Does Love At First Sight Exist In E-sport

CHAPTER 01

Ch.1 – Does Love at First Sight Exist in Esports?

The eyes of everyone in the room focused on the young boy whose head was nervously bowed. The face of that green youth who was only fifteen years young was flushed red. Finally, he clenched his fist, and with eyes blazing, he summoned up the courage to say: “I want to become a member of Titans’s main team!”

Song Mingzhe was one of the main team members of ‘Titans’, a professional esports team of the worldwide renowned multiplayer shooting game “Alarm Dawn”, commonly shortened as AD[1]. He listened to the boy’s words and patted him on the shoulder admiringly, and earnestly wished him, “Keep what you said today in mind and train well in the youth training team, you hear me?”

(footnotes: [1] the name of the game is ‘破晓警报 (pòxiǎo jǐngbào)’ which roughly translates to daybreak/dawn + alarm/alert so i went with daybreak alarm because it sounds… cooler… it’s actually shortened to ‘破警 (pòjǐng)’ which means break + alarm and i chose alarm break to… slightly shorten the name? it didn’t end up being that short though lol if you.)

The boy made a deep bow. “I do! Thank you, Song ge!”

The boy turned to face the man sitting on the gaming chair beside him and bowed once more. “Thank you, Captain!”

Hearing the boy’s words, the outer corners of the captain’s eyes narrowed slightly, and a charming smile arose from the curve of his mouth. “You’re welcome.”

The boy’s eyes shone. He blushed and bellowed “Yes!” excitedly, then puffed up his chest and left.Having sent away the child from the youth training team who had wanted to see the captain’s elegant demeanor, Yao Sen stretched his body and turned his chair to face the computer. He clicked on the game icon with a practised ease, and then leisurely logged into his side account.

More than two years ago, Yao Sen was recruited by the Titans Club, who had made an exception and allowed him to join the third team after spending only a week in the youth training team. Before he even had the chance to warm the third team’s bench, however, Yao Sen overpowered the members of the second team in the selection matches and officially became the fastest Titans member to join the main team since the club was first established.

After finishing school, esports was Yao Sen’s full-time job. He took over as captain not long after the former captain retired, taking on a team that was dropping in rankings, losing sponsors, and had low morale.

Even so, it was precisely this team that won the Asia Championship last year with a victory that shocked the Alarm Dawn esports circle’s gods, launching a counterattack from a weakened position[2] to obtain the crown.

(footnotes: [2] idiom: 以少胜多 (lit. using a few to defeat the many) to win from a position of weakness.)

Yao Sen’s personal rank reigned at the top of the Asian server, and the two characters of his name flattened the Chinese AD esports circle, turning the previously low-ranking Titans into a legend that reached the top of the Asian server overnight.

This ‘God Sen’ who was the talk of town tore open a bag of potato chips, preparing to rank up his side account.  

Wang Yuxi, who had been teammates with Yao Sen for two years, leaned over from his seat next to him and said, “Why do you suddenly want to go rank your side account today?”