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Ye Xiu steps down from the stage, trophy in hand. ‘Champions’, he thinks. ‘We are the champions.’ Beside him, his teammates hug and hit at each other, jumping up and down until they become mere blurs in Ye Xiu’s eyes.
Oh. He’s crying.
He raises his hand to his face and lightly touches the tear tracks. On his index finger, the new championship ring feels heavy, and Ye Xiu wonders if it’s just his imagination or if the Glory production team has finally chosen to order them in higher quality. Maybe they’re actually gold this time.
He only has a second to think about it before someone grabs his arm and whisks him away to an afterparty, where the bright bursts of light and noisy sounds follow.
When he’s finally in his hotel room, drunk off both alcohol and emotions, the significance of his choice comes crashing down on him. Only now does he realize the reality of his situation, how he has decided to leave his precious team and go back to his real…family.
‘Still,’ Ye Xiu thinks, ‘I need to do this, brother’s waiting for me.’
Ye Qiu comes to visit him the next day, wearing a crisp, grey suit with his hair skillfully slicked to one side, and Ye Xiu takes his hand with a blank face and leaves.
And goes back ‘home’.
Ten Happy Gamers are asked to re-sign, one refuses and then there are nine.
. . .
Wei Chen holds the ring as close to his face as he can, turning it this way and that to convince himself that it’s real. It is.
He walks into the bathroom and stares at himself in the mirror, stares at his scraggly beard, his baggy eyes, his pale face. Is that a grey hair he sees? Some wrinkles? No, it’s probably just his imagination. He forces himself out of the bathroom before he can ponder further.
He lights a cigarette and relaxes as he inhales deeply. He finishes a bottle of beer quickly and reaches for another.
The morning season 11 officially starts, Wei Chen wakes up early, brushes his teeth, shaves his beard, and drives to Happy alone. Chen Guo barely gives him a wave as he enters, too busy talking to the others to pay him much attention.
He walks upstairs and resists his muscle memory telling him to turn right, instead taking a left and mechanically sitting down at a computer next to Wu Chen.
In the room across the hall, his ex-teammates begin training without him.
Nine Happy Gamers await their fixed fate; One succumbs and then there are eight.
. . .
Just three years into his professional career, An Wenyi starts to seriously doubt his team and their decisions. Despite being under the lead of Su Mucheng, Happy doesn’t even make it into the playoffs, and people are starting to call their first win luck , their team a one-hit wonder.
In a moment of what some might call foolishness but An Wenyi calls being rational, An Wenyi concludes that there are more suitable opportunities in other teams.
He throws himself into researching teams with better opportunities, better pay, and better chances. He visits other teams’ headquarters and talks with any captain that is willing to consider him, and in his mind, he makes himself believe he is doing the right thing. Meanwhile, he distances himself from his own team, playing in fewer and fewer games—until his avatar drops out of matches altogether.
His teammates try to convince him otherwise, but even they can’t keep his one-sided belief at bay.
When the next season starts, his name is no longer in Happy’s roster, but in Wind Howl’s.
And ironically, Happy wins that season, without him, with a new cleric instead. Too late to turn back now.
An Wenyi can only regret.
Eight Happy Gamers catch a glimpse of heaven; One becomes addicted and then there are seven.
. . .
Tang Rou quits right at the peak of her career.
She has always had trouble maintaining passion. It happened with her school grades, it happened with her music career, and it was bound to happen with Glory as well.
Three seasons come and go since Ye Xiu retires and Tang Rou seems to be doing just fine: her passion for Glory is still burning, her fanbase is growing, and she is performing better than ever.
And then she just quits.
There is no rhyme or reason to it, and when the paparazzi finally manage to chase her down and ask, she is unable to give a real answer.
When Chen Guo asks, Tang Rou claims she woke up one morning no longer having any desire to play. And Chen Guo can’t do anything about it. If Tang Rou doesn’t want to play, there is no good reason to force her to.
Tang Rou quits during the winter transfer season, with a perfect record, like saying ‘see? this is too easy for me now. ’
The one regret in Tang Rou’s life, though, is that she never was able to beat Ye Xiu.
Maybe Ye Xiu’s ‘hundred years’ will actually be ‘never’.
Seven Happy Gamers brainstorming tricks; One loses interest and then there are six.
. . .
Mo Fan leaves Happy the same way he comes: silently and without any fanfare. The reason, however, is cancer.
He first feels it in his arm, an uncomfortable pain that won’t go away no matter how well-rested he is. He loses weight quickly, almost six pounds in the first month, though he just blames it on stress and carries on.
Then his arm starts swelling, slowly at first and then faster and faster, until he can barely move it and the pain leaves him constantly nauseous. It is only then he consents to see a doctor, and he is diagnosed with cancer when they find a malignant tumor in his right arm.
With this discovery, Mo Fan can only count the days he has left playing Glory, which are few and far in between.
The situation gets worse. Chemotherapy hits him like a truck, and Mo Fan feels more tired than he’s ever had before. He doesn’t do well in games even after taking long breaks, and his right arm gets progressively harder to control.
Mo Fan finishes his season with a pitiful amount of wins and leaves with a heavy heart.
Silently.
Six Happy Gamers playing live; One loses connection and then there are five.
. . .
Su Mucheng retires along with most of the other members of the golden generation, but unlike the others, she leaves with another championship under her belt.
She considers it the college graduation she has never had. Almost like ending one chapter of life— leaving friends, family, and familiarity— and moving on to uncertain waters.
Though, her waters are not very uncertain: several modeling companies have already contacted her about high-paying jobs, and Ye Xiu has also offered her a place to stay at his home. Though she is still considering the former option, she quite likes the latter.
She passes her captainship onto Qiao Yifan when she leaves, quite confident in what her future will hold. At least she has a happy ending, one without regrets.
Except, Su Mucheng very rarely goes back to the game after she retires.
Glory never does quite feel the same.
Five Happy Gamers passing through a door; One does not cross and then there are four.
. . .
Luo Ji closes his luggage and looks around at his bare room, just to make sure everything has been packed away.
The mathematician’s gaming career has always been pretty straightforward. Originally, Luo Ji only used Glory as a means to apply and test his math application and analysis skills. He wrote detailed guides, posting them online in hopes of sharing his knowledge with others. But instead, all he received was hate—until Ye Xiu came along and swept him up like a lost kitten, giving him a new home and new life.
Luo Ji loves glory, he really does. But there is only so much of the game he can play before his mind wanders, and he is left with a desire to learn new equations, theories, and formulas. Which is why he made the decision to move on.
Shouldering his backpack, Luo Ji steps out of one stage of his life and into his next one.
The sheet of paper in his hand notes the address of his new college dorm.
Four Happy Gamers climbing a tree; One lets go and then there are three.
. . .
The news comes suddenly.
‘Fans in mourning over devastating news,’ one headline reads. ‘Car crash kills three-time Glory championship winner,’ another says in pity.
“Team Happy’s Bao Rongxing died early this morning—”
Chen Guo turns off the TV and the remote clatters on the ground.
Three Happy Gamers walking through a zoo; A beast eats one and then there are two.
. . .
Fang Rui holds on as long as his hands allow him and longer still. But the reality is, time is neither pretty nor forgiving to people of his occupation. Selfishly, he thinks that he can hold on longer until Chen Guo actually pulls him aside to confront him about it. It’s an embarrassing conversation for the both of them.
And then Fang Rui starts seriously considering: is his place in the team beneficial? And the answer he comes up with—the answer that has been in the back of his mind for a while now—is a solid, resounding, no.
Although he is no longer on the main roster, his place in the team has gotten so insignificant that he's just a grandpa just waiting to die, and retiring now would lessen the burden he has on the team—and allow a new, more talented player to take his place.
And so Fang Rui retires, and the farewell party is not as grand as he wants it to be but warmer than he has ever imagined.
Two Happy Gamers encounter great fun; One withers away and then there is One.
. . .
Qiao Yifan switches the light off one last time as he walks out of the room he has trained in for over ten years. Had trained in. He walks through the rooms one by one, slowly, as if to imprint them all in his mind.
‘Ye Xiu used to live in this room. I wonder if any of his belongings are still here,’ he thinks before he dismisses it as stupid. Of course, that room has been bare for nearly a decade.
‘Wei Chen is in his forties now.’ Yifan shakes his head and laughs to himself. ‘What a grandpa.’
‘An Wenyi never got that second championship he so desperately wanted’ he sighs to himself in pity.
‘I talked to Tang Rou yesterday, she seemed to be doing well.’ Yifan walks past her room which has long been transformed into something else.
‘Mo Fan always sat silently on that couch. Is his cancer in remission now?’
‘Su Mucheng used to pour over strategies in that chair.’ And then: ‘Are she and Ye Xiu still close friends?’
‘Fang Rui is in the streaming industry now, he seems to be doing ok.’
‘That was where Baozi and I fought once,’ he thinks as he looks at a particularly empty corner. ‘I haven’t visited his grave in a while.’ He smiles sadly.
‘Luo Ji still works with the R&D department…. Maybe I should visit him soon.’
When Qiao Yifan walks out of Happy, the windows are dark behind him, and he doesn’t look back. On his backpack, the multitude of avatar keychains he has accumulated over the years jingle, sounding out one last goodbye.
Goodbye Happy.
Goodbye Glory.
Hello retirement.
One Happy Gamer is left all alone; He retires and then there are none.