As the saying goes: There's no romance in esports.
Tong Yao came to deeply understand this truth when she first started playing the game.
She vaguely remembered the simple reason she got into League of Legends—just like most girls who played the game—it was because someone else was obsessed with it, and she liked him.
That summer, even though they lived next door, separated only by a hallway, Tong Yao realized halfway through the vacation that she hadn’t managed to exchange more than a few words with him. So one day, she knocked on his door and found the guy she liked sitting in front of his computer, frantically playing some game. When she tried to talk to him, he ignored her. So she walked around to his side, glanced at the skill bar he was operating, and—when he wasn’t paying attention—reached out and pressed the "D" key.
The boy let out a loud "Aaaaaaah!"
On the screen, the Champion he was controlling suddenly dashed forward a short distance, charging straight into a crowd of red names. Then, the colorful screen turned black and white.
Tong Yao grinned and met his furious glare before dragging over a stool to sit beside him. Just then, she saw him typing rapidly in the game—
[Sorry, my girlfriend’s messing around.]
Her eyes crinkled into crescent moons as she poked the sulky but helpless boy and said slowly, "Jian Yang, since you’re having so much fun, why don’t you teach me? I’ll play with you."
"Huh?" The boy named Jian Yang turned to her. "You?"
"Yeah, me." Tong Yao straightened up and smiled.
To this day, Tong Yao still remembered how Jian Yang reluctantly exited the game, logged in with her QQ account to create a new one, and grudgingly scooted aside to let her take his seat. Standing behind her, he patiently explained—
"This is a tower-pushing game. The map is divided into three lanes. Just remember—destroy all the towers on these three lanes, push into the enemy’s base, and take down their Nexus to win."
The game entered the Champion selection screen—
"Which one should I pick? Can I just choose the prettiest one?"
"No, no, don’t mess around. Just pick a support—see that big guy in blue armor? That’s the one."
"He’s so ugly."
"You’re pretty enough for both of you."
"...You’re such a smooth talker. What’s a support?"
"The game has three lanes, right? Five players take different positions—one roams the jungle, killing monsters to level up, called the ‘Jungler’; the one in the top lane is the ‘Top laner’; the one in the middle is the ‘Mid Laner’; the bottom lane—"
"Bottom laner?"
"It’s called ‘ADC’."
"..."
"Usually, the bottom lane has two players. Since the ADC is the team’s main damage dealer, their early-game farming is crucial. That’s where the support comes in—to protect them."
"Sounds like I don’t have much to do. Can I just alt-tab and browse Weibo if I pick support?""Stop farming, can't you see the jungle map is completely dark? The support's job is to be the team's eyes, using vision items to light up the map like planting mushrooms—"
"That sounds so troublesome. Is there a role where I don't have to run around, can deal explosive damage, has a strong presence, and doesn't require sharing a lane with someone to avoid being called trash?"
"Of course!" Jian Yang gestured toward the center of the screen. "Mid Laner."
And so, Tong Yao became a Mid Laner.
Jian Yang was a Jungler. Whenever they played together, it was like he lived in the mid lane. No matter how desperately the other two lanes signaled for help, he would tirelessly hover around mid, harassing the enemy and securing lane advantages for Tong Yao—
Jian Yang called this "Mid-Jungle Synergy."
Later, Tong Yao learned a bit more and realized this wasn't "Mid-Jungle Synergy." It was the "Basic Rules of Carrying a Girl."
At first, Tong Yao always needed Jian Yang's help. The moment he stepped away, she would immediately die under the enemy's claws, screaming, "I'm dead," "I died again," "How the hell did I die again?" "Jian Yang, if you keep farming jungle instead of coming mid, you won't have a girlfriend anymore!" But through countless deaths, Tong Yao gradually improved—
The game's max level was 30. Starting at level 30, players could participate in Ranked matches.
The Ranked system was the most basic way to gauge a player's skill. The tiers, from lowest to highest, were Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond, each divided into five divisions... The rules were simple: win a Ranked match, and the system would award 10 to 30 points; lose, and the same range of points would be deducted. Accumulate 100 points, and you'd enter a best-of-five promotion series. Succeed, and you'd advance to the next division.
After Diamond I, there were no further divisions—just the unlimited accumulation of points in "Grandmaster." The top 200 players on each server by points were the pinnacle of achievement: "Challenger."
—Jian Yang was one of these rare Challengers in the most competitive region, Ionia of the Telecom 1 server. So rare that when he logged in at an internet café, an announcement would play: "Telecom 1 Ionia Challenger xxxx is now online at Terminal 17."
That was how he could carry a clueless newbie like Tong Yao to dominate mid lane.
Days passed one after another.
On the night she hit max level, Tong Yao was so excited she barely slept. The next morning, the first thing she did was knock on Jian Yang's door, demanding he take her into Ranked—but the moment she saw his confused face, she froze too. She suddenly realized with horror that she had become a gaming addict... And so, for the rest of that summer, Tong Yao and Jian Yang spent their time "dating" on Summoner's Rift (the game's map name).
A few days before summer break ended, Tong Yao, biting on a yogurt pouch, knocked on her neighbor's door again. Her first words when Jian Yang opened it were: "No gaming today. Let's do our summer homework instead."
Then, arms full of notebooks, she pushed past him into his room. Before she could even set them down, she spotted an open suitcase on the bed, already packed with a few clothes—"?" Tong Yao turned around in confusion and asked Jian Yang, "You're going out? School's about to start and you're still fooling around? Aren't you going to do your homework? Don't come crying to me begging for help when the semester starts because you procrastinated—"
"Tong Yao."
"?"
Jian Yang paused for a moment, then as if having made some firm resolution, said, "I'm not going back to school."
"What?" Tong Yao froze, wondering if she'd misheard.
"A manager from a professional team took a liking to me and wants me to go to Shanghai for a trial. If it goes well, I'll stay there to play professionally. My parents have already agreed." Jian Yang frowned slightly and scratched his head. "You know I'm not great at studying—even if I got into some third-rate university, I wouldn't know what to do afterward. I love this game, and I think I can go far with it—"
"..."
Yeah.
This was the first time Tong Yao had heard anything about the League of Legends Pro League, and this "first time" didn't leave her with a particularly pleasant impression—
She felt like this damn game had stolen the person she liked. Excuse me?
A few days later, Tong Yao started school, while Jian Yang went to Shanghai. Soon after, he told her he'd passed the trial and would first be a substitute for a top domestic team—
Then one day, he finally got his chance to play in an official match.
Not only did his team win that match, but they won spectacularly. The team's starting jungler was in poor form, so Jian Yang quickly secured the starting position.
That night, he excitedly rambled to Tong Yao nonstop. As she listened to his chatter, she searched online for comments about Jian Yang—on forums, Weibo, and app platforms. Everywhere, people were amazed: "Where did this YANG come from? He's really strong."
Tong Yao thought, wow, my boyfriend's a star now.
And then her boyfriend really did become a star—
Every day was either matches or scrims. A text sent at 8 a.m. wouldn't get a reply until 8 p.m., always starting with, "Sorry, I was training and didn't see this."
Their time to chat grew shorter and shorter. During the day, Tong Yao was in class while Jian Yang slept.
By the time she got out of school, he'd just woken up. They'd exchange a few rushed words before he had to leave for scrims or start streaming to meet his quota.
When Tong Yao was getting ready for bed, Jian Yang was just ordering takeout for dinner...
—By the time Jian Yang became the "Yang Shen" people talked about, their relationship had turned into a complete long-distance, time-zone-defying mess.
In the end, Tong Yao couldn't even remember who got fed up first. All she knew was that they had a huge fight and broke up in frustration.
For a while after that, Tong Yao stopped paying attention to the Professional League altogether, burying herself in ranked matches. She climbed slowly from Silver to Gold, to Platinum, to Diamond—
Later, she started university, made some new friends, and changed her in-game ID. Then one day, she reached the top of the Challenger ladder in League of Legends' Telecom Server 1...
By then, the Melon Skin girl who'd once yelled at a boy during summer break, "If you keep jungling and don't come mid, you won't have a girlfriend anymore!" seemed like a distant memory...
Until now—
...
"Tong Yao!"
"..."
"Tong Yao! Hey! Snap out of it! What are you thinking about?"The manager of ZGDX Team clapped his hands, snapping Tong Yao out of her wandering thoughts. She jolted back to reality and saw him smiling at her, extending his hand. "Welcome to ZGDX!"
"..."
Tong Yao, utterly bewildered, shook his hand.
The current Mid Laner of ZGDX, Ming Shen, was a veteran player who had been struggling to keep up in recent years. He had decided to retire after this year's Spring Split—rumor had it that the retirement announcement was already drafted and ready to be released on the day of the Spring Split finals.
As a result, ZGDX Team was in urgent need of a replacement, and they had set their sights on Tong Yao. It was said that before officially approaching her, ZGDX's data analyst had been stalking her (*like a creepy stalker) in the game's spectator system for days. The analyst was so impressed with her that he even suggested skipping the trial phase altogether... As for the ZGDX representative flying from Shanghai to Tong Yao's city, meeting her and her parents, and ultimately signing her with an annual salary of 800,000 RMB plus a guaranteed starting position in the Summer Split—the entire process was kept completely under wraps.
Even Tong Yao herself was still in a daze when she signed the contract, neatly writing her name on the dotted line—
She had never imagined that one day she would stand on that stage, which had once felt so distant and unreachable.
And now.
After shaking hands, the team manager sat back down and smiled at Tong Yao. "No rush to join the team yet, but next Wednesday is our Spring Split finals against Team CK. Why don’t you come watch? It’ll be a good chance to meet your future teammates in advance. We’ll cover your flight and front-row tickets to the finals..."
"Against which team?"
"Team CK."
"Oh," Tong Yao nodded slowly, her expression blank. "Sure, I’ll go."
—Team CK was Jian Yang’s team.
There was a time when she wouldn’t miss a single match of theirs, memorizing every detail. But now, she just wanted to sit in the audience and watch her future teammates crush them into the ground.
Just imagining that dejected face…
Hah.
The thought alone was enough to make her happy.
OpenNovel