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“Your kites sucked today.”
The recipient stuck his tongue out and winked at the man, “Sorry.”
“Don’t ‘ sorry’ me. At this rate, we’re not going to end up against each other,” the man continued, “Wasn’t it your dream to fight against me and the team? Take this seriously, Balsa!”
“Hehe, yeah.” Luca nodded, rubbing his nape, “I just… I don’t know, my kites were off for some reason. But yes, it’s always been my dream to go against the team of the ever so beautiful Edgar Valden.”
Edgar rolled his eyes, pink tinting his cheeks, “Whatever. You’re not doing your best. I don’t think you’re serious about this competition.”
“I am!” Luca retorted, voice a little loud, “I’ve been training for this for months and Naib could tell you how dedicated I am about this.”
“Then why did you kite five seconds today?” Edgar asked, “You call that dedication? I call it failure.”
Luca frowned, sighing and muttering, “You’re… right. But I didn’t give up!”
“You then proceeded to get two terror shocks during your rebound kite,” Edgar continued, “I don’t even know how you achieved that against Hullabaloo of all hunters.”
“He’s complicated to kite!” Luca countered.
“Then why didn’t you choose to ban him?”
“Ann was the priority.”
“For who? For you?”
“I…”
Knock knock
The door swung ajar a little bit and there came the view of three girls a little bit younger than the pair. They looked concerned, eyes scanning the room, looking for the people talking inside. The moment their eyes landed on Edgar who stood in front of Luca, demeanor and expression anything but nice, their reactions hardened.
“Were we interrupting?” One of the trio asked.
Luca flashed a wide grin, standing from his seat and walking away from the man in front of him. He turned around, grabbing Edgar’s hand and giving it a quick squeeze before leaving to entertain the women.
“What’s up?” Luca asked, gesturing for the three to meet him outside and closing the door behind him once he joined them.
“Ah, we just wanted to take pictures,” Another spoke up.
“Oh sure! The others aren’t here though. I was just taking a small break before joining them. Did you want to wait for them? I can call everyone,” Luca rattled on.
“It’s okay, we saw all of them earlier,” the third said, “You were the only one we didn’t get to see.”
“Is that so? Sorry for hiding out here on the backstage.” Luca chuckled, “Did you want a group photo or one by one?”
The three spoke simultaneously, the air from the awkwardness earlier dissipating as they took turns taking photos with the player. They took a good five minutes of Luca’s time, a seething Edgar left alone inside the team’s dressing room.
The three squealed as they watched Luca wave goodbye to them, the man immediately entering the room once they were gone. He was faced with Edgar who was busy on his phone, expression unreadable.
Luca put on his best puppy face before walking to Edgar, wrapping his arms around his waist as he hugged the man from behind. “Sorry. I promise I’ll do better next time so we can meet each other at the championships.”
“You better.” Edgar scoffed, “No boyfriend of mine would be labeled Terror Shock King online.”
“Have you seen this?” Qi Shiyi calmly approached Luca who was lounging on the couch of their team’s house.
“That was almost a full combo.” Luca cursed himself inwardly as he saw one Good amidst the Perfect tiles. He looked up from his game, peering over at the woman. “What is it?”
Qi Shiyi handed him her phone, letting him read the contents on the screen. It was a short tweet with a few thousand likes and reposts as well as a couple replies.
me and my friends were looking for luca (the oph member) the other day and we heard someone being so mean to him. not dropping the actual name but his initials are EV and he’s in AVL
Luca furrowed his brows, placing his phone down on the couch as he scrolled to the replies.
EV in AVL? Edgar? I heard he was mean.
HE WAS!! he was saying stuff like youre a failure and a loser like !! why would you say that!!
i always hated him.
ur in idfy twt, why the need to specify which luca lol
Remember that one time he was also so rude to AVL_Mikey? Not everyone’s perfect! Everyone has bad matches
he doesn’t even kite well…
Okay that one’s a lie. He’s a top kiter of this season.
well with that attitude? i hope he gets banned. we should tag the devs @identifyv_competition
Agreed! Being a bully isn’t part of the competition and if @AVL_EdgarV won’t play nice, then @identifyv_competition should kick him out!
A screech came from the second floor of their house. The pair looked up at the stairs and saw Lily running down the stairs frantically, her hair a complete mess.
“Did you see?!” Lily asked, throwing herself next to Luca on the couch. “They’re shit talking Edgar!”
“Lily, language,” Qi Shiyi said, “And you, what are you going to do about this?”
“Why are they taking things out of context?” Luca asked, eyes back on the screen and reading more of the responses from people.
“I’ll reach out to the game organizers to explain that this is all a misunderstanding,” Qi Shiyi continued, “Meanwhile you sort out this mess. Make a post clearing things up. I already warned the two of you not to bicker when we’re in public.”
“But we weren’t.” Luca handed the phone back to its owner, “We were just talking about wanting to play against each other.”
“If this blows up, he might not even get to play at all!” Lily sobbed. “I’m gonna make a call to him! Check up on him.”
Luca sighed, grabbing his own phone and making a one-sentence tweet.
Announcements on stream tonight at 8
Comments and quotes came flooding in as soon as it got posted. Many asked if he had already seen the tweets regarding Edgar’s bullying of him, more on whether he’s going to address them on the stream or not. Instead of responding, Luca opted to turn his phone off, shove his phone in his pocket, and make his way to the residence of the AVL team.
@OPH_Luca retweeted
@AVL_EdgarV Live now.
Replies of confusion filled the screen but the two ignored them. They focused on the stream that was starting to garner fans from both sides and those who weren’t but wanted in on the story. The comments from the retweet and main tweet slowly transferred into the stream, the pair still, watching and reading.
“Obviously, this isn’t going to be like other streams that we usually have,” Luca started, “There won’t be actual game content, but we wanted to clear things up because many of you are crossing the line. We saw the tweets about Edgar and some people are even going as far as reporting him to the game developers and organizers.”
Luca sighed, “It’s not what you guys think. Edgar and I are actually friends from when we were really really young. He was the main reason why I started playing Identify V in the first place.”
“He was a really bad kiter,” Edgar piped up, “I was too, but not as bad as him.”
Luca laughed, “That’s right. Every skill I have now, I basically owe it to Edgar here.”
“We’re not only friends too!” Luca grinned wide at the words, Edgar’s cheeks reddening at them.
“Hey.” Edgar muttered softly, nudging Luca with his elbow.
“We’re also rivals! Did you know we both tried out for AVL but only Edgar got in?” Luca spoke energetically, “AVL was just being founded at that time and they were looking to build a new and fresh team for the scene, but their requirements were so high! There was one slot left so we still tried out and Edgar got in because he kited better.”
“To be fair, AVL is a kiter-centric team,” Edgar added, “You were more on supports and rescues back then.”
“Yeah, I did focus on supports, mainly supporting you,” Luca commented. “I think this little rivalry makes the relationship better, no?”
Edgar made a face of disgust, “I hate you.”
Luca pouted, “Do you really?”
Edgar sighed, pushing Luca’s face away. He looked at the web camera, pointing at Luca. “This guy is my boyfriend, alright? Just in case someone wants to clip that ‘I hate you’ part and take it out of context. He’s my boyfriend from before AVL and OPH. My boyfriend, my man, the one I celebrate holidays with. Boy. Friend. Got that?”
At first, Luca stifled his laughter but it burst out once the deadly silence went over five seconds. He laughed boisterously, face becoming red. “Oh that’s definitely going to be clipped now.”
“Are we done here?” Edgar snapped before getting up and leaving the view of the screen.
Luca was left still chuckling, tears already pooling in his eyes. He sighed with a big smile on his face, “So, I really do think he wasn’t bullying me. It’s just really my dream to go against AVL ever since I started my pro journey and the entire OPH team and the ALV team captain has my back on that. Speaking of which, I have to go to him and apologize for laughing at his outburst.”
In the next match that OPH had and successfully won, Luca ran off the stage, practically throwing the phone and earpieces down on his table to go to Edgar who was watching in the front row of the audience. Edgar, caught off guard, was suddenly tackled in a hug and a deep kiss that left the two of them with a stern warning from the organizers never to pull that stunt in public again.