Ha Jeong-uk / Wook_SUP (1)
For Jin Gyeo-wool, who had been holding back for fear of interrupting him, Lee Do-jin's offer to play was nothing short of a windfall.
Bullied into it by her relentless pestering, Lee Do-jin played with her late into that night—and even that wasn't enough. Come Monday evening, she dragged him into duo queue again by force.
As they queued together, though, Lee Do-jin found himself mildly puzzled.
For someone who had supposedly recovered her memories, Jin Gyeo-wool was playing like a remarkably gentle little lamb.
She had never been the type to hurl abuse in chat, but whenever a game went south she used to need to smash something before she could settle down…
Now she didn't get angry at all. She let her play do the talking instead.
After watching her across Saturday and Monday, Lee Do-jin's conclusion was simple.
Jin Gyeo-wool no longer lost her temper in real life.
Instead, she was out there demolishing opponents in-game with her newly sharpened skills.
Of course, to Lee Do-jin—who knew her past—she still looked like nothing more than a tiny Larvitar. There was no telling when she might evolve into a Tyranitar, so he resolved to keep an eye on her even if it meant carving time out of his own schedule.
Saturday came around again.
Jin Gyeo-wool had come to meet Ha Jeong-uk, the support who would become the final piece of the team.
"Man, it's been forever since I've been to Noryangjin."
"Just thinking about studying here is pure nightmare fuel~"
"Nuna. Aren't you gonna eat lunch?"
She had meant to come alone, but her disobedient teammates had simply trailed after her of their own free will.
She had absolutely laid down the law before they left—told them they didn't need to follow—and yet either her words hadn't carried enough weight, or they simply didn't take her seriously.
Aside from Gong Je-hyeon, the other two didn't even pretend to be scared.
"You guys. Fine, you're already here… but do not get in the way. I'm talking to him one-on-one."
All three nodded, slow and lazy.
Wasn't her expression terrifying when she said that?
Not particularly.
Jin Gyeo-wool had, at some point, grown quite accustomed to wearing the devilish face that Hon Gyeo-wool used to put on.
Choi Do-yun, however, was operating under the conviction that he could not possibly stay behind when his future wife was going somewhere. Yu Min-jae wanted to ease terminally-ill Gyeo-wool's worries even a little sooner. And Gong Je-hyeon had tagged along for no deeper reason than that he simply wanted to see her.
So of the three, only Gong Je-hyeon was actually afraid.
"We'll pretend we don't know you and hang out inside."
"Yeah, just in case."
The meeting spot was a café at the three-way intersection in Noryangjin's academy district. The three of them would go in first, claim a corner table, and keep watch from a distance.
Jin Gyeo-wool sent them ahead, then waited for Ha Jeong-uk with growing impatience.
I heard he doesn't have much interest in studying… and yet he's still grinding through entrance-exam cram schools.
According to what Han Yeo-reum and Cha Ga-eul had told her, Ha Jeong-uk was never much of a natural student. From a young age he'd shown talent for games and the arts, but his parents had focused on ordinary university admissions and academics rather than nurturing those gifts.
There was no way his exam prep was going well.
He'd picked his studies back up in his first year of high school after letting them slide, but that hadn't changed much of anything. Weekdays meant supplementary classes and academies; weekends meant still more entrance-exam cram schools. He threw everything he had at raising his grades, and still hit a wall.
The result of all that effort: a grade-four average on his school records.
What his parents wanted was a university in Seoul—and just looking at the numbers, the outlook was pitch-black. Even if he managed an in-Seoul admission, reaching a school that would actually satisfy them meant budgeting for at least a second or third attempt at the exams.
Jin Gyeo-wool closed her eyes and turned his situation over in her mind.
Home was stifling. The academy was stifling. And yet the thought of picking up the game again after so much time away—of not being able to play the way he used to—had already gutted his self-esteem.
Now that he'd been somewhat broken in to studying, he was probably wondering whether grinding for a good university really was the right answer after all, and the game was slowly being pushed to the margins…
And right in the middle of that process, a tempting offer had dropped into his lap: join an amateur team and enter a tournament.
Even as he told himself it was too late, was some part of him hoping the team would pull him along?
Judging by how he'd folded to his parents' persuasion and thrown himself into studies that didn't suit him, it wasn't out of the question.
If I sweet-talk him just right, I think he'll come over.
Come to think of it, it was almost time—and he still wasn't here.
Almost without thinking, Jin Gyeo-wool unlocked her phone and checked KakaoTalk.
Should she kill him.
For a split second Jin Gyeo-wool's blood surged the wrong way up her body—but the medium ability Warm Spring Breeze automatically snuffed it out.
Anger suppressed. Personality takeover prevented.
Wasting a precious ability on garbage like this—Jin Gyeo-wool shed tears of pure indignation on the inside.
"I came all the way out here and you think I'm just going home…"
In the end, she had no choice but to round up the teammates waiting in the corner.
"Effective immediately, we are commencing Operation Capture Ha Jeong-uk."
"Ohhh…"
Everyone recoiled at the words capture operation.
"He made a promise and then no-showed. So shouldn't we drag him out right now?"
Everyone could feel the anger bleeding into the expression that, only moments ago, had been relatively calm. Sensing that the sparks would fly their way if nobody moved, Gong Je-hyeon spoke up first.
"Which academy is he at? If we know that much, we can get him out somehow."
Choi Do-yun and Yu Min-jae nodded along.
"Jaeseong Academy. No idea which floor. But he's in a senior class. If we look, he's got to be somewhere."
Entrance-exam academies liked to tape mock-exam score reports to the walls to stoke students' competitive drive. Reverse-engineer those, and Ha Jeong-uk's trail would be impossible to hide.
"First one to grab him gets a hundred thousand won in skins from me."
"Okay, now we're talking."
Yu Min-jae bolted out first. Choi Do-yun and Gong Je-hyeon pounded after him.
Jin Gyeo-wool watched the three of them stampede out, then placed a call somewhere.
"Hello? Yeah, Ga-eul. I've got a couple things to ask you."
When you make plans to meet someone, there is etiquette to canceling.
Same-day cancellations at least require a phone call. That is basic manners.
Same-day—and canceling right as the appointment time arrives?
You could call and beg on your knees and still not earn forgiveness.
The medium ability Warm Spring Breeze had already burned through two activations. That was how furious Jin Gyeo-wool was.
"People have manners, you know. You agree to meet, and then—same day, while I'm already here waiting—you cancel? Who does that?"
"I—I'm sorry…"
Ha Jeong-uk was exactly as passive and reactive as she had expected. Was it the glasses? Jin Gyeo-wool plucked them off his face without thinking.
"What's your prescription?"
"Minus on both sides…"
"Ah."
So it wasn't the glasses. His eyesight really was that bad.
She set them straight back on his face.
"So. You're really not teaming with us? You're just going to drop the game entirely?"
Ha Jeong-uk was at a loss.
Jin Gyeo-wool was a full year younger than him, and yet here she was not only talking down to him but behaving in a way no little sister had any business behaving.
"Well…. I have to study. That's the right thing… probably."
Recognizing the absurdity of a situation, however, did not mean you could push back against it. Differences in power always existed, and those differences had a way of steamrolling even the most reasonable decisions.
Ha Jeong-uk dropped his head like a herbivore set down in front of a tiger, thoroughly cowed.
"What do you mean, 'probably' the right thing? Is that your parents' will, or yours? Talk like that and I've got no idea what you actually want."
"…Th-that's. It's mine. My will."
"Zero conviction in that."
"It is my will…!"
"Still zero conviction."
One heavy line after another from Jin Gyeo-wool. Even Ha Jeong-uk, who had been gearing up to insist that studying was purely his own choice, found it impossible to push any further.
"Whatever. Come play a few games with us. Skipping academy for a bit won't kill you, right?"
"What are you talking about. I can't skip academy."
"What, are they going to call your parents if you miss one day?"
"No, that's… not it, but."
In the end, crushed under Jin Gyeo-wool's sheer force of presence, he couldn't get a single real argument out. Everything was unfolding exactly as she had predicted before the meeting.
Having confirmed that missing one day of academy wouldn't actually cause a problem, Jin Gyeo-wool smiled sweetly and issued orders to her slaves.
"Then we're good. Kids—PC bang. Let's go."
"Yes, nuna~!" "Let's go!"
The three guys started off toward the PC bang at once, hauling their newly captured slave candidate along with them.
"Ah—huh? Wait! Hold on!"
The look on Jin Gyeo-wool's face as she followed behind them was more wicked than it had ever been.
This was the academy district, sure—and yet the PC bangs were still packed nearly wall to wall.
Schools, cram schools, and PC bangs were inseparable, weren't they?
Studying was boring and hard in equal measure. Unless you were a robot, there was no way you could keep your butt glued to a chair for it twenty-four hours a day. So for a brief change of air—an escape from the suffocating daily grind—plenty of exam students found their way to a PC bang.
Sometimes you came looking for a little happiness and a stress dump and left even more stressed than before… but even so, no sanctuary quite matched a PC bang for kids like them.
"Alright. Figure out what you're playing support, and talk it over with Min-jae next to you."
"No, I need to get to acad—"
"Talk it over~?"
It was phrased as a question, but her molars were clearly locked together. The subtext was unmistakable: talk back and die.
A pretty girl—until the anger showed, at which point she looked every bit the devil. Ha Jeong-uk had no choice but to fold to her demands.
Besides, wasn't she friends with Cha Ga-eul and Han Yeo-reum, people he actually knew? He couldn't just blow her off. He ran through the self-justification in his head.
Fine… just one game… one game and I'm out…
Truth be told, he hadn't been a model academy student every single day either. When the timing lined up with academy friends, he'd ditched class for the PC bang plenty of times—just like today. If he had truly done nothing but study, would the recent match-history data Han Yeo-reum and Cha Ga-eul had pulled on him have had any credibility at all?
"Hyung, what are you gonna play?"
Support Ha Jeong-uk's partner—Yu Min-jae, with his strikingly intense face—asked the question. He wasn't quite on Jin Gyeo-wool's level, but for the youngest person on the team, he had by far the meanest look.
"Uh… what are you going?"
"Thinking Ezreal. If they take Ez, then Cait."
"Ezreal…"
A support that paired well with Ezreal, in the current meta, was Tahm Kench. But meta picks got snatched first often enough that Ha Jeong-uk needed a second choice ready.
"Tahm Kench—and if not, I'll go Janna."
"Janna? Didn't expect that."
Of course he hadn't. Janna was great in the right hands, but she was also one of the easiest champions in the game to throw with. Ha Jeong-uk, bitter about being dragged here against his will, had tossed out a little scheme—maybe he'd just ride the bus for a bit.
"You're going Janna?"
But the moment Jin Gyeo-wool overheard the Janna plan, she turned to him with a brilliant smile. Ha Jeong-uk flinched—and in that brief pause, an unexpected champion appeared on Gyeo-wool's pick screen.
"They're on Ornn, so this is fine, right?"
What had appeared was none other than Cho'Gath—a powerful tank with a kit full of CC and an ultimate more than capable of swallowing even a well-fed enemy tank whole in a single bite. Slow feet were his only real weakness, and Janna's movement-speed aura neatly erased it.
"What? Nuna, you're going Cho'Gath?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Say less. Then I'm on this."
Choi Do-yun locked in Zac next. The soft, bouncy jelly—another champion packing serious survivability, tankiness, and a buffet of CC, just like Cho'Gath.
Gong Je-hyeon took one look at their picks and started complaining.
"Ah, shit, this game's gonna be disgusting. They're on Ornn, Galio, Tahm Kench…. and we're on Cho'Gath and Zac? Ugh."
At this point, the mid laner's options weren't exactly plentiful. With an Ezreal ADC, the clean play was to poke the enemy's health down from range before committing to a fight.
"Times like this, it's gotta be Zoe."
"Ooooh~ we getting some nasty poke?"
"Hey, Jin Gyeo-wool. I'm about to show you exactly how you wrecked me in that 1v1 last time."
"Be my guest."
And just like that, the five-champion lineup was locked.
On paper alone, it was a frankly unhinged composition. But of the four heading into the game, not a single one looked tense or worried about what came next.
That, more than anything, left Ha Jeong-uk deeply unsettled.
What is with these kids…?
They hadn't scrimmed together more than a handful of times, and yet the four of them—everyone but Ha Jeong-uk—were already of one mind and one heart. It was only possible because Jin Gyeo-wool sat at the center as a solid axis; there was no way Ha Jeong-uk could have known that.
And how could he have? Up to this moment, he had written Jin Gyeo-wool off as nothing more than a spoiled rich girl who didn't know how the world worked.