Volume 2 - CH 21

Playing Fish Trapped in Secret Room

Book 2: You’re Beautiful

Chapter 21

She had guessed the answer to the question.

It was confirmed when room service delivered a bag of cleaned clothes to her room ten minutes later.  It was her clothes.

Signed by:  Room 1213, Wu Bai.

Ai Qing poured all the clothes in the bag onto the bed.  She found it was the exact outfit she had wore on the plane.  It seemed he picked them out deliberately for room service to wash……

She knelt down on the bed flabbergasted.  Three seconds later, she threw herself at the clothing.

Ah, heaven……

Because of the bag of clothes, she was late to Inin’s room by fifteen minutes, holding her computer.  The young man, with a toothbrush and foam in his mouth, came to open the door for her.  He ran back immediately to gargle his mouth.  Then randomly wiped his face with a towel before running out to watch Ai Qing set up a computer on the desk.  She pulled over a sofa.

“Manager…...you are sitting besides me?”  He felt strange.

Shouldn’t we sit face-to-face to play a practice game?

“Of course.  I’m not your opponent.”  She smiled and pointed to his computer.  “Come here.  Pull out competition videos of three players who you consider as your strongest competitors.”

As a professional player, she believed that Inin must have many videos of his competitors in his computer.

Unexpectedly, Inin obviously turned bashful and scratched the back his head.  “My computer only has Dt’s……”

……

She coughed slightly.  “Since you understand him so much, come on, tell me his biography in Baidu that you’ve memorized.”

She was joking, but Inin took the request seriously.  “I read his biography in Baidu, but it’s too poor.  There’s too little information.  It’s far less than what I know.”

“Less than you know?  How much do you know?”

“I swear.  There is absolutely nobody who knows more than I do!”  Inin was simply like a young girl talking about her idol.  His face turned red from excitement and eagerly added, “Manager, manager, let me tell you about it. You have to listen to me.”

…....

She felt that tonight’s training was already going down the drain, all because she had poked his idol complex.

“Dt, Wu Bai, champion of the 2007 DotA Chinese Regional and Asian Tournament. He was referred to as ‘God’s Left Hand’ at the time. But he didn’t sign up with any club. He gave up the event when he had won the Asian championship at the age of fifteen.” Inin then added, “Manager, I just learned that you also had a nickname at the time in the DotA circle, the Pianist!”

“Uhm.”  Ai Qing was stunned.  “It was nothing compared with Dt.  My highest achievement in DotA was only second place at the Chinese Regionals.”

“It was already great!”  Inin argued.

“......Continue.”

All of a sudden, she found that the time he dropped out of DotA was the same as herself……

Was that a coincidence?

“2010, Dt switched to WarCraft and won second place in the Chinese Regionals.  He lost to Solo, who was ranked number 1 at the time, but he is our boss now.”  Inin added again.  “This was one of the reasons why I was lured over.  He’s really something else!  My scores have never been ranked number 1……”

“......Continue.”  It was needless to talk about Solo’s standing in this circle.

“But Dt didn’t play the final competition later that year. He quit WarCraft and went back to Norway to continue his studies.”

So he went back to school?

She didn’t know that his departure was for school.

He was just eighteen years old in 2010, it was the the most frivolous age.

At that age, he already earned such a big name for himself, only having been defeated by Solo, the number one ranked player. It goes to show that whether he signed with a professional club or not, he would be one of the few dazzling players in this circle.

He was different from Grunt who started out with StarCraft.  Regardless of whether DotA or WarCraft, Dt was the hegemon in China without a doubt.

……

Inin didn’t notice that she was preoccupied with her own thoughts.  He kept on talking,  “He spent four years to get a CS degree.  He also took the championship in the European Regional StarCraft Tournament at the same time.”

“What is CS?”  She was stunned.

“It’s Computer Science.”  Inin explained.  “A field of study.”

……

What a coincidence?

Was it called CS also?

It was the same acronym of the game she started playing professionally.

Computer Science.

Counter-Strike.

…..Was it a coincidence?

“And he also won the ACM Championship! Championship!”  Inin clenched his fist and waved it about.

“......What is ACM?”  Ai Qing held her chin, wondering what competition was it?

“It is…...The competition for college students of Computer Science.  To develop software programs…..”  Inin suddenly realized that it actually was very difficult to explain……

“Oh.”  She didn’t understand.

“That is…...The top winners in the competition will receive offers from Microsoft and famous graduate schools before their graduation.  I heard that there was a champion who was invited by Bill Gates to his home for dinner several years ago.”

“Oh.”  It was like listening to a story from another planet.

It was so awesome it felt like listening to a story……

“Ah, I’m jumping around.”  Inin paused.  He reviewed the time periods he had gone over,  “Maybe I should start from his time in elementary school……”

So she sat on the sofa with her chin rested on her hand, listening about Dt’s twenty two years of life.

Without knowing why, she thought about the feeling she had when she had first met Gun.

Compared to most people growing up in a normal family in China with an average education, they had the advantage ever since they were born.  They could afford to treat the esports as a hobby, not a profession.

Like what Gun had said at the time, “Regarding games, either you just don’t touch it at all, or you play esports to win some awards.  It’s as simple as that.”

It was just…… that simple.

Gun could proudly make statements like that when she had run away from home numerous times in order to play in competitions.  There were times even her parents threatened to disown her.  When Solo was under appreciated and failed to win any support, he could only randomly play in competitions one after another, yet still live in poverty without money to pay for food.  When All and Xiaomi were kicked out from teams full of their good friends, they could only work as power levelers to earn some money for food…...  Then later on, he singlehandedly organized the entirety of Solo’s team……

He was really a person others were jealous of.

Really…...It made people wish to be like him.

With thoughts like that, she laid down her head on her arm.  She closed her eyes, listening.  She kept listening, but Inin stopped talking…...Being drunk last night still made her feel tired.  She was too lazy to open her eyes.  She thought that the young man may have gone to answer the phone.  Or was he hungrily looking for snacks?  Until she felt somebody walk close to her.  She finally opened her eyes lazily,  “Ok.  Stop admiring Dt.  We------”

Her voice stopped suddenly.

A big guy stood in front of her and moved his eyes from her embarrassedly to look outside of the window……

Wasn’t he the topic of the conversation between Inin and her------

Wasn’t he the person who excelled on everything that one felt like listening stories about?