Chapter 21 — Middle Road Rules

The night before the Final match, the computer room of Hoàng Diệu Club was still lit, but no one touched the mouse or keyboard.

Hải Đăng asked everyone to turn off their computers. He stood in front of a whiteboard filled with tactical diagrams that had been erased and redrawn dozens of times. The four boys sat quietly, while Châu worriedly stared at Đăng's wrist, even though it had been splinted and seemed more flexible after a few days of rest.

"VG Academy is unlike any team we've ever seen," Đăng began, his voice serious. "They are professional trainees. They eat, sleep and practice 12 hours a day in the Gaming House. Their personal skills are perfect, their Macros are pre-programmed by Lê Hoàng. If we play by the book, we will lose 0-3 before the 20th minute."

"So... how do we fight?" Nam 'Coward' asked tremblingly.

"Fight with instinct," Đăng smiled, a sly smile. He held a pen and circled each person's name.

"Hùng, tomorrow I allow you to rush in and kill freely. No need to hold back towers anymore. Let's mess with the Top Lane."

"Tuấn, you're blind, right? Good. Tomorrow, take roads where even you don't know where you're going. If you don't know, then your opponent won't be able to guess the trajectory of our Forest."

"Nam, instead of buying Armor Support equipment, tomorrow you give me all my magic damage. Become the second source of firepower from behind Kiên."

Everyone widened their eyes. This "lesson plan" goes completely against what Đăng has been training them for the past month.

"They are machines programmed to deal with methodical chess moves," Đăng explained. "The only way to defeat a machine is to dump a mess of garbage into its gears. You must turn tomorrow's Finals into a street fight, something you were used to doing before I led you. Only this time, the mayhem will be led by me."

After delegating the task, Đăng let the whole team disperse early to get enough sleep.

Only Đăng and Châu stayed behind to lock the engine room door. When there were only two people left, Châu pulled Đăng's hand back, hesitantly.

"Đăng... Tomorrow, let me play for you. Your wrist..."

"My wrist is fine," Đăng interrupted, gently rubbing Châu's ponytail, startling her. "You've taken enough bullets for me, Manager Châu. Tomorrow is the big stage. I can't let you hold the computer and tremble in the cabin. I will fight, from start to finish."

Đăng's eyes were so determined that Châu could not refute. She nodded and carefully stuffed a new roll of medical tape into his hoodie pocket.

"If you feel pain, you have to say it right away. The championship is not as important as your hands," Châu advised, her voice soft.

Đăng smiled lightly, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and walked side by side with Châu under the yellow light of the schoolyard. "The championship is very important, Châu. Because it is my promise to you guys."

Châu stopped walking and looked up at him under the street light. “Just with ‘you guys’?”

Đăng paused, realizing the meaning in her question. He was about to reply with a joke to avoid it, as was his old habit, but then decided against it. Tonight, on the threshold of the biggest battle of his student life, he didn't want to hide anything anymore.

“To you too,” he said, his voice quieter, without his usual coldness. “The biggest promise I give to the manager who risked her life to solicit a solo with a book-wearing guy calling himself by a very cheesy-sounding name.”

Châu burst out laughing, her eyes curled up, but something wet flashed through the corner of her eyelids. “Do you even know how to talk about love, Hải Đăng?”

"Probably because being around a manager who spouts morals all day long makes you used to it," Đăng replied, the corners of his lips curling up.

The two continued to walk side by side, no one was in a hurry to disrupt that rare peace. Arriving at Châu's gate, Đăng stopped and looked at her for a long time before speaking.

"Go to bed early. Tomorrow we need a sober manager, not a walking corpse from lack of sleep."

“You too,” Châu replied, then suddenly reached out and gently touched her bandaged wrist — the exact signal they had agreed on the rooftop this afternoon. “If it hurts tonight, don't try to bear it alone.”

Đăng nodded, watching Châu disappear behind the iron gate before turning and walking back to her house, her heart filled with emotions that she had never allowed himself to experience since the day she left the professional world.

That night, in HD E-sports' general chat group, no one mentioned tactics or formation. Hùng sent a screenshot of an old game, with the words "Who remembers the first day when we couldn't distinguish between Fighters and Mages?" Tuấn replied with a series of smiley emojis, while Kiên dropped in a photo of a new wifi router, captioned "Thank you for saving my life." Nam, the quietest person in the group, only sent a short line: "Thank you everyone for not leaving me behind."

Đăng read each message, did not reply immediately, just smiled quietly in the darkness of the bedroom. He typed one last line before turning off the phone: "Tomorrow, no one will be a hero alone. We win together, or not at all."

Four green ticks appeared almost immediately, confirming that the whole team had read and agreed. Đăng put the phone down on the table, lay down on the bed, and looked up at the ceiling. His wrist still ached, but for the first time before an important match, he didn't feel alone. There was no longer any trace of the fear that kept him awake before every professional match in the past, only a steady stillness remained, as if he had found something he had lost for a long time: the belief that tomorrow, no matter the outcome, he would not have to face it alone.

The next morning, Đăng woke up before the alarm bell rang, when the sky was not yet fully dawn. He lay still for a while, listening to the birds chirping outside the window, then slowly sat up, gently rotating his wrists according to the stretching exercises the nurse had instructed him to do. The pain was still there, but had subsided a lot compared to the first days.

His mother got up early and prepared a more hearty breakfast than usual. She didn't say much, just placed in front of him a bowl of steaming porridge and a cup of warm milk.

"Eat everything, don't compete hungry," she advised, her voice calm but her eyes couldn't hide her worry.

Đăng ate spoonfuls of porridge slowly, feeling the rare quietness of the morning before a day full of turmoil. He remembered eight months ago, the morning before the fateful final match with team VG, he quickly ate a sandwich in the car, alone, with no one to see him off, no one to wait. Now, everything was different.

At 7:30 a.m., the whole team gathered at the school gate as scheduled. Everyone wore the brand new club uniform that the sponsor had given them, with the words "HD E-sports" printed prominently on a dark blue background. Mr. Quang personally drove the school's seven-seater car to take the team to the City Center Gymnasium, where the Final match took place.

In the car, no one said much. Each person was lost in their own thoughts, their hands quietly tightening their grip on something they carried with them like a talisman - Hùng clutched the wooden keychain, Kiên checked his favorite mouse in his pocket, Tuấn mentally reviewed the cooldown times of enemy champions, and Nam just sat still, hands clasped together, eyes closed.

Đăng sat in the last row next to Châu, looking out the glass window, watching the city gradually wake up. When the car turned onto the road leading to the Gymnasium, he could see from afar a long line of people lining up in front of the gate, promotional banners everywhere, and a familiar feeling — the feeling of standing on the threshold of something much bigger than himself.

"Here we are," Mr. Quang said, his voice trembling slightly because he was nervous on behalf of his student.

The whole team stepped out of the car one by one and stood in a line in front of the massive Stadium gate, where the fate of the entire season was about to be decided. Đăng looked at each of his teammates' faces in turn, then took a deep breath and took the first steps toward the big door that was waiting for them. Behind him, his four teammates and Bảo Châu quietly followed, each carrying a part of the long journey that brought them here — from an anonymous bottom-of-the-table club, to the threshold of the National Finals — a journey that none of them, including Đăng, ever dared to believe was real.