Rise

If there were a medicine for regret in this world, Su Xue would be on the web ordering it right now! Oh, the bitter tang of regret! How could she allow herself to fall prey to greed and agree to let this brat become her roommate? A single moment of weakness, a lapse-in-judgement, one that would lead to untold sorrow!

Su Xue, still brooding, tried to focus on the game again. She wasn’t terrible at this game! There was a lot going on, and it made it hard for her to focus. Hard for her to play well. Just for starters, a short-range ad-carry like her Vayne was already at a huge disadvantage against Caitlyn. Then there was the distraction and pressure of having the 70-something people watching her stream constantly hurling insults at her and trying to backseat. On top of all of that, she got suckered into living with this little brat who was now joining in with her viewers to criticize her! It was all just too much! 

「.....she cant last hit for shit」

「DO U KNOW HOW TO CS?! U MISSED THE CANNON CREEP! [1]」

“Oh, yeah. They’re right about that one. Your CSing is pretty terrible, but a little bit of practice can take care of that. You just have to time everything a bit so you get as many last hits as possible. Bare minimum for acceptable CS is 10 last hits a minute. Or you won’t have enough gold to keep up.”

「more bewbs than brains……….. save your q [2] for his hook!!1!」

“Mhmm. Yeah. You should’ve saved your Q. It’s the difference between life and death when you’ve got a Thresh hook coming at you.”

「I’ve never seen someone this bad try to stream before...」

“That makes sense, yeah. You really don’t find streamers this bad very often. If at all.”

「i only clicked into this stream cuz she’s cute」

「if she didn’t have the facecam on I’d go watch someone with some actual skill!」

「It’d be nice if she was as skilled as she is thicccccc!」

“Hmm? Cute? Thicc?” Lin Feng paused after that. Then he looked at Su Xue. He turned back to the stream and said, “Eh, I don’t know about that one, guys…” shaking his head for emphasis. This was the first time he’d disagreed with chat.

Su Xue wanted to murder Lin Feng right now, chop him up into tiny little pieces. Suppressing that urge was like swallowing her own vomit. Don’t know about that one—Screw you! I’m not forcing you to look at me, am I? It's not like I even want you to look at me! Going after me for my gameplay is one thing, but pretending I’m not cute? That’s just too far! What did I ever do to you to make you want to hurt me like this? What the hell!

While Su Xue ranted and raved in her head, Lin Feng continued talking to the chat. He was either completely unconcerned or blissfully oblivious to the fact that he was seconds away from death at the hands of the person sitting inches away from him. He paid no attention or indicated that he even noticed the metaphorical smoke rising up from Su Xue’s head. Instead, he was enthusiastically engaging with the chat. So much so that some of the viewers started to feel a sense of connection, a kinship, with him.

Su Xue sat there, watching Lin Feng form a brotherhood with her viewers while she was trying so hard to turn her game around. The back-and-forth between Lin Feng and chat made her want to tear her hair out! Ugh! God damn it! Get a room already if y’all are so into each other! I don’t care anymore! I don’t even want you guys as viewers! All I want is for all of you to shut up and let me focus!

✹

A few moments later, Su Xue slipped up again. She was just too distracted by Lin Feng’s nonstop banter with her chat to play well. The Thresh found an opening and landed a hook on her, then flayed her back. She eventually did manage to escape by using her Flash, but the Thresh took a huge chunk of health from her. She essentially did nothing to the Thresh. In that exchange, she was clearly the loser. 

“Oof, that positioning…” Lin Feng exclaimed with a sigh, and shook his head.

The viewers on the stream started piling on.

「Soooo baaaad!」

「LOL! Even hookers don’t get hooked that hard!」

Lin Feng nodded in agreement while rubbing his chin, as if saying ‘great minds think alike’.

Catching a glimpse of Lin Feng, Su Xue felt like she was about to grind her molars into dust. Cleaver! Give me a cleaver! I’ll turn this brat into mincemeat! I don’t give a shit anymore!

People generally couldn’t play at their best while distracted. Su Xue was no exception. Not only that, but her bladder also announced its need for a release. She tried to endure, but in the end she recalled her champion back to base and got up from her seat.

Lin Feng looked up at Su Xue in surprise. “Huh, are you giving up?” In a rare show of consideration, he even threw in some words of consolation. “Don’t worry. Everyone in chat supports you, we’re all cheering for you!”

Cheering my ass! You degenerates are ganging up on me! Why do you have to make fun of me? Su Xue clicked her tongue. “I’m going to the washroom!”

“Oh, in that case, want me to play for you for a bit?”

Su Xue snickered. “Play for me? You sound pretty confident. What rank are you?”

“Uh…” Lin Feng did some quick calculations in his mind. “I’m a Challenger in the Ionia server.”[3]

Challenger? Su Xue’s sarcastic smile froze stiff on her face. Stop screwin—Then she shook her head. It was hopeless. This kid was hopeless. Who would believe that? Who on earth would buy that? She didn’t even want to get into this with him. There was no point in questioning it. This kid just tried to humble brag by casually claiming himself as Challenger ranked! Who does that? Someone this far gone, it was probably best to let them be. “Fine. Sure. Why not? You can play for a bit… but I want to be looking at a very different game when I come back! Completely turned around! Shouldn’t be too hard for someone as good as you, right Mr. Challenger?” She started walking away with an extra spring in her step from getting the last word in. 

Lin Feng completely missed the sarcasm in Su Xue’s final barb. It went so far over his head that it might as well have been in space. He actually believed that she wanted him to turn the game around for her, so he thought about it for a couple of seconds before telling her, “Hm… I mean, I can do it. But, well, I’m going to need 10 minutes. Are you going to go take a… uh, number 2? A dump… ?”

A dump? He wants me to–No. No. He just seriously thinks he’ll turn the game around in 10 minutes. Wait! HE THINKS I BELIEVE HE’S A CHALLENGER! Su Xue was flabbergasted. So bewildered that she actually paused mid-step, foot in the air. This kid is something else. In that single r/whoosh moment, he’d taken all the wind out of her sails. Her parting jab, the one that she’d been so proud of, it sliced through the air instead of connecting. She lost the spring in her step and stomped out of the room without replying.

Lin Feng watched her leave the room. He moved over to the gaming chair and sat down. But there was something different about that simple action. It wasn’t just a guy changing seats or a guy sitting down. Lin Feng sat down like a King returning to his throne. Forgotten glory, splendor, and power wrapping comfortably around him. A conqueror returning to his labor of love. 

While Lin Feng was settling into the chair, the viewers on the stream noticed Su Xue walking out and Lin Feng taking her place. They’d pieced together what was happening, and chat exploded.

「Hey, Lil bro, are you for real?」

「what rank are you? don’t feed please. Su Xue has already fed enough...」

「Vayne is 0/3/2 right now. It’s impossible for her to come back against a 2/1/1 Caitlyn.」

「just play safe and cs under you tower」

A lot of the people watching the stream had come to like Lin Feng. So when they saw that he was going to play, the dynamic of the chat swiveled towards concern rather than the harsh backseating and comments they’d thrown at Su Xue. No one wanted to watch a nice guy get crushed by League toxicity, especially if he was completely unprepared for it. 

Lin Feng rolled up to the desk and brushed his hand over the keyboard. He traced the curves of the mouse with his fingers, caressed it. It was odd, but also not completely out of place. Like a warrior reacquainting himself with weapons he’d long since laid down. Then he placed his right hand on the mouse and his left hand on the keyboard. A familiar stance, one tempered through battle. He was ready. Lin Feng glanced at the chat and smiled, “Don’t worry, guys. I can turn this around. Trust me. I got this.” 

He clicked on Vayne, still sitting at the fountain, and started moving her to bot lane. Vayne, huh... It’s been a while since I’ve played her. 

Lin Feng let out a long, wistful sigh, travelling back to his youth in his memories. Of times he’d lay awake at night and scheme… Stop! It's not the time for this! He snapped himself back to the present, to the game in front of him, composed and ready once more. His Vayne was about to reach the bot lane inner tower, the last defense before the enemy got into their base. The red team’s minion wave pushed up all the way to the inner tower after the outer one had fallen. The Caitlyn who had given Su Xue so much trouble stood behind her minions, calmy chipping away at the tower’s health. The Thresh, her support, had recalled back to base. 

Lin Feng stared at the screen, trying to comprehend what exactly was happening in this game. His support was a Janna, who was currently hiding behind the tower and had decided not to attack the Caitlyn who was taking their tower down. “Huh?” he muttered. “Why isn’t Janna going in? Didn’t Thresh back? What is happening here?”

The ever-present font of knowledge that was chat quickly provided the answer to his questions.

「janna has no health… if she tries anything caitlyn will just kill her」

「caitlyn already has a pickaxe her autos hurt a lot more now」

「XD if janna goes in, she’ll take a move from eveningsnowfall’s playbook HAHHAH」

Lin Feng shook his head, disagreeing with their assessment. “Yeah, that Caitlyn’s laning is decent. But a pickaxe isn’t enough of an item advantage for her to shut down a level 6 Vayne alone.” He stared at Janna again. “Why isn’t she going in?”

His confusion was justified and not completely unfounded. At the rank he used to play at, everyone was skilled and understood without being told when to go in and seize an opportunity for a kill. He was playing Vayne, the ad-carry. Now that he was back in lane, the Janna should have understood that it was time to go in and kill Caitlyn. The whole thing about her health being at 30%? That just didn’t matter in this situation. But this particular Janna, it was clear that she did not understand this. She just stood back behind her tower.

“Hm. Okay. No big deal. If Janna doesn’t want to go in, we’ll go in. Alright guys, let's go get our first kill,” Lin Feng declared to the viewers watching the stream.

When Caitlyn saw Vayne walk up to her, she shot an auto attack at him, then fired out a Piltover Peacemaker[4].

Lin Feng’s fingers glided over his keyboard. He pressed down on the R-key, and then on the Q. An aura of darkness shrouded Vayne. She tumbled forward diagonally, disappearing in stealth and dodging the Piltover Peacemaker. Her demon hunting crossbow loaded with holy silver bolts let out a faint thrum.

“Let us hunt those who have fallen to darkness!”

1. Minions are units aligned with one of the teams. They spawn periodically from their nexus and advance along a lane toward the enemy nexus. They automatically attack any enemy unit or structure they find in their way. They are controlled by artificial intelligence, and only use basic attacks. Every few waves spawns a cannon creep that nets more gold.

2. Every champion has four skills. With standard settings, they are on the Q, W, E, and R keys on a keyboard.

3. China is pretty huge. So, the region is split into different servers. The Ionia server is the most competitive server where all the pro players and best Challengers gather.

4. Caitlyn revs up her rifle for 1 second to unleash a penetrating shot that deals physical damage (deals less damage to subsequent targets).