Tangent | Soukoku; AU [✔]

31 ➳ on-stage // n.c

coach mori decided to put me in my original role for the first game. as he should.

but what this means is that our team only has one shot to make it out of this bracket. which also means that none of us can fuck up.

or at least just me anyway; i cannot fuck up for the life of me. i want to prove to everybody that i am not the huge portion of the problem as to why this team never won anything. but most importantly, i don't want to look bad in front of the new support. no no. that would be a nightmare.

i looked at the jet-black haired woman on my left, who was making a quick fix in her game's setting. i've been noticing since a while ago that, while her hair covers a lot of her eyes, i can tell that the surplus of lights in the stage were making her wince. ren would occasionally rub her eyes with her arm sleeves or make a low-toned grunt, almost like she's trying her best to be taciturn. well, i guess she is taciturn to begin with. 

my guess is that she's never been this exposed to light, but not to a point that she's photophobic.

"hey, xyren," was my attempt to engage in a conversation before the game started. "you doing good? seems like something's bothering you."

without even turning to my direction, ren kept her gaze straight to the monitor and replied to me; no more no less than "i'm alright."

"o-okay then," i mustered at that moment, silence filling the space between us again before i gathered enough courage to say "let's do our best this game, shall we?"

xyren just nodded with no changes in her facial expression. it's hard to gauge what her thought process is at the moment. i'm pretty certain that not all challengers are like this during tournaments. there are pro players out there such as in america or europe that just memes their way throughout the entire competition - whether they're winning or losing.

the commentators' voices have boomed all over the stadium, indicating that it was time for the game to begin. coach mori and the opposing team's coach had shook fair hands at the center of the stage before going backstage again where they'll be watching us play.

it was time to ban some characters that neither us nor the enemy team could use. can't say i was surprised when the opposing side banned only support characters, and all of them were all characters that had the stereotype of only girl gamers would use.

i heard tachihara snort through the voice call. "pfft, they thought they did something there huh?"

the usual discrimination for female players were all up in the atmosphere at this point. but i guess it is a fair point that the sudden appearance of a woman in the pgs scene with little to no time to dig up information about them, all they could think of is just ban the "egirl characters". whether they're doing it as a strategy or to insult xyren, it was still an obvious assertion of their egos as men.

after the banning phase, we were the first side to pick the champions that we were going to use. tachihara asked if ren wanted to pick anything first, but she refused and said she wanted to see what the enemy side is up to first.

eventually, almost everyone had chosen their characters to play and it was only up to me, ren, and the enemy support to pick. akutagawa picked my champion early, so it was up to me to pick for him, and ren to decide upon herself.

i swear, i felt a thousand widened eyes upon xyren's decision of whom she picked; my own eyes included.

i can't believe it. i'm not sure if this was her way to make a statement, but i absolutely have no idea what to feel about it.

the challenger picked another carry champion to support me with.