20 A Challenge

Yu Pengkai hesitantly turned around, trying his best to muster a polite smile. Yet every bit of his muscles screamed awkwardness.

But much to his surprise, he didn't see the familiar curly hair. Instead, a group of boys he had virtually no recollection of trailed behind his sister's car.

"Can I help you?" Yu Pengkai asked, trying to figure out what they could have wanted to do with him. After spending an entire day virtually alone other than the brief interactions during fourth period with Kevin and Josh, he was especially taken aback that people wanted to speak to him.

His voice cracked from disuse, and he briefly cleared his throat. Seeing that it wasn't Kevin trying to hunt him down, he noticeably relaxed, his muscles untensing as he breathed out a long sigh of relief.

"Is it true that you got forty something kills in your first game?" Someone asked, and Yu Pengkai's small smile noticeably crashed back down.

"Yeah, we heard that you got like five pentakills on a tank!" Another one chimed in, and perhaps it was Yu Pengkai's imagination acting up once more, but he could feel invisible walls closing in on him as he struggled to break free.

"Kevin has been telling everyone about how amazing you are!"

"Yeah! I think I've heard him talk about it in all of his classes!"

"Oh, I thought you guys had something else to talk about than Kings of Valor," Yu Pengkai replied, a bit coldly, unable to control his frustration. For an entire day, he was left alone to awkwardly trail through the school, but now that people wanted to speak to him, could no one acknowledge him apart from his gameplay? Was that really the only thing people attributed to him?

In the past, he would have been proud to hear people discuss his accomplishments in the game. But now, all he wanted was to leave the past behind. Yet every time he made up his mind, an intertwined web seemed almost determined to drag him back into the giant swamp known as Kings of Valor.

"For the last time, I'm not good at the game, and I'm not going to play it again," Yu Pengkai furrowed his eyebrows before firmly declaring. "The game with Kevin was accidental."

"Oh." His comments were met with murmurs of disappointment.

"But then what about Darius's challenge? I heard that you had already accepted it?" Someone asked, cocking his head to the side in confusion.

Hearing the name, it was almost as if a shiver ran down Yu Pengkai's spine. Even after so many years, the name still rang clear in his ears. Darius. His former childhood best friend.

It's strange how the first ten years of your life seems longer than they actually are. While the percentage of your age that it dominates only decreases with each passing year, somehow, with each birthday, the memories from that decade loom ever closer.

Yu Pengkai once heard the phrase that you know you are old when you begin reminiscing over childhood memories, and never until today did he realize how true that was.

Darius. It's strange to know someone since birth. It's even more strange when the person who was virtually your brother would abandon you entirely for newfound basketball friends during high school, passing you in hallways without ever acknowledging your presence.

Darius. Captain of the basketball team, the only sport in their high school that was actually Division I. High school prom king. Every Yort girl's crush at some point in the four years.

Meanwhile, Yu Pengkai had been busy working towards a professional eSports career. It was only a matter of time that it seemed that they only drifted further and further away until they were but two parallel lines.

In his former life, Yu Pengkai had never been one to watch sports matches. But somehow, he could never avoid the feeds recommending news on the basketball star. And honestly, sometimes he would wonder whether his former friend received push notifications about his eSports matches as well.

But now, they were back before their paths diverged. The concept was admittedly strange to Yu Pengkai. And hearing the name spoken to him was even more foreign.

"Hello?" One of the boys waved a few fingers in front of Yu Pengkai's face. "You home? Earth to Kai."

"I'm not that good at basketball," Yu Pengkai dragged his thoughts back to the present. "I don't think a challenge is a good idea."

"Huh?"

His words were met by a crowd of blank stares.

"Who said anything about basketball?"

This time, it was Yu Pengkai's turn to look confused.

"What else would he challenge me to? Does he even know who I am?" Yu Pengkai asked, a bit scoffing.

"Kings of Valor, of course! I'm telling you, Kevin was shouting to the entire world about what a legend you are, and Darius happened to be listening when he was telling everyone about it."

"He plays?" In his near-thirty years of mental existence, he had not known that Darius ever touched the game. From his memory, it was always that Darius had become the stereotypical jock, as far from the gaming type as could be. In all the stereotypes, basketball stars would never play videogames, would they?

The members of the group nodded, some of them saying that they queued together earlier in the week with Darius and commenting on how Darius carried them in the match. Apparently, hand eye coordination was a good skill to have for both basketball and MOBA gaming.

"I don't know if you guys have ever talked with each other or met each other, but Darius is actually super good at the game!"

The irony of that statement almost made Yu Pengkai want to accept the match.

"He's like a god at everything honestly!"

If there was one field that he could prove himself not to be a useless friend to be discarded, it was Kings of Valor. And most importantly, he wanted to show Darius that he had made a mistake.

"He can't be that good, could he?" there was a hint of the former Yu Pengkai, the prideful youth that knew no limits, in the limited words.

"I think I'm pretty good," a confident voice sounded from the distance.