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Zhang Jiale met Jiang Cheng at a Summer Sports Festival, because eSports were considered Sports enough for those now that there was a World Invitational.
It wasn’t a requirement to go. Lots of pro teams weren’t bothering. Zhang Jiale liked meeting people, though, so he agreed, and now—
The Glory booth—exhibit, promo area, whatever—was in the Nontraditional Sports Corner, positioned right next to the Lion Dance people, which Zhang Jiale promptly found hilarious. “You’re one of the most traditional sports and we’re one of the newest,” he gleefully told the lion dancer—half-costumed, a representative just as Zhang Jiale was in his Tyranny jacket—lounging at their desk and looking unimpressed. “They had to do this intentionally, right?”
The lion dancer scowled at him and said, “Are all esports players as chatty as you?”
“Nope.” Zhang Jiale sat down, pointedly ignoring the way Huang Shaotian was chattering away at anyone who came by, Yu Wenzhou at his side to keep him somewhat in control. “But the ones who wanted to come? Maybe. I’m Zhang Jiale, by the way.”
“Jiang Cheng,” the lion dancer said, shaking his hand. “I dance the ass end of the lion, and Lan Xichen over there dances the head.”
That startled Zhang Jiale enough to laugh. From there, the conversation flowed easily, though it was broken up whenever a group of festival attendees drew close enough to need their attention.
It didn’t take long for them to start talking about how they’d gotten into the sports they were here for, which was how Zhang Jiale learned that Jiang Cheng had both an older sister—“She took us to practices, but she was never super into sports. She’s got her own bakery now, and the best kid in the world.”—and a best-friend-slash-adopted-sibling. “He’s why I dance the ass end,” Jiang Cheng admitted. “Never could compete with him up front.”
“You used to dance together?” Zhang Jiale asked.
“Yeah.” Jiang Cheng heaved a sigh and stared up at the ceiling.
After it became clear that Jiang Cheng wasn’t going to explain anything more, Zhang Jiale said, “I used to have a partner in the game, too. Back when I played for Hundred Blossoms.”
Jiang Cheng glanced at him from the corner of his eyes. “A while ago, then. What happened to him?”
“Got hurt. Made it through the season, sort of, and then just… vanished.” Zhang Jiale shrugged and stared down at his fingers. He rubbed at the wrist Sun Zheping had hurt, wishing—as always—that there had been anything they could do. “We would’ve won that year if he’d been able to play, but as it was… we took second. I keep taking second. It sucks. Anyway, he vanished and I didn’t hear from him again until he reappeared a year and a half ago, playing substitute for another team.”
“Does it still hurt?” Jiang Cheng asked, voice almost inaudible beneath the festival’s echoing chatter. “Not having him around?”
Zhang Jiale shook his head. “For a long time, it did. I quit over it, got burned out, but then…” He shrugged a little, smiling at Jiang Cheng. “Well, I couldn’t stay away from the game, even if I had to join a new team to find that joy again. And now I’ve got a team around me, and he’s found a way back into the game that doesn’t destroy his body, and we hang out sometimes. It’s different. It’s good.”
And then he waited to see what Jiang Cheng might share with him in return, in this strange intimacy they had found. It took some time, as Jiang Cheng took down his bun and started combing his glossy black hair through his fingers. His hair was longer than Zhang Jiale’s, which felt like both triumph and defeat at the same time, but it was hypnotic to watch the steady motion of his callused hands.
“We used to dance together,” Jiang Cheng said abruptly, like they’d gone back a few minutes to the first time he’d said it. “He vanished during our second year of uni, during a summer internship abroad, and he hasn’t come back. My parents aren’t worried, and I’m pretty sure that means he’s still alive, but I don’t know why he won’t at least tell me.”
“Probably hurts him more than you.” Zhang Jiale sighed. He didn’t have a good read on how old Jiang Cheng was, but he bet they were about the same age, and five years was a long time to have lost your best friend. “You’ve got other people, at least?”
Jiang Cheng’s eyes flickered to Lan Xichen and the other people at his booth—a drum line, and some other people from their studio—and he said, “Yeah.”
“Then trust he’ll come back when he can, and let’s talk about something more fun. Like how the fuck you can even see where you’re jumping to, when you’re at the ass end of the lion.”
The wicked smile on Jiang Cheng’s face, brilliant and bright, was more than Zhang Jiale could ever have hoped for.
By lunchtime, Zhang Jiale was suffering from Huang Shaotian’s exceptional ability to tease absolutely anyone in his vicinity.
“Please tell me you’ve gotten his number,” Huang Shaotian said, leaning across the take-out boxes Jiang Botao had pre-ordered for them. “You’ve spent too much time talking to him not to have gotten something, right?”
Zhang Jiale flipped him off, but did admit, “He wants to see me play in our show match, and I’ve said I want to see his lion dance.”
“You’ve only got fifteen minutes until that dance,” Jiang Botao said, tilting his head towards the performance area. “Better eat fast.”
Zhang Jiale swore, stole the last dumpling, and ran off to find a good place to watch.
He’d seen lion dances before, of course; they were a traditional part of the Lunar New Year celebrations. He’d never known a dancer, though, or gone out of his way to see a live performance. Jiang Cheng had said that he and Lan Xichen were one of the best teams in the Hunan region—“Though we’ve never taken first; only second,” he’d said, with an all-too familiar groan—but Zhang Jiale still didn’t know what to expect.
When the drums started, Zhang Jiale felt like he was being transported to another world. Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen walked onto the stage, flipped the lion costume over them, and then disappeared, subsumed into the lion itself.
The lion danced its way around the stage and up onto the poles, rearing and reaching and jumping across poles that Zhang Jiale would’ve been scared to try crossing without a heavy costume on top of him. There was no hesitation, no worry, nothing but grace and the guiding beat of the drums setting the pace.
At the end, when the lion laid down to rest and two humans emerged from beneath it, Zhang Jiale hollered in appreciation.
Hopefully he’d be able to give Jiang Cheng a little sense of that same awe in return, when the Glory pros did their 3v3 show match.
And then, Zhang Jiale admitted, he would ask for Jiang Cheng’s number.
Maybe this time, he’d get lucky.