League of Legends

The electronic door to the house opened, making a sound notable to the people in the house. Shawn's mother, Jane was in the kitchen preparing soup for today. In their household, it was very normal to have soup mixed with rice for dinner. If they wanted something more special, Jane would fry an egg to put on top. She said, "Welcome home. How was your day?"

"Same old. Boring." Shawn would always say that about school.

"Should I be expecting any calls from school today?" Jane suggestively asked if Shawn got into trouble.

Stopping in his tracks, Shawn thought about it off the top of his head before answering, "No, not that I could think of."

"Alright, go take a shower and finish your homework before watching your videos."

"Will do." With a wave, Shawn went into his room. The first he does after closing his door was lay on his bed. Exhaustion poured across him as he thought to himself. Maybe I shouldn't stay up so late every night.

Back when he did not have to focus and do his homework, Shawn could basically nap in school secretly and come home energized for a full night of entertainment. Now, that idea was thrown out of the window with all the commitments that he was enrolled into. Bringing him back to reality was a phone notification from Julian.

"Hey man, I recently found this computer game called League of Legends. It's pretty damn good. Want to give it a try together? It is multiplayer." Julian messaged him over WeChat.

Looking at the message, Shawn thought about it. He had just finished his anime series and so, he could either start a new one or try out this game. For the first time, the boy decided to go with the latter. What he did not know was that this decision of his had effectively changed his whole life.

Before taking a shower, Shawn turned on his computer and downloaded League of Legends from the official website. Since they were in China and the game was only available to play in North America, Shawn downloaded that version. After dinner, the game had finished downloading and Julian had invited him onto a Skype call so that they could effectively communicate between each other.

"Hey, can you hear me?" Julian called out over Skype.

"Yes." Shawn replied while wearing his earphones.

"Okay, go play the tutorial. I will wait for you to come out." Shawn obediently created his account and named himself, Nobody. The reason for that name? Well, Shawn was edgy and did not really care for anything or anyone.

In the tutorial, Shawn got to play the beginner champion, Ashe, where he got to learn of the game mode, MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena). There were five players on each team and there were two sides on a map. The objective was to destroy the enemy's nexus which was located at the opposite sides of each map. There were three lanes, top, middle and bottom and also a jungle lane. Players would be split amongst the map and do their part in reaching enemy's nexus. That was what Shawn had gotten out of the tutorial.

Immediately from that point on, the teenager was hooked onto this game. It could be said that this was the first game after Pokémon that had genuinely intrigued Shawn. The unique playstyles of every champion and the diversity in gameplay was astonishing. Sadly after a few games with Julian, night time was already here and Julian's mother was already chasing him to bed for school.

"Dude, let's play tomorrow again. Goodnight." Julian said his goodbyes as he left for bed. On the other hand, Shawn wasn't feeling tired. Energised by the game, he had forgotten about the thought he had just now about sleeping earlier. The boy played till 3 in the morning, before realising that he had went overboard.

Still feeling the excitement of the new game, Shawn tried his best to sleep a good 4 hours. On the way to school, he had to quickly finish up the shading of his fruits. Emilie who sat beside him on the bus was astonished by her bus mate's art skills. "Shawn, what the heck? You can draw so well!"

"It's alright." Not really listening to her, Shawn focused on finishing up the cross-hatching.

"Nah, that's pure skill. I can't believe you really think that this is alright. You're already many times better than me."

"It's alright." Once again, Shawn repeated himself as he wasn't paying attention.

"Ah… sometimes I just wish that god was not so unfair when they created mankind. You're talented in both Art and Drama. What next? Who's to say you're also a Music genius?"

"It's alright."

"You're really aggravating sometimes, you know that?"

"It's alright."

"…"

As they arrived in school, Shawn and Emilie made their way to the Art room together and handed their sketchbook to Ms Stella. Seeing that the boy was handing up him homework, the teacher nodded and praised Shawn. If she had known that he had been rushing on the bus to finish this, Shawn would surely have gotten an earful of scolding from the older lady.

In form class, for the first time, Shawn did not sleep through it. Rather, he was discussing with Julian about League of Legends and the champions they had tried out last night. It was a very heated discussion and both boys were very excited to try out other compositions together. Sadly for Shawn, he also had play rehearsals to attend to, while Julian who never joined any form of extra-curricular activities, could head home after school to play more games.