TN: There’s gonna be a lot of League stuff in this chapter. For those who can’t understand, skill issue ig?
Lin Nan wasn't really in a competitive state. He'd been troubled by the matter of becoming female these past few days and barely played games at all.
Fortunately, Chen Yao had been in good form lately.
"Give me Yasuo! I'll chop off my hands if I lose!" Right when hero selection started, Dong An was extremely arrogant. "Ban Garen and Teemo! I'm absolutely going to crush the enemy this round!"
"The other team also has several diamonds, you're probably going to crash and burn." Chen Yao shook his leg, looking quite relaxed.
Lin Nan sat in the edge position, resting his chin on his hands while looking at the champion select screen on the computer monitor, occasionally glancing toward the audience in front, then quickly lowering his head again.
So damn embarrassing!
He'd never had the experience of standing on stage being cheered by hundreds of people in his entire life. Just thinking about what happened earlier made his scalp tingle.
But this competition wasn't limited to just that. A student responsible for livestream filming came on stage holding a phone fixed on a gimbal, then pointed the camera at Lin Nan and wouldn't move it away.
Lin Nan's mouth twitched as he looked up and glared at the person.
"The livestream audience strongly requested to see you," the person explained with an awkward smile.
"Would you jump off a building if they told you to?" Lin Nan's emotions hadn't been good lately anyway, so he snapped back without hesitation. "If I lose this round, it's all your fault!"
"My fault, my fault." The person nodded dismissively, then stood in front of Lin Nan's computer, holding the phone and constantly filming Lin Nan's face.
Lin Nan had no way to deal with this thick-skinned person, so he could only try to ignore him and casually said to Dong An: "Pick Blitzcrank for me."
"You're a girl, go play Janna!"
Although he said this, Dong An still obediently selected the champion for Lin Nan, then curiously looked toward the nearby "Mantis Shrimp Let's Go Team."
"What the hell are you looking at!"
Just from one glance, that hot-tempered big sister Li Sisi immediately glared at Dong An.
Hearing this, the student responsible for filming happily ran over with his phone to film Li Sisi, but Li Sisi had a much worse temper than Lin Nan. Seeing him approach, she immediately let loose with profanity.
"Fuck off! Get lost!"
So the person shrank his neck and walked away.
Seeing this, Lin Nan felt his intimidation was insufficient. Look at Li Sisi when she cursed—so righteous and fierce as a tiger. But when he cursed, he always liked to frown first, which made him appear very weak and somewhat wronged.
Li Sisi's family circumstances weren't very good. From what Lin Nan knew, she was on welfare, the type who needed government loans to attend university and worked part-time jobs everywhere. If she was good at gaming, then coming here to compete for the cash prize wasn't incomprehensible.
After all, the champion got a thousand yuan, and it was just playing a few games.
According to the host's earlier introduction, Li Sisi also had diamond-level skills and was an ADC player.
Soon the competition officially began.
The student with the phone came to film Lin Nan again.
Thinking that his face would appear in the livestream and be watched by hundreds or thousands of people, Lin Nan felt extremely irritated. He wasn't like some pretty girls or handsome guys who always liked posting selfies, and he especially hated becoming a topic of discussion about gender and appearance.
But now he didn't need to think to know the livestream chat was already in an uproar.
Due to the distraction, Lin Nan didn't play well. Dong An, playing mid-lane Yasuo, got beaten up by the enemy mid-lane Riven, running around with his head covered, constantly calling and shouting for Xiong Da to come help.
But fortunately Chen Yao's performance was consistently stable. Even though Lin Nan was distracted and made constant mistakes, Chen Yao still managed to crush the bottom lane by himself. In just about seven minutes, the enemy's bottom tower had already fallen.
Then came the chain reactions of taking dragon, herald, and pushing mid tower. Although Chen Yao wasn't a professional player, he'd played many high-tempo high-elo games. Under his command, the Mantis Shrimp team—whose highest member was only Diamond V—retreated step by step, finally having their nexus destroyed at twenty-two minutes.
Only then did Lin Nan breathe a sigh of relief, looking up to glare at the student who was still filming him.
Dong An had been beaten up the entire game and vented toward Li Sisi across the stage: "Aha! Who is your daddy in mid!"
After cursing, finding that no one on the other side paid attention to him, he immediately looked dejected and unable to vent, completely lacking his pre-game arrogance.
"I'm going back to watch the livestream." He probably felt embarrassed and left awkwardly after saying this.
Lin Nan noticed this guy seemed to get beaten up every time after being arrogant, a bit like Vegeta.
But there was another thing Lin Nan noticed. That filming guy sticking the phone right in his face, acting like a lunatic—rude and ill-mannered.
This made Lin Nan extremely angry. If he could beat him up, he would have found an opportunity to get him.
"Why are you still so unhappy after winning?" Chen Yao hadn't noticed Lin Nan's situation while concentrating on the game.
Xiong Da sat right next to Lin Nan and casually explained: "That livestream guy was a bit excessive."
"Really?" Walking from backstage to the audience seating, Chen Yao looked up toward the stage and found that guy with the phone was basically just staring at certain pretty female players or even filming pretty spectators below, obviously deliberately adding gimmicks for the livestream.
He also really disliked this behavior, curling his lip and cursing: "Probably brain damaged."
"I'm going back first, nothing interesting to watch."
Lin Nan sighed and turned to leave toward the dormitory. Chen Yao quickly followed, but looking back, he found Xiong Da and Tu Junhui seemed to be staying to watch the competition on site.
He caught up to Lin Nan's side and said with a smile: "After finishing this competition, we can relax Win two more rounds next week and we can earn a thousand yuan. Happy?"
"Not happy." Lin Nan stuffed his hands into his sun protection jacket pockets, deliberately copying Dong An's swagger, trying hard to act very manly.
Chen Yao was speechless. Ever since Lin Nan came clean to his parents, he seemed to care more and more about gender issues. Sometimes he always tried to act manly, but to others he looked like a tomboy at most.
"Is it because you're about to have surgery?" he guessed.
"Huh?" Lin Nan looked up in confusion.
"You're about to have surgery to become a girl, so you've been caring about this recently, right?"
Chen Yao basically guessed Lin Nan's thoughts, which made Lin Nan's face darken. Then feeling somewhat embarrassed, he turned his head away.
Previously he had hoped to return to his former appearance, but now he had completely given up on this expectation.
Before becoming completely female, Lin Nan just wanted to properly be a man for a while longer.