"It's fine, but Henry, you absolutely can't fall behind on your schoolwork. You're such a good student—I'm sure you'll get into the best university in Korea in the future." William Harris couldn't help but remind him.

In this parallel world Korea, similar to his previous life, while entertainment and esports stars are certainly popular, those with high academic qualifications—university professors and scholars—are even more respected in terms of social status.

Chapter 4: The Return of Naruto

On Saturday morning, Henry Thompson was helping out at the store. The new MAD watch craze saw its second surge on Saturday, with a line of esports-loving watch fans stretching outside the shop all morning. It wasn't until noon that the crowd thinned a bit. Henry Thompson checked the time, greeted William Harris, changed his clothes, and set off for home on his bike.

When he got home, only Emily was there. His father had meals provided at work, so he usually didn't come home for lunch. Normally, Henry Thompson and Emily would eat at their respective school cafeterias, but today was different. Henry Thompson quickly made lunch and called Emily Thompson over. After they finished eating, Emily Thompson once again enthusiastically volunteered to handle all future dishwashing duties. Smiling, Henry Thompson sat on the sofa and listened to the sounds from the kitchen for a while. Seeing that nothing was broken, he called out to Emily Thompson, then set off again on his bike to Zhicheng Audio & Video Store.

Passing by the corner kimchi shop, Henry Thompson paid special attention and noticed it was called "Bachabacha," an onomatopoeic name that was quite vivid and lively. The owner looked to be under thirty, sitting idly on the shop's sofa watching TV.

Korean kimchi is a fermented food made mainly from vegetables, with various fruits, seafood, and meats as ingredients. It's one of the main dishes for Koreans—not only delicious and refreshing, with a unique aftertaste of sour and spicy, but also highly nutritious. Its main component is lactic acid bacteria, and it contains abundant vitamins, calcium, phosphorus, other minerals, and more than a dozen amino acids essential to the human body. It was even rated as one of the world's five healthiest foods by Time Warner's "Health Magazine."

The shop owner wanting to promote his kimchi shop wasn't far-fetched; there are many large kimchi chains in Korea.

After arriving at Zhicheng Audio & Video Store, Henry Thompson parked his bike and was about to go to the locker room to change clothes.

At that moment, seeing Henry Thompson enter, William Harris excitedly came over and said, "Henry, you don't need to change this afternoon—uncle got the deal for you!"

"Really? Uncle, that fast?" Henry Thompson looked a bit surprised. After all, he wasn't a famous player, so getting a sponsorship so easily was quite rare.

"Heh, but they said they'll first give you an account with no ranked record. You have to reach Platinum in five days—they'll give you fifty thousand first. Then, if you climb to Diamond and get onto any champion's win-rate leaderboard, they'll give you another hundred thousand. Finally, if you can maintain it for a month without dropping, they'll pay the remaining one hundred fifty thousand. That's three hundred thousand in total. How about it?" William Harris asked, a bit worried.

"No problem, Uncle Sifan. Heh, I won't even need five days," Henry Thompson replied with a light laugh.

In his previous life, he reached Challenger in about a hundred games on the Korean server, and in less than three hundred games, he climbed to the top of the Korean server with an 82.5% win rate, shocking the entire global esports scene. In this life, although the overall esports environment in this parallel Korea had improved, with a stronger esports atmosphere and higher national esports literacy, as someone who once stood at the pinnacle of the esports pyramid, his confidence and pride in this field had never faded.

Urged by William Harris, Henry Thompson walked into the inner room—James Harris's room. James Harris, who was supposed to learn some skills from Henry Thompson today, had been called away by a few like-minded classmates to the SKT club to watch a scrim between SKT and SSW trainees. Before leaving, he asked his dad, William Harris, to tell Henry that he'd be back soon.

Henry Thompson turned on the computer, took a deep breath, and logged into the familiar game interface using the account provided by the kimchi shop owner. As requested, he opened the rename screen to enter his ID. The prefix was naturally "Gwangju Bachabacha Kimchi Shop." When entering the suffix, Henry Thompson hesitated for a moment, but ultimately typed in the ID "smile."

In his previous life, due to family reasons, whether at tournaments or fan meetings, he always wore a cold, expressionless face. Because of this, commentators and fans in the esports scene called him "the smile that will never smile."

In this life, he entered this ID again, but this time it was for his family's happiness. This feeling was something he had never experienced before, so at this moment, he was truly happy—a faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. Smile.

In this parallel world's League of Legends scene, it was currently the early S3 period. The ranking system had just been changed from the original rank point system to a tier system: Bronze—Silver—Gold—Platinum—Diamond—Challenger. The top fifty players on the server were Challenger. Most of those spots were occupied by pro team esports stars, though there were also rare solo geniuses like DOPA, but they were extremely few.