Chapter 1

On the other end of the phone, Dad fell silent for several seconds. Then, he exploded.

"Your mother is dying, and you still have the mood to play games? As her son, aren't you even going to see her one last time?"

I put the phone on speaker and tossed it onto the corner of the desk. My fingers flew across the keyboard as I continued gaming.

"Yeah, I heard you the first time," I replied indifferently.

Through the headset, my teammates' tense callouts rang in my ears.

To prepare for tomorrow's national finals, we had been training nonstop for a month. The glory of winning the championship was a fixation carved into the very bones of every esports player.

The prize money? That seven-figure astronomical sum was merely a bonus.

Dad kept on shouting, his voice growing louder by the minute as he began listing the sacrifices he and Mom had made in raising me.

"Do you have any idea how much we went through to bring you up? We let you go off to play your stupid games, and Gary lost a perfectly good job because of it!

"Have you no heart at all? Now that you're famous, you think you're too good to even care if your own mother lives or dies?"

I didn't even blink.

A commotion came from the other end of the line, as if the phone had been snatched away.

A stern male voice spoke up. "Cory Wiggins, book the earliest flight and get back here right now! Is your mother's life really less important than some game?"

I let out a soft laugh and ignored him.

Immediately after, the voice of my "dear brother" Gary Wiggins came through. His tone sounded considerably gentler.

"Cory, don't be mad with Dad. Mom probably just missed you too much. If you come back and see her, it might lift her mood and she might even get better. You can always win another championship, but you only have one mother."

He sure knew how to make it sound nice.

My hands stilled on the keyboard. My teammates glanced over, but no one dared to interrupt me.

I picked up the phone and said into the receiver, "I'll say this one last time—I'm not going back. The only way I'd return is over my dead body."

With that, I hung up.

The phone screen lit up again instantly. The same number had persistently called back. I simply switched on Do Not Disturb.

After dozens of relentless calls, the battery ran out, and my phone shut down on its own. Finally, the world was completely quiet.

Next to me, the support player, Mitch Ortiz, looked at me worriedly and asked cautiously, "Cory, is everything alright?"

I smiled at him and shook my head. "Yeah. It was a scam call, trying to get me to drop out of the tournament."

I put my headset back on and stretched my fingers. "Let's keep going. One last round, then we sleep."

Seeing I wasn't in the mood to talk, my teammates just went back to the intense training.

…

Early the next morning, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, I arrived at the finals venue with the team bus.

The moment I stepped off, I felt that something was off.

A mob of people crowded the player entrance. Every single one of their faces was etched with grief and outrage.

And leading them was Dad. His eyes were swollen and bloodshot. It looked like he hadn't slept all night. When he saw me, he charged over like a madman and seized my arm in a death grip.

"Cory, you ungrateful son! You've got some nerve showing up here!"

He yanked me so hard that I stumbled, my arm throbbing with pain.

"Come with us! Your mother is on her last breath. The doctor says she's holding on by a thread, waiting for you to go back and see her one last time."

I hadn't expected them to actually track me down to the venue.

I forcefully shook off Dad's hand. The strength I used sent him stumbling several steps back.

"She should've died a long time ago. She was lucky to have lived this long."

My words set off a firestorm in the crowd.