FOG [e-sports]

Chen Huo rolled his eyes, “Then pretend like I hadn’t said anything.”

“When was this friendship established?” Zhou Huo was puzzled. “Don’t you two bicker and quarrel all the time?”

“We do quarrel and bicker all the time and he’s even two years younger than I am.” Chen Huo turned and looked at Zhou Huo. He asked, “But do you think Shi Luo holds a grudge?”

Zhou Huo stopped and thought about it carefully, “Now that you say it...every time you two finish arguing, it’s like everything’s fine already.”

“I don’t hold any grudges either. Neither of us holds any grudges. So, you can’t really say we’re quarreling.” Chen Huo turned back. With a rare tone of seriousness in his voice, he said, “In the past, I was indifferent to it. It didn’t matter to me whether we were in the same team or not. Later...sigh, was it in that club? I thought he was really going to mess with Yu Sui and send him to the hospital. I was furious. I felt that brat didn’t know to distinguish good from bad, I thought he didn’t know how to treasure old ties. But later I found that it was a misunderstanding. It was my own despicable thinking. ”

Chen Huo whispered, “When I thought about it afterwards, I felt like he must be the one who actually treasured our old ties the most. He’d only been with the team for a few months but even after two years, he still couldn’t let go. This kind of person...oh, really, after you’ve seen so many people in this industry who are only in it for the money, there’s no way you wouldn’t like this kind of stubborn and inflexible guy.”

Puppy lay slumped on his gaming chair. “In the beginning, we weren’t really teammates and I didn’t really care. Now that we’ve really been teammates for a few months...and we’ve been teammates for the most stormy months, building a team together, being praised together, being sprayed together... None of us actually has a steel heart, okay? How can you not have feelings for them when you eat in the same room everyday? Anyway, the thing I find really vexing is when the sprayers say he has no international experience, I said two years ago that he shouldn’t have joined FS. If he hadn’t been so unlucky as to join our broken team, he would have long gotten international experience.”

“If the knife doesn’t cut me then it doesn’t hurt... It didn’t use to matter but now when others insult my teammates, how can I not get angry? Shi Luo’s pretty much the same. It’s not actually true that he only has Yu Sui in his eyes. ......” Puppy adjusted his sitting position and scratched his chin. “When someone in his live broadcast room said that I sucked, that I wasn’t pulling my weight, he saw it and banned them outright. Can you really say that he treats me as a tool teammate? No matter how much we take jabs at each other, that’s our own business behind closed doors. Outsiders can’t just butt in, you know?”

Zhou Huo looked at the two of them, feeling very regretful, “I should have brought a camera with me. Now, I wasn’t able to capture that rare moment of warmth from our team.”

Chen Huo looked uncomfortable, “Are you crazy? If you record it, then wouldn’t Shi Luo know?!”

Puppy also felt momentarily numbed, “Besides, don’t the fans know already? Please, don’t do this. It’s good enough that everyone knows it in the inside.”

“What is with our team?” Zhou Huo was tired, “Most people talk badly about others behind their backs. Here, it’s completely the other way around. You say good things about people who aren’t around. If you’re always going to be like this, it’s going to be difficult for me to do my job. Normally, when you’re not trying to auction off your teammate as a training partner on your live broadcast to boost your popularity, you’re taunting and mocking each other. It’s making our team culture particularly twisted.”

“When Chen Huo and Shi Luo team up to do a live broadcast, either they don’t speak to each other or they mock each other for their mistakes. The fans are always scared and afraid that you two would lose your temper and that would be it for our club. And what about Puppy? Brother No.1. No matter who you team up with, every ten minutes you remind everyone listening to your teammate’s live broadcast that you’ve got your webcam open on your live broadcast and call on their fans to come to yours.” Zhou Huo’s head hurt remembering the hardships he had to bear managing their official Weibo. “Do you know how envious I am when I see other teams showing such deep camaraderie, praising their own teammates?! Do you know how much I hate it every time I see other teams’ fans being moved to tears? It’s not like we don’t have those things in our team. Will it kill you guys to show it!”

“The whole club! The show of camaraderie for this entire club!” The more Zhou Huo said, the angrier he got. He said, grievously, “Relies on the hard-earned displays of affection between Yu Sui and Shi Luo to barely keep it going!”

Old Qiao, who just found out that Yu Sui and Shi Luo were already together, was inexplicably jabbed into laughter. He sprayed a mouthful of water and leaned on the arm of the gaming chair, panting with laughter. “Fortunately, there is Yu Sui and Shi Luo, otherwise our team would be too miserable. Like a sheet of loose sand. hahahaha...”

Yu Sui Chen Huo and Puppy nimbly avoided getting sprayed by Old Qiao. Only Zhou Huo, the non-pro-player got sprayed to his face because of his insufficient reaction time.

“I...” Zhou Huo was so angry he was about to give off steam. He quickly took the box of tissues and wiped his head. Forcing himself to calm down, he said, “You guys act one way in front of others and act the other behind their backs. Can’t you please reverse that?!”

Yu Sui was curious as to why Shi Luo hadn’t come back yet. He absent-mindedly said to pacify him, “Don’t worry, what you said, we’ll definitely reverse it.”

Zhou Huo was stunned and then understood. Putting up with his soaked head, he said, depressed, “Isn’t it enough that you mess with your teammates’ heads, now you’re even trying to mess with your manager’s?!”

Shi Luo, standing outside the door, couldn’t help laughing as well. He entered the training room and teased Zhou Huo along with everyone else. Zhou Huo was teased until smoke was starting to come out of his ears. Finally, he was placated by Old Qiao’s “Think about it. Don’t we only mess with people who we are closest to?”

The second game between Saint and IAC began. Everyone stopped their chatter and continued to watch the match.

IAC didn’t have a lot of moves right now. It’s did the same style of play back and forth. The second game was almost an exact copy of the first game. After forty minutes, Saint unsurprisingly won the regular season match 2-0.

Zhou Huo scoured the forum and was speechless, “Saint prepared so well today. The forums are all praising them...By the way, they’re also beating a dead horse, saying that we didn’t prepare enough, that we have a bad attitude, and have no tactics in reserve.”

Puppy pushed his gaming chair back to its original position. He shrugged indifferently, “They’ve been spraying us since we lost to Saint. Haven’t they had enough?”

“By now, I’ve been trained by you guys. I don’t feel much seeing stuff like this. I’m more worried about Saint right now.” Zhou Huo frowned slightly. “If you guys guessed it right, Saint doesn’t know when they’ll run into trouble. All these sprayers that are praising them will have they’re faces slapped and then the return-spray will be even more brutal.”

“Then, let’s hope we guessed wrong.” Chen Huo rubbed his ears. He himself had no confidence in what he said. “Maybe it’s just that we’re just being overly suspicious. No one knows what another team is really planning, and we don’t really know what’s Old A’s condition either. We were all just talking blindly...”

Everyone ate dinner together. After the meal, Yu Sui and Puppy went to do free training. Shi Luo and Chen Huo were asked by the data analyst to team up and practice their cooperation.

Shi Luo was a little moved when he overheard what Chen Huo said just before dinner.

Back then, when he’d gone to FS and later, when he joined Free, it was indeed because of Yu Sui.

When Shi Luo met Yu Sui and started his life of misfortune, he was only seventeen and ever since then he’s always been thinking about him, brooding about him.

In the past, he only had eyes for Yu Sui. And then after entering Free, just like Puppy said, getting along for so long day and night, even if one’s heart was blocked, you couldn’t control feeling something.

The more people he allowed into his heart, the more Shi Luo gradually began to understand why Yu Sui decided to do what he did back then.

Putting himself in Yu Sui’s shoes, Shi Luo also couldn’t see any way that he could let go of his other teammates and just save Yu Sui.

Shi Luo couldn’t help but think of what Puppy said before dinner. How long has he been insulted by the sprayers because he didn’t have World Championship experience? We’ll take him there even if we have to drag him...

It’s not just Shi Luo who has changed.

That morning, Shi Luo’s relationship with Yu Sui had taken one step forward. In the evening, he had come to feel that team camaraderie everyone was too shy to speak of out loud. Shi Luo was in a very good mood.

So good in fact that he was quite willing when he heard the data analyst request that he team up with Chen Huo.

Teaming up between brothers who simply bickered for fun was no big deal, right? They should practice to improve their cooperation.

Unfortunately, this little bit of warmth barely survived two rounds of being teamed up. Shi Luo could no longer hold back by the third round.

“Are you f*cking sh-...” Shi Luo swallowed the obscenities he was ready to spew out of his mouth. He endured, “Don’t rush forward, okay? I don’t need you to block the bullet for me.”

“Who’s blocking bullets for you!” Chen Huo said angrily, “If I didn’t rush ahead you would have snatched away that head again. Teaming up with Yu Sui all the time, has he finally infected you?! You’re getting better and better at snatching away kills that aren’t yours!”

“First of all, that head should have been mine. From the shooting, to dealing that head shot, I was the one who did all that. I’m robbing you of kills? Just who has been snatching away the bloody heads I’ve been shooting?” Shi Luo had very hast hand speed. Playing the game didn’t hinder him from opening the social software, pulling up the game statistics panel and using the shortcut keys to copy and paste the screenshot to sent it directly to Chen Huo, “See your profit ratio for yourself! Isn’t it lower than mine? You’ve used up an entire cartridge but still didn’t get any kills. If I didn’t take that last shot, wouldn’t the enemy have gotten away?”

“If I wasn’t so busy trying to stop you from getting in my way, I would have long gotten those kills!” Chen Huo tapped furiously on the keyboard and said irritably, “Didn’t you hear what the analyst told us? Cooperate! We have to cooperate well.”

Shi Luo nimbly grabbed another head. “I’ve been cooperating for two rounds. I have had as much as I can take. If I keep letting you get all the kills, our two passersby teammates will report me for playing a passive match.”

“Aiya, damn it!” Chen scratched his head angrily, “Have we started the mocking already? It’s started again, hasn’t it? You agreed so nicely to the analyst’s request just now but only after an hour and you’ve already began to show your true colors, huh? Little brat.......”

Shi Luo ignored the Chen Huo. He let himself have free reign and let himself play as he wanted. In a show of one-upmanship, the more the two of them played, the fiercer they became. By the twenty minute mark, they had won the match.

“How about this? let’s stop arguing.” Chen Huo took a step back and discussed, “You can change to your medic account and to team up with me. You can show gege how you play.”

“Me milk for you?” Shi Luo looked at the monitor indifferently, “You also deserve the surname Zhao.”

The fierce quarrel instantly died down. Chen Huo suffered from being uncultured and after a dazed moment, he asked, “What...what does this mean?”

Yu Sui originally thought he’d be able to happily team up with Shi Luo that night. He didn’t expect that his little boyfriend would temporarily be sent off to Chen Huo’s side. Yu Sui spent a dull and dry night, playing matches on his own. He heard this as he was getting some hot water in between matches. He said calmly, “It’s praise. It means you’re as brilliant as brocade, you’re worthy and deserving.”

Chen Huo was skeptical, “It’s a good thing? Who said it?”

“Sima Qian, from “Records of the Historian”.” Puppy consoled the fans in his live broadcast, “No need to be so nervous. Where’s the quarrel here? The mood here is pretty good... Oh, it wasn’t Sima Qian who said it? Fire, the fans reminded me. I remembered it wrong. It was actually Li Bai in one of his acrostic poems.”