I woke up normally. I didn't set up my alarm since I didn't have to wake up early for school today. I checked the time and saw that it was already 10:27 a.m., it was still too early. Well, too early for me on weekends. Liz said they would be arriving after lunch since the match was at 3 p.m. Remembering that my friends would visit my house later in the afternoon, my drowsiness vanished.

 

I'll just cook up a quick breakfast before cleaning my apartment room. I thought to myself.

After eating my brunch, I cleaned my plates and proceeded to organize my apartment which is usually messy since I'm too lazy to tidy it. I can't have them thinking that I'm actually this disorganized. Changing the sheets, dusting the floor, spraying some air freshener, and cleaning my apartment took a lot of time. I opened my phone to check the messages from our group chat to see if they were on their way here.

 

Liz: We're heading there right now, I'm excited to see the match with you Kat!

Lenna: I'm with Liz right now and we will both arrive in a couple of minutes. Save some snacks for us ;)

Katherine: You sure you guys don't need me to get you at the station?

I replied.

Liz: No need, we got this. We have goo*** maps after all and you already told us your complete address. It'll be a walk in the park.

I closed the messenger and opened another app. A couple of minutes later while watching cute cat videos on my phone, a call came. It was Liz. I let it ring a couple of times before answering it so it makes her think I'm mostly busy and not holding my phone 24/7.

"What's up?" I asked.

"The guard told us to wait in the lobby to verify if we really are your guests."

Oh, I forgot about that, this apartment complex is usually strict especially to unfamiliar people for safety reasons. It is one of the main reasons why Mom lets me live here on my own in the first place.

"Wait a sec, I'll head down there now."

I immediately hang up and then proceed to go to the ground floor.

I notice them sitting in the lobby intended for the guest.

"Liz, Lenna," I greeted them.

"Kat!" Liz said excitedly.

"About time," Lenna smiled.

"They are with me, can we enter now?" I asked the receptionist in the lobby politely.

"Of course Miss Katyusha. Please forgive the delay. It's just our policy to not let unfamiliar guests in." he replied.

"No, it's alright, It's my fault that I forgot to mention them beforehand," I said placatingly.

"Well, then let's go?" I said as I led the way to the elevator.

Liz and Lenna followed suit. The both of them surveyed the ground floor as we headed for the elevator. After we entered the elevator currently devoid of people since it was a relaxing weekday, Lenna suddenly started talking.

"Wow, I didn't expect your apartment complex to be this lavish. Ohh! Are you secretly a CEO's daughter or something?" Lenna said with amusement.

"You're exaggerating, It's not that luxurious. It has a good ambiance and is always well maintained so you get a good bargain for your bucks since the price is not that high. Their market target is just the upper middle class, not the billionaires." I explained.

Besides, were not short on money since Mom and Dad earns well and I also got the cash prize from the 1st AC to pay for it. Though my teammates and I had to split it into 4 so it's not really a life-altering amount of money compared to the prize now.

"Well, what matters the most is that it's safe and secure." Liz chimed in.

"Yeah, that's what my mother says too"

We chatted as we headed towards my apartment room. After arriving at the front door of my apartment, I beckoned them to enter

"This is my apartment room, come inside"

They entered unceremoniously and then took in the view of my living room. I'm glad I cleaned it earlier.

"Wow, what a nice place you got here. It is neat and tidy." Lenna praised

"Yeah, it also has a relaxing ambiance and music too!" Liz exclaimed.

"Anyways let's head to my room for now"

I lead them to my room just on the opposite side of the kitchen.

 

"This is my room"

 

I opened the door prompting the two inside. The area is quite spacey, a 15x18 feet room with a personal bathroom. A closet can be found next to the door with a mirror right beside it. Next to the bed are various decorations placed on a standing wall table. Most of the decorations are cute stuffed toys and other miscellaneous adorable decors that I think would look well in a room.

At the other side of the door is the entrance to the bathroom. At the center of the room is a small table that is placed on top of a relatively comfortable carpet. On the far corner is my desktop PC, It rarely sees any use nowadays since I mainly play VR games now, but I still use it sometimes for projects or school assignments.

"Ohh, your room is clean and comfy. Mine's always messy since I rarely clean it myself." Liz suddenly said.

"Yeah, it's also quite....girlier than I thought it would be. You should have a look at Liz's room. It's full of toys." Lenna giggled.

 

"Haa? What did you just say? Did you just call my prized CoA figurine collection toys? Do you want to end our friendship that badly?" Liz bickered.

 

"And listen to this! She even has that limited edition Yuusha schoolgirl uniform figurine she keeps bragging about to me nonstop like a national treasure when she got it!"

 

"Of course! It's the hardest figurine you could get, I was super lucky that I got the last one before they ran out! Die-hard male fans of Yuusha would even kill for it since it is the only figurine available where you can see her panties!" Liz rattled off.

My cheeks suddenly reddened. Good thing they didn't notice since they're both busy bickering, but I mean, what the heck! Is that even legal!?

But I suppose there were some kind of terms and conditions that allowed them to have all the monetization rights to the characters of their game or something when you first start the game. But I mean, nobody reads that so it's like cheating. Curse you and your greedy conglomerate company ways V-tech!

 

Suddenly, the doorbell rang distracting me from my thoughts.

 

"I'll go get it, wait here for a bit," I said as I quickly headed towards the door.

 

I don't recall having any visitors today except these two. But I doubt the security would let anyone suspicious in, so it could only be either my parents or my aunt.

 

I arrived at my front door and looked at the CCTV screen attached to the side that focuses on the door.

 

It was my mother.

 

I opened the door and she greeted me with a loving smile.

 

"How's my baby? Are you having any difficulties on your first week here?" she asked

 

"Of course not, I'm old and responsible enough to live by myself you know," I rebuked.

 

"By the way, is Dad not with you?" I continued.

 

"Ohh your dad has an important meeting to attend, so I'm the only one here visiting you today." She regretfully said.

 

"....I see"

 

While mom has been overprotective since my sister left this world, my dad allocated all his free time at work, attempting to change all his grief into productivity. At first, I thought that I was the only one affected by my sister's passing but it became apparent that my parents were greatly impacted by it too, it's just that we each had different ways of coping with it. I'm just the weakest one out of us three. The only one experiencing panic attacks. It was naive of me back then to even think that they didn't care about my sister at all. I guess I'm not as mature as I thought I was.

 

"Ohh by the way, I heard from Carlos you had visitors!" Mom bought me out of my musings.

 

Carlos was the name of one of the guards in this apartment. Mom has always been chatty and social (the complete opposite of me) so she probably got the information from talking to him.

"Uhuh, they came to hang out". I spoke slowly.

"Ohh I want to see them," she said excitedly.

I have a bad feeling about this. But I don't think I have a concrete reason to decline nor the choice since she will just barge into my room anyway.

 

"Fine, they're in my room," I said as I led Mother to my bedroom.

 

I opened the door and saw Liz and Lenna looking at some of my stuff and decorations.

 

They noticed I had someone else with me so they instantly straightened their back and stood up.

 

"Mom, these are my friends Elizabeth Miles and Lenna Taylor. Guys, this is my mother," I introduced them to each other.

 

"My my, aren't you kids gorgeous!" My mother cried out.

 

"Thank you, You look beautiful as well Mrs. Katyusha" Liz replied respectfully.

 

"And polite too it's hard to believe my daughter made such wonderful friends like you girls. I was skeptical at first when I heard she had her friends here. She never bought any of her friends home, you girls must get along pretty well."

 

I don't like the way this conversation is going. My instinct is telling me to cut off their conversation. But it would be quite rude, so doing that would be out of the question.

 

"Well, we're pretty grateful to Kat too, she's dependable and always takes care of us." Liz politely said.

 

"That's good to hear, ohh you can have some cake I bought whenever you're hungry. It's Kat's favorite cake from a famous bakery back at Ardmore."

 

"It.... is? I thought she didn't like sweets?" Liz asked dubiously

 

Oh yeah, I remembered telling them that back at the cafe to look more mature.

 

"Oh of course she does. I bought two cakes since she can easily finish 1 whole cake all by herself. She always eats a lot whenever she sees sweets. She also likes it more if they have some sort of cute designs on them."

 

My face instantly flushed. To be fair, their serving is not that big so I can eat it by myself, also having a good visual presentation for a food makes it more desirable right?

 

I can hear Lenna snickering in the background. Thanks, Mom you always were really good at embarrassing your own daughter unknowingly, It might even be called a talent at this rate.

 

"Ohh you girls want to see some photos of Kat when she was younger? She was so adorable back then!"

 

Ok, that's enough, drastic times call for drastic measures. I have to do something now that it's come to this. My image will be in shatters if this keeps up, I have to salvage whatever's left of it somehow.

 

"M-Mom, we're going to watch the match now. You can just bother us later." I cut her off.

 

I pushed my mother (quite gently if I might add) out of my room to prevent any further destruction of my well-maintained image.

 

"Ohh alright, you girls have fun! Remember to call me if there's any problem, I'll just be in the living room watching TV.

I shut the door after my mother left my room. looking right behind me I can see both Liz and Lenna smiling at me playfully.

 

I sigh

 

"Let's just watch the game."

-------------------------------

The three of us are lying in my bed with Liz sandwiched in the middle of me and Lenna, luckily the bed is quite big and can fit us three though it is still a little cramped so we're compressing to fit. We spent the time talking about school-related stuff and watching random videos on my and Liz's laptop. I took a look at the time at the bottom right side of my laptop. it is 2:58 already so the match should be starting soon.

"The match is about to start. let's open the streaming site."

Liz apparently noticed it too since she had already opened the site on her laptop.

"I want to eat some snacks while watching" Lenna chimed.

"No eating in bedrooms, especially mine." I admonished

"But I'm hungrrryyy, please just this one time?"

I sigh.

"Fine, I'll go grab some chips and whatever mom bought, but try not to make a mess while eating," I warned

"Yes! Thanks Katherine you're the best!"

"Yeah, yeah"

I went to the kitchen to pick up some of the snacks my mother bought. I picked a couple of chips and packaged caramel popcorn (one of my favorites) then went back upstairs.

"This is Lumen your host along with my 2 panelists for this game to help us break down the intricacies of this match. Dr.AnaList and Rainstorm."

I heard the introduction of the panelist signaling the start of the live stream match. I haven't followed the pro scene that much for more than 2 years but I remember Lumen and Rainstorm. Lumen is in the mid to late 20s and is a beautiful streamer that has quite a lot of followers for her outspoken and polite personality. Rainstorm on the other hand is a sponsored pro player from the days I was active, I even fought him once in the 1st Andartha Cup. He has medium-length hair, a serious-looking face, and a pale white complexion contributed by the fact that he probably seldom goes out into the sun and only plays VR as most pro gamers do. He must have retired recently and become a panelist talent.

 

"Kat, come fast! It's starting" Liz excitedly called out.

 

I lay down on my bed and then handed them the snacks which they both gratefully accepted. After that, we listened to the panel's take on the match.

 

"Let us first ask the question that the viewers would like to know, who do you think will win?" Lumen asked her co-workers.

 

"Personally, I would like team NG to win. We all know that I've been rivals with Tactical ever since I can remember and I can confidently say that I know how dangerous his strategies can be. But considering their recent declining past performances and their concurrent lackluster individual and mechanical skills, a good strategy can only take you so far. Also considering team Atelier's stellar improvement this season, I bitterly have to give my vote to team Atelier for this one." Rainstorm explained.

"I have to agree with you there Rainstorm, There is a saying that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Even if team NG has a tactical advantage, if they get outplayed individually and fail to execute their strategy then things will easily fall apart for them. Also, I do not want to bet against team Atelier's rising ace Murasame who is undoubtedly the best female pro gamer this season. People even call her the next Yuusha, although she will have to win an Andarta cup title under her belt for both of them to be even comparable." Dr.AnaList analyzed

That got me intrigued. Team Atelier is a fairly new team before I quit playing. I can recall that they were created for the sole purpose of marketing idol streamers and pro gamers so all their members are attractive and quite famous among the CoA fanbase. I remember they didn't do very well when they debuted and lost most of their matches but still garnered a very high fanbase because they are all popular female streamers. I didn't pay much attention to their roster but I can confidently say that they didn't have this 'Murasame' player back then.

"Who is this Murasame?" I asked Liz

"You don't know her? She's Murasame 'The Unseen Blade'. Her Real name is 'Aoi Yamamoto', 22 years old. She was the Japanese women's kendo champion before she became a pro gamer. Her slashes are so fast that you won't even be able to follow them! Her hobbies are tea ceremonies and gardening. She also likes listening to relaxing music. She's soft-spoken but can be very blunt sometimes. Her three sizes are-."

"Wait, wait, wait! How do you even know all this stuff? Are you her stalker or something?" I eyed Liz dubiously.

"That is suspicious. I didn't think you would stoop so low to be a stalker. As your best friend, I'm so disappointed I wasn't able to correct you on the right path, boo-hoo." Lenna fake cried.

"I'm not a stalker! You can find all of their public information on Team Atelier's site. And besides, she's a streamer too, I need to know who my competitors are and also take notes from them." Liz denied my accusation with a somewhat reasonable counter-argument.

 

"She's a streamer too?" I asked

 

Judging from what I heard about her personality, she doesn't seem to be the type to do streams.

 

"Team Atelier's organization requires their players to stream so she streams sometimes but she rarely talks even on stream and just plays PVP. She still has the second highest stream followers next to Yuna though." Liz recounted.

 

"Before we start, here is a quick advertisement from one of our sponsors."

 

Suddenly a well-crafted commercial advertisement played in the stream. All the while the stream chat is spamming sellouts and the like. Likely mocking the ads. After the advertisement, Lumen continued.

 

"Keep in mind that 20% of the sales of our products will go directly to the prize pool of this year's Andartha's Cup. So what are you guys waiting for? Buy as many figurines, t-shirts, and merch of your favorite pro players as you can so that you will also be supporting them at the same time!" Lumen advertised.

 

"And now let's head over to our casters DJ Riot and ParaTrooper for the start of the match!" Lumen announced.