Chapter 10: Teasing the Cat
The match began.
The ID “National Server No. 1 Jungler” threw the morale on Shen Yanjin’s side into chaos. At the same time, Duan Mingyue’s stream chat also exploded because of UOOW’s appearance.
In the voice channel, Lu Yuan forced a teasing tone: “Brother Moon, matched with your rumored partner.”
Duan Mingyue lazily lifted his eyelids and actually responded.
Today, the training match ended with less than ideal results. The coach called out Lu Yuan and Duan Mingyue’s names, asking them to duo-queue more recently to properly practice the jungle-support roam strategy.
So Lu Yuan took the initiative to approach him. She seemed to have learned her lesson, restraining her words and actions significantly. Plus, with the game version changes, the team indeed lacked a sharp support engage. Duan Mingyue agreed.
Who knew Lu Yuan had neglected her RANK play for too long, her score dropping from Challenger all the way to Diamond. To duo with her, Duan Mingyue could only use a smurf.
Two pro players swimming in a fish pond (low ELO match)—what fame could they practice for?
Just so happened Duan Mingyue still had to make up streaming hours, so he simply turned on the stream to leech some time.
Hearing Lu Yuan’s voice and seeing they were duo-queueing, the fans in the stream room immediately howled with excitement.
[It’s New Year, it’s New Year! Moon God is duoing with Lucida again!]
[Star-Moon combination is eternal god wuwuwu I’m healed]
[What wild chicken is UOOW, crawl away for master, Star-Moon is the real deal.]
Who knew that barely two seconds after raising the CP banner, God played a joke and matched them with UOOW.
Because of the recent trending search, the wind direction of the bullet screen shifted instantly.
[Your Lu has been on the same team with Moon God for six years. If there was anything, it should have happened long ago. Still fantasizing here, that’s enough.]
[Do Moon God and UOOW know each other or not, I’m dying of anxiety!]
[Whether they know each other I don’t know, I only know Moon-U is real.]
[Moon-U is real +1]
Seeing Duan Mingyue accept this joke, Lu Yuan’s face instantly became even uglier. At the same time, she became more certain of the guess that UOOW was someone Duan Mingyue knew.
She tidied her hair, exhaled to suppress her jealousy, quickly bought starting items, and followed Duan Mingyue into the jungle.
Duan Mingyue was playing Southern Tower Blade Master this game, a jungle carry character with high damage.
At this moment, the jungle monsters hadn’t spawned yet. He glanced at the minimap in the bot lane. The little kitty with the name UOOW was obediently lying in someone else’s arms, its long tail swaying, looking very leisurely.
He tugged at the corner of his lips.
From yesterday to today, almost every one of the hundreds of people in his list had asked Duan Mingyue questions about “UOOW.”
Rumors spreading was truly terrifying.
At first, the questions were still relatively normal like “Who is UOOW?” and “Moon God stopped practicing the public chat vow of silence? My youth is ending.”
Later, it became “Heard Moon God you took a fancy to a passerby Missy, real or fake?” and “So-and-so told me UOOW is your underground girlfriend. Unexpected ah Moon God, hiding deep.”
Things like that. Duan Mingyue was annoyed to death, physically and mentally exhausted.
For some reasons, he couldn’t directly say he felt UOOW was very much like someone he used to know, so he had to swallow his teeth and accept the blame.
Now, Duan Mingyue, having suffered much, looked at the little kitty nesting comfortably in someone else’s arms and ground his teeth.
Seeing him specifically look at the bot lane, the bullet screen exploded even more fiercely. CP parties plus rational fans pinched out a storm of blood. Duan Mingyue turned off the bullet screen assistant, cherishing words like gold as he spat out two words: “Ganking bot.”
After speaking, he slashed at the newly spawned Red Buff. A set of flowing combos plus Smite, and the Red Buff crashed to the ground. The Blade Master didn’t stop, walking straight toward the bot lane.
The little kitty was obviously startled by his sudden offensive. Its hand speed was fast, giving shield and slow. Although Lu Yuan made a mistake and didn’t follow up in time, Duan Mingyue’s blade still bagged First Blood.
Watching the back of the panicking little kitty running away, Duan Mingyue smiled, finally feeling a bit relieved.
The second GANK was even cleaner than the first. Without a guarding target, the little kitty fell to the ground, looking up at him foolishly.
Duan Mingyue leisurely sheathed his blade and left the bot lane.
Lu Yuan asked hesitantly in the voice chat: “Brother Moon… not killing?”
Duan Mingyue said: “No need.”
Lu Yuan stopped talking.
Jungle was originally the easiest position to rank up in WL, and the tier was a fish pond. Collecting several heads in a row and eating four jungle quadrants, Duan Mingyue’s growth was unrivaled.
The little kitty also understood that the bot lane was a place of trouble and couldn’t be stayed in. The next time it appeared, it was lying in the Mid Laner’s embrace.
Duan Mingyue walked up along the river, taking the dragon in passing. Two jumps through the bush, one slash out, and almost instantly deleted the Mid Laner.
Startled, the kitty hurriedly healed the Mid Laner once, then jumped into the bush and disappeared.
So Duan Mingyue followed, evidently treating this game as a cat-catching and cat-teasing game.
After driving the cat from bot to mid and then to top, Duan Mingyue looked at that panicking little fur ball and felt inexplicably much better.
In the voice chat, Lu Yuan asked: “Brother Moon… still killing?”
Duan Mingyue swept a glance at the minimap, not seeing the little kitty. He drank a mouthful of water and said: “En.”
Shen Yanjin closed the stream room, squatting in the bush, very autistic.
It wasn’t his illusion; Duan Mingyue was targeting him.
And the means were very nasty.
He rubbed his brow and thought for a while, finally thinking of a possibility that could explain the current situation.
After seeing Duan Mingyue and UOOW on the trending search with rumors, Lu Yuan was very unhappy, thinking he was a calculating green tea (manipulative person) deliberately acting to leech heat. And knowing she was unhappy, Duan Mingyue duo-queued to coax her. The reason he chased him again and again but didn’t kill him was to vent anger for Lu Yuan.
Shen Yanjin’s friendship with the KW team was shallow, but he wasn’t blind. Lu Yuan’s feelings for Duan Mingyue were so fervent that anyone with eyes could see it.
Before, he always thought it was unrequited love. Looking at it now, if his guess was correct, then…
Duan Mingyue also liked Lu Yuan?
Shen Yanjin bit his lower lip.
Stepping out of fixed impressions, even if Shen Yanjin was bent into a mosquito coil and had no interest in women, he had to admit Lu Yuan was a very beautiful woman with class.
Duan Mingyue was a straight man, so it was very normal for him to be moved by Lu Yuan.
Shen Yanjin had once sworn that if one day Duan Mingyue really found a partner, he would happily send his blessings.
But, he never thought this “partner” would be Lu Yuan.
It wasn’t that Shen Yanjin held a grudge; he genuinely felt this woman was unreliable.
More importantly, did Duan Mingyue also think that he was deliberately acting in that game to leech his heat?
Ever since getting on the trending search, Shen Yanjin loved to sneak down to read comments when he had nothing to do, so naturally he heard a lot of doubts.
Some people felt UOOW knew long ago that it was Moon God’s smurf and was deliberately playing dumb, and the opponents were also actors bought by him. Speaking up to defend and report were all acting.
The whole set was said so miraculously, as if it were true. It made Shen Yanjin laugh and cry. If he really had such means and brains, how could he end up so wretched?
But three men make a tiger, and rumors are fearful; quite a few people really believed this set.
After all, this circle was really chaotic. Especially for someone like Duan Mingyue with money, looks, and family background, he was no different from a piece of fat meat falling into a pack of wolves.
Almost every year, every month, every day, someone would deliberately stream snipe Duan Mingyue. Afterwards, they would brag to others that they “duo-queued” with Duan Mingyue, then let fans spread it around, and the heat would immediately shoot up as if it were free.
The two guesses “Duan Mingyue likes Lu Yuan” and “Misunderstood by Duan Mingyue” buzzed around Shen Yanjin’s brain.
The more he thought, the more depressed and annoyed he became, almost suffocating from internal injuries.
Suddenly, the sound of footsteps getting closer and closer came from the headphones.
Shen Yanjin looked up. He saw the tall man carrying a long blade standing quietly outside the bush, motionless, looking at the little kitty curled up inside looking listless.
Having overthought too much, Shen Yanjin had now completely substituted Duan Mingyue into the “Moon God with bad taste who listens to rumors” in his imagination.
Looking at this culprit who chased him all over the field, fck it*, Master is going all out. Isn’t it just being a calculating green tea? Isn’t it just leeching heat? He’ll take the blame!
Anyway, it was all done by UOOW, what did it have to do with him, Sliver Shen Yanjin?
So he started typing.
Shen Yanjin exhausted his lifelong courage and racked his brains, digging out a pile of routines used by female streamers when acting coquettish from the depths of his memory, and used them all at once.
However, just as he was about to press the Enter key, Duan Mingyue suddenly moved.
The Blade Master crouched down, extended a hand, and gently patted the fur ball in the bush.
Shen Yanjin’s mind went blank.
This simple and plain action was like a thunderclap yet also like a silent explosion, causing his brain, which was already a mess of porridge, to crash completely.
He numbly deleted those messy flirtatious words in the chat box and reopened Duan Mingyue’s stream room.
The bullet screen in the stream room had completely exploded, layer upon layer, flying past densely. Shen Yanjin could hardly see the image behind it.
The CP struggle just now evidently had a result because of the main character’s action.
[??? Sorry, did I enter the wrong stream?]
[If not for this luxurious score, I would suspect it’s not him.]
[To be honest, even with this score, I also suspect it’s not him.]
[Streamer teasing the Missy the whole time, reported.]
[Does this count as teasing… Chased for the whole game, if it were me I’d be depressed.]
[Depressed +1, momentarily don’t know whether to envy or feel sorry for the Missy.]
[Is it really Moon God himself? Holy sh*t, so this really is Moon God’s girlfriend??]
[True · lived long enough to see, didn’t expect Moon God to have a day of enlightenment, wuwuwu my heart is broken.]
[Can only say Moon-U is real.]
[So… can anyone tell me, exactly which fairy is UOOW?]
“…”
“Fairy” Shen Yanjin felt his brain was a bit messy, and his face was burning hot.
Duan Mingyue seemed to have also seen the noisy bullet screen and rarely replied with two sentences.
His voice carried a slight smile, but falling into Shen Yanjin’s ears, it was faint, with almost no emotion discernible.
“No girlfriend, single.”
“Who is UOOW? Don’t know, pure passerby.”
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