Master Guest Seat (2)
The moment the stream went live, a flood of chat messages swallowed the secondary monitor.
The setup's no different from how it was later on.
I'd been here a few times in my previous life, so the place already felt familiar.
After a short wait off-camera—
"Alright, today's guest is none other than—the mystery solo queue bomber who sent Han Byuri to Grandmaster: para!"
On Han Byuri's cue, I stepped into the room and sat down beside her.
The second I appeared, the chat erupted at a volume that made everything before look tame.
"Okay, why is chat like this today—hang on, switching to subscriber-only."
Even Han Byuri couldn't handle that kind of firepower. She hurriedly flipped the chat to subscribers only.
"Alright then, mind giving us a quick introduction?"
Knowing what she was really like, that polished host persona of hers was almost funny.
"Hello. My name is Yoon Seoha, and I'm fifteen. Oh—and I'm a girl."
"Okay, then shall we clear up the question everyone's been dying to ask?"
Han Byuri opened the Riot client on the desktop and scooted aside.
I only had one job.
Log into the account I was currently using, then pull up the screen that displayed my rank.
"Uh… your rank went up even more since last time?"
"I got lucky."
I smiled and met her eyes. She looked flustered.
I'd deliberately kept quiet just to see that reaction—and it was every bit as satisfying as I'd hoped.
"Th-then, shall we start with a quick solo queue game?"
"Sounds good."
Back in the lobby, I hit the button for duo ranked.
"Any idea what champion you're going for?"
"I'll look at the full comp and decide."
After about ten minutes of queue, we loaded into champ select. The enemy mid locked in Ahri.
And their jungle: Vi.
Ahri-Vi—a textbook pairing that showed up in pro play all the time. Vi's chronic problem of "getting sucked in alone" got covered by Ahri's ultimate, letting them chain heavy CC.
"Hmm…"
I fidgeted with the mouse, thinking it over.
Do I pick something that can bully in a 1v1, or do I build for the team as a whole?
"The Black Rose will bloom again."
Our jungle was Lee Sin anyway. I locked in LeBlanc with the simple plan of crushing them in mid-jungle skirmishes.
"Uh, so… I'm seeing some weird chat over here. This isn't your first LeBlanc game… right?"
Whatever formal speech she'd been using vanished. Han Byuri called out to me in the same tone she used on stream every day.
Yeah—it was true I'd never played LeBlanc on this account.
"It is my first game. But I'm good at LeBlanc."
With my confidently locked LeBlanc, the game began.
I'm going to lose my mind.
The attitude that didn't match her age. Those straight, unwavering eyes. The sheer confidence of her presence.
The moment Han Byuri saw Yoon Seoha, she knew instantly—this was the person she'd duoed with.
But the viewers?
They could tell Yoon Seoha was pretty, sure. Seeing someone in person, though, was nothing like seeing them on a screen.
If we lose because of a mid gap…
Just imagining it was horrifying.
Booster accusations, busing, queen bee—every ugly rumor under the sun would come pouring out.
That's why I was hoping she'd play her mains.
The champions Yoon Seoha played most were Yone and Akali.
Even during their duos, Han Byuri had never once seen her on LeBlanc.
And right in the middle of all that, the enemy mid's summoner name was Rave.
One of the five mid laners who represented the LCK—a skilled player who'd gone down fighting against a Chinese team in a bloodbath of a series.
Spring split hasn't started yet, so…
This was the dead period after every league and international tournament had wrapped up. Pros with nothing better to do were grinding solo queue.
And of course, Challenger—Yoon Seoha's current tier—was the kind of place where you'd run into pro players if you so much as blinked.
If it's Rave… no way.
She glanced at the chat, and the exact thing she'd been dreading was already unfolding.
k1ng—the jungler on the same team as Rave.
His signature solo queue habit: whenever he duoed with Rave, he camped mid like his life depended on it.
Jungle camps? Didn't farm them.
Level? Didn't care if it was low.
Just smash the enemy mid, funnel Rave, and win. A braindead strategy—except the two of them had hit Challenger rank one and two with it, and even pulled it out in pro play from time to time.
I ran into them once and dropped twenty deaths. Got screenshot-shamed for it…
All Han Byuri could do was pray they'd gank a different lane this game.
"Huh…?"
From pure laning to small skirmishes to full teamfights, Yoon Seoha smothered the enemy mid—Rave—so thoroughly he couldn't even breathe.
…She's a real monster. This is ridiculous.
"They say the enemy mid is a middle schooler?"
"Middle schooler? A trainee? Or just an aspiring player?"
"Apparently she's a girl."
"What kind of nonsense is that."
Rave—Kim Hyunseong—figured that k1ng, Seo Habin, his team's pillar for the past five years, had finally developed dementia.
After coming home from Worlds, he'd been taking a leisurely break, so his current solo queue LP wasn't at the absolute top. Even so, this was Challenger. Solo queue and pro play were different, sure, but this was still where the absolute freaks of nature gathered.
A middle schooler in that tier? A girl, no less?
Absurd.
"Look at this."
Seo Habin, duoing right beside him, dropped a link into their private chat.
On the stream—
Han Byuri was a streamer he watched occasionally, so he recognized her.
The problem was the girl sitting next to her.
A mask covered the lower half of her face, so he couldn't be sure—but those long lashes and the shape of her eyes said she was a serious beauty.
"That kid is… para? That's her?"
"Yeah. Didn't you see the community blow up over it last time?"
"We got knocked out in semis and I never went online once."
"That's on you, so you deserve it."
"What."
Kim Hyunseong let Seo Habin's habitual roasting wash over him and went back to watching the stream.
"Hey."
"What."
"Is it seriously her?"
"Bro, how many times do I have to say it. Yes. I watched that whole stream the day it happened."
"Weird."
Checking her match history, it looked like she'd climbed by stomping low Challenger and Grandmaster lobbies.
"Hey. You know the drill, right?"
"Camp mid only."
If this really was a brand-new sprout, a little hardship was in order.
.
.
.
"Did she seriously just dodge that?"
That was the second time already.
It wasn't even a raw charm—she'd Flash-chained it, and the girl still tilted her camera just enough to slip out of it.
No matter how you looked at it, that was a scripter.
Nobody on the team that just won Worlds could do that.
"She's streaming from someone's house. Scripts? Please. If Han Byuri had scripts she'd have hit Grandmaster ages ago—you think she'd have slammed four hundred games with a bunch of yetis?"
"You reacted to my ult right in your face earlier too."
"The mechanics are real, I'll give her that. Still."
Game time was twenty-five minutes. The ADC was mid; every other laner was side-laning and farming.
"Wag your tail a little."
The enemy LeBlanc's KDA was 4/1/3. Kim Hyunseong's Ahri sat at 0/2/1.
"She'll definitely look for a trade or a solo kill angle."
Figuring he'd teach her the difference between solo queue and team play, he sat in the bot-side brush and waited thirty seconds.
What finally walked into the trap wasn't LeBlanc—it was K'Sante.
"We can't take that just the two of us."
They chose to back off. And right then—
The enemy has slain the Baron!
The enemy team had taken Baron.
It was a cleaner attempt than most teams that ran the so-called Baron circus. Bot and top were even in gold—getting caught mid-take could have been a disaster. And they'd still gone for it.
That was on him. He'd pulled his support bot for a fishing play while Baron was up.
"This one's over."
The words left Kim Hyunseong's mouth at the same time the surrender vote appeared.
O O O X O
Four out of five voted yes, and the defeat screen painted itself in red letters.
Then the post-game stats loaded.
Before he even realized what he was doing, Kim Hyunseong had already sent a friend request to the enemy mid.