Finding Love into Your Eyes

[Yao Yao, I broke up with Ai Jia.]

Tong Yao opened WeChat to see a message from her good friend Jinyang. She was taken aback for a moment, before taking a cracker from her desk and bringing it to her mouth to calm herself. She replied after taking a moment to think: Why?

[He’s someplace beyond my reach.]

The five words stared back at her icily, eliciting a small “oh.” After a few moments, she realized that her friend could not hear her reaction — —

Jinyang’s boyfriend, Ai Jia, was a professional League of Legends player, an esports player. Since esports has been recognized by the country as a sports event, their status has gone up a notch.

In essence, most of these professionals are simple-minded teenagers addicted to the internet who can live happily with just a computer — —

But if you date them, it probably isn’t that different from dating a famous movie star.

“...... I said it from the beginning, you shouldn’t have agreed to date a teenager addicted to the internet.”

Tong Yao pinched another cracker and placed it into her mouth. Not knowing how to respond to her angered friend, she decided to wait for her to cool down by opening up League of Legends on her computer. — —

All text on screen suddenly became Korean. She had recently switched to the Korean servers to play since they had a more mature esports landscape. Professional players from all over the world tended to play on the Korean servers for this very reason.

Tong Yao had encountered several such professional players.

After signing in, as she was waiting for a match in queue, a chat window burst from the bottom left hand corner with an English ID. She squinted her eyes, waiting for the message to arrive, before discovering that he was quite direct.

[HI, friend, would you like come to china play game]

…… was he using Google translate?

Tong Yao dropped the cracker dangling in her mouth from laughter.

Might as well reply — —

[I’m Chinese.]

The other side was silent for a few seconds.

Then sent a flood of “hahahahahah” — —

[You play well. How old are you? Do you want to come and play professionally? I’m part of China’s ZGDX’s team.][1]

She stared at those four letters for some time before letting out a shout. Her mother, who had been cleaning fish in the kitchen, had quickly dashed into her room with a cleaver still clenched in hand: “What’s the matter? Is there a cockroach?”

“Mom, someone’s inviting me to play games professionally!” Tong Yao pointed at the screen, “It’s a famous team, they’re sponsored by China Telecom, headquartered in Shanghai.”

Her mother had a look of understanding, but otherwise her demeanor remain unchanged. “Last week, someone called to tell me that I had won a Rolls-Royce from the nearby supermarket.”

Tong Yao remained silent.

“How can you be so gullible? Play professionally? Then what about school? Just from playing these lousy computer games has gotten to your head. Have you even finished your summer homework?”

“I’m a college freshman, there’s no summer homework anymore……” Tong Yao spoke to the side, keeping her eyes on screen, and broke from her stupor in shock. “They make 600,000 RMB a year, not including the award money from tournaments. If you’re not satisfied by that, we can still talk.”

“.......” After a long moment, her mother responded, “Give him your contact information.”

“Didn’t you say it’s a scam?”

“Would a scammer claim to pay someone 600,000 RMB?”

“Maybe he’s smarter and doesn’t over exaggerate.”