Ch25 - I'm a Mac fan!

Edited by yuuki, Noks, and Kat

Wen Xi was a bit curious about the relationship between Ai Zhe and Blue Wolf.

It was clear that the two people lived together, and had even made plans to go to see the competition in person together. They seemed to be very close, but he didn’t understand why they never livestreamed together.

He went back to his room after lunch and scrolled through their Weibos—they had both asked for leave to watch the competition in their latest posts, but neither had mentioned that they had made plans with the other.

Even the times that they had posted their vacation notices on Weibo had been staggered, as if they were deliberately denying any relationship with the other party.

There was something fishy about it ah.

The more he thought about it, the stranger he felt it was. So, before starting the livestream in the afternoon, when he entered the voice channel, the first thing he said was, “Ruby, I have a question to ask you.”

“Ask bei~” Ruby’s voice sounded sweet and was very nice to listen to.

Her voice changed a lot, sometimes becoming a loli voice and sometimes a domineering Jie voice. Her personality practically ran in the same line as Ai Zhe’s, so whenever they livestreamed together, there would always be endless topics for them to discuss.

Taking advantage of the fact that the livestream hadn’t started yet, Wen Xi was relaxed as he asked, “I heard that Ai Zhe and Blue Wolf made plans to go see the competition together? Do they have a good relationship?”

“It should be very good ba,” Ruby responded, “They live in the same building ya~”

Why did he suddenly have the delusion that the whole world knew about Ai Zhe and Blue Wolf living in the same building?

Without waiting for Wen Xi to complain, Ruby continued, “They met each other a year before I met them ba, but they only got to know each other after they both started livestreaming. Back then, they often livestreamed together, but Love Pig always had trouble getting out of bed and kept missing their livestream time. Blue Wolf hated iron for not becoming steel and moved in next door to him—it should be next door, but I’m not sure ah. I just know that they live in the same building.”

Who would move next door just to wake a colleague up in the mornings ah?!

Wen Xi completely surrendered to Blue Wolf’s “dedication” and asked, “Then why don’t they livestream together now?”

“No reason really. It’s just that they’re both popular and can act as team leaders now and carry people. Magic Xi made them separate and told them to carry newbies bei~” Ruby replied, “What they told people outside was that Blue Wolf wanted to further improve his skills, which also counts as a reason ba. Anyway, after that Blue Wolf really went to play matches in the overseas high-ranked servers, and I became Ai Zhe’s partner.”

So it was like that.

Wen Xi felt that he needed to apologize to Ruby, and said, “Sorry ah, at first I thought you were Ai Zhe’s girlfriend.”

“Hahahahaha!” Ruby burst into laughter, and laughed until she thought she was about to die. “Haven’t you heard Ai Zhe ma?! Even if everyone in the whole world but the two of us died, he still would not consider me!”

Wen Xi commented, “Hey… but plainly you’re so cute and have a good character.”

“Wtf, stop right there!” Ruby was startled. “If my fans heard you say that and thought you wanted to chase me, do you believe that they wouldn’t tear into you until there weren’t even any shreds of you left?”

“Alright ba.” Wen Xi was scared.

Unlike Ai Zhe and Blue Wolf, Ruby showed her face when she was livestreaming.

She was very good-looking, and looked different from the other popular streamers, most of whom had the same features, so her unique appearance attracted a lot of boyfriend fans.

Wen Xi looked at the time, and saw that there were less than 5 minutes to 1 o’clock. He quickly asked one last question, “So, Ai Zhe doesn’t have a girlfriend?”

“I haven’t heard him mention one, so he shouldn’t have one ba,” Ruby said, but then suddenly let out a “hehe” sound as she continued, “In fact, I know what you really want to ask~ You want to know if there’s something fishy about his relationship with Blue Wolf?”

Wen Xi: !!!

He really did!

Wen Xi readily admitted, “Yes, I’m a little curious. To tell you the truth, although there are a lot of people who like to nibble on mine and Momo ‘s CP, I don’t have any real feelings or knowledge on it… But now, I feel like I’m shipping something real?”

“Pfft—actually I also…” Ruby said with a laugh, “Those two have always been mysterious. They haven’t clearly explained whether they live next door to each other or a floor above or below each other, and whenever they post a vacation notice, they intentionally stagger them by one day. Yet, they never mention that they’re going with each other. What’s this called? This is called a clumsy lie that reveals the truth!”

Wen Xi said, “That makes sense!”

Ruby replied, “Right, right?!”

Wen Xi said, “So they’re real!”

Ruby replied, “I don’t know ah!”

At this, Wen Xi didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

“I have to admit that they hide it very well,” Ruby continued, “Anyway, I personally think ah that they should be real. Not even mentioning anything else, but Love Pig is always randomly yelling that he’s a straight man, and he’s always talking about what he’d do if he had a girlfriend. I feel embarrassed for him! However, you can tell that they don’t want others to know about their relationship, so naturally I can’t say about it either. After all, they’ve taken care of me a lot, especially Love Pig. I can count as having been brought up by him.”

“Understood,” Wen Xi said, but internally he thought—Why cover it up? Perhaps they could get a wave of CP fans…

“Let’s stop talking about it and start the stream, start the stream!” Ruby said, taking the lead in starting her livestream.

Wen Xi let out an “en” sound, and also turned on the video and audio for his livestream.

[Huh? Was that Ruby’s voice just now?]

[Love Pig asked for leave, so God Xi is going to play duo matches with Ruby today?]

Wen Xi saw such similar lines in the barrage and wanted to respond, but before he could speak, Ruby took the lead and said, “Mhm, today I’m going to livestream together with Xixi. However, because this timing conflicts with the league competition, we’ll just livestream the league competition for the first hour. If you want to watch both the league competition and our friends, you can directly come to our livestream to watch it oh~”

“Did you hear her? It’s just like that,” Wen Xi said to his own stream followers.

Ruby let out a “pfft” sound as she laughed “Wow, you’re actually loafing on the job! You’re going too far!”

Wen Xi shrugged his shoulders as he replied, “All my lines were robbed by you, so what else is there for me to say?”

[Lolololololol!]

[Wtf, why does the two of them livestreaming together have the inexplicable aura of a CP? Let me establish a rarepair!]

[Kill the rarepair!]

Wen Xi was stunned to see these lines in the barrage.

It wasn’t that it was strange that someone was shipping their CP, but he suddenly remembered—he really had never seen anyone shipping Ai Zhe and Ruby’s CP.

Ai Zhe’s fans were all girlfriend fans, and Ruby’s fans were all boyfriend fans. The two of them were obviously partners that had been playing together for a long time, but they had each developed their own harems (no).

But after thinking about it a bit, it did make sense. When Ruby and Ai Zhe livestreamed together, although they chatted and were really lively together, Ai Zhe was obviously the one leading them.

However, now that Ruby was livestreaming with him, it seemed more like they were supporting each other—after all, the backbone of their stream had been carried off by a wolf to go watch the competition.

So why was it that they had the feel of a CP?

Wen Xi laughed helplessly and said, “Any fans shipping our CP will be hammered to death by Ruby’s fans, so their courage is commendable.”

Ruby added, “And there’s also Xixi’s and Momo’s CP fans—don’t think that their CP fans will disappear just because Momo has disappeared~”

When the two people finished speaking, a chorus of approval was seen in both of their livestreams.

Both Ruby’s boyfriend fans and Wen Xi’s and Momo’s CP fans agreed, and were eager to emerge and establish their existence. As a result, the newly established XiBy CP rarepair only existed for a few minutes and then disintegrated.

At this time, Wen Xi and Ruby had turned on the professional league’s livestream, and their screens now showed the two casters.

A-Yi exclaimed, “The most important match of the professional league, the squad match, is about to start! I’m excited just thinking about it!”

Bunny Ji agreed, “Yes! The end of the competition will still come down to their total points. The solo and duo match points don’t amount to much, so the key is the squad matches!”

A-Yi asked, “Which team does Bunny Ji like best?”

Bunny Ji replied, “For the squad match, MQ is still my favorite ba! In terms of team cohesion, no team can match MQ!”

As soon as Bunny Ji said that, Ruby said, “Even without mentioning anything else, Miku’s team captain CC is really handsome!”

How was he handsome? When compared to Mo Chen, he was a lot worse, okay?

Wen Xi stifled this thought and echoed her, “En, he’s pretty handsome, but the main thing to watch in the competition is still their skills.” After he finished saying this, he suddenly realized… “Huh? What did you call the MQ team just now?”

Ruby said, “Miku~ hahaha! You know Hatsune Miku? Don’t you think it’s very cute to call MQ Miku?”

Wen Xi didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and exclaimed, “I’m warning you, we’re going to be served a legal notice!”

At this time, the casters mentioned YEY.

A-Yi said, “YEY is also very good at squad matches ah! In fact, I personally think that the team captain of YEY, Lightning, is stronger than CC.”

Ruby commented, “But he’s not handsome ah!”

Wen Xi asked, “You call MQ Miku, so what about YEY?”

Ruby replied, “Yay~ Like the ‘yay’ you say when you win, you know that sound right?”

Wen Xi raised his hand to cover his face and said, “Since there’s actually nothing wrong with that name, I surrender.”

It seemed that he would no longer be able to look directly at these two teams from now on…

A-Yi added, “But YEY is playing in the second match, so this match can be said to be MQ’s home field.”

“Then what about CLM?” Bunny Ji suddenly asked.

Wen Xi was stunned for a moment. When he heard the name of this team, he just felt his heart skip a beat.

A-Yi said, “Regarding CLM, we definitely don’t need to mention Mac’s strength. However, ever since Chen Xiao retired and Kitty advanced to the main team, their duo and squad match performances haven’t been very good. It takes time for new members to be broken in. Adding onto that Kitty himself isn’t very stable yet, so it’s difficult to say what will happen.”

Wen Xi pursed his lower lip.

Obviously the CLM wasn’t favored, but he felt as though he was the one being scolded. He kept feeling that his heart was stuffy and uncomfortable.

At this time, the director gave Mo Chen a close-up shot, causing Wen Xi to breathe in sharply.

He thought that Ruby would say something about how handsome Mac was, but Ruby didn’t say anything.

Obviously, she didn’t want to provoke Mo Chen’s anti-fans.

Wen Xi frowned slightly and stopped talking.

*

Soon, all the players were ready, and the game began.

This map was centered on Area M, with the rest of the areas surrounding it to form a circle. The mountain pillars in the middle towered into the clouds.

SGH’s maps were randomly generated at the beginning of each match. There were a large number of models made of each area, and at the beginning of the match the system would randomly extract parts of each area from different models and splice them together to generate a complete map.

The good thing about this was that the maps were unpredictable.

The disadvantage was that they were prone to bugs.

However, there were always people who could use such bugs to their advantage.

For example, Mo Chen.

He and his teammates jumped when the plane flew over Area M, but their target was the junction between Area M and Area C, where half a building was actually standing!

Yes, a perfectly good building had been split vertically in two, and only half of it was left—it was obvious that a bug had occurred during the process of splicing together this map.

Mo Chen and his teammates directly landed on the roof of that building, before travelling along the remaining half of the roof to flip into the next building. They hid behind various pieces of furniture before turning sniper rifles on all the enemies who had not yet landed!

The building wasn’t very tall, and it would be easy for people on the mountain to snipe at someone who had landed at the top of the building. However, they could avoid this problem if they got inside the building.

Because only half of the building was left, it was easy to flip into the building, since they didn’t have to look for pipes, and could instead just climb down and break through the windows.

Area C always saw the most teams jumping into it. By the time the four of them had crouched in a good position, there were still many people who hadn’t landed yet, and all of these people became their targets.

In three short minutes, they were able to kill two entire teams!

A-Yi said, “Hahahaha, this is exactly Mac’s style!”

Bunny Ji said,”Yeah, he’s very good at using all kinds of bugs that pop up in SGH!”

He really was. Wen Xi remembered that one time when Mo Chen had formed a team with him, he had even used a bug to freeze and kill the enemy.

Recalling that time, Wen Xi couldn’t help laughing.

Ruby heard him laugh through the stream, faintly sensed something, and her heart trembled—Dage, don’t tell me that you’re a Mac fan… You must hold back ah!

Just as she had thought that, Mo Chen shot a bullet across Area C, sniping off the MQ team captain CC’s helmet!

Wen Xi exclaimed, “Wtf, amazing!”

Ruby slapped herself on the forehead—Wtf, you’re the one that’s amazing!

He actually dared to say what she wanted to say but didn’t dare to…

——Yes, Ruby was also a Mac fan.

Looking at the whole SGH e-sports circle, who wasn’t a Mac fan!!!

However, like Ai Zhe, ever since Mac had suddenly and mysteriously missed the competition and was attacked by the entire Internet, Ruby no longer dared to support Mac publicly.

As the saying went, “water can carry a boat, but it can also overturn it.” Mac now had just as many anti-fans as he had had fans at that time.

On the day that he was mysteriously absent from the competition, it had felt as though, since everyone else was cursing him out, whoever didn’t flame him was unpatriotic.

So, after hearing Wen Xi say that Mac was amazing, aside from thinking “You’re right!”, Ruby’s stronger feeling was uneasiness.

She was worried that both of their livestreaming careers would be ruined just like that today.

She couldn’t just blatantly remind Wen Xi of this, though.

However, even if she didn’t remind him, some viewers in the barrage did:

[Xixi, you should be more restrained.]

[You can praise anyone, but not Mac…]

With such lines in the barrage, there were bound to be some people refuting them as well.

[What do you mean? Mac really did shoot well, so why can’t we praise him?]

[Xixi didn’t actually say anything ah, everyone is just being too sensitive.]

[Mac is the disgrace of e-sports!]

[You’re talking as though if you had played instead, you could have won glory for your country.]

[That’s enough everyone! Can we stop bringing up Mac?!]

[If you don’t want to watch Mac, then why are you watching the professional league?!]

There were more and more lines of a similar effect appearing in the barrage, and their tones grew increasingly fierce. In just a few short seconds, the discussion had become a scene where people were tearing into each other, and war looked imminent!

Wen Xi didn’t expect his single casual praise of Mac to turn the barrage into this. For a while, he was a bit dumbfounded.

He didn’t know what to do, so what could Ruby do? She could only weakly try to stop the arguing. “Okay, okay, let’s not quarrel and instead focus on watching the game…”

At this moment, Magic Xi had already picked up her cell phone, and was ready to call Wen Xi so as to guide him on what to do next.

However, just as she opened her contact list and was ready to dial, Wen Xi suddenly opened his mouth and asked seriously, “Is Mac not strong?”

He followed up by saying, “Don’t bring up anything else, and just answer—isn’t Mac strong?”

After asking this question, Wen Xi looked at the barrage.

Not even half a line in the barrage dared to face his question. They were all mentioning other things, like [Mac is strong, but…]

“So all of you admit that Mac is strong, right?” he said in a more serious tone than ever before, unwilling to give up on a situation that wasn’t beyond repair.

Because he had suddenly realized that he was not as tolerant as Ai Zhe, and that he completely couldn’t hold back his admiration of Mo Chen at all. In such a case, instead of suppressing and limiting himself, and always worrying that he would say something wrong, it was better to speak clearly from the beginning.

If his livestream career was destroyed, then it would be destroyed ba.

In the end, he just wanted to make some money, and he didn’t have to do that through livestreaming.

If worst came to worst, he could really accompany Mo Chen to play professionally.

Wen Xi was someone who was usually gentle, but once he made up his mind, he would become very tough.

It was like when he quit his job—he had resigned decisively and quickly.

His boss had originally just wanted him to switch jobs, but he didn’t want to, so he resigned—En, he was the one who had chosen to quit.

“I just want to say one thing—no matter what Mac has done wrong, the future of e-sports in China needs him, and it can’t lack him!”

Wen Xi had held back on saying that for too long, and he felt really good after uttering it.

Soon after he spoke, Ruby agreed, “I think Xixi is right.”

Wen Xi was stunned for a moment, and his eyes widened in disbelief.

Ruby also took the plunge and said, “What should I say ba. I think that a person deserves to be cursed out for doing something wrong, but when a person behaves well, can’t we also praise them a bit? What’s more, his skills are way beyond what any of us are capable of. Surely you guys wouldn’t be happy if you cursed him out of the e-sports circle? Then who will be responsible for the future of e-sports in China? ”

As she spoke, Ruby’s tone was more serious than ever.

When two people who usually joked around suddenly became serious, their words held a persuasive power that was difficult to resist.

It was clearly Wen Xi who had spoken for Mo Chen first, but at this moment, even Wen Xi was awed by Ruby’s words.

On the other hand, Magic Xi had been watching the screen this whole time, and after listening to the two people’s speeches in turn, she somewhat reluctantly put down her cellphone.

Although she was very worried that there would always be Mac anti-fans going after Wen Xi from now on, Magic Xi would also feel distressed if Wen Xi kept holding back what he actually wanted to say.

Forget it, let’s just leave it like this ba. Worst comes to worst…she’ll support Xixi all on her own!

After the two of them finished talking, they were indeed attacked by a round of anti-fans, but at the same time, there were many voices supporting them.

[I just admire people like you who dare to speak the truth!]

[That’s right ah! If you really flamed him out of the e-sports circle, you anti-fans wouldn’t just be the disgrace of e-sports, but the disgrace of the nation!]

[Go Xixi ah! I will always support you!]

Wen Xi breathed a sigh of relief. Suddenly, he felt as though he had been liberated from a cage. Even if he was being flamed, he still felt very carefree~

Ruby was even more carefree than he was~

“Wow! I feel so relaxed after saying that ah!” Ruby had regained her teasing tone in a second and exclaimed, “I declare that from now on, I’m a Mac fan! You guys can all blacklist me now!”

Wen Xi didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he replied, “You really hid that quite well…”

If it wasn’t for Ruby suddenly defending Mo Chen after he had, Wen Xi really would have never known that Ruby was also a Mo Chen fan after all.

“Ai, I was compelled to by the situation.” Ruby took out a tissue and wiped pretend tears from her eyes. “Actually, I’ve wanted to do that for a long time now, but I didn’t dare to until you stood up for him. Did you know? When I heard you speak, I felt as though I had suddenly been enlightened, and grew very heated…” She said this and laughed, her mood switching so smoothly that he was startled. “So, now we can recklessly praise Mac ba?”

“Yes,” Wen Xi affirmed.

Ruby immediately started to praise him, “Mac is so handsome! I’ve never seen a more handsome e-sports player!”

“Yes!” Wen Xi immediately agreed, “His skills are also excellent!”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Ruby echoed wildly, “He’s not called the number one sharpshooter god for nothing, okay! Whenever he steps onto the field, he never lets me down!”

Wen Xi said, “Every shot is a headshot!”

Ruby said, “No one can stop him!”

The two of them traded praises, complimenting Mac until flowers rained down from the heavens.

However, just as Wen Xi was laughing and joking about toasting his and Ruby’s revolutionary friendship, a line in the barrage caught his eyes.

[Xixi, have you forgotten Momo by Daming Lake?]

Wen Xi: “….”

—

Juurensha: Xixi: …..but I am praising Momo so much right now???? Hahaha, I’m sure Momo is going to love seeing the replay of this livestream. Also, I feel like Wen Xi is way to naïve about why Ai Zhe and Blue Wolf may want to keep their relationship private.

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