared at those four letters for some time before letting out a shout. Her mother, who had been cleaning fish in the kitchen, had quickly dashed into her room with a cleaver still clenched in hand: “What’s the matter? Is there a cockroach?”

“Mom, someone’s inviting me to play games professionally!” Tong Yao pointed at the screen, “It’s a famous team, they’re sponsored by China Telecom, headquartered in Shanghai.”

Her mother had a look of understanding, but otherwise her demeanor remain unchanged. “Last week, someone called to tell me that I had won a Rolls-Royce from the nearby supermarket.”

Tong Yao remained silent.

“How can you be so gullible? Play professionally? Then what about school? Just from playing these lousy computer games has gotten to your head. Have you even finished your summer homework?”

“I’m a college freshman, there’s no summer homework anymore……” Tong Yao spoke to the side, keeping her eyes on screen, and broke from her stupor in shock. “They make 600,000 RMB a year, not including the award money from tournaments. If you’re not satisfied by that, we can still talk.”

“.......” After a long moment, her mother responded, “Give him your contact information.”

“Didn’t you say it’s a scam?”

“Would a scammer claim to pay someone 600,000 RMB?”

“Maybe he’s smarter and doesn’t over exaggerate.”

“Give him your phone number. It couldn’t hurt.”

“...... Didn’t you say I need to finish school first?”

“Take leave, then after you’ve earned 600,000 RMB you can go back.” Her mother deftly replied and waved her cleaver, “Just give him your number.”

It seemed that if she said no now, the cleaver was going to fall onto her head. Tong Yao shook her head and turned back to the computer. After a moment of thought, she typed her answer into the chat.

[Sorry, I’m a girl. I can’t play LPL.]

LPL is China’s top League of Legends League, composed of twelve teams. ZGDX is one of the better teams in the league with many star players, each with thousands of fans both in and outside of China. — — Compared to Jing Yang’s ex-boyfriend’s team YQCB, they were miles above.

Tong Yao also held great admiration for the team, following them whenever they were competing.

When she saw someone from this team contacting her, she was ecstatic, but now there was only one problem — —

She was a girl.

Except for last year at the North American Regionals, they had only taken one girl on the team. Aside from her, there was not another girl in any of the other major teams, globally. — — When she was hired from the North American Regionals, it caused a small earthquake in the League of Legends community.

Tong Yao wiped her face and seeing no response, figured that the other side probably wouldn’t continue the conversation. She couldn’t tell if she felt disappointed or something else, but either way lost interest in playing a match. As she was about to close the chat box, she noticed that there was a response.

[girls is OK, xiaojiejie, let’s make a big splash in the news!]

“......”

Even with his Google translate English, it was still a bit cute.

Even if he was pulling her leg, she was happy enough to give it a try. With that, she posted her number onto the chat and logged off.

By this time, she discovered that her WeChat with Jinyang was overflowing with messages — —

[All he knows what do is play his damn game. What about his girlfriend? I told him one day that I was in a bad mood. Guess what he said? I lost my game today, I’m not in a good mood either. T.T]

[I told him that I wanted to see him. He said, sure, tonight he’s going to stream with his web cam, so I can watch him and give him some bits.]

[I told him that I’m tired from my classes. He says he’s tired from playing games.]

[Dammit all, I’m so angry. Where are you! Come back and respond now. Yesterday, I saw him wear a t-shirt that I’d never seen before. It looked so nice on him, but the moment I saw it, I could tell it wasn’t something he’d ever buy himself. I asked him where it’d come from. He told me that it was sent in from a fan. Could I say that it looked good? I had to say it didn’t look good on him. What did he say? The fan had sent it to him, to support him, so he had to wear it at least once to show his appreciation. Damn him, he appreciates his fans but treats me like shit!]

[I’ve had enough of this idiot! My heart can’t take it anymore!]

[Finally, he’s on break and doesn’t have to train. He doesn’t even want to go out with me for dinner ……. He has the gall to stay at his base to self-train. If he practices so much, why hasn’t he won a championship yet? Fate’s just playing a sick joke on him isn’t it!]

[He loved that keyboard more than me. Hell, I’m the one who gave him the fucking keyboard. ]

[Even when we’re dating, we’re just playing games. Then he has the balls to criticize how badly I play. Please! All a girl has to do is play cute. If there’s such a creature who’s cute and can play games well, then there’d be no need for pro gamers like him!]

[It just pissed me off!]

…...

Tong Yao roared in laughter as she read.

She laughed so hard that she felt guilty as she typed her reply. “Look at the bright side, I’ll buy you a big dinner.” Before she could send the message, another line popped up from Jinyang.

[Yao Yao, if it’s you, how would you go about dating a professional gamer?]

Tong Yao stopped typing her message and began to think, before deleting her message. After a moment of silence, she came to a realization as her smile faded away. Tong Yao looked down and earnestly responded — —

[If it was me, I wouldn’t date a professional gamer. If I had that kind of patience, then I might as well use it to get into Tsinghua University or Beijing University.]

[1]: A big Chinese telecommunications company.

As the saying goes: there’s no such thing as love affairs in esports.

Tong Yao was profoundly aware of that, from the beginning she encountered the game.

The reason that Tong Yao began playing LoL was very simple-- -- the same reason as most girls who played-- --she started playing because another person was addicted to the game and she happened to like him.

They lived very close to each other that summer, but halfway through the summer, Tong Yao realized that they rarely spoke…...So, one day, she knocked on his door and discovered him sitting in front of the computer frantically playing a certain game. Tong Yao couldn’t elicit much of a response from him. While he was busy with his abilities, she went up to the keyboard while he was distracted and pressed a key.

He screamed.

On screen, his character suddenly dashed forward towards a group of people with red names. Then the screen, which was full of color, suddenly became black and white.

Tong Yao giggled even as a pair of angry eyes glared at her. She moved a stool over to sit next to him, just in time to see him speedily type a message-- --

[Sorry, my girlfriend's messing around.]

Tong Yao’s eyes narrowed as she laughed. She poked him, who was annoyed but afraid to complain, and slowly asked, “Jian Yang, looks like you’re having a lot fun. Teach me how to play so I can play with you.”

“En?” He turned around, “You?”

“Yeah, me.” Tong Yao smiled.

She still remembered the look he gave her. With little choice, he was forced to log off, then used Tong Yao’s QQ to create a new account. He reluctantly let Tong Yao sit in his chair and hold his mouse, then patiently explained everything standing behind her-- --

“This is a pushing tower game. There are three lanes on the map. You only need to remember that when you destroy the towers on all three lanes, the enemy base, and the enemy nexus, you’ll win.”

They reached the champion selection screen-- --

“Which one do I choose? Is it ok if I choose that good looking one?”

“Don’t, don’t, don’t. Aiya, just choose a support. Support-- --see that big guy with blue armor, that’s it.”

“So ugly.”

“It’s alright since you’re pretty enough.”

“......you’re really a sweet talker. What’s a support?”

“This game has three different lanes with five people on your team. One person runs around in the jungle to kill monsters to get level up, he’s called a ‘Jungler’; one person takes the upper lane, called ‘top’; one person takes the middle lane, called ‘mid’; and the bottom lane-- --”

“It’s called bot!”

“It’s called ‘ADC’.”

“......”

“Usually there are two players at the bot because the ADC is the carry.  How well the ADC plays in the beginning defines how well the game will usually go and so has a partner to help. So, the support.”

“Sounds like I won’t have much to do. Will I be able to browse Weibo after I choose support?”

“Might as well not play if you’re browsing Weibo. Haven’t you noticed that it’s pitch black in the jungle area on the map? Support has to be the eyes for his teammates. He has to use wards to light up the map like planting mushrooms-- --”

“So bothersome. Is there a position that doesn’t need to run around but has a strong presence and doesn’t have to worry about being yelled at for poor skill?”

“Sure!” Jian Yang used his lips to point at the middle of the screen. “Mid.”

So, Tong Yao became a mid player.

Jian Yang was a jungler. When the two of them played together, Jian Yang would hang around mid all the time, despite any cries from the other lanes for help. He would tirelessly move about mid, harassing the opponent, and establishing an advantage for Tong Yao-- --

Jian Yang called it the “mid alliance.”

After Tong Yao got more into the game, she realized that it wasn’t a “mid alliance” at all; it was just the “the basic rule of playing with a girl.”

In the beginning, Tong Yao needed Jian Yang’s help all the time. Without Jian Yang at her side, she would die instantly. She would call out, “I’m dead.”, “I’m dead again.”, “Damn, why, I’m dead again.”, “Jian Yang, if you keep doing jungle, you won’t have a girlfriend anymore.” Yet, after numerous deaths, Tong Yao finally got the hang of it-- --

The game has 30 levels. After reaching level 30, one can start playing ranked games.

Ranked games use League Points, or LP, as the fundamental indicator of a player’s skill level; from lowest to highest the rank went as the following: bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and diamond each having five divisions within each tier…...The rule is very simple: whenever one wins a ranked game, he will gain 10 to 30 LP, if one loses, the system will deduct the same amount of points. For every 100 LP you acquire, a player qualifies for a promotion series best out of three games to move onto the next tier.

Once one reaches diamond, there were no more tiers. League Points will keep accumulating until reaching “Master” tier and the top two hundred players with the highest points in each server is considered “Challenger” tier, kings of their server.

-- --Jian Yang was one of those kings in one of the toughest servers, Ionia. He was one of the rare ones that when he played in an internet cafe, they would announce his arrival, “the super strong king so and so on the Ionia Server is playing at our cafe now on computer number 17.”

Therefore, he could do whatever he wanted with the newbie Tong Yao at mid.

Days passed quickly.

Tong Yao was too excited to sleep well the night she reached level 30. The next morning, the first thing she did after she got up was to knock on Jian Yang’s door and declared that he had to help her play ranked-- --When she saw Jian Yang’s confused look after he opened the door, she was stunned to find that she had turned into an internet addict…...That summer, Tong Yao and Jian Yang passed the last half of the summer dating at Summoner’s Rift.[1]

Few days before the end of summer vacation, Tong Yao went to knock on Jian Yang’s door with a bag of yogurt in her mouth. Jian Yang opened the door and said, “We’re not going to play game today, let’s do our summer homework.”

So she brought over a stack of notebooks and went into Jian Yang’s room. Before she had time to set the notebooks down, she noticed that there was an open suitcase on his bed with a few clothes inside-- --

“ ? ” Tong Yao turned around to ask Jian Yang, “You going somewhere? School is going to start soon and you’re going out? Aren’t you going to finish your homework? Don’t procrastinate then beg me to finish for you when school starts-- --”

“Tong Yao.”

“ ? ”

Jian Yang paused, after a while he spoke as if he had finally made a decision, “I’m not going back to school.”

“What?” Tong Yao was taken back and thought maybe she had heard it wrong.

“A manager of a professional team likes me and wants me to go to Shanghai to try out. If I do good, then I’ll stay there to play professionally. My parents have already agreed to it.” Jian Yang slightly frowned and scratched his head. “You know that I’m not good at studying. Even if I can get into a third-tier college, I wouldn’t know what to do after I graduate. I like to play games and I feel that I can have more of a future there-- --”

“......”

En.

That was the first time she had heard about the LoL tournaments and this ‘first time’ didn’t come with a pleasant impression-- --

She felt that the game had taken the person she liked away from her.

Several days later, Tong Yao went back to school and Jian Yang went to Shanghai. A few days after that, Jian Yang told her that he had passed the try out without a hitch. He started as a substitute for one of the best teams in China-- --

Later on, he finally got the chance to compete on stage.

Jian Yang’s team not only won the match, they won beautifully. At the time, the first jungler of their team wasn’t in a good condition, Jian Yang was sure to become the first jungler after that match.

That night, he excitedly talked to Tong Yao without stopping. Tong Yao searched online for news about him while listening. Everyone from Baidu Tiebar, Weibo, or APP was surprised at his performance: where did this Yang come from? He’s super strong.

Aiyo, she had thought, my boyfriend was a star now.

Later, her boyfriend really turned into a star-- --

Everyday he either had to train or played a match. On WeChat, he wouldn’t reply to the message she sent at 8am until 8pm. The first line would always be, “Sorry, I was training, didn’t see it.”

They had less and less time to talk. During the day, while Tong Yao was in school, Jian Yang would be sleeping.

When she got off school, he was just waking up. They would chat a bit then he had to go train or stream.

When Tong Yao was getting ready to sleep, Jian Yang was calling to order dinner delivery……

-- --When Jian Yang became the “Yang God”, their relationship became a long distance romance with time difference.

In the end, Tong Yao couldn’t remember exactly who became fed up with it first. Regardless, after a big fight, they sulkily broke up.

Afterwards, Tong Yao paid little attention to the professional scene. She concentrated on playing her own ranked games. She rose slowly from silver to gold, then to platinum, and finally diamond-- --

Then, Tong Yao got into college, met some new friends, and changed to another id. Suddenly, one day her accumulated LP had became the highest on the Ionia Server, she became the strongest king herself……

It seemed such a long time ago when she was yelling, “If you keep staying in jungle, you won’t have a girlfriend anymore.”......

Until now-- --

……

“Tong Yao!”

“......”

“Tong Yao! Hey! Come back! What are you thinking!”

The manager of the ZGDX team clapped a few times to get Tong Yao back from her wandering mind. Tong Yao, startled out of her reverie, saw the manager reach out his hand, “Welcome to ZGDX!”

“......”

Tong Yao shook his hand in a daze.

The current mid, Ming God, of ZGDX was a veteran player. He felt that he was getting too old to play the game well and was preparing to announce his retirement after this year’s spring tournament-- --it was said that the news release was already done and it would be announced on the day of the spring tournament finals.

That was the reason why ZGDX was in a hurry to look for a replacement and they picked Tong Yao-- --they said that before they contacted Tong Yao, ZGDX’s data analyst had followed her when she played for several days. The analyst was quite satisfied with her and even suggested that she could skip the try outs…...The head of ZGDX flew from Shanghai to meet Tong Yao and her parents. They offered a contract of 800,000 RMB a year and guaranteed the first mid position for the summer season. The whole signing process was kept a secret.

When Tong Yao signed the contract, she was in a daze-- --

She had never thought that one day she would be standing on the stage which had seemed so very far away before.

Yet, right now...

After they shook hands, the manager sat back to his seat and spoke to Tong Yao with a smile, “Though there’s no hurry to come over, next Wednesday is our spring finals with CK, why don’t you come take look? Get to know your teammates in advance. We will take care of the airline ticket and the ticket for the first row at the final……”

“Which team are we against?

“CK.”

“Oh.” Tong Yao slowly nodded without any expression. “Alright, I’ll go.”

-- --CK is Jian Yang’s team.

In the past, Tong Yao wouldn’t miss any of the CK’s games. Now, she only wanted to go watch the game live and see how her future teammates would smash their enemy.

Just by thinking about that dejected face……

Yiii.

She felt happy even by thinking about it.

...[1]: The name of the main 5v5 map in League of Legends...

The weekend after she signed onto ZGDX, Tong Yao flew to Shanghai. Before boarding, she did two things while waiting at the gate-- --

The first was to WeChat her friend, Jinyang, informing her that she was going to Shanghai to play professionally. Tong Yao was going to be the Mulan of the esports.

The second was to post on Weibo telling her streaming fans that she was going to Shanghai to watch this year’s Spring Tournament Finals. She made it clear who she was rooting for: Go Team ZGDX!

Soon after her Weibo post, the official Weibo site of Team ZGDX reposted it with the comment [Thanks for the well wishes, Smiling. Looking forward to seeing you]. The unexpected interaction excited Tong Yao’s fans, quickly creating a giant comment chain-- --

[My goodness, when did you get hooked up with the team of the competition sponsor, ahhhhhh!]

[You’re really going to watch the game! I’m going too! I want to go and guess which one is you!]

[So happy Smiling likes the same team as I! Promise me to get an autograph from Cheng Ge, alright?]

[Is the competition sponsor buying a ticket for you? Make sure to ask for business class since they have money. Ah……]

Usually when she had free time from school or was on vacation, Tong Yao would live stream, either playing games or simply chatting to earn some spending money-- --Unlike other stream hosts, she never turned on the camera. Yet, since she was a girl at the ‘Challenger’ tier on both the Chinese and Korean servers, she had gathered quite a following-- --about thirty to fifty thousand fans. In a normal day, her post on the Weibo would receive several dozen replies at the most. At the moment, probably because the official ZGDX site had shared her post, her post about going to watch the game in Shanghai received more than 300 comments in less than ten minutes……

[Posting on Weibo just about going to a game. You have no life! Why don’t you go compete yourself if you’re so good? You don’t even turn on the camera when streaming, are you afraid of exposing yourself!]

Tong Yao, “......”

Because she never turned on the webcam, there was always a rumor circling around that someone else was playing for her, especially after the scandal where another ‘Challenger’ tier female streaming host had someone carry her through her ranked matches…...that was the reason why there were so many malicious comments as well……

It seemed like he was having a lot of fun.

Tong Yao twitched her lip and stared at this comment for a while when she heard the boarding announcement. She grinned and replied with a smiling face on the spot with [That’s right! Don’t you know women like to post on Weibo for the smallest of reasons? That’s what makes it cute.] Then she calmly signed off the Weibo.

Her phone started vibrating, an incoming call-- --

The caller id was Jinyang.

Tong Yao could guess what Jinyang would say, so she pretended that she was too busy boarding the plane to notice it. The phone hung up after ringing twice, but before Tong Yao could breath a sigh of relief, a message from her arrived-- --

[Answer the phone! Don’t pretend you’re not there. I saw your Weibo! You were talking smack with someone just 35 seconds ago!]

Tong Yao, “......”

Tong Yao, afraid of losing her friend after she got off the plane, called back and listened patiently to her friend’s ranting-- --

“To hell with the Mulan of esports! !”

“Dammit, my boyfriend plays esports and now my best friend’s going to play as well. In the future when I’m watching a game, other people asked me what I was watching and I reply that I’m watching my boyfriend and my best friend. They would think I’m insane! !”

“Where are you? Are you really on the plane already! Get the hell off! I’m going to hijack it! !”

Tong Yao spent a long calming her friend down, especially since she was sensitive to the words “esports player.” They talked until the flight attendant nicely reminded her that the airplane was about to take off. Just as she was getting ready to hang up, the agitated one on the other end suddenly quiet down-- --

Tong Yao knew what was coming.

As expected, she heard her best friend speak the next second, “You aren’t playing professionally because of Jian Yang?”

“......No.” Tong Yao said, “I play for the 800,000 yearly salary.”

“Tong Yao!”

“Aiya, I’m really not! I haven’t talked to him for a long time…...besides, people on his Baidu fan page say that recently Yang god has a new girlfriend, a pretty streaming host-- --”

“What? Aren’t you a streaming host?”

“Pretty, streaming host.”

“Don’t be like that. Though I despise Jian Yang, that jerk, I haven’t heard anything about a new girlfriend from Ai Jia. They said CK wouldn’t allow love affairs……”

“Anyway, I’m not going to look for him.”

“Then, that’s ok.” The one on the other end seemed to want to make sure. “A good horse will never turn around to graze on an old pasture. I remember you said just a couple days ago that if you had a chance to do it again, you would never date a professional player ever.”

“I know, I know.”

“If you have to date one, then I’ll go to your wedding only if it’s Cheng Ge.”

“........................then you don’t have to come to my wedding.” The face of Cheng Ge flashed in her brain and Tong Yao replied, “Cheng Ge has a face which doesn’t like any human beings.”

Jinyang burst into laughter at the other end of the phone.

At this time, the flight attendant came over a second time to remind Tong Yao to turn off her cell phone.

Tong Yao hastily bid goodbye to her friend and put away her phone. She looked out through the window as the airplane gained speed to take off. She saw a silly face yearning for the LoL League stare back at her in the window with the blue sky and white cloud in the background.

“Be modest.” She murmured while patting her face. “Be cool.”

……

It took about two and half hours to fly to Shanghai.

After she got off, the lady sent by ZGDX to meet her took her directly to the hotel where all the players would be staying for the finals happening the day after tomorrow-- --

Tong Yao was nervous for a while thinking the lady was going to introduce her to her future teammates. She found out when they were almost at the hotel that it wasn’t the case. The manager of the team just wanted to treat her properly since she was travelling on her own, so they booked the same hotel for her.

As for the meeting with her new teammates, it had to wait till after the retirement announcement of their current mid player, Ming god.

“That’s good. That’s good.” Tong Yao kept nodding. “I also feel it’d be a bit too rushed to meet them.”

The lady laughed at Tong Yao’s reaction. “I thought you couldn’t wait to meet Cheng Ge and the others. The other trainees who came to our base before were like that.”

“I do want to meet them.” Tong Yao said matter of factly. “But I haven’t washed my hair today.”

“......”

“Not even yesterday.”

“......”

Tong Yao laughed embarrassingly. They were close to the hotel at the time and could see many reporters holding long-focus cameras swarming outside. The outside had so many people bustling about as if a superstar was going to show up there-- --

The lady shook her head. “Who knows where the media people learned about Ming god’s retirement. They all want some scoop……”

Tong Yao, “Oh.”

The lady glanced through the rearview mirror at Tong Yao who didn’t seem to have much of a reaction. She raised her eyebrows and proudly said, “Those stupid people don’t know that the biggest news is sitting at the back seat in my car.”

“Don’t, don’t, don’t.” Tong Yao giggled as she shook her hand. “The big news hasn’t washed her hair.”