When an Alpha is Marked by One of His Own Kind

Chapter 32

Perhaps due to the voting incident that had sent him spiraling into depression, Shen Qiao didn't go online for quite a long while. Every morning, he would get up and visit the swimming pool like clockwork. Then he would head to the training room and practice until two or three in the morning.
But he wouldn't queue up for ranked games. He played only random matches in which he could rampage wildly on the battlefield.

Lu Zhe stayed with him every night. While queuing for his own games, he would glance over at Shen Qiao's screen. And every single time, Shen Qiao was either mired in a 1v5 bloodbath or on his way to mire himself in a 1v5 bloodbath.

The increased ferocity of his performance in the rift allowed DG to easily steamroll their opponents in their next five tournament matches, winning each best-of-three game in a clean 2-0 sweep. Shen Qiao took the title of MVP in four of those ten matches, putting him in the spotlight with Lu Zhe, who'd claimed the same number of MVP titles. The other two MVP titles had gone to Qian Bao.

This unbridled performance... puffed up all of DG's fans and had them rampaging through the esports community, savagely full of themselves.

Unfortunately, the man who was making a name for himself-Shen Qiao-refused to participate in all post-game interviews. He seemed to be making a bold declaration: every day his fans refused to forget about the voting incident was another day he would refuse to appear in the public eye.

And because of that, he also planned to bunk off the rest of his allocated streaming hours for June.

Near the end of the month, Manager Zhou reviewed the whole team's streaming hours. When he saw the twenty-four hours that Shen Qiao still owed, he started to feel a little unwell from head to toe.

Manager Zhou had learned from Lu Zhe why Shen Qiao was reluctant to stream. But those streaming hours were a part of his contract. In his office, Manager Zhou scratched at his hair which was thinning more and more every day. He ultimately decided to give Shen Qiao a gentle, tactful reminder in the most roundabout way possible.

One morning, as Shen Qiao prepared to head out to the swimming pool with his gym bag in tow, he was stopped at the top of the stairs by Manager Zhou.

"Wolfy, ah... good morning. Wanna grab breakfast together?"

Shen Qiao paused just before starting down the stairs. He stuck one hand in his pocket and glanced back at Manager Zhou, before casually answering, "I just had some bread in my room. Not hungry."

Which meant 'no'.

Manager Zhou could see that Shen Qiao was going to disappear from sight in just another few steps. He was frantic. Before he thought through what he wanted to say, he hastily blurted something, anything out to make Shen Qiao stay:

"Ai! Wait!"

Shen Qiao patiently stopped again. This time, he could tell that Manager Zhou had something he wanted to say.

Manager Zhou couldn't think of anything he could say that sounded urgent. He had no way of steering them towards the subject of livestreaming. Then, suddenly, he spotted the floor number '2' hanging on the wall.

He vigorously clapped his hands together once!

Shen Qiao's mind had filled up with a befuddled fog due to Manager Zhou's weird behavior. Manager Zhou wasn't getting to the point, and his spontaneous actions were completely inexplicable. Before using up the last of his patience, Shen Qiao decided to try to get to the bottom of what Manager Zhou wanted.

Manager Zhou finally managed to squeeze out a few words. He lifted his hand and pointed to the floor number on the wall, asking Shen Qiao, "Take a look at this number. You know what that looks like?"