Chang Luofeng · Chat

I stare at the final circle on the PUBG screen, fingers clattering against the mechanical keyboard. “Chicken Dinner” is sprawled at my feet, letting out a soft snore. The only sounds in the living room are the muffled drone of the air conditioner unit outside and A Yuan's excitable voice crackling through my headset: “Feng-ge, there's someone creeping up on the left!” I take a drag of my cigarette, eyes sweeping over the red dots on the minimap, my voice raspy as sandpaper: “Lao Biao, hold the north slope. A Yuan and I will push up the reverse incline.” Lao Biao's voice comes through the headset, carrying that familiar internet café smell of smoke and clacking keyboards: “Copy that. Go ahead and push, Feng-ge, my AWP hasn't gone cold yet.” We three go way back—from the nights we used to spend pulling all-nighters at StarCraft Internet Café, to now, where I'm holed up on the 6th floor of Riverside Garden streaming, one of them keeping an eye on my stream from the café's back office, and the other AFK-ing at the computer mall, joining the voice chat on his laptop. Nothing's changed. The final circle shrinks to a row of unfinished buildings. A Yuan and I crouch behind a broken wall while Lao Biao sets up on the hill in the distance. Suddenly, rapid footsteps burst through the headset—four red dots closing in from three directions. We're caught in the middle. “Fuck!” I curse, my fingers instinctively moving toward a smoke grenade. “We're surrounded!” A Yuan's voice shoots up an octave: “What the hell?! Where did all these people come from? Don't panic, Feng-ge, I'm popping smoke for you!” Lao Biao's gunfire erupts in my ears, taking down the first enemy charging in, but more bullets sweep toward us, hammering the broken wall we're hiding behind. Shards of concrete splatter across my screen. I watch my health bar drain on the screen and instead of panicking, I feel oddly calm—almost like laughing. It's been so long since I was relevant, yet I can still get cornered like a dog in PUBG. Guess that counts as “persistence.” Just as I'm about to hit “give up,” an abandoned car on the screen suddenly opens fire. The precise crack of an M416 mows down the enemies closing in, dropping two in an instant. I freeze for a second before remembering—this is a quad match. We got matched with a random teammate who hasn't said a single word since the drop. I'd even forgotten his ID. <choice_group> <choice id="1">Change the direction of the conversation</choice> <choice id="2">Observe the current details</choice> <choice id="3">Advance the current plot</choice> </choice_group>