Chapter 2

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

In the end, they came to an agreement and the incident was resolved. Titans’s main team would be staying here with the members of Noah’s Ark, while the remaining second and third teams as well as the youth training team would go to another e-sports club for group training.

Titans’s main team’s group of four opened the door of the dormitory that had been arranged for them. The training center’s dorms resembled common student quarters with the existence of bunk beds. The Titans base had always had double rooms, so Wang Yuxi rushed in and scrambled to snatch an upper bunk: “I haven’t slept up top for a long time, nobody better try to rob me of my top bunk.”

Bai Yue, who was the main team’s No. 3 starter and famous as a ‘gold medal support’ in the e-sports circle, had a hobby of arguing with Wang Yuxi. Having heard Wang Yuxi’s words, he said, “What kind of shortie sleeps on the upper bunk?”

Wang Yuxi: “Short people sleep on the upper bunk… Pei![1] I’m not short! “

Yao Sen casually threw his backpack on a lower bunk and asked, “Where is Noah’s Ark staying?”

Wang Yuxi: “Should be these two floors. What’s up?”

“Nothing, just asking.”

Yao Sen tidied up his things. When he left the room, he happened to encounter several members of Noah’s Ark’s youth training team, and they all stared at him with excitement, stealthily sizing him up. When Yao Sen smiled at them, they all straightened their backs.

Yao Sen went to the training room to try out the new devices, which felt pretty good. Bored to death, he logged into his account and was overcome with a sudden impulse to open a new webpage and search for Noah’s Ark’s official website.

Noah’s Ark’s performance in the past two years was worthy of praise. He directly looked for Noah’s Ark’s introduction page, and immediately found Shao Han’s outstanding face with a single glance.

His distinctively cool and charming face didn’t display any excessive expressions and was pleasant to look at.

Shao Han’s personal ranking was very excellent, and his background was basically regarded among the best in the country. When Yao Sen searched his name on baike[2], he felt even more fascinated—apparently, Shao Han was left-handed.

Within professional e-sports circles, left-handed players were extremely rare because of all kinds of equipment problems. Shao Han’s ID, ‘Left’ also completely suited this characteristic. Yao Sen savoured the name carefully for a while, and finally came to the decision that this name was a bit cute.

Yao sen felt that his rose-tinted glasses were a bit thick.[3]

He also got on Weibo, looked up Shao Han’s profile, and followed him straight away. He found that Shao Han’s fans all called themselves ‘Grass Powder’[4]. Yao Sen found this unexpectedly cute, thinking that his glasses weren’t only thick, but also layered with a beautiful and elegant cute point[5].

There weren’t many posts on Shao Han’s weibo, and they were mostly about his team or news about the competition, nothing about his daily life. Yao Sen scrolled through the posts one by one and with great difficulty, he finally saw a photo of Shao Han that had been forwarded from one of his team members.

The photo was probably taken during a Noah’s Ark’s member’s birthday party, and each member of the main team had one photo per person. In the photo, both the tip of Shao Han’s nose as well as his hair were pasted with a bit of cream. The photo had probably been taken out of nowhere, and Shao Han looked somewhat confused. His blank and innocent face that was captured by the camera had no sign of the aloof and distant expression from when they had first met earlier in the day.

Yao Sen stared at the picture for a long time, not knowing what ghost possessed him as he moved to save it.[6]

The fans under the Weibo post were all shouting about how cute Shao Han looked, and it made Yao Sen feel a lot more at peace now that he saw that he wasn’t alone in thinking Shao Han was cute. It seemed that his rose-tinted glasses could still be redeemed.

Yao Sen browsed the fans’ comments and randomly came across a message saying that they ‘wanted to lick the cream off the tip of Shao ge’s nose’, and his eyes narrowed and quickly fell wide open again as he tried to restrain his imagination.

What kind of people were Shao Han’s fans?

Yao Sen quit Weibo and opened WeChat. Shao Han’s contact was still on his recently added friends list, and he couldn’t resist sending a message to Shao Han.

Yao Sen: Are you left-handed?

Shao Han: Mm.

Yao Sen: Did you come up with your Left ID on your own?

Shao Han: My sister helped me.

Yao Sen: Your sister Shao Mengmeng?

Shao Han: Mm.

Yao Sen: Your blood-related sister?

Shao Han: Mm.

Yao Sen looked at Shao Han’s reply. In his heart, he wrote down the word ‘siscon’ in the book of impressions that he had secretly arranged for Shao Han. In addition to this word, the book also had the words ‘cool, pleasant voice’, ‘cute’, ‘good-looking’, ‘aloof’, and so on.

After the personnel finished setting up, Yao Sen and the members of the Titans main team officially greeted Noah’s Ark.

When facing Yao Sen, someone who had led his team to win the Asia Championship with a legendary deadly counterattack last year, most of Noah’s Ark team members had reverent expressions. Whether in terms of strength or qualifications, Titans were indeed way ahead of Noah’s Ark, so it was naturally great that they were able to receive the Titans’s friendly guidance.

When Yao Sen arrived at Noah’s Ark’s youth training team practice room, he was met with the sight of Shao Han in the middle of giving out directions while drilling the youth training team.

Yao Sen was about to call out to him when Bai Yue suddenly stepped out from behind him, clapping Yao Sen’s shoulder heavily in passing.

Carelessly hooking an arm around Shao Han’s neck, Bai Yue smiled and said, “Aiyo, Shao Xiao Zuo*, I haven’t seen you in almost four years ba? I really didn’t expect to run into you here.”

*小左 xiao zuo: little left

Bai Yue and Shao Han were originally youth trainees who trained together at a famous domestic youth training base. After standing out in the competition, Bai Yue and Shao Han signed contracts with Titans and Noah’s Ark respectively. The two were roommates when they were trainees, and their relationship had always been very good.

Since Shao Han was left-handed and played the role of an assault in the team, he was previously nicknamed the left-handed killer when he was still on the youth training team. The team members jokingly called him “Xiao Zuo” behind his back, and most of Shao Han’s true fans also knew this nickname and liked to call him ‘Shao Xiao Zuo’.

Just when Bai Yue was planning to catch up with Shao Han, his captain’s slightly subtle voice sounded in his ear, “Do you guys know each other?”

Bai Yue: “Yeah, we used to be roommates when we were trainees.”

Yao Sen breathed a sigh of relief. “Ah, roommate.”

Shao Han took a look at Yao Sen and greeted, “Captain Yao Sen.”

“Just my name is fine.” Yao Sen pointed to the team members behind him. “Let me introduce you to—Bai Yue I won’t mention—Wang Yuxi, Song Mingzhe.”

Shao Han nodded and briefly said, “Hello everyone.”

Yao Sen asked, “Where’s the rest of your team?”

“Preparing for tonight’s friendly match.”

“Then is it okay if I sit down first?” Yao Sen smiled. “I happen to be familiar with the computer.”

Wang Yu Xi said, “Yao Sen, how come we’ve never seen you this active during our team’s usual internal practice matches?”

Yao Sen turned his head and said with a smile, “When was I not active?”

“……Active. You’re[7] the most active. You train for twenty-four hours a day nonstop.”

The domestic competition was more than a month away. In recent years, the country had more and more dark horse teams, and long-established teams like Titans and Noah’s Ark were under considerably great pressure.

After Yao Sen became Titans’s captain, the whole team took on a brand new image, and to the people who had won the Asia Championship, the domestic competition was turned into a formal training opportunity for the youth training team.

On the other hand, Noah’s Ark attached great importance to the domestic competition, and it was said that they were sending their main team to participate in order to prepare for the Asia Championship and even next year’s WCAD world finals.

Naturally, WCAD was also Titans’ goal. The WCAD next July would be the first-ever world finals where Yao Sen would be leading Titans, and he had always claimed that they would win the championship.

After dinner, Yao Sen was invited to participate in Noah’s Ark’s training matches. He sat up straight on his chair, put on headphones, and played a long line of solo matches with Noah’s Ark’s youth training team.

Shao Han was mainly there to guide the youth training team members who were practicing, walking around the training room and watching the members play while noting down their mistakes.

Most of the youth training team members were sixteen or seventeen year olds, and the level that the Asia champion played at was very different from what they were used to. Yao Sen took care to not bully them too ruthlessly lest they turn to Shao Han to complain about him, even to the point of handing them a large number of guns, but they couldn’t withstand the huge difference in level, and the match was nevertheless still overwhelmingly one-sided.

Noticing that there was something wrong with one of the team members’ game operation, Shao Han walked up to guide him, but as a result, as soon as he came over, the youth was shot in the head twice by Yao Sen, and his extended hand was left to awkwardly hang in the air.

Shao Hang didn’t mind much at first until the third player he wanted to direct was also taken out by Yao Sen. In the end, he walked up to Yao Sen directly.

Shao Han called out to him as Yao Sen was looking for a bunker. Taking off his headphones, he asked, “What’s the matter?”

“Don’t be so fierce,” Shao Han looked at Yao Sen with an indescribable complexity. “They’re no match for you.”

Yao Sen innocently said, “I’ve already given up, but your kids can’t take me out.”

“……”

Shao Han stood by Yao Sen’s side for a while and found that his ability to discern the enemy’s location was very accurate. As he was about to ask Yao Sen how he trained his noise positioning, he unintentionally looked down, only to see that Yao Sen’s headphones weren’t connected to the computer at all, but rather to his phone. A faint sound of music came out of the headphones.

Shao Han: “……”

This friendly match made the members of Noah’s Ark’s youth training team realise what the dominant class was truly like. The esports industry was exactly like this, you can’t just pull fancy tricks and rely on luck—the important thing was overwhelming strength.

The first step to becoming an excellent esports player is to thoroughly understand how big the gap between yourself and other people was.

After analyzing the youths’ gameplay, Yao Sen also patiently provided several suggestions until the review finally concluded at eleven past.

Shao Han: “I’m sorry it dragged out till this late.”

Yao Sen: “It’s okay, I didn’t have anything to do tonight anyway.”

Shao Han: “Let me buy you a drink?”

Shao Han bought a cold bottle of Sprite at the automatic vending machine and handed it to Yao Sen. As he took the bottle, his touch met Shao Han’s fingers, slightly cold and wet from holding the bottle.

Yao Sen unscrewed the bottle cap and took a sip, and the cold lemon-flavoured soda was able to make one feel extremely comfortable, similar to the feeling Shao Han’s voice gave him.

While chatting side by side, the two went back to the living quarters and finally separated in the dormitory corridor. Shao Han turned and left, and Yao Sen stood rooted in place, waiting there until he saw Shao Han enter his dorm room.

With the intention of coming to find Shao Han to solo when he was free in the future, Yao Sen found himself a ‘proper reason’ to note down the room number of Shao Han’s dormitory.

The author has something to say:

There are no side CPs in this text. Others are purely straight♂male friendships.

☆ ☆ ☆

t/n – let me know what you think of the novel/my translation in the comments!

⟵ Chapter 1 | TOC | Chapter 3 ⟶

footnotes:

[1] 呸 pēi: the sound of spitting on someone without actually spitting on them… the english equivalent would probably be ‘bah!’?

[2] baike: china’s wikipedia

[3] thick filter: his perception of Shao Han is extremely biased (in Shao Han’s favour) edit: i changed it to rose-tinted glasses

[4] 苕粉: 苕 could either be read as tiao or shao (different from shao han’s shao) and means some sort of grass… since i’m far from well-versed in slangs and the nuances of the chinese language i just went with grass. so like. grass powder (粉 lit. powder, slang meaning fan). bc it sounded cute. please don’t hesitate to correct me!

[5] 萌点 lit. meng point/moe point… couldn’t figure out how to translate this sentence so i went with [what i wrote]. again, corrections are welcome 🙂

[6] 鬼使神差 idiom lit. demons and gods at work; unexplained event crying out for a supernatural explanation. i tried thinking of a similar phase hehe

[7] he used 您 nin (formal you) here

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