Both the Kills and You Are Mine

At the cafe. “Two lattes, please.” The girl in front of the counter has a head full of straight black and beautiful hair. She has cute air bangs on her forehead. And her face has delicate makeup with a small heart drawn under her eye. She does not wear cosmetic contact lenses but her eyes are bright, her nose is small but tall, her lips are a pretty shape of an M, the faint and pinkish lipstick making her look extremely vivid and cute. Just like a doll. Unfortunately, she has on a pair of long and loose denim straight pants that already have a few holes on them. “I’m not joining,” she states. “It’s more value for money that way. Our ala carte desserts are all 32 dollars each.” Mu Wanwan creases her brows slightly as she repeats, “I’m not joining.” “How about this,” The waiter pulls out a smile which he himself thinks is graceful, “We also have many limited promotions. As long as you write down your opinions on our cafe and leave your contact details behind, you can receive a free dessert.” The promotion is, of course, fake. He is willing to spend 32 dollars in exchange for her phone number. Mu Wanwan stares at him for a long while and then, she smiles all of a sudden, “Sure, give me the paper.” She presses the paper against her palm and starts writing seriously. The two cups of latte are placed in front of her when she is done. She puts down the money and paper, uses her finger to hook the carrier for the latte and leaves the cafe without turning back. The waiter regains his senses and quickly looks at the paper in front of him. Her handwriting is smooth and round, just like herself. “I’ll file a complaint against you if you continue to be this pesky next time. :)” It is already well into autumn, so the weather is chilly. Mu Wanwan quickens her steps on her way back to her apartment, attracting many looks from around her, not because she is good-looking but because of her weird clothing combination. Her upper body is covered in a soft and cute look but she has paired it with loose denim. It looks weird no matter what. She returns to her computer once she arrives at her apartment, the screen displaying her streaming page. The League of Legends client is open and at the bottom right side of the screen shows her webcam view. “Sorry about that. I came across a troublesome waiter which took me some time.” The comments flow in along with her words. [Who is this streamer, a newbie? Why is her popularity so high? She literally just went live and she’s already ranked third in popularity in the online game category??] [You look good. Grill*, do you play support*?] (T/N*: A popular word used in the gaming community to refer to girls. Has a slightly negative connotation.) [Did you not see the streamer’s ID?] When the new viewers see that comment, do they finally look at the game screen carefully. DepressedPrince, Lv 30. DepressedPrince??? Almost every viewer who often watches streams or higher-tiered players has an impression of the ID DepressedPrince. This account has killed its way straight from the Challenger rank to the top ten on the Chinese server. It is currently the highest-ranked ADC player causing quite an uproar within the community. [......... Dafuq? This name, isn’t this the ADC who has been going around massacring everyone in the Chinese server? It’s a girl???] [FYI, this female streamer has streamed on TigerTV for two months. She was a hit but that platform isn’t that popular, so many of you may not know about her. She was poached by BattleCatTV just recently.] Mu Wanwan did not look at the comments since she had gone out to get herself coffee the second she turned on her stream. She has not given her stream a title yet. She opens the editing page, thinks for a second, and types. <Wanan, ADC, Challenger rank, giving out a 1000RMB* red packet for every time bot lane loses.> (T/N*: Approximate 150USD.) [That typing speed!!] [Good shit, Imma camp in this stream today. Hope the streamer won’t go bankrupt.] [Such a proper girl, why did you name yourself DepressedPrince in-game?] Mu Wanwan glances at the comments and answers, “Because I don’t want an online boyfriend.” The chat goes quiet for a moment before the comments of ‘6666*’ comes flooding in again. (T/N*: 6 and 溜 have very similar pronunciations. Therefore, 溜溜溜 is often replaced by 666. It is a very commonly used slang to describe someone doing something extremely well or very proficiently. It is almost always used with positive connotations.) She does not say anything further as she clicks on the ‘PLAY’ button, joining the queue for an in-game matchmaking. Since her rank is high, the time for matchmaking has become relatively longer. She takes advantage of the waiting time to look at her system messages.
BattleCatTV Manager: “I have pushed you onto the recommended pages~” BattleCatTV Manager: “Why are you not in front of the monitor???” BattleCatTV Manager: “You there??” Mu Wanwan quickly replies to the messages, “Here, sorry about that. I went out to buy something just now.” Everyone has their own eccentricity, even Mu Wanwan. The lack of coffee beside her hand greatly affects the quality of her controls in-game. It sounds pretty ridiculous, but it is what it is. Just as the comment states just now, she has, indeed, been poached by BattleCatTV with a high price. Strictly speaking, the word ‘poached’ is not accurate. When TigerTV contacted her in-game, they asked her to “try streaming”, so she did not sign any binding contract with them. Coincidentally, the money BattleCatTV offers is extremely pleasing, so she up and went with absolutely no qualms whatsoever. Mu Wanwan is a game streamer, she plays a game called League of Legends, one of the most popular games right now. It is a 5V5 battle game where each team has five positions. She plays the ADC role at the bottom lane, responsible for most of the team’s physical damage output. As the ADC role demands high levels of character control, awareness and APM*, so most ADCs are male players. (T/N*: Action per minute.) Now that the highest-ranked ADC female player in the Challenger rank has suddenly appeared, together with her eye-catching stream title, the stream naturally attracts a lot of attention, pushing her to the top of the popularity ranks on the streaming platform. As the number of viewers increases, so does the number of comments. [You bought this account, didn’t you? This streamer is quite willing to spend, huh?] [She must have some skills if she dares to use such a stream title.] [Are y’all blind? You call this good-looking? I guarantee you that even her mum doesn’t recognise her once she washes off that makeup.] Mu Wanwan laughs, “Indeed, my mum would not have recognised me.” [66666 Very honest.] [Why is the matchmaking taking so long?] What Mu Wanwan said is, indeed, the truth. The reason why she has put on such heavy makeup is to prevent her mum from recognising her. There is no way Lady Lin would agree to her being a streamer. “Give it a moment. It is common in this rank.” Just as she said that the system cooperates really well by letting her in a game as well as assigning her to the ADC role. Her first gaming stream on BattleCatTV is officially beginning, the crowd giving her much support by sending her small gifts on stream. She does have quite a following from TigerTV and most of them have followed her to BattleCatTV now. Just as Mu Wanwan is banning heroes, a big, special effect appears on the streaming page on her side. <NNJiujiu left a bunch of gifts in Wanan’s stream! Enter the stream to snatch one for yourself!> The chat goes mad instantly. Not because of how rare such gifts are since it costs about 1000 dollars each, it definitely isn’t cheap, but it is not exceptionally expensive either. The key point is that “NNJiujiu” is also a female streamer on BattleCatTV. She is the long-standing number one streamer in the singing and entertainment category. [Jiujiu? Did I see it wrong?] [Stream raid from Jiujiu! Wishing Wanan an auspicious debut stream!] [NNJiujiu: I threw a bunch of gifts in your stream, aren’t you gonna thank me?] Mu Wanwan laughs, “Thank you for little boss Jiujiu’s gifts.] [NNJiujiu: No need, you’re paying for dinner tomorrow.] As soon as that comment appears, everyone understands right away that these two female streamers are friends in real life. No wonder the other one came over to cheer her on and pull in more popularity. Lin Jiu returns to her own stream after raiding Mu Wanwan’s stream. Mu Wanwan brings her focus back to her main screen. Seeing that their team’s support chooses Janna, she quickly bans Lulu without much thought. The current patch is finally slightly more user-friendly towards the bottom lane because of the new god-tier support item -- Ardent Censer. Lulu and Janna benefit the most from it, earning themselves the title “Censer Monster”. To put it simply, as long as they have a Janna in their team, the bottom lane will have an advantage over the opposite team’s bottom lane during their laning phase. After all, everyone’s skills can’t be too bad at this rank. After the banning phase, she lowers her eyes and asks unhurriedly, “Which ADC do you guys wanna see?” The chat immediately fills with the names of different heroes. She glances and decides, “Sure thing, Twitch it is.” She picks Twitch without any hesitation. She glances at their team’s player one, Janna, and sees the opposite’s team bottom lane team combination -- Jinx and Leona. The corner of her lips lifted slightly, her tone becomes arrogant. “The opposite team’s bot lane is done for.” [Rubbish. Twitch winning against Jinx? You talk really big.] [I’m guessing you guys have not seen Wanan’s stream before, right? There is a reason why she was such a hit on TigerTV.] That particular comment was buried quickly by other comments without attracting anyone’s attention. Mu Wanwan types out a line in the game chat once they load into the game. DepressedPrince [the Plague Rat]: “push at 6.” LittleXiaoxiao [the Storm’s Fury]: “ok. we meet again. how’s your condition?” Mu Wanwan’s viewers quickly recognised the ID LittleXiaoxiao. He is Team MA’s reserve player called Xiao. Seeing that, the viewers get even more enthusiastic. Furthermore, judging from Xiao’s dialogue, it seems like he has played with the streamer before. Mu Wanwan has no intention of replying at all. She is in the blue team this game. She helps their jungle by dealing two auto-attacks on the red buff and then swiftly walks to her lane. Mu Wanwan is relatively peaceful during her early laning phase despite being harassed pretty badly by Jinx’s cannon shots. The chat begins sneering at her. Mu Wanwan can read the viewers’ comments on the left side of her screen. She ignores the negative comments, calmly clears the golem camp near her, and successfully gets to level 6.
She glances at her support. Janna has just gone back to base and has yet to return, as if waiting for money. On the other hand, Jinx is already solo laning. She looks again at her creep wave’s position and Jinx’s build, goes invisible resolutely and starts towards Jinx sneakily. Janna sees her movements and immediately pings on the map to signal for her to fall back but it only falls on deaf ears. Wu Wanwan sneaks around and gets beside Jinx, smashes a W on the ground, successfully reducing the opponent’s speed, and follows up with a series of auto-attacks. Predicted the other party has gone invisible and is sneaking up on her, Jinx quickly reacts by turning around and dealing auto-attacks on Twitch for a while. However, there are too many minions around so Jinx’s W, which can reduce the opponent’s speed, can not reach Twitch at all. Going against an ADC with poison that deals damage over time is clearly disadvantageous, so Jinx resolutely decides to fall back after throwing an E, a crowd control skill. But Mu Wanwan already expected when she moved her character to the side just as the opponent throws out her E, successfully avoiding Jinx’s traps and immediately activating her ultimate R. With reduced speed, there is no way for Jinx to dodge Twitch’s ranged attacks, her HP immediately drops low. This time, Jinx turns around again to use her W, attempting to slow Twitch down but Twitch easily dodges it again, taking advantage of the Jinx’s cast time to get right into her face, securing the kill. [Disregarding everything else, I’m convinced that positioning…] [The streamer herself is only left with 200HP, that’s all luck.] [Why do I have a feeling that the streamer has actually considered the HP before going for the kill?] With this solo kill, Mu Wanwan is able to take advantage of her better equipment and snowball the game. Her score is up to 4/0 when she destroys the bottom lane’s first tower. She’s one fed Twitch. Unfortunately, her team is a bit of a letdown. Lifting her head, she sees the teams’ overall score, 11/6. The opposite team has 11 kills while they have 6. And out of those kills, 4 kills are Mu Wanwan’s. Throughout the whole lane phase, their team’s jungler has not once gone down to the bottom lane for ganks. Rather, the other team’s jungler tried to gank her twice. Judging from that, it is obvious how badly the other lanes are doing this game. Luckily, Twitch is very strong in team fights. Together with their top lane, Jarvan, Mu Wanwan is confident in killing a few in a team fight as long as Jarvan traps the opponents with his ultimate. After the first wave of team fights, Mu Wanwan realises how overly optimistic she was. Did she just count on a Jarvan with a score of 0/5/1 (Kills/Deaths/Assists)? The moment Jarvan tries to get into the fight with his EQ combo, he gets focused fire to death before his Q is even released. But players in this rank generally know themselves. After the first wave of team fights, Jarvan immediately switches out all of his current gear in exchange for a more tanky build. In their next team fight, Jarvan’s ultimate did activate — trapping one opponent in it, Singed, who is tanky as heck. After this round of team fights, Mu Wanwan cannot bear it anymore and mumbles, “Other Jarvan’s ultimate is for trapping people while ours uses his ultimate to feed.” The keyboard goes pitter-patter as she types quickly into the in-game chat. DepressedPrince: “Jarvan, you’re too awesome.” Jarvan: “???” DepressedPrince: “There were 5 of them literally standing right in front of you and yet you can accurately trap ONLY Singed, you must be really good with UFO catchers, aren’t you?” ---------- Author’s note: The game is based on League of Legends, Season 7, with some changes.