The Qualifiers (1)
"Hello. I'm here to pick up my invitation..."
Team booths usually opened an hour before match time. With two hours still to go, only a handful of front-desk staff were setting things up.
"Huh? Wait, is that actually Para?"
The moment I walked over and spoke, a staffer in an RG uniform recognized me.
"Our coach couldn't make it today, so..."
"No, no! We heard you helped a ton with our team's scrims, too."
"RG was the one doing us the favor. Other LCK teams won't even schedule scrims with us."
"Come on — next year you'll be playing alongside us at LoL Park. Here's your ticket, and this is a jersey."
The staffer handed me a Team RG uniform. Getting team merch with a guest pass was standard enough, but...
Is it even okay for me to wear this?
I wasn't sure whether an active pro was allowed to throw on another team's jersey. Still, I took it and stashed it away.
"Did you bring a friend with you?"
"Yep!"
The staffer glanced at Choi Eunseo beside me, looking intrigued.
"Isn't that one of the jerseys from last year's charity auction? That's a seriously rare piece — you've got one?"
"Collecting jerseys is my hobby!"
The uniform Eunseo was wearing really was last year's RG kit — and not even the retail version. It was a player-issue jersey.
"The booth's going to get packed once it opens. Your friend should grab some merch too."
Maybe it was the jersey. The staffer handed Eunseo a whole assortment of goods — everything except another uniform. Normally you'd spin a roulette wheel for one item out of the pile. What Eunseo got was a little shopping bag with all of it inside.
"Cheer loud for us today!"
"Of course!"
We finished our goodbyes with the staffer and headed back out of the arena.
"We've got about two hours. Want to grab food?"
"Sounds good."
We left Jonggak Tower, where LoL Park was located, and walked about ten minutes down the street to our destination.
"What's this place?"
"Temple cuisine, I think? It's pretty famous with the vegan crowd."
Temple food — a vegan spot built around namul and vegetables.
"Welcome. Do you have a reservation?"
"Under Yoon Seoha."
"One moment... Right this way, please."
I'd booked ahead, so we were seated without waiting. Once Eunseo sat down, I held out my hand.
"Huh? What?"
"Rice. The stuff you always carry around."
There was another reason I'd picked this place. For vegan food, it was expensive enough that the service tended to be decent.
Someone once microwaved chicken breast in here, after all.
In my past life, one of the pros I hung out with was hardcore about being vegan. Because of him, the whole group had come here to eat once — and the gym-rat of the bunch had insisted he needed his protein and pulled out chicken breast. The staffer watching him asked if it was too dry and offered to heat it up in the microwave.
So asking them to swap out a meal because of a medical condition wasn't going to be a problem. I'd even called ahead to check.
I took the instant rice Eunseo pulled out and handed it to the staffer.
Han-san Food, though?
The Han-san I knew was a cutting-edge IT conglomerate that filled every Korean with national pride. They made food too? New knowledge unlocked.
"Why are you so natural at this?"
While we waited for the food and I set out the utensils, Eunseo said something odd.
"At what?"
"I don't know — competent? Like, if you were a guy, I'd be thinking, 'Wow, he's got manners,' but you're just doing it like it's nothing."
Probably the skills I'd picked up herding a pack of zero-life-skills gaming shut-ins in my past life. That was how it looked to her, anyway.
We killed a few minutes chatting, and then the staff started bringing dishes out one by one.
"Where would you like the rice you requested earlier?"
"Right here! Thank you."
I'd already asked them to leave out the fish and soy dishes, so everything that arrived was a pure vegetable spread. Expensive or not, it earned its price — overall, it was genuinely good.
"So, who do you think wins today?"
"I'm going with RG."
"Why?"
Today's match was RG versus WQ — a guillotine match for the fourth seed. RG had caught the last train into the qualifiers but won their previous series, while WQ had blown a chance to lock in the third seed. Momentum favored RG.
Matchup-wise, RG has the edge too.
Even if their overall standings points trailed, RG held the head-to-head record. Put it all together and RG winning was the clean chalk pick.
The guest seats were all the way in the back, so the entire arena spread out in a single glance. I hadn't set foot in this place since becoming a girl, and even as a spectator rather than a player, I could feel my heart pounding. It still didn't feel real that if I just waited a little longer, I'd be the one competing down there.
As if they could read my mind—
The massive jumbotron locked onto my seat, and a wave of gasps rolled through the crowd.
"Wait, she's a pro? I was about to ask for her number."
"With a face like that, she's a pro gamer?"
"Wild."
The two guys sitting near me whispered to each other, and my improved hearing — a perk of becoming a girl — helpfully delivered every useless word.
"Damn, I was gonna get her number."
"Even if you'd asked, she wasn't giving it to you."
Laughter rippled through the stands at the casters' banter. So even when it wasn't pure game talk, you still had to keep the audio from going dead if you wanted to be a tier-one caster? I thought back to my past-life self, who'd figured that if pro play ever fell through, casting would be the backup plan.
But...
I was still up on the jumbotron. How long were they going to keep the camera on me?
I knew what they were getting at, but doing it would draw way too much aggro, so I stayed put.
Eunseo poked me in the back a few times, then started doing the challenge hand signs on her own. With her going at it solo right beside me, just sitting there felt weird.
In the end I had no choice. I joined Eunseo and made two little hearts with my hands.
Yeah, this is definitely getting clipped and passed around.
In my past life, searching my name online got you a wall of hate. This life, searching my name just pulled up face pics. I still couldn't decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
It was about time. As the casters spoke, the arena interior flooded with red light.
Players in red uniforms walked out to center stage and offered their greetings.
Next up—
The arena washed over in blue as RG's players entered. They walked to center stage as well, bowed in unison, and headed to their stations.
I've seen this draft somewhere before.
Hand the enemy a melee ADC and take Yone. Top lane takes a tank that loses the matchup but cleans up side waves. Bot grabs a mid-tier hypercarry ADC.
That's our team's draft.
It didn't take long to recognize it — the exact draft composition our team had run when we scrimmed against RG.