NonPopular ~ Book 2 [A LCS FanFic]

Homesick

2nd of June
Week 3, Thursday

Lauren POV

We arrived earlier than usual in the Studios, since the Puls4 wanted to get some special insight into the Studios. Jeffrey and I showed them around and commented everything together with Chris, who was pretty amazed of how big the Studios were in real life.
"I mean, I already did some work before I came here. I watched some videos from the League Championship and stuff", he told us as we made our way up to the caster desk: "But it always looked smaller. Here is so much space."

After we showed him the buffet, different rooms and the backstage area, we made our way back to our room and did some pre-game talk. Chris and his team decided to get some food in the meanwhile.
I really liked them. They were all nice and it was actually really funny with Chris. Also, it felt comfortable talking and hearing that Austrian German from other people rather than just from Jeff, Hiêu and Zhen. I was already curious about the report, but now we needed to focus on the game against Inspire Esports.
We played the first game and I was actually pretty happy about it, cause then we would be finished with the game at about 7 pm and still had enough time for some more interviews with Puls4.
Fnatic played the third game against Gamers2, so they would arrive later.

Shortly before we made our way backstage, Febiven showed up in our room and gave me some last motivation.
"I'm sure you gonna beat them", he grinned: "Oh and btw, tomorrow we will get interviewed after our game?"
I nodded: "Yes, but don't remind me on our game now. I'm already nervous to play against Inspire, so I don't even want to think about facing you guys."
Febiven started laughing: "Ah, comeon."
"They are completely new here, so you never know", I shrugged, but still smiled: "Anyway, we need to go now."
"Good luck, my little Lauren", he gave me a short kiss and then let me go backstage.

Puls4 filmed us until it was our time to go on stage. But they left us alone with our thoughts, which was pretty good, cause there were a lot of thoughts going on in my head.
As we could finally walk on stage, I was so relieved to play the first game. First of all, it was Thursday, so they weren't many people in the Studios and second of all, I was kinda tired already.
We sat down and logged ourselves into Teamspeak.

Levi POV

"Ughh, I wanna go home", I heard Seika as I put on the headphones.
"Why?", I laughed: "It's not like we are facing NonP, right?"
"Ha ha", our Support sighed: "Not funny."
"Why so negative though?", Kilian asked.
"Cause we have a super tough week? NonP and Vitality?", Vic joined our conversation.
I could see Kilian rolling his eyes:"With this kind of attitude, we won't get anywhere. We are 2-2. We just have to face such hard opponents sooner or later. But we aren't at the bot of the table."
"But we aren't top either", Seika said.
"True, but midfield is quite good for a new team, right?", I tried to motivate everybody, but couldn't really believe myself. Something bothered me. I wanted to get rid of the negative thoughts, but it was really hard. I just couldn't see us winning this game.
But before anybody of us could say anything more, Lanya interrupted us all: "Stop that now. Don't see NonpPopular as NonPopular. See them as just 5 people playing against you. It doesn't matter who they are. They could be SKT or they could be Renegades. It doesn't matter. All that matters is our gameplay, okay?"
We all remained silent, cause we knew that she was right. We were just really lucky to have such a positive and strong coach.
"Now let's focus on this game."

After a 40 minute game, we all just stared into our screens. While some already pressed on Continue, I was still staring at the Defeat sign. I shook my head and slowly put down my headphones. I could hear the crowd shouting and I could also hear Quickshot talking about the game, but I didn't understand a single word. It was just a loud noise in my head.
We were blue side, so I was happy to be the last one to stand up. Just seconds before Mikuo reached me, I stood up and turned to her. I shook her hand and she gave me a warming smile.
Next was Hiêu, then Kirito and then Jeff. He gave me a strong hug and patted my back. Last one was Meffi, who also gave me a warming smile just like Mikuo did.
Now I just wanted to get off stage. I unplugged my stuff as fast as possible and made my way backstage with big steps.