Chapter 1249: Turning Over a New Leaf
Especially when she saw that girl who had just been yelling "God An, God An" suddenly burst into tears, Zhou Chengchen’s heart was yanked hard.
She instinctively looked at Zhou Qi and found that in his eyes there were also some emotions she half understood, as he just quietly watched the stage.
Zhou Chengchen pressed her lips together. Her brother really did still hope he could be the one standing on that stage.
Right then, a lot of cursing still drifted into Zhou Chengchen’s ears—saying the mid laner was trash, that they all got screwed over by him, and so on.
Zhou Chengchen didn’t really get those technical things, but she remembered that Zhou Qi seemed to play mid, right?
If you really counted it up, this was actually the best result An Rui and his team had gotten in years. An Rui hadn’t been a starter the moment he joined the team; he’d lain low for a year too, so this was only his second year standing on the tournament stage.
It’s just that the moment An Rui debuted, he was deified in a single battle, so the fans’ expectations for them kept climbing higher and higher.
Last year they stopped at top four, this year they went straight into the finals; the fans had all been expecting them to take the championship, but in the end they still lost to the other side.
"Glorious in defeat" and all that didn’t really seem to apply here.
Zhou Chengchen and Zhou Qi didn’t see An Rui until the next day. After their match, the result, while not perfect, was still a breakthrough. The team had to get together, to review, to celebrate, to lick their wounds.
As captain, An Rui of course couldn’t skip that, so it was the next day before he made it to the hotel where Zhou Chengchen and Zhou Qi were staying.
Compared to before, An Rui had grown a bit taller; his figure looked pretty good, but his complexion wasn’t, with dark circles under his eyes—he was your typical gaming shut-in at a glance.
An Rui didn’t seem to be in a bad mood; it didn’t look like he was upset over the "loss" in the fans’ eyes yesterday. This was G City, where he’d been for three years now, so he practically counted as a local. He took them to a famous restaurant and sat them down.
"So this counts as a break for you guys now?" Zhou Qi asked.
"Yeah."
"Heading home?"
"Of course. I didn’t go back at all last year. If I don’t go back again, my mom’s gonna kill her way over here."
They hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and hadn’t really kept in touch either, so they were missing some common topics.
Actually, they did have a shared topic—for example... Xi Siyan.
But right now, absolutely no one brought him up.
Still, that mood didn’t last long, because soon enough An Rui and Zhou Qi started talking about the game, and it was like opening a floodgate—the water came crashing out, and once they started, they couldn’t stop.
Especially when he found out Zhou Qi was thinking about getting back into the scene, An Rui literally jumped up from his chair. "Damn, you finally turned over a new leaf?"
Turned over a new leaf?
Zhou Chengchen was speechless. What kind of line was that?
In the eyes of outsiders, Zhou Qi right now was someone with a master’s degree in finance in hand; that was the proper career path, right? And you, playing games...
Besides being embarrassed, what else could she feel?
Compared to his outburst, Zhou Qi was much calmer. "I still need to plan this properly. After all, I’m not eighteen anymore."
In esports terms, at twenty-one, Zhou Qi wasn’t exactly old, but he definitely wasn’t young either. His current skill still needed to be tested further, so it wasn’t something he could decide on in a rush of passion.
The three of them ate for a while longer before they started talking about going back to B City. An Rui had actually already booked his ticket, but now he immediately changed it so he could go back with Zhou Chengchen and the others.