The Addiction of Youth [Esports]

- The story is complete -

[Upcoming stories: Seven Floors and Lonely Isle. Please add them to your favorites~]

Shen Shi, the support player for JN, hit his peak as soon as he debuted. His incredible gaming skills and handsome, refined looks won the hearts of countless fans.

Fans shared Shen Shi’s promotional photos on Weibo and couldn’t help sighing: He’s so handsome, but way too aloof.

Some haters sneered: So what if he’s the world’s best support? Maybe he has a fear of women.

But just a few days later, photos of Shen Shi appeared on Weibo. In the hallway of the JN team’s base, he had a newly hired photographer backed against the wall, his eyes full of tenderness.

The woman wore nothing more than a simple white T-shirt and high-waisted jeans. Her baseball cap was pulled low, but some people still recognized her.

"Isn’t that Shen Shi’s ex-girlfriend? The one who won the Xia Qiao Cup championship with him?"

*

Feng Jining was once the star AD carry for Nanshan University’s team. She and Shen Shi had fought their way to victory together, winning the national college league championship several times.

Many teams had once offered enormous sums to sign the pair, whose synergy as a bottom-lane duo was unmatched. But then an accident fractured the middle finger of Feng Jining’s right hand, ending her chance at a professional career.

When Feng Jining first met Shen Shi, she knew his dream was to reach the world championship stage and bring home the S Championship trophy.

So after the accident, she left Shen Shi without hesitation, decisive and resolute.

Stubborn as she was, she didn’t want to hold Shen Shi back from his dream.

Feng Jining never imagined she would see Shen Shi again in her lifetime.

Nor did she imagine she would get another chance to fight alongside him.

Least of all did she expect that at the S Championship final, Shen Shi wouldn’t rush madly to kiss the trophy he had yearned for all those years.

Instead, he slipped a rose diamond ring, her favorite, onto her middle finger, covering the faint red scar. He stood up, pressed a light kiss beside her ear, and declared to the whole world under the gaze of countless people:

"Feng Jining, you have always been my dream."

[She was the obsession of his youth. Unless he could make her completely his, there was no cure.]

[Important Notes]

1. The game teams and players mentioned in this story are entirely fictional. Please don't speculate about real-life inspirations.

2. Some details are the author's own additions.

3. 1v1, both leads are each other's first love, reunited after a breakup.

[Upcoming Story 1: Seven Floors]

Back in college, Jiang Wei was wild and uninhibited. Beautiful and flamboyant, she was like a thorny wild rose. Her admirers could have lined up from the cafeteria entrance all the way to the dormitory.

Yet she didn't like any of them. Instead, she went after a younger student herself. He was supposedly the famously unattainable beauty of the finance department, and very hard to win over.

When someone asked what she saw in him, she nonchalantly said around her cigarette, "He’s handsome, and he has abs."

Her best friend rolled her eyes. "Come on, you’re just after something new."

Later, they did break up.

*

When they met again, Jiang Wei had removed the tattoo from her wrist, permed her hair into obedient black curls, and was sitting in a lively bar across from the blind date her family had arranged for her.

As luck would have it, the bar belonged to the younger man she had dumped.

In a dim, narrow hallway, Ji Han corners her against the wall. Holding the cigarette she had just smoked, he calmly lowers his head to the circle of bright red lipstick on it.

Jiang Wei freezes. "Since when did you learn to smoke?"

Ji Han exhales and turns to look at her. "You’re allowed to learn to behave, but I’m not allowed to learn to be bad?"

*

Ji Han once loved a woman without holding anything back. In all his twenty-some years, there was only one person he had ever loved so much he nearly went mad.

She liked drinking, so he opened a bar.

She liked Chen Li, so he named the bar Seven Floors.

He had heard her sing Chen Li’s song "Seven Floors." She sat by the road, holding a guitar and singing each word softly. She was so beautiful she seemed unreal, so beautiful it drove him mad.

"Let me down a cup of poison called delusion / Let me drown in a meeting long planned / Let me lose myself, playing the fool amid the lovely scene / Let me surrender / Then beg for more"

Unfortunately, he never did manage to pluck that wild rose, stem and all.

But it didn’t matter. He could still... beg for more, one more time.

* Utterly wild x unattainable beauty

* Older woman, younger man romance

[Upcoming Story 2: Lonely Isle]

When the rain began to fall, Chen Qingyu had just finished a fight.

Blood from the corner of his mouth dripped onto his school uniform, staining the white fabric a grotesque red. Then an umbrella appeared over his head, and someone offered him a packet of clean tissues.

"Are you okay?"

Chen Qingyu looked up and saw Ni Zhi beneath the umbrella. Her uniform was spotless, her face fair and clear, her eyes as adorable as crescent moons.

He instinctively wiped his hand on the hem of his uniform, then hesitantly reached for the tissue in her hand.

"Zhizhi, what are you doing here?" Someone ran over and pulled Ni Zhi away.

The newcomer glared at him with disdain. "Stay away from someone like that."

"I..." Ni Zhi started to explain, but the other person had already pulled her out of the alley. "Come on, your aunt called to hurry us home for dinner."

The girl’s footsteps faded at the mouth of the alley, leaving only the rain’s steady roar.

Chen Qingyu knew that boy. Zhao Jiashu, student council president, always at the top of the class, and every teacher’s favorite.

He lived in the same courtyard as Ni Zhi. They had grown up together, childhood friends.

He called her Zhizhi.

*

Instinct is the hardest thing to restrain. His love for Ni Zhi was the same, growing wild in an abyss no one else could see.

So he fought for her, got hurt for her, made a fool of himself for her, and let the whole world despise him for her.

All because he wanted to climb toward that light.

The light called Ni Zhi.

* Love triangle, salvation from the abyss versus childhood sweethearts. The male lead is Chen Qingyu.

Theme: Supporting each other, staying together through it all, and finding a happy love