Chapter 56
S5 Summer Split, speaking of which, was four years ago.
Bai Dabai was very surprised that Duan Mingyue would be interested in this matter. To him, there was nothing to hide, and worrying that text wouldn’t be clear, he called.
Four years ago, with Sliver joining, HG Team had improved significantly. Bai Dabai accepted the invitation to serve as head coach.
He was young, but had long struggled in society and was a good judge of character. In just one week, he clearly realized one thing—this team, except for that support, was completely rotten.
Top and Jungle were drinking buddies, hanging on livestreams all day for dirty money, spewing filth constantly.
The bot lane AD went around claiming to be a pro player, dated several girlfriends, skipped training every day to go on dates, and often stayed out all night.
The Mid laner barely counted as a normal person, but he was too old, his talent was average, and his ambition was long gone, living like a walking corpse, muddling through days.
Only the Support, a newcomer who had just played professionally for a year, had outstanding talent and a deep hero pool; he could play anything.
“I felt it was very strange at the time. Logically speaking, such a piece of unpolished jade wouldn’t willingly stay in a dump like HG. Other teams aren’t blind; why wouldn’t they come to poach him…” Bai Dabai shook his head, clicking his tongue in lament, obviously unable to answer this doubt even now.
Duan Mingyue sat down on the bench nearby. “…En, it is quite strange.”
Actually, it wasn’t strange at all. At that time, he was determined to bring YanGold back to his own team, almost practically tying himself to the little Support. Other teams naturally couldn’t fail to see this intention and backed off sensibly.
If Shen Yanjin wanted to enter the professional circle then, he could only choose a bottom-tier team like HG that refused no one.
It was simply… exactly the same as UOOW’s situation recently.
Would Shen Yanjin not know that such behavior was actually branding himself? Not necessarily.
Fortunately, this time he brought the person to his side.
But it was too late.
Five whole years too late.
Bai Dabai didn’t hear the abnormality in Duan Mingyue’s tone on the other end and continued speaking on his own, “I couldn’t stand it after staying there for one season. If the players just weren’t striving, that would be one thing, but the problem was that management, simply pure idiots.”
“You said that team is a match-fixing team. What’s that about?”
“Moon God, you don’t usually watch games of such small teams, right?” Bai Dabai sneered. “Not watching is right. They are truly disgusting. I originally thought since it was a team I coached, I’d watch a bit when I encountered them. The result was acting so fake that if they weren’t already terrible usually, they would be investigated right on the stage.”
Duan Mingyue frowned. “They took money? The Alliance didn’t investigate them?”
“If they took money, that would be fine.” Bai Dabai seemed to light a cigarette on the other end, the lighter clicking. “This was just the season before last. I saw it and asked an acquaintance in the Alliance to check. Guess what the result was? The result was: no gambling involved, purely bad.”
Bai Dabai felt it was absurd and laughed muffledly twice. “Bad is indeed bad, but anyone with eyes could see they were gathering the whole team’s strength to mess with one person’s mentality. By the way.” He suddenly changed the subject here. “HG’s support retired a while ago, right? Sigh, what a pity…”
Mi Yonghui hurried over from the parking lot. As soon as he arrived, he saw Duan Mingyue leaning on the bench smoking as if no one was around.
The man bit the cigarette, eyelids lowered, expression cold. He tilted his neck back, exposing his Adam’s apple. The action of swallowing clouds and puffing mist gave his whole person a decadent beauty.
Mi Yonghui had only extremely rarely seen Duan Mingyue smoke in the base training room or on the balcony. Seeing it now, he thought something big had happened and ran over in a panic. “Moon God? Where’s Sliver? What happened?”
“Nothing.” Duan Mingyue stubbed out the cigarette and handed the ID to Mi Yonghui. “Go, get it done quickly.”
“Moon God…”
Duan Mingyue glanced at him. Seeing him hesitate to speak, he assumed he was worried about public opinion and pointed to the sign nearby. “Relax, this isn’t a non-smoking area. No one will seize on this to make trouble.”
“…” The more he said, the more mistakes he’d make. Mi Yonghui shut his mouth, took the ID, thinking this guy’s temper is really getting weirder.
Fans all said Duan Mingyue was gentle and approachable.
In reality, everyone in KW knew that compared to the coach and manager who played the bad cop, Duan Mingyue, who loved playing the good cop, was actually more fearsome.
Duan Mingyue looked at his phone.
He had an impulse now to rush over and question Shen Yanjin directly, asking clearly about all the strange clues he had discovered.
Just like the simple logic that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points—he asks, the other answers, and many questions would be answered immediately.
He saw Shen Yanjin offering him a sincere heart, but with the revelation of the truth, this heart gradually became scarred and bloody.
Shen Yanjin said nothing. It seemed he didn’t wish for Duan Mingyue to know the origin of these scars.
Duan Mingyue really couldn’t bear to rip open those scars with his own hands to see the truth underneath.
He exhaled, threw the cigarette butt into the trash can, and returned to the lounge.
Being a veteran familiar with the process, the shooting work had already entered the final stage in this short time.
Shen Yanjin wore a little makeup, his pale complexion improved a lot, and his hair was styled. Sitting in front of the camera, he was quite photogenic.
Seeing Duan Mingyue return, his eyes lit up, but he pursed his lips and didn’t speak.
Duan Mingyue also knew his temperament of never showing intimacy with him in front of outsiders, and only asked the photographer, “Finished? So fast?”
The photographer smiled and replied, “Forty minutes for one person, that’s considered slow.” Usually, when it got busy and a whole team came, they would have to cut at least another ten minutes to finish the work smoothly.
Duan Mingyue paused. He was so engrossed in thinking just now that he really didn’t notice the time. He nodded impassively and walked into the lounge first.
Having mixed in this industry for a long time, the photographer had long practiced a pair of fiery eyes. He flipped through the photos taken, made an OK gesture to Shen Yanjin, and tilted his head to signal him to follow quickly.
Shen Yanjin hurriedly removed his makeup, pushed the door, and walked into the lounge.
Once the door closed, his unapproachable demeanor disappeared completely. He sat next to Duan Mingyue and called, “Brother.”
Duan Mingyue was urging XXDY to check faster. XXDY rarely saw him so urgent and asked curiously, “Are these chat logs that important?”
He replied, “It concerns the happiness of the rest of my life. Do you think it’s important?”
This made XXDY both surprised and curious, but he also knew he couldn’t pry open Duan Mingyue’s mouth without finding something, so he gritted his teeth and went back to pounding code.
Hearing Shen Yanjin call him, Duan Mingyue raised his eyes, smiled, and reached out to pull him into his arms.
Shen Yanjin liked being close to Duan Mingyue too much, especially since the man intentionally indulged him. It led to him wanting a hug whenever he saw Duan Mingyue. After hugging, he wanted to kiss, and after kissing, he wanted to do deeper things.
He suppressed the romantic thoughts in his mind. “Photos are done. Is Manager Mi ready? Let’s go back to the base.”
Duan Mingyue teased him, “In such a hurry to go back? Not willing to stay outside with me a bit longer?”
“The season starts soon; can’t delay training anymore.” Counting from his retirement, Shen Yanjin hadn’t trained seriously for too long. He wasn’t a genius like Duan Mingyue, so he knew clearly that his career was approaching its end, and he was more anxious than anyone. “Besides… isn’t there time after returning to the dorm at night?”
Duan Mingyue raised an eyebrow. “Oh—Player Sliver, can I interpret this as asking the captain for ‘unspoken rules’?”
Shen Yanjin’s ears burned from his words. He hugged him and kissed Duan Mingyue’s lips.
Duan Mingyue held his waist, letting him fool around.
After a long time, their lips parted. Shen Yanjin pressed his forehead against Duan Mingyue’s, looking directly into his eyes. “Wait for me. I will definitely stand by your side very soon.”
Duan Mingyue smiled lazily. “I know. Don’t worry. Only on this matter, even if you beg me, I can’t mix in personal feelings.”
This was exactly what Shen Yanjin needed.
Esports and Duan Mingyue were the most important things in his heart—one was career, the other love, indistinguishable from each other.
If Duan Mingyue let him be a starter just because he liked him, Shen Yanjin would only be unhappy.
The two were intimate for a while longer before packing up and heading to the parking lot, ready to return to the base.
While they were affectionate here, the internet exploded because of a video revelation from a secondary league player.
In the video, Duan Mingyue was intimate with Sliver, who had just retired due to poor condition a while ago. Their words indicated… this “competition tumor” was about to enter the highly anticipated KW Team and become the new Support player.
Mi Yonghui had just struggled to finish Shen Yanjin’s player registration, thinking his work could finally come to an end, when his phone began ringing ceaselessly again.
He answered a call, and the expression on his face instantly changed from the relief of closure to utter despair.
Mi Yonghui numbly set incoming calls to silent. In the message box with the PR department, he typed “Help,” then deleted it; typed “I want to resign,” then deleted it again. Finally, he sent out a sentence: “Notify a meeting, re-strategize the PR.”
Just painful.
As for veterans in the team like Kai and Tans, who had long been blackened countless times by the whole internet, they had prepared early when the rhythm just started and turned off their streams. Anyway, the draw was in two days, preparing for the season start. Using closed-door training as an excuse to avoid the limelight was just right.
Helplessly, the firepower of fans and haters had to aim at the remaining two.
However, Song Yuan was a tough nut to crack. He streamed without turning on bullet comments; he couldn’t see whatever people spammed, didn’t even read out gifts, and played RANK happily, possessing extremely strong psychological quality.
As for Lu Yuan—
She rarely turned on the camera. Her eyes were slightly red, head lowered, not speaking much, looking like she had suffered a grievance.
A new PR strategy couldn’t be produced immediately. Amidst the chaos, KW officially announced Sliver’s official joining of the KW Team first team. Immediately following, the highly anticipated WL Pro League S9 Drawing Ceremony began.
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