Looks Like I Got It Wrong (3)
The YouTube channel Devil Maiden.
It had been cruising along nicely at two thousand two hundred subscribers when one of its players was suddenly caught in an accident. Uploads stopped cold, and over the next three months the subscriber count dwindled at a slow, stubborn crawl.
But most of the fans who had mourned the news never unsubscribed. They clung on like burrs, and the channel still sat at roughly two thousand one hundred. Once Jin Gyeo-wool and Jin Ju-yeong put their heads together—after a fashion—and started posting new videos, the downward slide reversed and the numbers began climbing again.
And here was someone watching Devil Maiden's comeback with a distinctly uneasy heart.
"Ah… you're here."
"…… What's wrong with you? Why do you look like that?"
Only a few days remained until the start of the 2018 CCK Spring Split. Lee Do-jin had come over to his friend's place for the first time in a while, wanting to check on Jin Gyeo-wool's condition before the season kicked off.
Then he got a look at the dark circles under his buddy's eyes and nearly jumped.
"Gyeo-wool is—you—she's terrifying."
He looked less like a person and more like a newborn puppy that had somehow survived three days next to a predator without getting eaten—minus the drool, but only barely.
Lee Do-jin half-lidded his eyes and asked, thoroughly unimpressed,
"…She's your little sister. What's there to be scared of?"
Tsk tsk. Couldn't even step up and calm his own sibling down. Clicking his tongue, Lee Do-jin started toward Gyeo-wool's room.
"Hey—wait, hold up."
Jin Ju-yeong suddenly blocked his path.
"She doesn't even know you're coming."
"? And?"
"Think about it, man. You barge in first thing in the morning and she has to face you looking like a total mess, no prep at all. She's had a crush on you for years. You really think she's going to come out just because you call?"
"…Is that how it works?"
But as the entire world already knew, Lee Do-jin had zero interest in romance. His head was packed with nothing but the game. League of Council. Hyeonsung Universe. The fans. End of list.
He had known about Jin Gyeo-wool's feelings for a long time. He just couldn't return them, so he had kept pushing her away.
He hadn't been able to reject her coldly enough to make her stop, and left to her own devices she had latched on and eventually announced—with great fanfare, alongside Lee Bom—that she was going to become a pro gamer.
Which was how they had ended up here. A pro gamer. A girl who looked like Jin Gyeo-wool could have picked any career she wanted. And she had chosen this one.
She wanted to throw herself into an esports scene that was anything but woman-friendly, that had no proper women's pro league to speak of, and where the criticism leveled at players sometimes blew past every reasonable limit.
As if Lee Do-jin was ever going to allow that.
"Forget it. I don't care whether she's dressed up or not."
"Fine… whatever… do what you want. Just try not to piss her off."
"Is she that angry?"
Jin Ju-yeong answered in the voice of a dying man.
"She smiles at me every time she sees me. A big sunny smile. And it looks like she's about two seconds from ripping every hair out of my head. I have no idea what suddenly got into her. I'd almost rather she didn't smile at all…"
Honestly. Lee Do-jin shook his head with a look of pure incomprehension and headed for Gyeo-wool's room.
"Anyway. If you set her off, I'm the one who has to deal with it. Got it?"
"Got it."
Lee Do-jin was well aware that Jin Gyeo-wool had a nasty temper. Rumors that she had yanked a classmate's hair out by the roots had spread through the entire neighborhood.
But around him she had always been an angel, and so he had never been afraid of her.
"Gyeo-wool?"
Arriving at her door at an unhurried pace, Lee Do-jin gave it two quick, sharp knocks.
A voice answered from inside.
"Yes? Who is it?"
Something was already off before he even stepped in. Jin Gyeo-wool was not the kind of girl who asked that question. She had an animal instinct for sensing when Lee Do-jin was coming over; the second he opened the front door she would already be there to greet him.
This was not her usual reaction. Frowning slightly, Lee Do-jin opened the door.
A sweet diffuser scent washed over him. Looking past it into the room, he found Jin Gyeo-wool sitting at her computer, hair yanked back tight with a thick decorative scrunchie, grinding away at League of Council with total focus.
"Oh, I'm in the middle of a game, so if you could just—huh?"
"……?"
Their eyes met, and both of them sprouted a giant question mark over their heads at the same time.
The girl who had woken up, splashed water on her face, and parked herself at the PC thought: What the hell is Lee Do-jin doing here?
And Lee Do-jin, thrown by the sight of her, thought: What the hell is Jin Gyeo-wool doing playing looking like such a slob?
"Ah—crap. Missed the cannon minion."
Amazingly, even after seeing Lee Do-jin, Jin Gyeo-wool did not throw herself at him. The girl who normally came flying over like a dog reunited with its owner after ages apart, rubbing her very much not-subtle body all over him—today, of all days, she prioritized the cannon minion.
I'm… less important than a cannon minion?
That couldn't be right.
Even Lee Do-jin, who would normally have brushed it off without a second thought, found himself flustered today.
She was his little sister's friend. Practically a little sister herself. He had always hoped she would meet someone better than him.
That was why he had kept pushing away her relentless advances—and now that she was suddenly reacting like this, a little heat crept up the back of his neck.
"Just a sec, just a second. I'll finish up quick, so hang on. Holy crap. No wonder. I was wondering why we were already friends on Recon."
Just leave the game and come over already! Lee Do-jin shouted inwardly. But Jin Gyeo-wool only sank deeper into the match, and the glances she had been sneaking his way locked fully onto the monitor.
"Hey, hey. Where do you think you're going. Hold still right there!"
ValKyrie ▶ OurJungleWtfMeowRider
You had to hand it to her, though.
A living legend of the esports world—a walking hero of the League of Council scene—was standing awkwardly in her open doorway, and she still could not bring herself to abandon the ranked game she was in the middle of.
Of course she couldn't. Jin Gyeo-wool might have gone running and clung to him, but what was inside her was Bae Do-hyun.
Offering to finish the game quickly was the greatest courtesy he could currently extend toward Lee Do-jin. And even that much only happened because Hon Gyeo-wool had given him permission to use the body and told him, in no uncertain terms, to treat Lee Do-jin well.
Without that, he wouldn't even have turned his head. How much critical early-game map information did you lose just glancing away for a second?
In the end, Jin Gyeo-wool closed out a ranked game with an average tier of Diamond 2 as the sole Diamond 4 player on the lobby, delivering an overwhelming top-lane carry.
The champion she had played was Adult. Lee Do-jin, who only belatedly confirmed the pick mid-game, felt his thoughts tangle.
For a while now… it really does feel like she's trying to follow in Bom's footsteps.
Adult. Sturdy tank champions like Saiom had been Lee Bom's favorites from the moment she first touched League of Council.
Bom had always been more brain than hands, so she had skipped the stylish, high-mechanical champions like Jake and Akalin from the start. Even Lee Do-jin—who had kept telling her he hoped she would never stream on Recon—had started paying attention once she picked up Adult and began holding her own respectably.
Jin Gyeo-wool was the exact opposite: a pure physical player who had dumped every stat point into mechanics. She could handle every slick mid-lane champion there was. Akalin, Montblanc, Elco—anything with a trickster streak had been her favorite toy.
And one of the people who had shaped those champion preferences was Lee Do-jin himself.
Jin Gyeo-wool had loved him far more than was healthy, and she had practiced every champion he had ever touched even once, determined to catch up to him somehow.
Of course, that had backfired. Her play on every champion ended up mediocre. Master a single champion at a pro level and you could at least crack the amateur threshold—but she never got close.
All because she had liked Lee Do-jin too much.
"Wow. Nice to meet you. Plum!!"
Jin Gyeo-wool came bouncing over with a bright, sunny expression and stuck out her hand for a handshake.
A handshake?
Lee Do-jin frowned as he took it. Palm met palm. They pumped once, twice.
And that was it. Nothing more. No hug. No over-the-top affection of the kind he had half expected.
What kind of nonsense was this.
Truthfully, Jin Gyeo-wool could have overreacted far more than this—and she had held herself back. There was a perfectly sound chain of reasoning behind the choice.
Hon Gyeo-wool had told him to treat Lee Do-jin well. But as far as Jin Gyeo-wool knew, Lee Do-jin had zero interest in girls and was a purebred Council addict who lived and breathed the game. A girl throwing herself at a guy like that could only be a burden.
So Jin Gyeo-wool had decided a clean handshake was the way to go. It was a conclusion she had reached only by splitting her focus through an entire game, and it had not been easy.
Among people who dreamed of going pro in League of Council, the conventional wisdom said nobody could stay calm in front of Lee Do-jin. Jin Gyeo-wool had just smashed that wisdom to pieces.
He wanted to go pro so badly that a single ranked win had mattered more than the Lee Do-jin who had suddenly appeared in his doorway.
"Do we… know each other? Are we friends?"
"Uh… huh?"
Given how things were going, it was Lee Do-jin who ended up flustered.
He couldn't even bring himself to argue with the word friends.
"Y-yeah. Friends. That's right…"
Technically they were more like an older brother and younger sister with a bit of an age gap, but Lee Do-jin found himself nodding before he could stop it.
It wasn't because he was terrified of Jin Gyeo-wool the way Jin Ju-yeong was. But he could tell, with absolute certainty, that she was different from usual—different enough that Ju-yeong had every reason to be scared.
"Oh, that's insane. Friends with Lee Do-jin! I kind of had a feeling. No wonder we were already friends on Reco—"
Too busy with his own thoughts, Lee Do-jin barely heard the rest of her muttering.
There's this… weirdly intense energy coming off her…
That was all it was.
Hon Gyeo-wool had simply been swapped out for a Jin Gyeo-wool with Bae Do-hyun inside, and that Jin Gyeo-wool had thoroughly misread Hon Gyeo-wool's intentions. Nothing more.
But this single meeting began, little by little, to twist Lee Do-jin's fixed ideas about Jin Gyeo-wool.
Do you want it that badly, Gyeo-wool…? To be a pro gamer? Are you trying to carry on Bom's will?
Jin Gyeo-wool had always been the girl who talked a big game about going pro while trusting her talent more than her effort. Instead of pouring hours into practice, she had watched Lee Do-jin's matches for fun, tried to memorize his plays, and schemed for ways to catch his attention.
And now that same girl was chaining herself to the practice grind, determined to stand tall as a real pro.
Lee Do-jin had been tracking her match history all along. He knew perfectly well that her games played had been skyrocketing at a completely different rate from before.
This time, even he could feel that she meant it.
But… that level of resolve still isn't enough.
He still couldn't throw his full support behind her. Jin Gyeo-wool forcing her way into the pro league on her own would almost certainly happen faster than any women's league getting off the ground—but he couldn't be sure that would actually be good for her.
He still didn't have enough grounds to make the call.
And knowing Gyeo-wool's personality… there's no telling what might blow up if she debuts like this.
Even if she looked resolved right now, nobody knew when she might flip. Even Jin Ju-yeong was shaking in his boots, wasn't he? For all Do-jin knew, this whole act was just a ploy to convince him she had changed.
So rather than rush to any judgment, Lee Do-jin decided to keep watching a little longer.
Still, somehow……
"…?"
Standing in front of a Jin Gyeo-wool whose face was lit up like she had just met a living legend in the flesh, Lee Do-jin found himself thinking, unbidden, of the family member he had lost.
She reminds me of Bom.
The pure-hearted girl who, from the moment she learned her mechanics had a ceiling, had never once slacked on practice. The girl who had never allowed herself a single lazy moment, determined not to hold Jin Gyeo-wool back.
It was a pipe dream. But he couldn't help imagining it.
Maybe Bom got through to her somehow. Warmed up the heart of a cold girl who only ever thought about herself…
Lee Do-jin decided to believe the kind version: that his dead little sister was still at Gyeo-wool's side, helping her along.
"I should head out. See you around."
"Yessir~ Fighting! Always rooting for you!"
But on the way back to Jin Ju-yeong's room, the more he turned the conversation over in his head, the more things didn't add up—and not just one or two of them.
It didn't feel like Jin Gyeo-wool was scheming something, the way Ju-yeong had suggested. It felt more like every memory of Lee Do-jin had been carved clean out of her head.
Did she get amnesia or something?