You Said We Were Just Playing for Fun, So Why Are You Going Pro? [Esports]

Cold-faced, socially anxious, frail, gorgeous, killer mid-lane receiver x sunny, clingy, unexpectedly feral jungler giver on the main team

Xu Zhiqiu's last memory was of four in the morning. After confidently picking LeBlanc in a competitive match and losing, he queued for ranked and lost nine games in a row. When he got into the queue for the tenth, a teammate recognized his ID in champion select.

[Are you really God Qiu?]

Just as he thought he'd run into a fan, the next message appeared.

[Bro, please play Galio. I want to win.]

Xu Zhiqiu did the guy the courtesy of locking in LeBlanc on the spot.

As if! You can lose a ranked game, but you can't lose your dignity.

But before he could send "I'll hard-carry this game" in the chat, he was already out of this life.

When he opened his eyes again, Xu Zhiqiu had returned to age seventeen.

Good news: His hands were young again.

Bad news: His legs didn't work properly.

Worse news: His bank balance was in the triple digits.

Worst news: The original owner's League of Legends account was Gold IV on Ionia, and they mainly played support.

The champion pool was lush with Lulu, Janna, and Nami, while the mid-lane champions looked like they'd been banned ten games in a row. His profile on the game-boosting service was heartbreakingly modest, too:

[Support for fun, my voice isn't sweet but I'm well-behaved. No guaranteed wins, just here to keep you company~]

Former world champion mid-laner Xu Zhiqiu studied it for three seconds, then deleted it and wrote a new one.

[Support for fun, not much talking, can win.]

On the first day after transmigrating, no rich family's manager showed up like in a short drama, and no youth-team contract arrived out of nowhere so he could show them all.

All he had was a Gold support account, a three-digit bank balance, a body that wasn't working right for reasons he couldn't understand, and bills piling up.

Xu Zhiqiu: "I only threw one promotion tournament!"

"Are the haters' wishes really that powerful?"

Xu Zhiqiu accepted it.

First, he'd take game-boosting jobs and earn some money. Once he climbed the ranks, the pro scene would be his again sooner or later.

Who knew that Heartbeat, the game-boosting platform owned by a sponsor, was holding an exhibition tournament with pro team NOVA, and randomly picking platform users to play?

Xu Zhiqiu signed up on a whim.

Xu Zhiqiu got picked on a whim.

On the day of the event, he entered the room with his Gold IV support certification. After checking his profile, all four teammates voiced their confidence in him.

Then he carried the team to victory all by himself.

Opponent: "His profile says he does this for fun."

Xu He stared at the match stats and smiled. "He has a pretty twisted idea of fun."

--

What Xu Zhiqiu feared most was being abandoned after people found out he wasn't good enough anymore.

Xu He, meanwhile, loved imagining the future.

The more Xu Zhiqiu heard, the guiltier he felt. Bro, when you say "join the team house," you'd better not be assuming I'm walking in.

So he climbed all the way into the top ten on the Korean server, figuring he had at least built up enough value for people to be reluctant to leave him behind. Only then did he stammer out what was on his mind.

Xu He: "Did you sign with another team behind my back?"

Xu Zhiqiu: "..."

But as the two of them fought their way to the top, slaying anyone who stood in their path, Xu Zhiqiu's old heartache from his previous life came back...

Devoted 1v1, both leads have only been with each other. The game is League of Legends, and you can follow the story even if you don't play. The later part focuses more on the ensemble cast.

Theme: Fate tests us again and again, just to see a steadfast heart