Xiaomi’s issue was hard to handle. Though she could lessen Slide’s psychological burden a bit by caring less about Solo’s and her opinions. Nevertheless, it needed to be solved quickly.
Otherwise-- --she was afraid that it would create chaos inside SP due to favoritism.
Xiaomi……
She kept her head down in the players rest area and kept messing up her hair as a way to relieve her tension. Then she raised her head in a daze trying to clear her head......She didn’t expect to see Gun walking right in front of her. He looked down at her with a strange expression. Dt followed him, she could see her messy hair reflected in his dark eyes.
Ai Qing blushed instantly. She stood up and ran out of the arena to find a restroom.
The restroom was full of people. There were many outgoing and cheerful American girls who were joking around inside. She managed to push in. While she was looking into the mirror to smooth out her hair, a girl beside her handed her a comb. She spoke to her in English, “Are you the manager from China? I saw you with K&K players.”
Her instinct, based on years of experience in this circle, told her…...that was a bad sign.
Just as she had expected, all the girls gathered around her as soon as they heard the name K&K. “Is K&K the club that signed with Dt?”
“Dt, Dt, I like him. He is so handsome!”
……
She deeply felt that Dt, during the years he played in foreign countries, had attracted so many fans simply by his handsome look. She had only gone to the restroom to tidy her hair and ended up surrounded by Dt’s fan club, even if it was an unofficial one…...Of course, she felt that Dt, with his personality, wouldn’t have any officially organized fan groups.
She arrived late after the game had already started.
Two groups were broadcasted live. One group was the ranked 1 in the world vs ranked 3, which was the player who had beaten Grunt, Tatami. He also had the bad luck to play the ranked 1 player at the quarter finals.
The other broadcasted game was Dt and Inin’s as expected. They were the number 1 and number 2 of the American offline competition last year.
In order to show the importance of the champion and the runner-up of last year, the commentators also focused on this group.
StarCraft had many different competitions every year.
WCS, DreamHack, GSL (Korea), SPL…...etc etc etc etc. The larger ones were the international tournaments. The smaller ones were the local competitions in each country. Not every competition was competitive.
Frankly speaking, the master players at the peak of the pyramid wouldn’t go to the smaller competitions in some countries.
Many…...were playing for fun for the professional players in each country. Or they would invite a couple somewhat famous players to make the competitions look good. The prizes were small and very little attention was paid to these competitions. The most important thing was that they weren’t very competitive.
But it was different with this American offline competition.
This was the reason why Solo insisted to have her accompany Inin here. Though the arena wasn’t set up well, but the advantage was that they had invited some of the best professional players.
Just like now, no player in the competition arena was outside the top ten ranks.
Today’s livestream would probably…...paralyze the streaming website.
She sighed. She saw Inin already biting his lower lip and begin to play around with his keyboard. The little kid was nervous.
Her eyes moved to Dt. He was playing around with the keyboard too. His fingers slowly slid over the keyboard back and forth. He was waiting for the map to open. The assistant referee told them the result of the maps chosen. His expression changed subtly for a second.
The dark eyes under the rim of his hat accurately spotted her seat.
It was a publicly recognized Terran map.
This was the best map for Inin to play on. Ai Qing, you chose this map for the first round. Though you could let Inin, who played Terran, win this round, but what would you do in the next two rounds?