Chapter 32: Streaming Platform Cooperation. Where to Go for Spring Festival?
Oh no.
Zuo Chi tapped his forehead. He must have been sleep-deprived to blurt out anything to Ning Luzhao.
Just as he was secretly pondering how to explain it, he heard the other party ask.
“Or is it that Coach has already seen his in-game mechanics? Did you encounter him in ranked? Or—”
“Right! I met him in ranked!” Zuo Chi quickly chimed in, adding another layer of insurance to the lie. “The other day, I logged on and played a few ranked games to relax and happened to run into that kid… He played quite well, but he probably didn’t recognize me.”
Ning Luzhao didn’t press further, but Zuo Chi repeatedly stole glances at the youth’s expression. His brows were lowered, looking almost as if they had lost today instead of winning.
Before he could speak, they reached the entrance of the garlic clams with vermicelli stall. The stall occupied a large area, with about a dozen tables and chairs set up outside, almost all of them occupied. Near a round table not far away, Fugui stood up and waved at them: “Coach Zuo, Ning-god! Over here, over here!”
The cubs had almost finished eating. They had ordered two steaming bowls of garlic clams with vermicelli and about a dozen skewers for the newcomers.
Zuo Chi sat down and moved a bowl of vermicelli in front of Ning Luzhao.
“Coach Zuo, we thought you’d sleep until tomorrow morning. We were even discussing how to get you back to the dorm once we reached the base.” Fugui was stuffed, slouching in his chair and wiping sweat. “The minced garlic at this place is incredibly fragrant. I dare say it’s the best food stall in this whole area.”
Zuo Chi always acknowledged Fugui’s expertise in “eating.”
For instance, most of the snacks at the base were purchased by Fugui, and all the cubs swore they were great.
He lowered his head and picked up a mouthful of vermicelli. The freshness of the clams spread across his tongue, and the grogginess from waking up seemed to vanish along with the pungent aroma.
“If I really slept that soundly, you could just leave me in the car. I’d just wake up the next day and go straight to the training room.” He took a few more bites and noticed the vermicelli in front of Ning Luzhao remained untouched. “Land, do you not like minced garlic?”
“No, it’s just a bit hot. I’ll eat it in a bit.”
“Hey—speaking of which, Ning-god, that time Coach Zuo was drunk, how did you get him back to the dorm? You didn’t really leave him in the car all night, did you?”
Ning Luzhao looked up. Beneath his deep brow bones, his cold phoenix eyes were tinged with the warm glow of the bustling night market.
Zuo Chi pricked up his ears. After waiting a while without hearing Ning Luzhao’s answer, he looked curiously at Manager Li.
Manager Li coughed: “That time… that time Land carried Coach Zuo back on his back… The rest of us had been drinking, and Coach Zuo was so drunk that the moment we moved him, he grabbed the car seat and wouldn’t let go. We were all helpless, so we had to leave it to Land.”
Hearing about his embarrassing story, the cubs stopped slurping their vermicelli and gnawing on skewers, pestering Manager Li with questions.
“Then how did Ning-god get Coach Zuo to let go?”
Zuo Chi looked to Manager Li for help, signaling him with his eyes to stop talking. At the same time, his ears turned red, and he pretended not to care: “I’m not drinking anymore. I promise, not a single drop…”
“Coach Zuo, don’t interrupt! We’re asking Manager Li!”
Zuo Chi: “…”
As a coach, once he stepped out of the training room and off the stage, he truly had no authority in front of the players. His status in the team had plummeted.
Although he had zero memory of Ning Luzhao carrying him from the car to the dorm, he instinctively felt the process must have been embarrassing.
Extremely embarrassing.
Manager Li was in a bind: “Oh, well, I don’t remember it very clearly either…”
“Impossible, impossible, impossible! Manager Li, you were describing it so vividly just now!”
“There really isn’t much to say.” Ning Luzhao said nonchalantly, “Coach just drank too much that day. After getting out of the car, his stomach probably felt unwell, and he threw up twice before falling asleep. Besides, Coach is thin, so it was easy to carry him.”
Manager Li rubbed his increasingly rounded belly: “That’s right, that’s right. It’s lucky it wasn’t me who got drunk, otherwise with my build, I’m afraid none of you could carry me.”
Fugui said gloomily: “I haven’t even said anything yet… I don’t expect you to carry me to the dorm, just don’t dump me halfway.”
The cubs laughed for a while and soon moved on to other topics.
Zuo Chi moved his hand under the table, his elbow lightly touching Ning Luzhao’s arm. He asked in a whisper: “…I really only threw up twice that day?”
“Mm.”
“I didn’t do anything else even more embarrassing?”
Ning Luzhao hesitated for a second: “Want to talk about it in detail back at the base?”
Zuo Chi felt dejected.
“Actually, it wasn’t embarrassing. Besides, everyone else had left by then; only Manager Li and I were present, so…”
Ning Luzhao even helped dismiss the others? What did that imply?!
He waved his hand, his tone heavy: “Forget it, you’d better not tell me the details. As long as this remains between us and Manager Li…”
“Mm. No one else will ever know.”
Over the next month or so, they finished their remaining two matches, winning both 2-0. With a three-match winning streak, their points naturally placed them first in Group Six.
The rankings of the other groups also gradually became clear. Aside from them, almost no other teams pulled off upsets. A newly formed team charging straight into the knockout stages during the Spring Split—combined with the fact that Ning Luzhao had a handsome face that, according to Fugui, “shouldn’t belong in the esports circle”—caused the followers of the team’s official Weibo to skyrocket. Although most were fun-seekers wanting to see how far they could go, there were also many “face fans” for Ning Luzhao.
Of course, there were also fans of his own looks.
However, Zuo Chi hadn’t developed such thick skin yet. When he browsed the official Weibo, he would subconsciously skip the parts mentioning himself and then read the comments discussing the players with great interest.
The knockout stages were scheduled for after the Spring Festival. The draw for the knockout stages would be conducted electronically by the league officials, so their opponent for the Round-of-16 was currently uncertain. They only knew it would be a second-place team from another group.
“Coach Zuo, what are you looking at?”
Hearing Fugui’s voice, Zuo Chi didn’t look up. He was already used to the random appearance of the cubs’ hands and heads on his shoulders and the back of his gaming chair.
“Watching your five-man queue videos from last night. 0-2, 0-3, 1-4… although you were practicing new heroes and compositions, do you have any explanation for these stats?”
Fugui, who had the lowest score on last night’s five-man queue result page, quickly declared his stance: “Reporting to Coach Zuo! I guarantee five hours of training every day during the Spring Festival! I’ll practice while on a video call with you!”
Around him, voices echoed: “Reporting to Coach! +1!”
Over the past two days, the cubs had already started packing their luggage. The team was giving a three-day break for the Spring Festival. People in esports rarely get to go home during the year, so they should be allowed to go home and enjoy the holiday.
As for him, he had no family in this world. VEX was the place he knew best. He had contacted Fang Tong to ask if he wanted to spend the Spring Festival together, but Fang Tong stated that even if the streaming industry was competitive, one couldn’t be so competitive as to work during the Spring Festival; he was leaving Nancheng to go back to his hometown.
Zuo Chi decided to be competitive on his own—to outwork the entire esports industry. He would (had to) stay at the VEX base for the holiday.
“In that case, I’ll start a Penguin Meeting every day. You all join the room and turn on your cameras so I can watch you train… Those with less than five hours of clock-in time, you know the drill.”
Beyond plucked up his courage: “Since we’re at home, we won’t be able to wash our teammates’ socks, right?”
“When you get back, you can do a deep clean of the base. Look at your desks; a cockroach nest would be cleaner than this.”
The cubs fell silent and behaved.
Zuo Chi looked around and didn’t see Ning Luzhao: “Where’s Land? Is he packing?”
He remembered that when he woke up this morning, Ning Luzhao’s things were still sitting untouched in the dorm, with no sign of being moved.
“I don’t know… I asked Ning-god this morning if he’d bought his flight home, and he said no. Is it possible he couldn’t get a ticket and doesn’t plan on going back?”
The alarm for training time rang, and the cubs returned to their computers one after another.
He turned to look at the training room door. The corridor was empty, with no sign of Ning Luzhao—since he’d become the coach at VEX, Ning Luzhao had never once been late for training.
[Zuo Chi: Land, where are you now?]
The other party replied quickly.
[Land: On the way, almost there.]
[Zuo Chi: If you couldn’t get a ticket home for the Spring Festival, you can borrow the team car to drive back. Should I mention it to Manager Li in a bit?]
Ning Luzhao didn’t reply to this, but Zuo Chi heard the sound of running footsteps in the hallway outside the training room.
Half a minute later, the youth pushed open the glass door of the training room, gripping a team jacket in his hand. The stray hairs on his forehead were slightly damp, as if he had just rushed back in a hurry.
As Ning Luzhao sat down in his gaming chair and logged into the game, he turned his face and said softly: “No need. I’m not going back for the holiday.”
“Is it because you’re worried about the match?”
“No.” The corners of the youth’s phoenix eyes hooked up slightly. “Spending the New Year at the base is quite nice.”
Everyone had their own reasons for not going home for the holiday, so Zuo Chi didn’t press further: “Alright, then the two of us will have our reunion dinner together on New Year’s Eve. I saw quite a few frozen dumplings stocked in the fridge.”
“Mm. The dumplings Coach boils are especially delicious.”
Next door, Fugui pulled off his headset: “Ning-god, you’ve learned to be slick-tongued too. Don’t all frozen dumplings taste the same? I can boil them too!”
Zuo Chi walked over and checked Fugui’s screen: “I was wondering how you had time to join our conversation. Turns out the new hero you’re practicing just died in-game.”
“I accidentally…”
“Accidentally, 0-2 in five minutes.”
“I guarantee I’ll kill my way back in the mid-to-late game—Wu Yang, come help me gank!”
The phone in his pocket vibrated with several “buzzes.” Zuo Chi dropped the line “I’ll be watching you,” and opened WeChat. It was a series of four or five messages from Fang Tong, and he was still sending more.
He originally thought the other party had changed his mind and wasn’t going home for the Spring Festival to stay competitive in the streaming industry, but when he opened the messages, he realized it was related to VEX.
[Fang Tong: Good news! Great news!]
[Fang Tong: You must treat me to a meal after the New Year.]
[Fang Tong: Hello, are you at the VEX base right now?]
Below was a string of random “hitting your head” emojis.
[Zuo Chi: Speak. Let me see if I should treat you to a food stall or high-end seafood buffet. Dog-head.jpg]
[Fang Tong: Haven’t your team’s players signed with a streaming platform yet? My boss recently noticed the hype of VEX advancing to the knockout stages and is interested in discussing a partnership.]
[Fang Tong: How about it? Is this news worth a seafood buffet?]
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