Forced Into Rest, I Suppose (1)

If you had to sum up the 2018 CCK season in a few short phrases, you could do worse than these:

The fall of a great dynasty. The oldest jungler’s long-awaited enlightenment.

The 2018 season was, quite simply, the year a vast empire that had ruled the world—and the Korean league—from 2013 through 2017 finally came crashing down.

Hyunseong Universe, which had enjoyed its absolute peak with Lee Do-jin at its core, barely scraped into fourth place in Spring and failed to even reach playoffs in Summer, plunging into the darkest period in the organization’s history. Their longtime nemesis, POT.G, fared little better, finishing fifth in both Spring and Summer.

And rising from the wreckage of those two fallen dynasties with terrifying force was a single team: Falcon, who had stormed into the CCK through the 2018 Summer promotion tournament with a monstrous top laner named Jang Jae-hong in tow.

But Falcon, who finished the regular season in second place and charged into the finals on a wave of momentum, ultimately fell to Rollercoaster. Their roster was young—unaccustomed to competing in a massive arena under the eyes of a roaring crowd. Against the relatively seasoned veterans of Rollercoaster, a five-set series was always going to tilt the other way.

The mental fortitude required to maintain focus and judgment through a long series had always ranked among the skills young players found hardest to master.

“Kari is down…! Sniper’s in trouble too!!”

“Scorn. What a razor-sharp engage. The timing on that Smite was pure art!!”

“Sniper, Sniper, Sniper…!”

“Drrrrrrrk. Cut down!!”

“Falcon can’t hold on!”

“Scorn stands on the brink of the CCK championship he has longed for since his debut. A title seventy-eight months in the making—!!”

“How long has it been?!”

“Seventy-eight months—!”

“GG!!”

Scorn—Go ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Yong-bin. The player who had never missed a single CCK match since his debut, who had spent even longer in the league than Lee Do-jin, praying for this one moment of enlightenment.

The two dynasties had fallen, and the storm-bringer transfer student had ultimately failed to lift the trophy. But the 2018 CCK Summer season closed its curtains having left behind no shortage of stories.

As the fires raging across the League Gallery finally began to die down, public attention—with about a month left until the CWC (Council World Championship)—naturally drifted toward the players’ personal lives and gossip.

Posts tearing into players who’d underperformed in Summer.

Posts re-examining the plays of those who’d been phenomenal.

Posts wagering on which team would take the CWC and baiting each other into arguments, springing up like weeds…

And among them, threads about Jin Gyeo-wool had multiplied noticeably compared to before. Most of them were comparisons between her form and that of the top laners who’d struggled through the Summer season.

Of course, the evaluations were harsh. She’d only just won an amateur tournament, after all, and had never truly proven herself against professionals.

She’d be competing in an international amateur tournament soon enough, but even that added résumé line wasn’t going to move the needle much.

There was only one way to put a definitive “yes” on the question circulating everywhere—Could Valkyrie actually hang at the pro level?

Deliver visible results at the Korean Cup, the one stage where amateur and pro teams could actually collide head-on.

Roughly two months remained until the IeSF Amateur World Championship on November 9th.

After dropping out of school, Jin Gyeo-wool began spending more than twelve hours a day permanently stationed in the practice room. Monday through Sunday—her daily routine was measured out with a ruler’s precision.

Wake at 8 a.m. Shower, breakfast, arrive at the practice room by 10.

Lunch at 1 p.m. Keep practicing. Dinner around 7 p.m. Practice some more.

Head home at 10 p.m. with Han Yeo-reum and Cha Ga-eul.

Sometimes they’d stop by a café on the way back to chat, but she was always home before midnight at the latest.

Then sleep.

September 14th. When she arrived at the practice room and checked the Soul Assimilation UI for the first time in a while, the number was fairly shocking.

She’d been throwing herself into practice without much thought lately, but she hadn’t expected it to be this high. Maybe because nothing special had unlocked when she crossed 40%, she’d barely registered reaching this stage at all.

(*Select each ability for a detailed description)

Peak cognition. Peak athleticism.

In plain terms: abilities that could be called the absolute best in their respective fields.

Jin Gyeo-wool had reached the point where she could pull her weight in solo queue even while eating a meal.

The practice room on a weekend.

Chae Hojin went pale when he spotted Jin Gyeo-wool grinding solo queue while eating a cup ramen from the break room fridge, apparently too lazy to go out for a real meal.

What kind of girl liked gaming more than eating? Among all the women Chae Hojin had met who were decent at games, not one had ever been this pathologically obsessed.

Granted, Chae Hojin had entertained the idea of dating more than a few times, and being the soft-hearted type, he’d specifically sought out women who played Recon so they’d understand what he did for a living. But even those women hadn’t been anything like this.

They ate demurely in front of guys. They cared more about looking good than about the game. And they all shared a similar goal: reeling in a gaming nerd.

Jin Gyeo-wool, though, carried an ambition so vast it put all of that to shame. There were plenty of guys around her, but romance didn’t even register on her radar. Lee Do-jin was probably the immovable center of gravity there—but still, the way she treated everyone like friends and left zero room for anything else was genuinely impressive.

Even now she was hammering her mouse and keyboard with a mouthful of ramen, hunting for a kill angle. The white T-shirt under her tracksuit was freckled with red broth stains. Looking good for the male players had clearly never been part of the plan.

Shouldn’t I make her rest? That single thought had occupied Chae Hojin’s entire head since September. How could a person play games for ten hours a day, meal times and feedback sessions excluded?

If burnout hit Jin Gyeo-wool—the team’s gravitational center—the whole roster would shake. She might be casually pulling off ramen Recon right now, but there was no guarantee that could last forever.

Burnout Syndrome: a state of extreme physical and mental exhaustion in which a person loses the passion and sense of accomplishment derived from a given activity.

As Chae Hojin fretted over a solution, his eyes landed on Choi Do-yun, who was taking a break from his own games to watch Gyeo-wool play.

“Holy shit, noona, that was insane.”

“Told you it was sick.”

“How do you even do that while eating ramen.”

“This is ramen Recon, baby. That kill was delicious.”

Come to think of it, this might also be a good window to untangle the misunderstandings tangled around Choi Do-yun, Gong Je-hyeon, and Yu Min-jae. With about two months until the tournament, even if the players’ mental states took a hit from the truth coming out, there’d still be time to recover.

Gyeo-wool has zero interest in the guys anyway… If I just put them together, it’ll sort itself out, right?

Having a third party stuck in the middle of a relationship that needed resolving never helped anyone.

In Chae Hojin’s experience, forcing a confrontation had a much lower success rate than simply increasing the time two people spent together and letting things resolve naturally.

A masterstroke that would rest the game-obsessed Jin Gyeo-wool and clear up the misunderstandings with her teammates at the same time.

“Gyeo-wool, can I talk to you for a second?”

“Huh. Me?”

“Yeah. Come find me when that game’s over?”

“Sure. Be right there.”

Coach Chae Hojin’s campaign to regulate Jin Gyeo-wool’s practice-room attendance was about to begin.

Jin Gyeo-wool strolled out like it was nothing and cracked open a canned drink with a sharp pssht.

She swallowed a mouthful of soda, and Coach Chae Hojin launched into his pitch. A very middle-aged Ahh! of satisfaction escaped her.

“Uh… you want me to rest on weekends?”

“That’s right. Honestly, from where I’m sitting, rest is what you need more than games right now.”

“Hmm… is that so.”

From Jin Gyeo-wool’s perspective, it was a hard sell.

She could afford to take it easy after going pro.

She hadn’t racked up any concrete achievements yet—she needed to keep running, not stop for a break.

But Chae Hojin, after more than a month together, had proven he was genuinely invested in his players, and he had his own philosophy about managing them. His suggestions always carried enough weight that brushing them off lightly wasn’t an option.

Jin Gyeo-wool thought back to the Memory Erosion total she’d checked when she arrived at the practice room today.

42%…

Halfway was already right around the corner.

And objectively speaking, her skill had already drawn close to the peak of what a human being could achieve.

The only ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠place she could confirm that directly was when she ran into other pro players in solo queue—but in those moments, she knew. She’d even caught herself thinking, with no small amount of hubris, I’m good enough to debut as a pro now, aren’t I?

She tried to stay as objective as possible to avoid getting addicted to her own potential, but the confidence still crept up on her whether she liked it or not.

And yet she’d never once faced a properly organized pro team. For all her swelling confidence, Jin Gyeo-wool was starving for real competitive experience.

Watching Coach Chae Hojin chew on his lip while he waited for an answer, she made up her mind to float a counterproposal.

“Would you be able to set up a scrim with a CCK team, or maybe a CCKC team? A team from another region’s league would be fine too.”

Chae Hojin’s jaw clenched in shock. His lower lip split under the pressure with a soft tick. “Ow!” he yelped, and a thin bead of blood welled up.

“Uh… is that too much to ask?”

“N-no. No, it’s not.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Yeah.”

It wasn’t that the request was hard to grant. It was that he felt, uncannily, as if she’d read his mind.

Jin Gyeo-wool was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠clearly not someone destined to rot in the amateur scene, and neither was Gong Je-hyeon, who clung to her heels with stubborn tenacity. Choi Do-yun, Yu Min-jae, and Ha Jeong-uk weren’t lagging behind either. That was exactly why Chae Hojin had wanted for a long time to book scrims against CCK pro teams and test the limits of what this roster could do.

Win or lose, the Seoul team would learn a tremendous amount from scrims—and if they won, it would be a chance to raise the players’ names across the entire industry. There was no reason to avoid it.

But no matter how many feelers he put out through coach seniors and juniors he’d known for years, everyone just said “I’ll think about it,” and nothing ever actually got scheduled.

Scrims only happened when both sides stood to gain, and for a pro team facing the Seoul squad, there was almost nothing to gain.

Yes, Jin Gyeo-wool and Gong Je-hyeon were individually outstanding. Yes, they’d shown eye-catching skill in the Presidential Cup finals. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠There were absolutely things to learn from playing them. But if a pro team lost, the backlash crashing down on their players would be hard to weather. You could always make the excuse that it was “just a scrim” and nobody was trying—but a loss was still a loss on the record, wasn’t it?

Anonymous communities had the virtue of open exchange, but anonymity also meant chaos and extreme language. Someone would flame a pro team for losing to amateurs. You got wrecked by an amateur team? Why are you even pros? Shut the org down.

Maybe once Jin Gyeo-wool went pro and her former teammates earned recognition at the professional level, those scrim results would be re-evaluated. But in a competition-driven sport, there would always be players suffering in the shadows cast by the bright lights.

Still.

Jin Gyeo-wool was in no position to spare any consideration for the other side’s circumstances.

“If you promise to book us at least one scrim before the November tournament, I’ll take your offer.”

To climb higher, you had to step on someone. And Jin Gyeo-wool—Bae Do-hyun—knew that better than anyone, having been stepped on by Jang Jae-hong himself.

Chae Hojin must have seen the iron resolve in her eyes, because he nodded once and spoke. Judging by the look on her face, if he didn’t book the scrim, she might start yanking out his hair next.

“Alright. I promise.”

Deal sealed. Jin Gyeo-wool flashed a bright, fresh smile and held out her hand for a handshake.