Honey Stewed Squid

The entire night, she was immersed in her own feelings of gloom, and the atmosphere in the room was so stiflingly depressing it was scary. The scariest part was, she later sent more invitations to grunt, but he did not accept them… Didn’t accept them… Didn’t accept them…

In this way, she tossed and turned in bed until three in the morning, when she finally could not take it anymore and, in the dark, sat up straight.

It must have been a problem with her character selection.

That character was too ugly!

That must be it.

So, she furtively opened up her computer. To prevent her parents from seeing the light in her bedroom, she pulled the blanket off the bed and, propping it up with the monitor, made a little tent, which she slipped into. Speedily, she turned on the computer, clicked on the desktop shortcut, and entered the game… Hmm? Where was the password for the account? She dug around again on her desk for a lengthy time, and finally, pulling it out from beneath one of the keyboards, she carefully input it.

A few hours ago, she had persistently sent seven or eight invitations over… and they had all been flat out rejected. Now…

Even though she was feeling rather timid, she still, one letter at a time, typed in grunt’s name.

And then, the enter key!

He was online?!

He wasn’t sleeping? So hard-working?

No wonder Soy Milk said his account was in the Grandmaster group of players… Uh, what was the Grandmaster group? … She had forgotten to ask.

Anyway, when she heard, “grandmaster,” she would think of the saying, “a grandmaster of an era[1].” Really cool and flashy, so it must be right.

Poor her. She did not even really have any concept of what this particular game was about, but she had already learned proficiently how to invite someone to do battle. T.T

Eh?

He didn’t immediately turn it down?

All of a sudden, a dialogue box popped up:

grunt has accepted your invitation. Please wait patiently while the system randomly selects 8 players.

He! Accepted! It!

Wait! She immediately sent over a private message: May I… be on the same team as you? Let’s not be enemies, k?

There was no reply.

……

The system began to read the data and then entered into the character selection screen. This time, she did not dare just arbitrarily choose one, and in those more than one hundred characters, she carefully searched to see if there was a lovely and adorable character whom, the instant you saw her, you could not bear to kill her. Soon, she found a Loli-style [Lolita style][2] character who was even riding… a big cat?

A cutie, and so adorable. She’s the one!

With the sound of lightning flashing past, the image on the screen completely opened up. She swiftly swept her gaze over all the IDs that were before her eyes. grunt was there! His character was different from last night’s. This time, the character he selected was… um, an evil demon. Even cooler and more attractive!

She wordlessly shifted a couple of steps closer to him. Seeing that he did not give any reaction, she shifted another two steps.

Finally, she decided to be bold and moved right up beside him.

Huh? He wasn’t avoiding her? So, that meant he wasn’t turned off by this? Hidden under the blanket, Tong Nian wiped away at the condensation from her breath that had coated the monitor, all the while wearing a silly grin on her face.

Before she had even gotten to experience that delight for more than a few seconds, everyone had already bought all their items and, one by one, were leaving home base. There were three lanes: top, mid, and bottom. grunt seemed not to even hesitate before going onto the middle lane and following it along.

Straightaway, Tong Nian exuberantly ran after him…

Mid lane, one player. Wasn’t that… accepted, common knowledge?

On the chat screen, her teammates one after another passed out.

Hey, the dude riding the big cat… ya crazy?

Sheet! I ran into two hackers already this week. Don’t tell me this is another one?

It’s 3:00 in the morning. Hey hacker, don’t you sleep??!! My ranking, my points AAAAH!

……

Tong Nian was utterly bewildered. Astride her big cat, she stood behind grunt, not knowing what she did wrong this time.

Weren’t they all spawned in the same place? Weren’t they teammates? Why couldn’t she follow a teammate? Couldn’t they help each other out?

You… and I are teammates in the same group, right? Why can’t I follow you? She finally… summoned her courage to ask that person who was in front of her.

grunt: ……

He replied to me!! He really replied to me!

Tong Nian instantly forgot about these things that had baffled her, and riding on her big cat, she elatedly ran circles around him. Hihi, grunt! I’m Little Squidie. It’s my first time playing video games. Honest! Honest! I’m soooo excited! *covers my face* Don’t know what I should say. I’ll try my best to learn! Please, please don’t get frustrated with me!

grunt: ……

She had completely forgotten that she was toting around an account belonging to the Grandmaster group of this server…

Moreover, it was ranked 97th on the leaderboard for Mainland China…

Then, using this ID that was ranked 97th amongst all of the twenty-four servers and more than three million gamers in Mainland China, she bounded circles around grunt and asked: I use Q, W, E, R, and A, S, D, F to attack, right? I read the walkthrough[3] on the official website, and I played against the computer quite a few times to practice. 𝘧𝒓e𝑒𝑤e𝙗𝚗o𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝐜𝐨ｍ

And so, three seconds later, a row of words appeared on the team-chat screen.

grunt: Not a hacker. ID stolen by one of the kids in the family. Everyone, watch yourselves.

Everybody fell over backwards.

This implied that, not only had they lost one person who could fight, they also needed to protect this ID and prevent him from being killed by the enemy. One kill meant that they were giving a hundred gold coins to the enemy, ah… Crap. They had no choice but to treat this guy like a Buddha whom they needed to reverentially worship.

Good thing this team still had grunt, a pro gamer who consistently ranked in the top ten on the leaderboard.

See the underbrush over there? grunt suddenly asked.

Yup! I see it really clearly! My monitor is especially good! Guaranteed it won’t lag!

grunt was silent.

After three seconds: Go inside it and stay there until the game is over.

* * * * *

grunt yawned and, turning himself over on the couch, blearily threw a glance at Gun, who had just turned off the computer. “Leader, can’t you just register and get an account of your own to play? Why are you always using mine to get your kicks?”

“What do you think?” Gun could not even be bothered to look up at him. “If I don’t help you win a few more times, you’ll soon fall out of the leaderboard’s top ten.”

This was obviously calling grunt’s capabilities into question.

“You really don’t want to sign-up for one yourself to play?” grunt had long since grown accustomed to this languid, nonconformist Leader with a wicked tongue and had acquired the ability to automatically filter out the sarcasm and taunting.

“Why? You really want me to register for one of my own?” Gun offhandedly shoved the keyboard in further on the computer desk and stood.

“I do, yeah. I still haven’t played a ranked match with Leader yet. I can’t really be happy about that.” grunt solemnly slipped on his rimless glasses and gave a stretch. Right as he was about to get up from the couch, a huge document folder came flying directly toward his face.

“If I register, then what’s the need for all of you? Go. Have them fill these all in, then give them to your captain to apply for visas.”