[JX3] The Crack Ship I Shipped as a Joke Turned Out to Be Real

As an obscure little streamer for Jian Wang 3, Ku Shan has a pretty fulfilling life.

Just as Ku Shan had resigned himself to scraping by like this for the rest of his life, he ran into an old friend backstage at an offline gaming expo, someone he hadn't been in touch with for years and had long assumed he'd never cross paths with again.

His friend asked what he was doing there.

Ku Shan lowered his head and stammered, unable to bring himself to say he was there to cheer on his buddy in the Jian Wang 3 offline tournament.

-

Someone once asked Bian Jing what his biggest regret was after all these years of playing CS.

Everyone thought Bian Jing would look back on some match where he'd performed badly and gotten flamed by viewers.

Instead, after three seconds of thought, Bian Jing said, "There's a friend. I don't know why, but one day he just stopped contacting me."

-

The annual Masters Tournament.

Ku Shan put together a team of casual players, disappearing on weekend nights during the qualifiers to grind for points.

The first weekend of qualifiers went by like this. The next day, Bian Jing asked in his livestream, "Why aren't you bringing me to the Masters?"

"The top 16 have to compete offline. Do you have time?"

"I do."

Ku Shan stressed, "Offline, bro."

Bian Jing: "I have time."

Ku Shan thought, Do you really not know which part of that sentence is the point? With the chat scrolling across the screen, he joked, "Come on, bro. People in my chat are already asking why I didn't bring you."

"Yeah," said Bian Jing, completely oblivious. "I'd like to know that too. Why aren't you bringing me?"

"...Don't mess with me, man..."

Why aren't I bringing you? You know damn well why. You're an FPS champion, and now you're randomly showing up at the Jian Wang 3 Masters... What are you trying to do?

-

Bian Jing x Ku Shan

FPS esports champion x an MMO player who likes to lie flat

The FPS player who's best at Jian Wang 3 x the Jian Wang 3 streamer who's best at shooters

Mutual pining, second-chance romance, keyboard-and-mouse MMORPG;

*Jian Wang 3 esports (crossed out)

*The 95 era (Maybe this counts as a Jian Wang 3 period piece?)

*An absolutely enormous amount of forum posts from the perspective of fans shipping the couple (emphasis: an unbelievably huge amount _(:з"∠)_)

*The characters aren't based on real people. Parallel world, unrealistically glamorous esports, not realistic at all, so don't compare it to real life

Theme: Striving for victory