Chapter Text
Yu Wenzhou is in the Heavenly Domain when a figure bounds out in front of him, spewing a flurry of words so fast he can barely keep up.
"Hey hey, you. Yeah you, the Warlock. Are you buying stuff? Don’t go to that guy over there.” The person, a swordsman, steps between Yu Wenzhou and the vendor whose wares he was eyeing, still talking. “All his armor is way overpriced. What a ripoff. I'm here all the time so I know everything about everyone. Don't worry, I'll help you get the best price!"
Yu Wenzhou shrugs him off with a quick, “I don’t pay commission to third parties,” and goes on his way. He has no intention of buying but it’s the easiest way to get rid of these kinds of pests.
The market is busy, cobblestone streets teeming with brightly dressed avatars as they browse the various stalls and haggle over weapons and equipment. Yu Wenzhou weaves his way through the crowd, keeping an eye on the ebb and flow around him. Most of his free time is taken up with training but the rest is spent here in the game, scouting for interesting tidbits of gossip and tracking price fluctuations. It’s amazing the amount of information it’s possible to glean simply by watching the movement of goods. The guild has spies for that kind of thing but as vice-captain of Blue Rain, Yu Wenzhou considers it his duty to keep his fingers on the pulse of the game. He’ll never forget the look on Sun Zheping’s face when Blue Rain showed up to their first playoff game prepared for his upgraded weapons, all because Yu Wenzhou had tracked his Boss kills in the Heavenly Domain.
For a blissful few minutes, the interloper disappears and Yu Wenzhou is left in silence to jot down a few observations in the notebook he keeps next to the keyboard. Before long, the noise in his headset starts up again. The swordsman is back and he’s louder than ever. It’s more trouble than it’s worth to shoo him away again, and Yu Wenzhou doesn’t want to make a scene by trying. There’s no harm in letting some enthusiastic player follow him around. Yu Wenzhou’s Warlock, Evening Glow, is just another character among the masses. There’s nothing to tie him back to Blue Rain or his professional identity as a member of the team. And so the two of them wander the market together, Yu Wenzhou taking note of various prices to determine which equipment is oversaturated and what’s highly prized.
The swordsman continues to chatter. “...anyone rips you off I can push them over a cliff and steal their weapons. I’m great at that. Wait no, I don't do that kind of thing anymore, I— Hey, why are you going that way, that lady doesn’t sell Warlock stuff! Come back, come this way.”
Yu Wenzhou doesn’t come back, but he pauses in his stride to allow the swordsman to catch up. Despite his better judgment, he’s grown a bit fond of his lively shadow. The colorful commentary is a nice background to the constant price calculations flitting through his mind. The swordsman is surprisingly insightful once Yu Wenzhou stops tuning him out. And he’s funny. Yu Wenzhou laughs more in ten minutes than he has in months.
In a fit of curiosity, he takes a closer look at the guy’s stat page.
And nearly runs Evening Glow into a wall.
He brings his avatar to a halt and reads the words again. And once more, just in case he read it wrong the first two times. It’s impossible. It can’t be. Except it’s right there in tiny lettering, leaving no room for interpretation.
The swordsman is an NPC.
Yu Wenzhou gives his brain a good kick. If it wasn’t for the facts in front of his face, he’d swear it was a real person at his side. A real person who liked to talk and tell jokes and was maybe a little lonely. And who has so many opinions, Yu Wenzhou mentally adds, going over the mountain of things he heard over the course of the afternoon.
Or maybe it isn’t so unlikely. Perhaps the game devs are experimenting with adding new AI features to flesh out the storyline and make it more interesting for regular players. It seems like a long shot but the proof is standing beside him in the artificial sunlight of the game, still talking about what makes a good weapon for Warlocks and the one time a very rude Warlock tricked him and killed him.
Yu Wenzhou should log into Glory more often if he’s managed to miss such a huge upgrade. “I didn’t realize they were making you so advanced,” he muses aloud.
“Make me?” The NPC swings his sword like he’s decided to fight an invisible foe. “I’m Troubling Rain. No one makes me do anything. Fight me if you don’t believe me. Fight me, come on let’s fight!”
“Maybe next time,” Yu Wenzhou tells him, deftly sidestepping a wild swing. He isn’t in the mood to downplay his ability in a public fight with someone who isn’t even real.
On his desk, his phone vibrates, a calendar reminder that he has an end-of-season handover session with Captain Wei in a few minutes. He pulls his account card from the reader, cutting off a second wave of enthusiastic demands to meet in the arena.
Everything he needs for the meeting is stacked neatly on the edge of his desk. Yu Wenzhou should be thinking about his preparations, but as he makes his way toward the captain’s office, he can’t shake the conversation he had with the strange NPC.
I’m Troubling Rain. No one makes me do anything.
Strangely enough, Yu Wenzhou is inclined to agree. Troubling Rain was more like a player than a program, with a unique personality and force of will of his own. He didn’t appear to be following a preset script while he trailed after Yu Wenzhou and loudly whispered funny insults. And offered a slew of surprisingly accurate assessments of the players around them, made from nothing more than observing their class, level, and the equipment they carried.
It’s an interesting conundrum but ultimately not worth Yu Wenzhou’s time. He has other matters to attend to. Like his meeting with the captain.
It goes as he expects.
“It’s time, kid,” Wei Chen says as he hands over Swoksaar’s account card. His fingertips are white but he lets go of the card when Yu Wenzhou takes it. “Guess I should call you Captain now, huh? Don’t let it go to your head.”
Yu Wenzhou has been training for this day all year but he still doesn’t feel ready. “You should stay on as vice-captain,” he says, and nearly kicks himself. This isn’t how he intended to broach the subject. He had plans, he was going to do it delicately. But now that he’s slipped, he may as well follow through. “You could play another year. The team still needs you.”
“No, you don’t.” Wei Chen reaches out to ruffle his hair and halts at the last moment to lay a hand on his shoulder instead. There’s something that looks like bitterness in his eyes and Yu Wenzhou can’t help but wonder if one day he too will see that look in the mirror when his time comes. “And don’t think you’re going to get away with trying to wriggle out of choosing your replacement that easily.”
The words settle like lead in Yu Wenzhou’s stomach. The selection of a new vice-captain is a problem with no solution. He doesn’t technically need one. There’s no official rule mandating the position be filled, but Yu Wenzhou has a vision of the type of team he wants to build, a team where responsibility is shared and where everyone has an important part to play. Where players can rely on each other.
And that kind of thing starts with the captain.
During the previous season, as Wei Chen became less of a distant mentor figure and more of a friend to Yu Wenzhou, he slowly began to confide his hopes for Blue Rain. Wei Chen dreamed of a dual-core team. To his despair, no one in the training camp had the skills to match his own, not until Yu Wenzhou defeated him during their now infamous training match. They joined forces to lead Blue Rain with dual Warlocks—attack and defense—but now their partnership is coming to an end. Blue Rain is once again a team without a dual core.
Today, Yu Wenzhou is inheriting not only the captain’s title and the captain’s avatar, but also the captain’s unfinished work.
He needs a partner. Someone to usher in the dual-core era Blue Rain was always meant to have.
Wei Chen stands, fishing a cigarette out of his pocket as he heads for the door. “Don’t come crying to me when you realize how much crap the captain has to deal with.” Like the man himself, the words are all bark and no bite. Wei Chen isn’t actually leaving. As of today, he’s Blue Rain’s new head trainer.
If he’s honest with himself, Yu Wenzhou is proud of that bit of persuasion. He didn’t just spend the past year refining his gameplay and preparing to step into the captain’s shoes. He spent it arguing with Wei Chen, laying out all his points for why it would be a mistake to leave Blue Rain entirely. It was Yu Wenzhou’s personal project, a way to repay Wei Chen for convincing him to debut in Season Three, a whole year earlier than he initially wanted.
‘Think of it as training,’ Wei Chen had said, ‘but you’re doing it on the stage instead of being some kind of armchair general. Let’s get those hands of yours dirty.’ And he kept saying it, until Yu Wenzhou agreed.
As it turned out, Wei Chen was right. As vice-captain, Yu Wenzhou reaped the benefit of experience without the pressure of a team on his shoulders. He was hardly going to repay Wei Chen by leaving him alone to face the world, not after everything he did for Yu Wenzhou.
“Strong-armed by a kid,” Wei Chen grumbled, the day he finally gave in and agreed not to leave.
In the coming years, it’s a phrase the trainees and players come to be intimately familiar with, muttered at least ten times a day by their head coach. Yu Wenzhou doesn’t gloat but he does flash a smug smile every time he sees Wei Chen surrounded by a horde of trainees, his grumbling unable to mask the contentment thick in the air.
Okay, maybe Yu Wenzhou gloats a little.
The last team meeting of the season is traditionally led by the captain. This year, Wei Chen waves Yu Wenzhou to the front of the room.
“Alright everyone, I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors and they’re all true. Your old captain is headed for a nice, easy life of training duties. From now on, you’ll have to brave the sweaty player booths without me.”
Yu Wenzhou raises an eyebrow. “Captain, can we really consider it a rumor if you already threw yourself a retirement party?”
Wei Chen swats him on the shoulder. “You kids today have no respect.”
A bark of laughter rings out from where the team is seated. “Respect? Ha! I respect you like I respect a wet, limp napkin.” Wu Yuming leans back in his seat, the studs in his ears glinting in the light. A Brawler both in Glory and in real life, he liked to claim. As Blue Rain’s oldest remaining member, he’s usually the first to heckle the captain during regular team meetings.
It was one of the things that surprised Yu Wenzhou most when he joined the main roster a year ago. Team practices were peppered with a steady flow of casual insults that somehow never eroded the seriousness of training, or Wei Chen’s authority over the team. Yu Wenzhou hasn’t yet decided if the lack of heckling directed at him is a good thing or a bad thing. It’s a puzzle for another day. For the moment, he has a meeting agenda to get through.
He steps forward and clears his throat. Instantly, the room falls silent.
A smile breaks over his face that he quickly schools into something more appropriate for a captain. “Hi everyone. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I’ll be the captain next season. I know that Captain Wei usually takes this time to review the season but I’d like to do something different this time.”
Yu Wenzhou scans the faces of his teammates. Most of them were around when he was a struggling trainee who could barely keep his spot in the youth training camp, he wouldn’t hold it against them if they had doubts. But all he sees are encouraging smiles, the same as when he was vice-captain. Even the veterans, the players who would be most justified in resenting an inexperienced captain with slow hands, are nodding at him.
Taking a breath, Yu Wenzhou sets his first plan as captain into motion. It only takes a few minutes for the team to rearrange their chairs into a circle rather than the rows of seats facing the front. Yu Wenzhou takes the last chair for himself, slotting it into place between Wei Chen and their veteran Exorcist Zhang Boqing.
“You’re not going to make us hold hands and sing, right?” asks the new rookie, Zheng Xuan. Technically, he’s still part of the training camp until September but he’s on Yu Wenzhou’s lineup for next season.
Yu Wenzhou smiles. “I won’t stop you if that’s what you’d like to do.”
The team breaks out in good-natured laughter as Zheng Xuan buries his face in his hands and groans about life being too stressful before he’s even debuted. Internally, Yu Wenzhou is pleased. He doesn’t know yet what kind of captain he’s going to be, but a captain who can laugh with his team is a good start.
“In any case,” Yu Wenzhou adds, “thank you for being our first volunteer.”
“Me?” Zheng Xuan squeaks, to a renewed round of snickering from the team.
“Normally Captain Wei likes to use this time to review the season but we’re going to change things up a bit and look forward instead. Zheng Xuan, what goal do you have for next season?”
The startled look on Zheng Xuan’s face is funny but Yu Wenzhou immediately regrets springing the question on him without any warning.
“Actually, I’ll go first,” Yu Wenzhou says. He looks around at his teammates new and old and feels a rush of excitement. “I won’t say my goal is to improve my hand speed because we all know that’s not going to happen.” It earns him a round of quiet laughter. “But mostly I’d like to brush up on my knowledge of the less frequently played classes. And to select a vice-captain.”
That last bit earns him more than a few considering looks but when Yu Wenzhou fails to elaborate, the rumblings die down into a gentle murmur.
One by one, the team takes turns going around the circle. Wu Yuming wants to do a 1v3. Zhang Boqing wants the chance to be more aggressive on the field. Du Cheng wants to win a home game now that his little sister is old enough to attend matches in person. Yu Wenzhou takes note of what’s important to each of them. He can’t make all of it come true, but it helps to know what they want in addition to their shared desire to bring home a championship trophy.
This time, when it’s Zheng Xuan’s turn to speak, he squares his shoulders and proudly says, “I don’t want to be vice-captain.”
Wu Yuming, one seat over, nudges his shoulder. “Famous last words, just you wait.”
Eventually, Yu Wenzhou coaxes out a real goal from Zheng Xuan, that he’s worried about hitting the rookie wall and not getting over it. Yu Wenzhou grimaces in remembrance, as does most of the team.
“It sucks but you’ll get through it,” Du Cheng throws out, to a chorus of nods and agreement. Du Cheng had debuted in Season Two and most everyone still remembers his disastrous 1v1 on the lake map.
“Since none of you asked, my goal is to never write another post-match report again,” Wei Chen breaks the ensuing silence, slouching in his chair and looking pleased with himself.
“You never wrote them in the first place,” Yu Wenzhou says. “I did.”
Zhang Boqing makes a gesture like dropping a microphone.
Wei Chen glares at them both but it’s just for show. The post-match report is an old inside joke. Yu Wenzhou took over the responsibility when he became vice-captain, but only because he was adamant that Wei Chen’s summaries were too atrocious to inflict on other people. In truth, Yu Wenzhou likes writing the reports. Reflecting on the team’s performance after a match helps focus his mind to make adjustments for the next one.
Eventually, the conversation moves on to the summer and everyone’s respective vacations. Several members of the team are traveling with family and friends, but Yu Wenzhou isn’t going anywhere further than the suburbs. After a few rounds of discussion, they decide to have a weekly in-game scrimmage that people can either attend or skip, depending on their plans. A low pressure way for the team to get together and maintain their skills during the break.
When Yu Wenzhou gets back to his room, he’s so caught up in his ideas for the scrimmages that he doesn’t notice anything amiss at first. It isn’t until he goes to draw up a schedule that he frowns at Evening Glow’s account card sitting on his desk.
“I thought I put you away,” he mumbles, slipping it back into the drawer.
He must have been more nervous about leading the meeting than he thought if he’s losing track of his things. Shaking it off, he fetches his notebook and marks down a few discussion points so he doesn’t forget them over the summer.
The season ends and they all go their separate ways, trading promises to keep in touch.
A hat and sunglasses go a long way towards ensuring Yu Wenzhou isn’t recognized on the subway. He's dressed down in jeans and a plain t-shirt, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder. Just another face in a sea of people.
The journey passes in a series of subway stops announced over the loudspeakers, but Yu Wenzhou barely hears it. His mind is too busy spinning, looking ahead towards a future whose shape he can’t yet see. He has a million and one ideas for next season, but no concrete plans. One thing he knows with disturbing clarity is that he doesn’t have the mechanics to carry the team on his shoulders like Wei Chen did, or like Tiny Herb’s new captain does. In order for his Blue Rain to be effective, they need to work together.
Which means Yu Wenzhou’s task this summer is to figure out how to do that without eroding his authority as captain. The end-of-season meeting was a good start, but he has ways to go.
On a whim, he took Evening Glow’s account card with him when he left. He likes playing with his old avatar, it’s a good distraction from thinking about the heavy weight of Swoksaar on his shoulders. The card is nestled away in a side pocket of his duffel bag, and while it isn’t large enough to make a difference, Yu Wenzhou can swear he feels the outline of it whenever the bag bumps against his hip.
The other reason for taking the card is more selfish in nature. Evening Glow never played a professional match—Yu Wenzhou used a stronger account for that, passed down by Fang Shijing when he retired—but it’s the account Yu Wenzhou used when he defeated Wei Chen for the first time. The account that sealed his future in Blue Rain. Keeping him locked away in a drawer all summer felt too much like abandonment.
Beneath his feet, the train rumbles as it takes him further away from the city. The trip home is an easy one and he passes unnoticed through the crowd, though he thinks he sees a group of girls pointing at him as he gets off at his stop near his childhood home.
The computer in his bedroom isn’t as good as the ones at Blue Rain, but it’s decent enough for his purposes. Yu Wenzhou unpacks his notebook and pens and the mouse he likes best, and marvels at the sense of strangeness that overcomes him at the thought of playing Glory surrounded by his childhood trinkets. Luckily, it’s a feeling that fades the very first time he dons his headset.
Somehow he isn’t surprised when Troubling Rain finds him almost immediately after he spawns, running up to him with his sword glinting in the air. “Evening Glow, look it’s you, you’re here, you’re here! What a coincidence, isn’t this great, I think it’s so great.”
And fine, maybe Yu Wenzhou wasn’t entirely truthful with himself. Maybe the real reason he took the card was to see Troubling Rain again.
It’s been less than a week since that day in the Heavenly Domain but more than once, Yu Wenzhou has found his thoughts wandering to the funny swordsman with the big mouth. He scraps his plan of finding a group of Blue Brook members to party up with, and adjusts his character’s trajectory to bring him into step with Troubling Rain. Together, they spend the day running dungeons.
Troubling Rain doesn’t try to claim any of the materials that drop, leaving them all for Evening Glow. It’s strange that he can enter a dungeon, let alone do damage, and it reminds Yu Wenzhou to ask his friend who works in Glory development about these new NPCs. Perhaps it’s not a full rollout but a beta test with a single character that Yu Wenzhou has stumbled upon. Some kind of easy mode for players who want to experience Glory but are too shy to do it with real life strangers.
Whatever the case, Troubling Rain finds Yu Wenzhou that first day and keeps finding him. No matter where Evening Glow goes on the map, he picks up a noisy shadow. Eventually, Yu Wenzhou simply expects him to be there, chatting by his side wherever he goes.
They’re picking their way through a snowy mountain path when Yu Wenzhou asks, “Have you ever taken on a responsibility you’re not sure you’re ready for?” He doesn’t know why he says it. He’s never told anyone, not even Wei Chen, who insists he’s more than qualified.
Troubling Rain isn’t a real person, though. Maybe that’s why it’s easier.
“Once, yeah, I did!” Troubling Rain shrugs, squinting at the sky. His sword spins through the air, a background cadence to his voice. “Don’t tell anyone, but it was scary, even though I’m not scared of anything. That old man found me and invited me to—nevermind, nevermind, somewhere cool. A cool place to do a cool thing. My parents said I was way louder than usual when I found out. So noisy, they said. Drink some milk and calm down. They were very wrong though, the milk just gave me more energy.” He pauses, resting his sword over his shoulder. “Your cool opportunity, did you take it?”
Yu Wenzhou almost logs out. What is he doing, spilling his secrets to some random NPC? His hand tightens on the mouse, chest heaving as he breathes through it, one long drag of air after another until his heart no longer feels like it’s trying to break out of his chest and flee. When it passes, he forces himself to sit upright and think. His brain is his strongest weapon, isn’t that what he told himself during those early years when everyone around him was so convinced his slow hands would be the end of him.
So what if he wants to talk to an NPC? Is it any wonder he chose Troubling Rain, someone with no ties to Blue Rain to cloud his judgment. Troubling Rain doesn’t have any expectations; none of his hopes and dreams are riding on Yu Wenzhou.
Yu Wenzhou brushes a lock of hair out of his eyes, the rush of adrenaline ebbing away. Frowning, he wipes the sweat on his shirt and turns back to his monitor. Troubling Rain is idling, though in a much more animated way than most NPCs, waiting for an answer. For a moment, Yu Wenzhou considers simply logging out. He can understand his drive to confide in a construct like Troubling Rain, but that doesn’t mean it's the right move.
A wild thought flits across his mind that Troubling Rain would be hurt if Evening Glow left without warning. And that should be warning enough that Yu Wenzhou is in too deep. Computer programs don’t have emotions, there’s nothing that exists for Yu Wenzhou to hurt.
He fiddles with his headset. Surely, it can’t do any harm to talk to a computer program. It’s not like Troubling Rain is going to tell anyone.
With a last long breath, he drops his hand back to the keyboard.
“Yes, I took it,” he says. “But I don’t know if I—” the words stick in his throat. For all his plans and his notes, he’s never said it out loud. “What if I let them down?”
There’s silence in his ears and he wonders if Troubling Rain has vanished. But no, he’s still there, still shifting in place and staring straight at Yu Wenzhou like he’s carefully considering his answer. Stop being ridiculous, he chides himself. It isn’t a real reaction, it’s just the preset facial animations in the game.
The problem with shifting his mind away from Troubling Rain is that it leaves him with nothing but himself.
What if I let everyone down?
The question echoes in his head, repeating itself as it races along each tiny crevice in his mind. But after the initial clamor dies down, Yu Wenzhou feels scrubbed clean. As if voicing his fear loosened the grip it had on him. If he fails, he’ll try it again and he’ll do it better. Again and again until he gets it right. Maybe the developers at Glory have the right idea with their artificial companions. Yu Wenzhou already feels better than he has in weeks. He’s on the verge of logging out so he can think more about it when Troubling Rain’s enthusiastic laughter comes through his headset.
“Let everyone down? Evening Glow, you’re great! And you’re nice too, no one ever talked to me until I met you, did you know that? You’re nice and you listen and you fight really good too, even if your spells are slow. No offense but they are. But you make it work for you, I never thought someone could do that.”
It’s a childish flight of fancy but Yu Wenzhou suddenly wishes Troubling Rain was real, and not a glorified chat program with a face.
He doesn’t know why he asks, but it suddenly seems important, far more important than logging out. “What about you? Did your opportunity turn out well?”
Maybe it’s a trick of the digitally rendered sun but for a split second, Troubling Rain’s face does this strange twisting, like he’s recalling a painful memory. “I did it! Or at least, I was going to. It was all sorted out, all I had to do was show up and I was so excited. And then…” He pauses when a group of birds fly overhead. Not monsters or a Boss, just a bit of background scenery. “Anyway, stuff happened and it didn’t work out. But I bet I would have been the best. I’d be so good everyone would bow down and cry.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get your chance,” Yu Wenzhou says, and he means it.
“That’s okay, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
For the rest of the day, Troubling Rain seems less enthusiastic than usual. There’s no reason to dwell on it but Yu Wenzhou can’t stop circling the memory. Troubling Rain’s response was a little too quick, a little too casual. So much like a real person brushing off a painful experience.
That’s the only reason to be unsettled, Yu Wenzhou tells himself as he enters another dungeon alongside Troubling Rain. He isn’t invested in Troubling Rain, he doesn’t care beyond the mild curiosity of solving an intriguing mystery.
He can’t care. Troubling Rain isn’t a real person.
Neither of them brings up the topic again.
Evening Glow walks into an ambush. It’s one of the rare times Yu Wenzhou is playing alone, and a band of scrap pickers mistake him for an easy target. A large group of them, hunting as a team.
He surprises them with the ferocity of his defense but they’re good. They rally quickly and move to surround him.
As skilled as they are, they’re no match for a professional player. It’s the work of moments to analyze their teamwork and find the weak link. Yu Wenzhou calculates where the largest group of them is heading even as the net around him closes tighter. He readies his next volley of Curse Arrows, fingers tapping steadily at the keys. Not fast, but accurate. Meticulous. Deliberate. According to his calculations, if he takes out enough of them in one blow, the rest will scatter like leaves.
Just as he casts the skill, a figure appears out of nowhere, jumping into the fray with his cape streaming behind him.
“Ha! Yeah like that, do you like that! Watch my sword, do you see it? No you don’t because you’re dead. Dead, dead, dead. Slash, slash, slash!” Troubling Rain’s mouth moves as fast as his blade as he gleefully decimates the unfortunate party that ambushed Evening Glow.
Curse Arrows rain down death from above. Half a dozen of their attackers fall yet not a single arrow hits Troubling Rain as he dances across the battlefield, sword flashing. Yu Wenzhou drags his eyes away and quickly revises his plan to account for a second person. Before long, Evening Glow starts casting.
A window pops up on his screen showing a request from Troubling Rain to join his party. There isn’t time to do anything but click “Accept.”
In between calculations, Yu Wenzhou’s mind is racing. NPCs just can't do that. Even if Troubling Rain is some kind of new NPC who’s witty and has a sad backstory and isn’t constrained to a single area, he shouldn’t be able to send party requests. He shouldn't be able to enter dungeons. He shouldn't have such a vibrant personality. But more than that, Troubling Rain plays like a professional. Or at least like a pro-in-training. Until this encounter, they mostly ran dungeons and hunted Wild Bosses and so Yu Wenzhou assumed his high level of play was because he was fighting computer-generated monsters. Their opponents here are real people, not machines. There’s no way he can know what they’re going to do in order to react with such accuracy.
Troubling Rain dodges a hail of bullets with the kind of precise microing he’d expect from Ye Qiu, following it up with a Triple Slash that takes him in multiple directions. An Assassin takes the hit and flies directly into the Soul Strike that Evening Glow just finished casting. As if Troubling Rain knew it would be there. Yesterday, Yu Wenzhou would have chalked it up to coincidence; there’s no way an NPC could be coded well enough to learn another player’s style and make such precise adjustments on the fly. Today, he’s not so sure.
“Take that, losers! Look at you, beat up by my sword and then taken out by a curse. You never stood a chance. That’s right, run away!” He chases after the retreating players, sword raised and still shouting nonsense. “Run away or our sword and curse will kill you dead, dead, dead!”
It’s impossible to read any intent into the facial expressions in the game, but when he turns around, Yu Wenzhou could swear Troubling Rain is beaming at him. He tries not to think about what it means that he's grinning at his monitor just as hard.
A quick glance at his watch makes him swear under his breath. He’s almost late for his own practice. Saying a quick goodbye to Troubling Rain, Yu Wenzhou swaps account cards and heads to the location where he’s scheduled to meet Blue Rain for their weekly scrimmage. They’re hunting Bosses today and Yu Wenzhou hopes it will serve the dual purpose of synergy training and helping to fill up Blue Brook’s storehouses for the upcoming season.
He gives a brief overview to the assembled players and then they’re all neck-deep in the fight, arranging themselves according to Yu Wenzhou’s plan. It’s tedious work, syncing up their movements in such a complex pattern, but they mostly manage to keep it together.
Right up until the Boss hits red blood and half the team gets taken out in the ensuing explosion.
Yu Wenzhou blinks away the dots in his vision from the bright afterimages on the monitor. Killing the Boss herself wouldn’t be a problem if they went all-out, but brute force isn’t the goal of the exercise. The goal is to do it while working together.
The memory of fighting against the scrap pickers flits across Yu Wenzhou's mind. That's the kind of seamless integration he needs, that unspoken ability to know what someone is doing and make adjustments on the fly. He toys with the idea of bringing Troubling Rain around for a demonstration, but he could only imagine the team’s reaction if he told them to act more like an NPC.
“Captain, you still with us? Don’t tell me you ditched us for a pretty girl or something?” Zhang Boqing’s wolf whistle pierces through Yu Wenzhou’s headset.
“He was probably distracted by how hard you fell on your face,” Zheng Xuan calls out from where Bullet Rain is pulling himself out of a lava river.
“Big words from the guy who took a nap in the middle of Captain Wei’s farewell speech.”
However much Yu Wenzhou is pleased to see the team getting along with their new member, he has a practice to keep on track. A quick mental recap is enough to pinpoint where their maneuver went wrong. “Alright everyone, let’s do it again. Zheng Xuan, you recovered nicely but you never got back into step with the team. Remember to pay attention to the rhythm.”
For the rest of the informal practice, he sets aside thoughts of NPCs and enhanced algorithms, and gets his head back in the game. Their scrimmages have been running increasingly smoothly as the summer progresses. It was unsettling at first, not to have Wei Chen’s gruff sense of humor to break the tension when things went awry, but the team has settled into a comfortable balance of gameplay broken up by the occasional joke.
It isn’t until Yu Wenzhou takes off his headset that his thoughts return to Troubling Rain. When he logs off, he shoots an email to his development contact to inquire about their interesting enhancements to NPCs like Troubling Rain. Mostly, he wants a heads up if the feature is going to make a widespread appearance in the game. If so he’ll need to sit with the guild and help them develop new tactics to take advantage of the change.
But it isn’t professional tactics he’s thinking about now, it’s the battle against those casual players. He keeps hearing Troubling Rain’s voice in his head.
Run away or sword and curse will kill you dead.
Sword and Curse.
It feels like something important, something tangible. Something completely impossible, and a sure sign that Yu Wenzhou is working himself too hard. He needs to get out and see some sunshine if this is his mind’s answer to the problem of choosing a vice-captain.
“Go touch some grass,” he mumbles to himself as he goes to do just that.
He thinks he hears a wisp of laughter as he laces up his shoes, but his mother is at the university and his father is at his art studio.
After a few light stretching exercises, Yu Wenzhou heads out for a short jog. The next time he considers the question of his vice-captain, his head is out of the clouds and firmly back on the ground. He thinks he might have an idea for a candidate but it’s still too soon to tell.
“What do you do when you’re not playing Glory?” Yu Wenzhou asks, after what’s become a regular sparring session.
He isn’t trying to catch Troubling Rain out with the question. He’s genuinely curious. This NPC is so realistic and unpredictable, an unending source of fascination. Troubling Rain is better than any training program owned by the club, far more creative and unpredictable, able to make adjustments based on Yu Wenzhou’s style of play. Also, he’s fun.
Troubling Rain sheathes his sword and skips over to Evening Glow. “I love spicy food and karaoke but my mom used to say I’m not allowed to do it until I finish my school work. If you want to know a secret, all my teachers hated me. It’s not my fault I never finished the homework. They should make it harder if they want me to pay attention!”
Yu Wenzhou wonders who made the decision to give Troubling Rain the personality of a student. Maybe they figured it would make him more relatable to younger players. He doesn’t comment that Troubling Rain didn’t technically answer the question. Perhaps it’s part of his code. Yu Wenzhou doesn’t press. It seems rude.
“What about you, what do you do?” Troubling Rain asks, when the silence stretches more than a few seconds. “I bet you’re a way better student than me.”
And that’s… unexpected. For a wild moment, Yu Wenzhou has it on the tip of his tongue to tell Troubling Rain his real name and profession. He squashes it immediately. “I was a good student,” he confirms. “I like birdwatching on the weekends but I don’t usually have time anymore. Sometimes I go to the opera with my parents.”
“I’ve never seen an opera. I’m a great singer though, watch me!”
Yu Wenzhou maneuvers Evening Glow to place a hand on Troubling Rain’s shoulder. “Please don’t, my ears can only take so much.” In the real world, sitting in his childhood bedroom, he has his other hand poised over his headset, ready to tear it off in the event of hideous screeching.
“Ha! Fooled you! Don’t worry, my singing voice is good but I’m not ready for opera yet. Maybe next time.”
“Maybe next time.” Yu Wenzhou doesn’t realize he’s smiling until he feels the ache in his cheeks. It’s disturbingly easy to forget that Troubling Rain isn’t a person, and Yu Wenzhou is self-aware enough to know that a big part of it is because he doesn’t want to remember.
A knock at his door thankfully cuts off that line of thinking.
His father is standing in the doorway. “Wenzhou, dinner.”
Now that he’s paying attention, he can smell the familiar scent of his mother’s cooking. His stomach makes an embarrassing noise and he quickly says goodbye to Troubling Rain. The cafeteria at Blue Rain is amazing but it doesn’t compare to home. He follows his father to the kitchen, where he eagerly helps carry various dishes to the table.
Neither of his parents had been thrilled when he first announced his intent to make a career out of his passion for video games. He wasn’t lying when he told Troubling Rain he was a good student, and until Glory caught his interest, he had every intention of taking the College Entrance Examination and continuing on the path chosen for him. His parents were crushed that he was ‘throwing away his future,’ as they put it during that first fight. Esports isn’t nearly as prestigious as a degree in engineering, and they were convinced he was going to waste his youth on a dream. Even after securing a place as vice-captain of a strong team—and now captain—along with the very respectable salary that came with it, he thinks his family is still a little disappointed. It only strengthens his resolve to bring Blue Rain the championship and prove he’s on the right path.
At least family dinners have gotten less tense since he signed with Blue Rain. His parents might not be thrilled, but they’ve stopped trying to change his mind. His father was the first to come around, perhaps because he’s a successful painter, and had once followed his own dream to pursue his art. Or maybe because Yu Wenzhou meticulously researched the upcoming field of esports and his father was tired of losing arguments to a teenager.
Once they’re all seated and eating, his father gives a low-bellied laugh and asks, “Are you going to tell us about your new friend?”
Yu Wenzhou freezes with the chopsticks halfway to his mouth before setting them down like that’s what he meant to do all along. “New friend? What do you mean?”
“We can hear you when you talk into your headset,” his mother chimes in, looking far too amused for Yu Wenzhou’s comfort.
The rush of heat to his face has nothing to do with the spiciness of his mother’s cooking. He’d forgotten. He’s so used to Blue Rain, where everyone is so busy wearing their own headsets that no one listens to what the rest of the team is doing.
It’s a good thing none of his fans can see him. After only a year in the professional scene, he’s developed a reputation for tactical thinking. Blue Rain’s two Warlocks: the Brawn and the Brains, the media have taken to calling them. And here he is, the powerhouse thinker of Blue Rain, outsmarted by his parents at the dinner table. He’d never live it down if anyone found out.
Yu Wenzhou clears his throat. “It’s just my teammates. You know we talk all the time. Even though it’s summer, we’re still practicing. Now that I’m captain I have to keep working hard.” Even as he says it, he knows he’s protesting too much.
His father gives him the same look as when Yu Wenzhou broke his grandmother’s vase as a child and tried to blame it on the neighbor’s cat.
“He’s no one,” Yu Wenzhou says and shovels a large clump of rice into his mouth before he can say anything else.
His mother gives him a knowing look. “You talk for hours every day, that doesn’t sound like no one.”
“It’s just a new project. Glory stuff.”
“You can invite your new friend over if you want to talk about ‘Glory stuff’ in person with him.” His father uses finger quotes and Yu Wenzhou dies a little on the inside.
“That’s okay, thanks dad,” he manages to choke out. “But I’m not seeing anyone. Really.”
Both his parents nod, and Yu Wenzhou doesn’t need to be a tactician to know neither of them believe him. He sends a grateful smile to his dad when he takes pity on Yu Wenzhou and shifts the topic to his mother’s latest work at the University.
There isn’t anything to hide, but the tide of questions makes him realize he’s spent so much time playing Glory with Troubling Rain that he’s neglecting the other parts of his life. He sets aside his account card and tries to concentrate on other things. He reads a few books, watches dramas with his parents in the evenings, and even meets up with some old school friends. Luckily, his parents don’t mind that he spends most of their drama-watching time splitting his attention between the romance onscreen and the much more entertaining drama unfolding in the Blue Rain group chat on his phone.
A few of the members have posted pictures of birds, and Yu Wenzhou can’t help but smile. He replies to the photos, detailing the type of bird and making guesses as to where the photo was taken. It’s become somewhat of a game, the team trying increasingly convoluted tactics to take a photo that will finally stump him. It makes Yu Wenzhou feel like part of something larger, like he’s found his place in this world.
He wasn’t the most popular player during his time at the training camp, and while no one overtly made fun of him for his slow hands, he remembers the feel of disdainful eyes whenever he played. It was Vice-captain Fang who found him playing Warlock one evening and started giving him pointers, eventually bringing him to Captain Wei’s attention. The three of them began sparring together after practice, warlock vs warlock vs warlock. Yu Wenzhou learned so much from the two of them, especially when Captain Wei began discussing tactics with him. They often argued late into the night, debating the merits of Wei Chen’s style of dirty play as opposed to Yu Wenzhou’s preference for psychology and teamwork.
His skills bloomed under their tutelage and little by little the rest of Blue Rain thawed towards him. The day he beat Captain Wei in a training match was one of the highlights of his life, and the best part of it was looking around and seeing the respect in the eyes of the other trainees. That night, Wei Chen called him into his office to talk about succession. Dual warlocks.
It was only a temporary solution, as Wei Chen’s professional time was limited. Yu Wenzhou could have a year to get his feet wet and then it would be up to him to take the reins of Blue Rain’s future and find his own partner. A partner who could anticipate his playstyle and fight at his side.
Run away or sword and curse will kill you dead.
Yu Wenzhou shakes his head at himself. Flights of fancy aren’t normally his thing. Clearly it’s time to unplug if that’s the direction his thoughts are taking him in.
Tucking away his phone, he focuses on watching the drama his parents are so engrossed in. He can only imagine the ridicule if he stood up in front of the Glory chairman and attempted to argue for an NPC to be his partner and vice-captain.