My esports team is engaged in a practice match at midnight. Suddenly, my coach hands a phone over to me.

On the other end of the line, my dad cries hysterically. Amid his sobs, he tells me that my mom is currently unconscious in the hospital, and that the doctor has issued him a critical notice. Apparently, my mom's funeral is being prepared in advance, so my dad wants me home immediately.

As I stare at the match-up diagram of the final round of the national-level competition as well as the seven-figure prize money, I reply icily, "I'm not going home. I must participate in the final round tomorrow. During the competition, my phone will be turned off. Don't disturb me no matter what."

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.

"You bastard!" My uncle, Dwayne Wiggins, was trembling with rage. He pointed at me and snapped, "How could you say something like that? That's your mother you're talking about!"

With a look of raw anguish, he turned to the growing crowd of reporters and fans and began to denounce me.

"Take a good look, everyone! This is your so-called esports star! He doesn't even care if his own mother lives or dies, all for the sake of gaming!"

He took a step forward, his voice growing louder. "Do you know why your mother ended up like this? It was all for you!

"On Labor Day, you told your parents you wanted to buy a big house downtown. But how was a retired factory worker like your mother supposed to come up with that kind of money? She took on odd jobs at that godforsaken construction site just to help you scrape together the down payment.

"Do you know how dangerous that place is? When the scaffolding fell on her, she was still clutching the 300 dollars she'd just been paid. She kept calling your name, saying now she could buy you another toilet bowl!"

The impassioned speech made a few distant relatives tear up.

The onlooking reporters and fans also began pointing at me and whispering among themselves.

"Oh my god, is that true? That's so cold!"

"He'd abandon his own mother for money?"

"He's definitely the most ungrateful player in esports."

I listened to all the murmurs, my face expressionless. "So what? She went and got herself killed. What's that got to do with me?"

No sooner had the words left my mouth than a loud slap landed hard on my left cheek. The sting burned.

It was Dad who had hit me. His hand was shaking violently, whether from anger or the force of the blow, I couldn't tell.

My parents had never laid a finger on me since I was a child, let alone resort to something as humiliating as a slap.

"You dare hit me?" I covered my face and stared at him in disbelief.

Dad pointed a trembling finger at me. "I'll beat you to death, you ungrateful brat! I'll dig out your heart and see if it's black!"

He shrieked hysterically and lunged forward, trying to rip off my jersey with the team logo on it.

"Stop!"

Just as the situation was about to spiral completely out of control, Coach Nicholas Platt and a few staff members finally pushed through the crowd.

Coach Platt immediately stepped in front of me, shielding me.

"What do you think you're doing? This is a competition venue, and there are surveillance cameras everywhere. If any of you lay a hand on him again, we will call the police immediately. You might want to consider the consequences for inciting a riot and disrupting public order."

Coach Platt's voice carried an undeniable authority, and it succeeded in sobering Dad up a little. He stopped trying to grab at me, but he still glared at me with murderous intensity.

Just then, Gary suddenly rushed forward and snatched the keyboard that I had been holding against my chest.

"Cory, I'm asking you one last time—are you going back or not? If you're not, I'll smash your precious tool!"

That keyboard was something I'd specially custom-built with the prize money from my very first professional tournament win. It meant the world to me.

But even if I lost the keyboard, I was still going to compete. There was no way I was going back.

"You want me to go back? Keep dreaming!"

The moment the words left my mouth, Gary's face twisted. With all his strength, he slammed the keyboard against the hard concrete ground.

A deafening crash rang out, and the keyboard shattered instantly. Black casing fragments and keycaps scattered everywhere.

I stared fixedly at him in silence.

Gary grew uneasy under my stare and instinctively stepped back.

Suddenly, Dad dropped to his knees with a heavy thud and began banging his forehead to the ground, begging me. Soon, blood appeared on his forehead.

"Cory, don't hold this against Gary. He was so furious at you he wasn't thinking straight. Please, I'm begging you! Come back with us and see your mother off on her final journey!" he wailed heart-wrenchingly.

Around us, camera flashes went off like crazy. The sound of shutters and murmuring voices nearly swallowed me whole.

I closed my eyes for a moment. For just an instant, I almost caved.

But the second I pictured that shiny gold trophy—so close I could almost touch it—any hesitation vanished without a trace.

"I've wanted that championship trophy for a long time. There's no way I'm giving it up," I said.

At that, Dad lifted his tear-and-blood-streaked face and pulled out a faded, yellowed cloth pouch from his pocket.

He unwrapped the pouch layer by layer. Inside were crumpled bills of various denominations, along with a few wrinkled 100-dollar notes.

He held the stack of money up to me and said hoarsely, "How much does that trophy cost? I'll pay for it! We'll pool our money together to buy it for you. Just don't play in the tournament. Let us buy the trophy for you, alright?"

I looked at the pile of money and scoffed.

"That wouldn't even cover the cost of a tiny piece of that trophy. You really are a bunch of clueless country bumpkins," I retorted, not bothering to hide my contempt.

"We have money too!"

The moment Uncle Dwayne said that, all the relatives and distant kin began pulling money out of their pockets.

There were ten, 20, 50, and 100 dollars. They dumped the crumpled bills, reeking of sweat and dirt, in front of me.

Even though I kept my expression indifferent, I couldn't help the sting in my nose. Even so, I still had no intention of going back with them.

"I'm not going back with you. Just give it up. The match is about to start, and my teammates are waiting for me."

Seeing that I was completely unmoved, Dad finally pulled out his trump card.

He struggled to his feet and jabbed his finger at me with resolve. "Cory, if you don't come back with us today, you're no longer my son."

I nodded calmly. "Fine, then you can consider me dead."

My resolve utterly crushed Dad. He slumped to the ground, pounding his fists against the pavement as he let out a piercing, anguished wail.

Seeing this, Uncle Dwayne pointed at me and roared, "You monster! Look at what you've done to your father! What could be more important than your own parents? You're coming back today whether you like it or not!"

With that, he motioned for a few of my strong, young cousins to come forward and forcibly drag me away.

"You wouldn't dare!"

Coach Platt and my teammates immediately surrounded me, shielding me completely behind them as they faced off against my relatives.

The reporters at the scene were practically buzzing with excitement, their eyes gleaming as they frantically clicked their shutters.

Push notifications had already started popping up on phones.

The hashtag #EsportsProdigyRefusesToSeeDyingMother shot to the top of the trending list at breakneck speed.

At this, Gary immediately turned to one of the live streaming cameras and tearfully launched into a litany of accusations against me. He painted me as a cold, heartless monster who was willing to abandon my dying mother just for fame and fortune.

Uncle Dwayne was fanning the flames, saying they were going to publicly disown me, remove me from the family tree, and make it so I couldn't even be buried in the family plot.

I watched the escalating spectacle before me and felt nothing but exhaustion.

"Do you really have to cause a scene here?" I asked wearily.

Uncle Dwayne's face was flushed with rage, spittle flying as he ranted, "What do you mean by that? It's you who's making a disgrace of yourself here, you ungrateful brat.

"All you have to do is go back and see your mother, and we'll leave immediately. She's lying in the hospital bed waiting for you.

"You might as well forget about your stupid esports tournament. Someone who won't even see his own mother one last time has no right to win any championship."

I took a deep breath and pulled out a spare phone from my pocket.

"Fine. Since you're dead set on blowing this matter up, I'll give you exactly what you're asking for," I said coldly.

I looked into the camera lens and at the millions of viewers watching on the other side.

"You all want to know why I refuse to go back even though my mother is dying? Fine. I'll tell you why right now."