After the breakup, I was taken in by a group of trendy young women.

Lin Ye stood at the top of the stairs on the second floor of the internet cafe, and was immediately hit in the face by the suffocating air that was a mixture of the smells of smoke, instant noodles, perfume, and foot odor.

"What's wrong, bro? You've never played this before, have you?"

Seeing that Lin Ye didn't speak, Bai Xiaojing nudged him with her elbow.

"I've played it."

He said, "It's just been a long time since I've been here."

How long is it?

He thought about it carefully.

In the second semester of his sophomore year, on the night after the final exam week, his roommate dragged him there.

The internet cafe was located in the alley behind the school. The computers were so old that they couldn't run any demanding games. They played League of Legends all night and lost seven games in a row. At dawn, the two of them squatted at the entrance of the internet cafe eating jianbing guozi (Chinese crepes). The roommate said he would never duo queue with him again.

That was five years ago.

Later, he met Zhang Qian, who then forbade him from going to internet cafes or playing games, saying that those were things only "unambitious people" would touch.

"Then you'd better catch up on your studies tonight."

The tattooed man squeezed up behind him, one foot on the last step of the stairs. The koi fish on his tattoo gleamed bluish-black in the pale light of the corridor.

"I'll take you flying."

"You think you can carry others with a skill level like that?"

Flowery legs emerged from the other side of the woods, using her elbows to prop herself up on his shoulder as she took off her shoes. She had just stepped in mud at the night market, and her canvas shoes were covered with a thick layer of black mud mixed with pebbles.

"Last time you played mid lane, you had zero kills and twelve points. The enemy mid laner was practically treating you like an ATM."

"That's a fucking memory card!"

"Yes, yes, the computer is lagging, the mouse is lagging, the keyboard is lagging, the monitor is lagging, but yours isn't lagging."

Green-haired and pink-haired kids had already darted to the front and were leaning over the front desk of the internet cafe to greet the manager.

The internet cafe manager was a tall, thin man wearing black-rimmed glasses, who looked no more than twenty years old. When he saw the two colorful heads approaching, he gave a helpless look that said, "It's you guys again."

"All night?"

"Six stations, no, seven stations!"

Green Hair turned around and counted the heads, counting on his fingers.

"Yellow hair, tattooed arms, tattooed legs, me, pink hair, bangs, and bro, seven of us!"

"Seven overnight stays, 140 yuan."

The internet cafe manager quoted a price, then looked Lin Ye up and down.

Six women with their hair dyed in a palette of colors, sandwiched between a man who looks neither normal nor normal—this combination just doesn't seem right.

Lin Ye had already taken out his phone, and with a beep, he scanned 140 yuan.

"Brother, you're too fast!"

Bai Xiaojing clicked her tongue beside her, "I haven't even bargained yet."

"Can you cut it down?"

"Can't cut it down."

She argued confidently, "But there has to be a sense of ritual in bargaining, right?"

Lin Ye chuckled and put his phone back in his pocket.

The lobby of the internet cafe is not much better than the corridor.

Three rows of computer desks stretched from one end to the other, with about forty or fifty computers, but less than half of the people were sitting there.

Bai Xiaojing skillfully walked through rows of computer desks, stopped at the innermost wall-side seating area, and pulled out seven chairs one by one.

"This is our usual spot."

She patted the armrest of the chair furthest from the wall.

"Sometimes when I don't have money for an all-night session, I'll find a corner to squat in and wait for someone to leave halfway through their all-night session, but the machine is still running, so I can mooch off them for a while."

Lin Ye sat down in front of the machine in the very middle.

There were three seats on each side, and six girls filed in to sit down, the chair wheels rolling haphazardly on the composite floor.

The tattooed arm was on his left, Bai Xiaojing was on his right, the tattooed leg was on the right of the blond guy, and the green-haired and pink-haired guy had his bangs spread out to both sides.

That put him right in the middle.

Lin Ye reached out and grabbed the mouse.

The mouse is the kind that costs a few dozen yuan and is used in internet cafes. Its shell has been polished by thousands of hands, and a piece of the paint on the left button has been worn off, revealing the grayish-white plastic underneath.

The feel of it is both familiar and unfamiliar, like seeing an old classmate you haven't seen for many years, and you have to think for a moment before you can remember their name.

He shook the mouse, and the screen in front of him lit up from standby mode, displaying the login interface of the internet cafe management system.

"Brother, what's your account number?" Bai Xiaojing had already logged in and tilted her head to look at his screen.

"I forgot."

"Forgot your password too?"

"Um."

"So what are you going to play?" The tattooed man peeked over from the left.

"Play whatever you want."

Bai Xiaojing didn't ask any more questions.

She reached over and typed a string of numbers on his keyboard—her account number.

The login screen jumped briefly, and I entered the game lobby.

The desktop wallpaper features a game character he doesn't recognize, standing in front of ruins, sword in hand, his gaze so resolute it seems unreal.

"I'll play with mine first."

She said, "I'll teach you."

She taught him.

An 18-year-old girl with blond hair is teaching a 23-year-old adult how to play video games.

She would occasionally reach out and point to a skill icon on his screen, explaining its effect, the cuff of her Lolita dress brushing against the back of his hand.

Her fingernails were painted with black nail polish, and a small portion of it had already chipped off.

"Brother? What are you spacing out for?"

Bai Xiaojing waved her hand in front of him, "The game's starting! The game's starting!"

Lin Ye snapped out of his daze and gripped the mouse tightly.

He played terribly the first time.

I pressed the wrong skill button, ran into a wall while moving, bought the wrong equipment, and got solo killed by the opponent four times.

The guy with the tattooed arm next to him was laughing so hard he was slapping the table, his tongue nail dangling from his mouth: "Holy crap, bro, you've never done this before!"

"I said I forgot."

"You've forgotten so completely, it's like you've been formatted."

He regained some of his touch in the second round.

He got one kill, then another. When he was ganged up on by three opponents for the third time, Bai Xiaojing's character rushed out of the bushes and unleashed a powerful attack, pulling him out of the crowd.

"Go!" she shouted into the voice message, "Don't look back!"

He didn't turn around.

The character on the screen ran halfway across the map, and Bai Xiaojing's character behind them died at that intersection.

"It was worth it," Bai Xiaojing pushed the keyboard forward, leaned back in her chair, and lit a cigarette. "This was a good deal."

"You are dead."

"So what if I died? I won't lose any rank."

She took the cigarette out of her mouth and turned to look at him.

"Besides, if I don't die, you'll die. If you die, who am I supposed to lead to victory?"

The person with the flowery legs made a meaningful "yo" sound from the side.

Bai Xiaojing ignored her.

The third, the fourth, the fifth.

Time in an internet cafe is like liquid, flowing through the gaps in the screen light, impossible to grasp.

Lin Ye didn't know how long he had been playing. He only felt a little soreness in his neck, a little stiffness in his wrists, and a little dryness in his eyes, but his fingers didn't want to stop.

The tattooed man tucked his legs up onto the chair and sat cross-legged to play. The man with the tattooed legs had somehow gone to the front desk and brought back a case of Coke. The green-haired and pink-haired men were playing duos, shouting at each other across an empty seat. The man with bangs was quietly playing a single-player farming game, with pixelated characters on the screen digging potatoes in the field.

Lin Ye took off his headphones after the sixth game.

A thin layer of sweat clung to the earphone's foam cover. He hung the earphones on the corner of the monitor, leaned back in his chair, and let out a sigh.

Bai Xiaojing was smoking a cigarette, leaning back in her chair watching him.

"How is it?" she asked.

"What, how is it?"

"Go to an internet cafe."

She twirled the cigarette between her fingers.

"Was it good?"

Lin Ye thought for a moment.

"Cool."

At that moment, he suddenly realized something.

He had never thought about this before. The day Zhang Qian deleted all the games from his computer, he thought he was doing the right thing.

He is working hard for their future; he is becoming a better person.

But now, sitting on a broken chair in an internet cafe, surrounded by six young women, I've just played six games, winning three and losing three, with the buzzing of keyboard clicks and the swearing of tattooed women still ringing in my ears.

He realized that all he really wanted to do was play a game.

It's not that I'm not ambitious or unambitious.

I just want to play a game.

Just like a person wants to eat, drink, and breathe.

Zhang Qian made him realize that this was wrong.

But she was wrong.

"elder brother,"

Bai Xiaojing suddenly leaned closer, bringing her face close to his. "Why are your eyes so red? Have you been staring at the monitor for too long? I'll go get you some eye drops."

"Need not,"

Lin Ye blinked and laughed, "Smoked."

Bai Xiaojing looked at him, then at the cigarette in her hand.

She stubbed out her cigarette in the can, said nothing, and gripped the mouse again.

"One more round!"

She said, "I'll pick support this game, and you'll play ADC."

"I'm not very good at it."

"I'll teach you."