We've Become a Legion (1)
Spending the hours grinding ranked games together, they somehow found themselves at seven in the evening.
The two people who had helped Min Cheong-ha so much with setting up the practice room showed up late.
"You worked hard. Mom said you two put this place together after talking it over with her?"
Han Yeo-reum threw herself at Jin Gyeo-wool and immediately started whining at full volume.
"Jjinglyeo, Jjinglyeo… I thought I was going to die. Ga-eul dumped every hard job on me… and just stood in the back giving orders…"
"When did I ever?! And the construction guys did almost all the actual work, okay?"
Cha Ga-eul was normally someone who rarely showed emotion, but today her voice carried an uncharacteristic energy, like she was genuinely excited.
"Coach. Must've been rough looking after everything, huh~?"
"…Don't call me coach. Cut it out."
"Why? You are the coach. Our Coach Cha Ga-eul and Manager Han Yeo-reum."
Cha Ga-eul flushed and dropped her gaze to the floor, embarrassed by the title, while Han Yeo-reum lit up at being called manager and started bouncing around in a little victory dance.
The violent motion set her chest swaying, and every teammate's eyes followed the bounce up and down without meaning to.
"Hey, Gyeo-wool."
"Hm?"
"Did you thank Yeong-bin yet?"
Lee Yeong-bin hadn't exactly been sitting around twiddling his thumbs either.
Jin Gyeo-wool had been busy recruiting new teammates, and Lee Yeong-bin had been just as busy supporting everything from behind the scenes. Lately the two of them barely had time to hang out at all.
But of everyone involved, Lee Yeong-bin had contributed the most to gathering such excellent teammates around Jin Gyeo-wool. It was his steady work spreading the word about how safe she was to be around that let her become friends with Choi Go-yun, and through him she had met her first member, Choi Do-yun.
To Jin Gyeo-wool, he was one of the benefactors she could never afford to forget.
"I'll reach out to him myself soon."
"Good. Keep him in mind. Starting next month he's diving into entrance-exam cram school for real, so he's going to be slammed."
Jin Gyeo-wool looked at Cha Ga-eul's sympathetic expression and answered,
"He's helped Ju-yeong and me with a ton of stuff. Of course I have to thank him properly."
The thank-you could wait for its own moment. Right now there was something more important.
"So it's about time we threw a founding party. Curious about the team name?"
Once they made it through regionals they'd just become the Seoul team anyway, and if they reached internationals they'd be Team Korea. But a sense of belonging was still one of the most important ingredients in any team.
"Winter Legion. In English, Legion of Winter. Three-letter tag: LOW. Like it?"
A naming sense that openly declared it was Jin Gyeo-wool's team.
And yet not a single person objected.
The only one who ever really pushed back against her, Gong Je-hyeon, tossed out a couple of lines.
"We're not even a pro team. Why'd you make a team tag? And 'Low' sounds like bad luck waiting to happen."
"So what? We might become a real pro team someday. And quit jinxing us. Shut up."
"Yes ma'am…"
Once Gong Je-hyeon had been flattened, Choi Do-yun picked up the thread.
"But Min-jae's ID is MJLow, and we're supposed to match tags for tournaments, right? So it'd be LOW MJLow? Front and back are the same? Ahaha!"
He snickered to himself and started humming the familiar melody of "Front and back are the saaaame~."
The atmosphere froze over at light speed, as expected.
Choi Do-yun really ought to be grateful Han Yeo-reum was sitting there as manager.
"Ahahaha! That's hilarious! Wait, Gyeo-wool, did you do that on purpose?"
As demonstrated, Han Yeo-reum was the type who laughed a little too easily.
While she was busy losing it, Jin Gyeo-wool muttered at Choi Do-yun,
"Can the useless gags."
"Okay…"
While a suddenly deflated Choi Do-yun sat there sucking on his cola through a straw, Yu Min-jae stepped in to try to lift the mood.
"Honestly, I wouldn't even care if you just slapped your three-syllable name on the team. You're the one who pulled us all together anyway."
"That's true. Yu Min-jae gets it. We vibe."
Gong Je-hyeon stuck out his hand like he wanted a high-five. Yu Min-jae left him hanging.
One shot from Jin Gyeo-wool, another from Yu Min-jae.
Gong Je-hyeon sank into gloom just as fast.
Sensing the weird turn in the air, Jin Gyeo-wool cut in.
"Don't do that to each other. Everyone get along—except me."
She'd meant it as I'm older, so don't try to act like my equal, but the four of them each took it in completely different ways.
She's cutting off any possible romantic feelings from the others at the root, huh? That's my Gyeo-wool noona.
…Is she already preparing to say goodbye to all of us?
Staying closest to Jin Gyeo-wool is how you secure your future, right?
Yep yep. Gotta make sure Do-yun and Min-jae don't fight and take good care of them.
Han Yeo-reum, who had been listening, asked,
"Why are you excluding yourself, Gyeo-wool?"
"Well… because I'm a girl?"
She was only trying to keep some distance because of the age gap, but if she needed a plausible cover story, that was the only one she had.
Even Jin Gyeo-wool never imagined she'd end up using an excuse like that to put space between herself and other people.
"I mean, it's fine if we all hang out like friends, me included, but it can't get in the way of practice. So everyone be careful, but let's not put on airs with each other."
She lifted the glass in her hand.
"Anyway. The reason I named us Winter Legion is simple."
Rome—the mightiest imperial power that once ruled the Mediterranean.
What made that vast empire possible was the Roman army so formidable it earned its own proper noun: the Legion.
"I named us that because I want us to smash every rival the way Rome's legions did. So from now on, there is no defeat. The moment we lose, we fall. Got it?"
Jin Gyeo-wool thrust her cola-filled glass high toward the ceiling.
Every teammate and both of her friends immediately clinked their glasses against hers.
With each person's own unique cheer,
the Winter Legion finally took its first monumental step toward their primary goal: clearing the regional finals.
That weekend.
Jin Gyeo-wool had made dinner plans with Lee Yeong-bin.
Normally it would have been practice time, but she carved out a full day for the sake of thanking her benefactor.
There was a saying that a single day's kindness could not be repaid even in a hundred days. Receiving help was easy; returning it was hard.
Once Jin Gyeo-wool threw herself fully into practice and Lee Yeong-bin got buried in his own studies, neither of them could guarantee when free time would appear again.
So she decided that if she was going to repay him, she might as well go all out.
"Whoa… what even is this place?"
"I asked Mom. She said this spot was really good."
Lee Yeong-bin looked rattled by a level of luxury he never saw in daily life.
Even Jin Gyeo-wool, who had asked Min Cheong-ha to book it, hadn't expected the restaurant to be quite this much.
She'd noticed the name was unusual, but who could have guessed it would be a restrained, elegant Korean fine-dining course restaurant on a hotel high floor—the kind of place where you could hold a formal meeting of the families?
The pre-booked dinner course alone ran 250,000 won per person.
"You sure about this? One meal is basically a month's part-time wages."
He wasn't wrong. Two people made it half a million won.
But today she had her mother Min Cheong-ha's full permission to eat without holding back.
So there was no need to hesitate, and no need to shrink from the price.
"Doesn't matter. Mom already said it was fine."
Two casually dressed students sitting in such a refined, old-world atmosphere naturally drew stares.
And because this was the restaurant Min Cheong-ha always used when meeting major figures in Korea's political and business circles, her daughter Jin Gyeo-wool received a similar level of VIP treatment.
Not an ordinary floor server but the manager himself was personally looking after their meal, so of course the other diners' curiosity was piqued.
Remembering the size of the compensation money he had once received from Min Cheong-ha, Lee Yeong-bin decided to stop worrying.
Instead of fretting about Jin Gyeo-wool's money, he ought to be worrying about his own future.
"Alright then… if your mother approved it."
Jin Gyeo-wool—Bae Do-hyun—was not used to atmospheres like this.
Unlike Hon Gyeo-wool, Bae Do-hyun had spent his entire life steeped in poverty.
Two hundred and fifty thousand won? For one meal?
If he hadn't been living as the daughter of a well-off household like Jin Gyeo-wool's, he wouldn't have dared even once every few years.
But he had to get used to it.
Hon Gyeo-wool might have been a complete psycho with a rotten personality, but at the end of the day she was still a rich kid.
He couldn't very well ruin the image of someone he cared about in his own way with some idiot table manners.
Even if dishes he'd never seen in his life came out, he would eat them with a smile. Jin Gyeo-wool steeled herself before the meal began.
They had a window seat. Looking out at the darkening sky, Lee Yeong-bin spoke up.
"Come to think of it, I was pretty shocked today."
"…Yeah. Me too."
Something genuinely special had happened, at least from their perspective.
It had already been two months since she'd started dragging the three villain sisters she'd ganked around the school store with her.
Besides them, students had begun approaching Jin Gyeo-wool directly, and more kids were coming through Han Yeo-reum and Cha Ga-eul as well.
Today, for the first time, some friends had even asked to eat lunch together—boys from another class she'd never met before.
She'd thought they were just saying hello. They weren't.
They asked in surprising detail how her debut preparations were going these days.
"I never expected them to lead with that either."
"Right? I didn't see it coming at all."
She wasn't the type to shut people out when they approached, so Jin Gyeo-wool had kindly explained the practice-room move-in, the team name decision, and the plans going forward.
They seemed impressed by how systematically everything was progressing, and even cheered her on, saying they hoped she'd debut soon.
"Debut is still a long way off, but it already felt like I had fans."
It was a bit like running into one of the viewers from her Recon streams out in the real world.
It was a first for her too, so the feeling was strangely pleasant.
It was the kind of attention she never could have felt back when she was Bae Do-hyun.
Who would have paid attention to some no-name streamer scraping by in the first place? Plenty of people probably didn't even know he was aiming to go pro.
But now, at the very least, the people at school and the ones who watched her streams knew Jin Gyeo-wool's news in pretty fine detail.
Thanks to today's conversation with those boys, word about her preparing for the amateur tournament had probably already started spreading.
"I felt really good about it too. The kids used to be so scared of you. I guess you could say all the work on improving your image paid off."
They were laughing happily together, but their thoughts didn't quite match.
Jin Gyeo-wool believed her image had improved this much entirely thanks to Lee Yeong-bin's steady effort. Lee Yeong-bin believed it was thanks to the clutch plays Jin Gyeo-wool dropped at every critical moment.
Different vantage points naturally produced different conclusions.
It was true that Lee Yeong-bin had worked consistently.
It was true that he had tried to rehabilitate her image through his friends.
And thanks to that, Jin Gyeo-wool had gained new teammates.
But it was also true that Jin Gyeo-wool and her friends had flipped public opinion with their cafeteria gank victory, and that she had cemented her image by showing her true worth at the charity Recon tournament.
It was a result neither of them could ever have achieved alone.
"Anyway, Lee Yeong-bin. You're a benefactor for life. Thank you."
Jin Gyeo-wool clenched her fist and held it out to him.
It was her own way of showing closeness—of saying their friendship should stay the same going forward.
Hoping he would become a cool adult who could look after Jin Gyeo-wool as soon as possible, Lee Yeong-bin bumped his fist against hers with a soft thump.
"I'll keep cheering you on. Don't forget—I'm always on your side."
What followed was a kind of confession.
The problem was that the person hearing it didn't catch a single word of the subtext.
Not only did Jin Gyeo-wool completely miss it—she also threw in something she absolutely did not need to say, thoroughly confusing him.
"Yeah. Thanks. Because you forgave me, I found the strength to keep moving forward. Seriously, thank you, Lee Yeong-bin. You're a really good guy."
Ordinarily, calling someone "a good guy" was a way of drawing the friend line. But when a beautiful girl on Jin Gyeo-wool's level said it, a lot of that meaning got washed out.
Just look at him now. Lee Yeong-bin was grinning ear to ear without a clue.
Even though they were both about to get so busy they wouldn't see each other for a while.
"Once you debut, I'm going to watch every single tournament you play in without missing one. And I'll make Jin Gyeo-wool special highlight reels and upload them to YouTube."
No one had even asked him, and he was already hunting for work on his own—a truly loyal slave of the modern age.
That level of devotion made Jin Gyeo-wool a little uncomfortable.
He already had enough on his plate. Did he really need to carve out extra time for this?
If making videos started interfering with Lee Yeong-bin's studies, that would be a problem. So she needled him with a sharp jab.
"Don't bother. Stop wasting time on useless stuff and just study. You can dump that on Ju-yeong—he's got nothing but free time."
Jin Gyeo-wool had no way of knowing, but the words "wasting time on useless stuff" left a pretty deep cut on Lee Yeong-bin that day.