A Sly Heart
(Photo attached)
13/0/7 Mid Aatrox
Headbutting dinosaur, my ass lol. This guy solo-swept the entire map.
This bastard just treated top like an inhibitor.
Once he got warmed up he just sniffed out kills and ran around like crazy, what are you even talking about lol
Grandmaster in no time, probably lol
Lane swap? That's what you do when you get hard-countered.
Malphite can handle Irelia and Sylas just fine, so from Malphite's perspective, going anywhere is breaking even.
Malphite runs First Strike and only ever thinks about the "click" moment anyway, so he wouldn't have cared either way.
Sylas was probably grinning, thinking he'd steal Malphite's ult — but laning against Malphite is more doable than you'd expect.
In that situation, stubbornly sticking to your own lane instead of taking the swap Malphite offers is just a loss.
Swapping after getting hard-countered is something even Bronze players do if they actually want to win, yeah.
Of course the enemy isn't stupid, so Irelia followed Aatrox down.
Aatrox's current power level is solid enough that he can win late — but that's only if you minimize early CS losses and actually get your items online.
No items? Irelia wins every time.
One item? Irelia still wins more easily.
So how did Aatrox solo-kill Irelia in that matchup?
The answer: he interrupted her so she couldn't stack Bladesurge.
As everyone knows, Irelia's Bladesurge resets its cooldown when she kills an enemy with it.
She uses that to rapidly stack four times, then either kites with the extended auto range and attack speed, or just all-ins — and most people know that in those setups, Irelia wins.
Aatrox cut that off with the very tip of his greatsword slam, launching her and breaking the chain.
Irelia couldn't farm minions with Q, so no cooldown reset.
Then she just got beaten down by raw stat-check and lost the trade.
The first time, I figured it was a fluke.
But when Irelia was just riding Bladesurge around for CS, he left her alone — and the second she thought she had a kill angle, he just slammed Q, chained her, and beat the absolute hell out of her.
If he'd tried a few times to cut Bladesurge and only gotten the kill catch on the occasional success, I'd have thought, okay, fair enough.
But watching him deliberately cut Irelia's Bladesurge the moment he decided it was a kill angle and then finish her — yeah, that was intentional. No question.
If this person had never made a statement about the hack accusations, I probably would've thought they were hacking too.
I mean, Irelia's Q is faster than Aatrox's greatsword slam to begin with, so how did he even time it?
Anyway, the four solo kills on Irelia can be explained by that.
Through three kills, she probably figured the first two were flukes and kept going in.
On the fourth, she had Trinity Force, so she figured she'd win the fight.
But she lost, so whatever.
Roaming is just basic mid-lane literacy, so I won't say more on that.
But put another way — that means the basic literacy is there.
Is Noel a headbutting-dinosaur bubble? — No
Is Noel pro-level at League of Champions? — △
What I've seen so far is someone who goes hard in lane and knows how to snowball off that.
Whether they're a player who can generate synergy with teammates from a zero base and win that way — I still don't know.
Looking at that 33% tank win rate, I personally don't think they're that kind of gamer, yeah.
I played late into the evening.
After saying goodbye to my viewers, I dug through the gaming community.
Aside from one game, every match I'd played as a tank had gone poorly. Still, my results in the rest of the games had come out pretty well.
But there was more talk than I'd expected about the game where I'd played Aatrox.
Only about thirty people had been watching the stream, and fewer than ten had actually been chatting along with me. Maybe the fallout from the hack suspicions and the subsequent explanation had drawn more eyes than I thought.
I'd figured it would be enough just to let the controversy die down. Having it blow up this much was starting to feel like a burden.
Of course, I was a streamer now, so I ought to be grateful for that kind of attention. But still — it scared me.
Playing games while chatting casually with a handful of viewers was definitely more fun than sitting alone with nothing but the game. But if the aggro pulled in even more people?
Hanging out with friends was enjoyable. One was fine. Two was fine. Four or five would probably still be okay. With friends like that, I could talk about interesting stories from books I'd read, or ask what songs they liked — as much as I wanted. After a few drinks, I could even get philosophical and share my personal thoughts freely.
But even with those same friends right in front of me, standing up to present in class still made me burn with embarrassment. University project presentations had been the same. Back when I was a guy, I'd told myself a boy had no business being scared of something like that and taken the presentations on anyway. Now, just thinking about those numbers made me feel like I might throw up.
Even thirty had made my heart race. If it became forty, fifty — if it hit three digits — would I still be able to play the way I always had, without being conscious of them?
Just looking at the community was enough. People were paying attention because I was good at the game. Even the ones tearing me down for being bad were only picking at me because I was climbing through Master tier and my score kept rising.
What if I got so intimidated in front of people that it started affecting my play? Those admiring looks would all flip to contempt. Praise would turn to mockery.
Criticism, verbal abuse, curses, and ridicule were things you got used to playing League of Champions. But the thought of someone who'd been close to me turning like that — the thought of viewers who gasped in admiration and praised me whenever I made a good play on stream suddenly turning their backs — that was what made my breath catch hard in my throat.
I'd already been through that once. Starting with my father and mother. The well-behaved son who'd gotten into a prestigious university had become a worthless little girl, and even the people who'd been my family had done that. Between me and viewers I'd never even seen face-to-face, changing their attitude would be as easy as flipping a hand.
…It was funny, in a way. If you thought about it, even if that happened, I'd just be going back to how things were before. I'd spent so long alone, never hearing anything but insults. And yet after hearing a few warm words for a little while, I was terrified of going back.
Like how you don't think much of it when you're living on instant ramen alone, but once you've had some chicken or pizza, you don't want to go back. Once I'd felt people's warmth, I didn't want to return to that cold shadow.
What a sly heart.
…I hated myself for thinking something so pathetic. Quietly, I brought my hands to my throat.
"Kh, kh…."
I clamped both hands around my neck and squeezed, putting force into my fingers until no other thoughts could form. I held on until my mind went completely white, until I started to wonder if I might actually die this time — and only then did my heart settle.
Whether I was angry or depressed, when my mind got tangled up like this, resetting it once seemed to help.
"Haa, haa…."
I was lying face-down on the bed, gasping for breath, when somehow the bare legs of the next-door sister came into view.
…Had she seen it?
My chest dropped at the thought that my private secret had been found out — and yet at the same time, a flicker of anticipation rose about what kind of attention the next-door sister might show me. Did that just mean I was that desperate for attention?
But the next-door sister simply sat down beside me and spoke in a perfectly casual voice.
"You seem like you're in a bad mood. Maybe taking a shower would help you feel a little better?"
She didn't ask a single thing about what had just happened. That left me a little disappointed, and at the same time, relieved.
Yeah. That was why I liked her. She kept a proper distance, and still offered advice.
"Could I do it tomorrow? I already showered this morning."
"You're allowed to shower morning and evening, you know."
"I didn't sweat. I don't smell either."
"It'll help clear your head."
"…Alright. I'll go, then."
"Ah — I'm heading out myself."
"Were you going to sleep?"
"I came to say good night."
"…Good night."
"Mm. Sleep well."