A Pro Gamer Is About to Retire [Esports]

[A mid-length novel of just over 100,000 characters!]

Player5, the top player in the LTE division, is planning to retire.

On the day he posts his retirement announcement on Weibo, he and his boyfriend Lu Xing begin reminiscing about their ten years in professional esports.

*

When You Jiayan first went pro, his ID was Player.

He thought it would be fun, and feel like fate, if he won Best Player and the big screen showed: “The best player is Player.”

In his second year as a pro, on his eighteenth birthday, he won his first S championship.

But that year, despite being the team's de facto core, he didn't win the Best Player title.

Instead, because he hadn't stood out enough on the team and made a major mistake in the finals, everyone called him a “fifth-place champion.”

Most viewers didn't care about the crucial decisions he'd made to save the team.

All they cared about were the mistakes he made while distracted by calling plays.

You Jiayan refused to accept it, so in a fit of anger he changed his pro ID to Player5.

A few days later, his former teammate Lu Xing, who wasn't his boyfriend yet and whose team had lost to You Jiayan's in the finals, changed his Chinese server ID to Player6.

“If I can't beat Player5, I can only be Player6,” Lu Xing said on stream.

You Jiayan was stunned.

*

You Jiayan (Player5) x Lu Xing (Dust)

The top: fiercely competitive, insecure, afraid of losing what he has, and a bit of a handful. The bottom: focused on the process, indifferent to winning and losing, emotionally steady, and endlessly tolerant.

Same-year senior x older; support x jungler; both shot-callers

Reader's guide:

1. Set in a fictional PC 5v5 MOBA. The competitive format follows the professional League of Legends circuit. Matches aren't described in detail; the focus is on their experiences and romance.

2. Told entirely in flashback, covering both characters' full careers. The title refers to the fact that the two esports pros are about to retire. In terms of honors, they are the top two in their division.

3. The protagonists play professionally for ten years, from age sixteen to twenty-five, including three nonconsecutive years on the same team.

Character design by @Bingzizi. Commercial use rights purchased ><

Theme: Success and failure are both part of life.