[Adelie]

"Yeah, I can't remember why they changed it?" Ven said. She tapped away distractedly, looking up the exact cause. "Oh, it says here that they thought it was 'unsuitable for minors' or something..."

"Some kind of weird broadcast rule, I guess," Chi said. "Wasn't there that show where the characters were clearly eating potato chips and candy but they were calling them salads? Some kind of weird health campaign or something like that."

"Yeah, I remember that! That was ridiculous," Ven said. "Think it was the same channel this show aired on. They've probably got some weird sponsorship rule going on."

She paused for a moment, then continued, "It would've been nice to get an actual esports TV series, though. You'd think someone would've capitalized on its popularity by now, but I guess it's still kind of a 'niche' interest."

[Adelie]

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Chi offered. "My last discussion section - way back when we were still able to hold discussion sections, of course - I overheard one of my students discussing just how hot they thought Arise was."

"Really?" Ven said, surprised. "I mean! If I were going to discuss the relative hotness of my favorite players, then I'm pretty sure Arise would be way up there! But he's really not that popular, I feel. Like, his brother is more well-known than him by miles."

"Yeah, I was surprised too," Chi said. "I mean, for most people that team's just Wolf and four friends."

"Wolf deserves all the praise, though," Ven said. "If they made a TV series out of that team, she's definitely the protagonist."

[Adelie]

He wondered briefly if he should interrupt this conversation - after all, he had no idea what was going on, and to that point, he couldn't even summon up a coherent enough thought to ask about it. It had taken him a moment to even realize that the 'Wolf' and 'Arise' they spoke of were people's names and not mere nouns and verbs.

Curse the typical video game player's naming strategy of opening the Oxford English Dictionary to a random page and pointing at it blindly. Not that programmers were much better at that, admittedly.

"Say, Mirny," Chi suddenly interrupted. "Has the allure of esports ever drawn you in?"

"No," he responded bluntly. "And probably never will."

"Lame," Chi said, elongating the syllable in a way that came off half-childish, half-mocking. "Isn't that everyone's dream, though? Do something you love, make money off it."

[Adelie]

"Putting money into the equation ruins it," he shot back, rather sourly. That was the philosophy he'd always run on, and he had yet to find any evidence to the contrary. His personal projects were enjoyable; his work projects were miserable and existed solely for the sake of funding his next month's rent.

"Tell that to Fischer," Chi responded. "He seems to be having a great time, at least."

"Don't talk to me about Fischer," he grumbled, even more sour than the last. "You know where he is, right now? He was on vacation when this quarantine started and his flight back got canceled, so now his primary source of entertainment is sending me pictures of the beach and complaining that he's got nothing to do but sunbathe and surf."

"That..." Chi said, before coming up with what she wanted to say. "Sounds just like him, honestly."

[Adelie]

"Yeah, the island he's at hasn't been hit, either, so they don't have to worry about social distancing or anything like that," he continued. "I really hate him, sometimes."

"I do too, just from listening to you," Chi said, mournfully. "I want to go to the beach... I want to go outside..."

"Same," he said.

"Same," Ven said, and then added, "Is this one of your high school friends, too?"

"Fischer? Yeah," Chi said. "I should probably let Mirny talk about him, though, since they're best friends and all. Well, considering your tone of voice right now, it sounds more like former best friends."

[Wild Pet Found]