Chapter 5: The Drawer

Ji Mingye lost the intra-squad scrim at 4:52 in the afternoon, and he knew the exact second he'd done it.

It was minute nineteen.

Lu said "Left," in a voice that wasn't a request, and four players who had never taken orders from him walked left.

They came out of the fog behind Ji's team and finished the game in under two minutes.

On the big screen the red side's victory banner lit up the dim scrim room.

"That's not how he calls," Su Ran whispered, on Ji's team. "That's not how anyone calls. He didn't even say why."

"He said left," said the top laner.

"Left is a direction, not a reason!"

Ji took off his headset.

Across the room Lu had pushed his chair back and was stretching.

His hoodie rode up over a strip of flat stomach, and he grinned at the ceiling.

Ji looked at the strip of skin for a moment.

He had become expert, over the years, in what a second could hold.

Coach Pei came to stand behind him with his tea.

"You gave him the lane," Coach Pei said, quietly.

"I won the duel."

"You won it so you could give it away."

Ji said nothing.

"Jungle suits you," said Coach Pei. "You call better when you aren't also hitting minions." He sipped. "Don't tell him it was your idea."

Ji watched Lu laugh at something Su Ran said, with that dimple on one side.

He had known the breath Lu took before a call since a qualifier in a Chengdu internet cafe.

The kid had been sixteen then, and the room had been loud.

He had known it before Lu knew he was being seen.

"It wasn't my idea," Ji said.

That night he went to the third floor alone, and unlocked the desk drawer.

The notebook was where he always left it, black cloth spine, fat with three years of ink.

He didn't open it.

He took a pen and wrote the date on a loose slip.

Under it he wrote: He called the left flank on instinct. He has never done that. Something happened to him.

He tucked the slip in the back cover and locked the drawer.

The key went onto his watch strap loop, and he put the watch on.

Behind him, the door opened without a knock.

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