You're Beautiful When You Smile

CHAPTER 96

As usual, there was a group interview right after the game was over.

During the spring season, the group interview was conducted on the couch in the winning team's break room. It was different in the summer season. The location for the interview had moved to a more formal setting. All players would be interviewed at a long table. Sometimes two teams that had played matches on the day would be interviewed at the same time-- --Usually, it would be the two opposing teams that were interviewed together......

Yet, today was an exception.

The ten players of both YQCB and ZGDX were crowded behind the table. To the left of Lu Sicheng was Pope, to his right was Tong Yao; he was sitting in the middle.

Reporter: [First, congratulations to ZGDX for keeping your undefeated record.]

Lu Sicheng: "Thanks."

Reporter: [We're also quite surprised that YQCB players haven't left after their game and have given us this special chance to do an interview together with ZGDX.]

YQCB's captain scratched his head: "We actually wanted to leave, but our coach wouldn't let us. He forced us to watch in the break room to see how 4 protect 1 should be played......It's a new strategy we're trying out, we're not too familiar with it yet."

Reporter: [Nowadays 4 protect 1 isn't that suitable when the team's bot is relatively weaker. Why did ZGDX insist on using it even after YQCB had failed in their attempt?]

Lu Sicheng paused a moment and leaned back to cast a sidelong glance at Pope on his left. Pope rolled his eyes. Lu Sicheng gave a short chuckle and playfully said: "Our mid said: I want to play 4 protect 1 too, I want to try it out with Lulu too......I thought it seemed alright to do that. Besides, we can teach 'the other AD' how to play 4 protect 1. So we played two matches of 4 protect 1."

Everyone burst out laughing.

Pope sensed that Lu Sicheng might have said something aimed at him. He grabbed the translator behind him to demand a translation. The translator had no choice but to translate for him. After hearing the translation, Pope used Korean to complain at a rapid pace.

......The interview continued. One reporter asked several questions back to back about different situations during the matches. Little Fatty and Lu Sicheng were the two who answered most of the questions. Tong Yao glanced, through the corner of her eye, at Ai Jia who was sitting at the other end of the long table, quiet like Tong Yao, and seemed to have spaced out until a reporter mentioned him in the question-- --

[There was a little incident after YQCB's second match and Ai Jia wasn't on the lineup in the third match. We would like to know what happened? Fans really like to know.]

Ai Jia came out of his daze.

Tong Yao also straightened her body.

Ai Jia slightly frowned and received the microphone from his teammate next to him, ready to speak. However, the microphone was grabbed away from him by his captain, Liangsheng. Ai Jia was stunned. Then he heard his captain saying: "It was the decision made by the coaches and our teammates together to let Aisha play the third match-- --I know some people are making claims online right now that it was because Ai Jia's stuck-up and refused to go on. But that's not true. And please, everyone, enough is enough...... We made the switch just because Ai Jia was in a bad mood at the time, therefore we felt it would be more suitable for Aisha to play the third match."

Reporter: [Then why was he in a bad mood?]

Everyone: "......"

Tong Yao uneasily moved a bit on her chair......Even she, not to mention Ai Jia, had the urge to flip the table in front of her at the reporter-- --

Why was he in a bad mood, you tell me, thought Tong Yao.

He was already not very happy for losing the match, then found out that his girlfriend under the stage was being confronted by a fan and had to take the blame for his bad performance. Could anyone be in a good mood under the situation?!

Tong Yao took a glance at the microphone in the reporter's hand. Just as she had expected, the logo on the microphone showed that this reporter was from an infamous esports media outlet. They liked to take words out of context and stirred up controversies around players. Their reports had regularly been refuted by esports clubs and players and they apologized each time, but their reporters still kept doing the same thing-- --

A famous incident was when a player had said: "I think the Korean players have brought more things to the Chinese region when they first started to come over here." But the media reported it as "A certain player has frankly pointed out that Korean players were only useful early on."

Ai Jia also noticed who was asking the question and mockingly twitched the corner of his lips. It was obvious that he didn't think this question was worthy of answering.

The atmosphere inside the room grew awkward.

That reporter sulkily sat back down when there were no answers forthcoming. But his question steered the interview towards a different direction, away from the matches themselves. Soon there was another report who stood up to ask-- --

Reporter: [Recently, there has been constant talk centered around the private love lives of professional players, as professional players yourselves, what do you think about all this?]