The Beginning of Competition (2)
“Jimin, is Gnar okay?”
“Yes.”
Park Jimin nodded at the coach’s words.
Same as always.
Even when he had teamed up with Hwata and the streamers for tournaments, he had never refused a champion someone asked him to play. This was no different. He still believed he hadn’t accumulated enough knowledge to start throwing out opinions or digging in his heels.
“I think Varus-Renata would be good.”
“Huh? Yeah.”
Of course, other types existed too. Kang Jun was already offering the champion he wanted to pick first.
The game began.
It was a scrim between teams composed entirely of Academy players. Jimin’s Team A, facing Team B, was on the red side.
“Ahem.”
P1 Academy head coach Kim Hyunjin watched the game with a hawk’s eyes. The coaches, too, were unusually fired up for the first scrims of the new season. The greatest organization in the league had declared its comeback. The Academy could hardly sit still and do nothing.
How will he do?
Jimin of Team A kept catching Kim Hyunjin’s attention. The moment first-team head coach Jang Yaohwan had been announced, the very first thing he had pushed for was the recruitment of that boy. Of course, the verbal agreement had already been in place, and CEO Oliver as well as everyone inside the organization had already signed off on it. The kid’s mechanical talent looked special enough. But what would he look like in a team environment? That was the real question.
“He’s already pressuring him.”
“His spacing against Renekton is pretty good.”
“Hmm.”
Coaches Kwon Ohhyun and Lee Hwanjung began murmuring among themselves. The opponent was last year’s Academy Challengers starting top laner, “Fact” Seong Woojin. Yet from the very beginning, Jimin was taking the initiative against a player two years his senior.
“Jun, as expected…”
“He’s incredible.”
In the bot lane, Kang Jun on Varus was playing aggressively while still cleanly dodging the enemy’s skill shots. This was only a second-team scrim, but how many AD carries could actually play like that? He was still only eighteen. The talent was absurd.
Has he gotten even better than last year?
Apparently he had come back only three days into vacation and immediately started practicing again. That bottomless drive to improve was what made his special talent shine so brightly.
“Huh?”
“Whoa—”
The first-blood banner popped up. Of course they had watched the whole sequence through the observer camera. Jimin, transformed into Mega Gnar, had just solo-killed Fact’s Renekton.
Kim Hyunjin swallowed hard.
This matchup…
If Gnar bought plated steelcaps he could take the lead easily enough, but Renekton still had windows to shove hard in the early levels. Yet Jimin had pressured the Renekton from the very first moment. It wasn’t that the enemy Renekton had overextended and eaten every skillshot—Jimin had simply kept hitting him, kept hitting him, until the solo kill was forced.
“Can that Renekton even recover?”
“He died after teleporting over, so…”
“…”
It was still only the first game, still early. But Jimin was already twisting the older player’s wrist like a child’s.
“This is getting a little one-sided.”
“Yeah.”
Both coaches agreed in the same breath. Top and bot were getting crushed so hard in lane that a normal game couldn’t even form.
“Aigoo.”
A two-level lead. Renekton could no longer withstand the damage of a Trinity Force and Black Cleaver Gnar and was solo-killed again in the side lane.
“Gnar won’t even need to stack rage for teamfights.”
With nothing more than lane trading, Jimin had already crippled the enemy top laner and twisted the entire game out of shape. Even in the mid-lane turret 1v1 that the AD carries had shifted to, Kang Jun’s Varus was stomping his counterpart. They were still watching, but the game looked ready to end at any moment.
“It’s over.”
“That first game was just too one-sided.”
“Twenty-six minutes. We could’ve closed it a bit faster—kind of a shame.”
While the coaches were busy marveling at Team A’s performance, head coach Kim Hyunjin delivered a slightly sterner assessment.
“Jimin, you played really well.”
“Thank you.”
“In that dragon fight earlier…”
Even after the destructive first-game performance, coach Kwon Ohhyun kept the praise short and moved straight into the points that needed work—responding to teammates’ engages, teleport timing. Exactly the kind of feedback Jimin had been hungry for.
“Ah, yes. I’ll fix that.”
“You’re already playing extremely well, so just keep doing what you’re doing.”
“Thank you.”
Jimin smiled and expressed his gratitude.
“…”
In a little while they would start the second scrim without swapping teams. Even in that short break, Jimin was already reviewing the replay and analyzing.
“All right, get ready.”
Second game. Jimin loosened his hands and prepared himself. The draft ended. The coaching staff gathered again to watch.
“Wasn’t Gnar originally not one of his main champions?”
“No, sir. Most of the time he preferred Jayce, Fiora, Aatrox, Yone and the like over Gnar.”
“In that case…”
Coach Kim Hyunjin studied Jimin carefully. This time they put Jayce—a champion he had high mastery on—into his hands. It might only be a scrim, but evaluating individual skill was something an Academy coach could never overlook.
“Again.”
“Whoa.”
Kim Hyunjin’s eyes went wide. Jimin on Jayce looked even more ridiculous than before. Fact was excellent at surviving on Gwen, yet Jayce still melted him for a quick solo kill. Two consecutive solo kills in lane—both of them meaningful results.
“Bot lane isn’t that different from last game either.”
“We should definitely keep giving Jun champions that can go hard from the early game.”
The coaches nodded. Team A’s Ezreal-Karma was completely overpowering the enemy Miss Fortune-Nautilus. Once again the overwhelming laning power of top and bot was making the game snowball at high speed.
“We can’t stop this. We just can’t.”
The teamfight had been doomed from the start. Team B, forced to contest because they could no longer afford to give up dragons, was getting utterly dismantled. What stood out most was Jimin’s Jayce in hammer form, slaughtering the routing survivors.
“…”
This kid is the real deal.
There was no need to watch any longer. Even in a team setting, Jimin was clearly a monster. And in that moment he was, for all practical purposes, snatching the starting Challengers top-lane spot right out from under his opponent.
“So, after watching him, what do you think?”
“Hahaha.”
P1 first-team head coach Jang Yaohwan and Academy head coach Kim Hyunjin were walking together.
“Exactly as I showed you—he’s incredible. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a kid with this kind of talent.”
“I agree completely.”
Kim Hyunjin was six years older than Jang Yaohwan, yet he still spoke with full respect. The scene was small; unless you had a personal relationship, polite speech was simply correct.
“And he works so hard and takes feedback so well that the coaches already like him a lot. If you tell him to try something, he just does it.”
“Heh heh heh.”
He’s even better than I expected.
From Yaohwan’s perspective, Park Jimin the human being was a rather gentle, soft-edged kid. Talented, yes, but missing that stubborn, prideful edge so many teenage Challengers carried. Yet that very quality seemed to be working in his favor now that he was a pro. Aside from the desire to get better, he carried almost no unnecessary ego.
“Is there anything he’s still lacking?”
“Because his overall game experience is still short, he sometimes struggles with responding to engages or finding the right teleport timings. But if you leave him in a pure 1v1, he’s a wild animal.”
“He needs to get even better.”
Yaohwan grinned. Limitless talent. He could not be allowed to be satisfied with this moment.
“Jun is playing extremely well too. Skill is skill, but he’s such a diligent kid.”
“Yes, he’s really reliable.”
“Three days into vacation he came right back and started practicing. Jimin and Jun are the ones who close the practice-room door every night. The other members tried to keep up out of pure stimulation, but they dropped out pretty fast.”
“Hmm.”
When P1 had first offered him the coaching position, Yaohwan had already been keeping an eye not only on the league’s famous jungler Oz but also on Rapid in the Academy. He had never imagined the kid would be this much of a hard worker.
Things are going almost too well.
Yaohwan had already blended smoothly with the first-team roster. The players listened well; everything seemed to be flowing.
“…”
But crisis always arrived precisely when everything looked perfect. Constant vigilance was the only correct attitude.
“Ugh.”
“What’s wrong?”
“…”
Jimin was poking at his food instead of eating properly, so Kang Jun spoke up.
“You’ve been staring for a while now.”
“At who?”
“Not the players. Just… people.”
“Ahh.”
Kang Jun tilted his head, catching on.
“Guess the rumors are spreading that you’re actually pretty good.”
“Ah… is that so?”
Jimin didn’t even try to brush it off as a joke. He himself knew he had shown a lot of good form in the scrims.
“Don’t worry about it. When I first got here everyone stared at me like I was a monkey on display. I almost flipped a table once. After a while they stopped.”
“Ah, it’s not that it bothers me or anything.”
P1 staff would never deliberately make an Academy player uncomfortable—Jimin was sure of that.
“Looking even more jacked these days, huh?”
“Hahaha.”
“…”
First-team jungler Oz. A staff member had just struck up a conversation with him. The Academy had its own practice rooms, but everyone ate in the cafeteria inside the P1 building. It was spacious, yet Jimin inevitably caught sight of the first-team players.
“That hyung seems to have an unusually large number of close people.”
“He’s been with the team forever. I heard the dorm right next to ours is the one he used when he was still in the Academy.”
“So people like him more because he’s a homegrown player. Is that what they call a franchise star?”
“Hah. These days that word doesn’t mean anything.”
Kang Jun spoke cynically between bites of rice.
“Look at Dexter going to Maehwa Life. I saw an old interview where he said if he ever came back he wouldn’t even consider anyone but Gen.G. And then what?”
“Mm…”
Having watched the Worlds finals with such intensity, Jimin still found the news that Dexter and Kaji had both joined Maehwa Life pretty shocking.
“When I make first team I’m going to avenge every Gen.G fan.”
“…”
A guy who barely felt any belonging to his own team P1 was talking about avenging another organization’s fans?
Huh?
Jimin, who had been watching the first-team players eat, glanced sideways. “Blur” Shim Changmin, having finished his meal early, was already returning his tray.
“…”
He ate fast so he can get back to practice right away?
Suddenly Jimin started eating faster too.
Jimin, texting with Dahye, let out a small snort. At least now he could take jokes like that in stride.
“…”
Then or now, nothing made Jimin happier than hearing Dahye say he was good. Of course, sniping a streamer just to get that reaction had been a pretty big stain on his record. He had dreamed more than once of an enraged Dahye permanently banning him and saying she never wanted to see his face again.
Because…
“Huu…”
Jimin leaned the back of his head against the wall.
Not yet.
Academy life right now was his period of enduring hardship and nursing revenge. Until the day he rose to the first team and claimed the starting spot with his head held high, nothing else existed. He had deliberately set aside everything that brought him joy. Afraid his resolve would weaken, he even found it hard to contact Dahye casually.
“…”
Pathetic.
But he still had to do what needed doing.
If he had tried to express his actual joy through text, he would have needed an even longer string of laughter.
“…”
Well, not exactly that…
Jimin was trying to approach people with a smile, yet he could feel that a few of the older Academy players found him a little difficult to deal with. Still, he got along fine with his roommate Kang Jun, so it didn’t really matter.
(Aigoo why the hell would you walk forward there you dumbass, how the fuck did this guy even hit Challenger as a support)
(…)
Of course, it would be nice if he could tone down the swearing in the practice room. In scrims he was fairly calm, but in solo queue the guy turned into a completely different person.
“…”
There were so many things he wanted to say, but Jimin held them back.
“Huu…”
“Jimin, are you not feeling well?”
“Ah! I’m fine.”
Jimin smiled and reassured the coach that nothing was wrong.
It’s not that I’m sick…
The Hongdae Esports Studio, where the Challengers regular season was being held. Because it was a P1 match, a fair number of fans had shown up. Still, they were a bit of a distance away, so he wasn’t trembling too badly.
If I make first team…
They said you even had to do fan meetings after matches. He wasn’t sure he could handle that yet.
“Next up is P1!”
Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap!
“…”
Right.
Until the day he reached the first team, he had refused to feel even 0.001 percent satisfied. But if there were people out there hoping for their victory, then for this one moment this place was his Worlds and his SCK.
The female announcer introduced the players. Then the entrance.
Standing tall as the team’s top laner, Park Jimin steeled himself with a determination to win at all costs.
Competition and ambition could wait. Today, they would take the victory.