THE KING OF THE GOLD SYSTEM GAMING

BLIND DATE

I wait until she walks out the door and then give it another few minutes before I exit the restaurant myself. The last thing I want is to bump into her and make this night even more awkward.

I’m already pulling up my mother’s number and dialing it by the time I get into my Jeep and start driving home.

“Wai,” her greeting filters in through my speakers.

“Ma,” I return dryly.

“Ah. I take it dinner with yourpo podidn’t go as expected.”

“Unless she suddenly found the fountain of youth and turned into a twenty-something-year-old woman, then no. No, it did not go as expected.”

She lets out a heavy sigh, “Herson.”

“I don’t need to go on blind dates, Mom. I can handle my own love life.”

“You don’t have a love life.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t. You play around—that is not the same thing, and it’s not respectable.”

Shit.

I try to be discrete by conducting most of my activities at Cardinal Club, where customer confidentiality is key, and Sydney sweet-talks and bribes as many reporters as she possibly can to keep my sex life out of the press—but it’s hard to hide everything when you’re in the public eye, something always slips through.

Now it’s my turn to sigh as Mom descends into a monologue of her own.

“Po pois just looking out for you. And your aunties are right; you are getting older, and you’ve yet to have a stable girlfriend in your life. When I was your age, I was already engaged to your father. And I know things are different for people your age nowadays, but that’s not an excuse to not even try. Reputation matters, and it doesn’t look good on the family for our son to not even have a girlfriend when everyone else we know is busy setting up weddings and celebrating their grandchildren. You’re twenty-eight, time is ticking.”

Why did I think calling her was a good idea?

“I’ve spoken to your father about it, and he agrees that we should pursue this. It’s just a few dates. There’s no harm in just meeting the women and seeing if they’re a good match. You never know—auntie Lei met her husband that way, and they’ve been happily married for twenty years. So, just appease your grandparents and go on the dates.”

“No.”

“Lau Ka-yee, you will listen to me, and you will go on these dates, or so help me, I will come over there and force you to go on them myself.”

I grimace. It’s never a good sign when she switches to my Chinese name.

“I’ve let you do a lot of things in life that I was deeply opposed to, so for once, I’m telling you to do as I say and stop arguing.”

Great.

She just had to pull the gamer card.

Even after all this time, she’s still pissed.

Ten years ago, I helped my high school best friend, Aleksander, start his streaming career as the infamous masked gamer, NightBlade32, before eventually dropping out of college my sophomore year to join him—which my parents didnotapprove of. A few years later, we recruited one of our close online friends—Maker—to join us and formed a group called The Gold System. The three of us rose to fame as masked video game streamers, accumulating millions of views and millions of dollars.

We are the most in-demand gamers in the industry, but that doesn’t mean my traditional family understands what that means. To most of them, I’m just spending my days messing around online. Even with the rise of esports in China, it is still a foreign concept to them. It would be fair to say that my relatives are split in their support of me, and I am always fighting an uphill battle to win their approval.

It’s exhausting never having anyone on my side.

“Fine,” I grumble.

“Thank you, and don’t forget your sister has another piano recital in a few weeks.”

“It’s already on my calendar.”

“Good, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay, bye bye.”

“Bye bye.”