Who Is Jimin? (1)
"……"
Park Jimin was locked in.
He was on Jax. The opposing Orion top laner, Simon, was on Gnar. There was no room to ease up until the very end—every step had to be precise, every trade measured.
Jimin answered in a low voice. Even so, ever since the five regulars had been locked in, he had been making a real effort to get closer with his teammates—forced or not.
Jinjjao had come for a gank and committed fairly deep, but Jax walked out without burning a single summoner spell. Even without jungle pressure, the top laner's aggressive movement alone had burned the enemy's turn.
Against the enemy Ezreal and Rakan, Varus was instead pressing forward with aggressive footwork.
Jimin—Shake—Open—Rapid—Sala.
The P1 Academy Challengers roster locked in as the opening-day regulars was already looking sharp from the very first game.
Even after the map shifted into side-lane play, the picture didn't change. Jimin's Jax kept stomping the enemy Gnar into the dirt. Even without dying for a solo kill, the Gnar was so drained from trades that dive pressure alone made it nearly impossible to farm CS properly.
P1's mid laner Open had just gotten hit by the enemy Ahri charm.
Ezreal burned Zhonya's, but surviving still looked unlikely. Over on the side lane, Jax had already interrupted Gnar's teleport.
Attack-speed Varus was weaving past every skill in sight, protected by his teammates, and never stopped dealing damage.
The teamfight that started with Ezreal getting picked was over. The observer immediately cut to bot-lane turret two.
Gnar burned Flash, but Jax's final auto still landed—and Gnar went down. Then Jax started hammering turret two without mercy.
Jax had been shredding Gnar at two items. Now Jimin had pulled a teamfight-optimized third-item Zhonya's—and that alone announced just how overgrown he already was.
P1's main force advanced with Baron buff draped over them.
Jax dove the Flash-less Miss Fortune, and Orion lost their marksman in the blink of an eye.
The moment the tension snapped, Jimin—who had been pure concentration the whole time—broke into a huge grin.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
The roar of the crowd erupted as the Nexus detonated. Fans who had come to cheer on P1's young sprouts had every reason to celebrate that performance.
Still kind of unsatisfying, though?
Game two.
Watching Yone get banned, Jimin clicked his tongue. Yone and Yasuo were both sitting on indirect buffs right now—this was a pretty strong window for them.
Jimin nodded at Coach Oni—Kwon Ohyeon—and his teammate.
Kang Jun was aggressively pushing for his own champion pick.
Game two began.
P1 fans who had just watched that first-set performance were watching with eyes full of expectation.
P1's Ezreal–Braum duo was shoving Orion's Cherry–Bippo combo from the earliest minutes.
Jimin's Lethal Tempo Yasuo was carving Gnar to pieces without mercy. Already, Gnar was stuck hugging the turret just to catch the wave.
Gnar got caught in the tornado Jimin's Yasuo sent out.
Teleport-less Gnar got dived on the spot. The CS gap that had already opened was only going to get worse.
Kang Jun muttered it while stomping his own lane and heading back bot. Had there even been games like this last year—games where top lane just obliterated the map?
The more items came online, the more Gnar was reduced to a pure flee pattern against Yasuo. One small step too close and the blade storm simply couldn't be tanked.
Just like game one, both top and bot had been demolished in the laning phase.
Diana's Flash ultimate landed right as the enemy tried to initiate—and Yasuo's ultimate dropped right on top of it.
Fed enough that he wouldn't die, and dealing terrifying damage on top of it. A well-scaled Ezreal and an accelerated Jayce joined the hunt as well.
"P1! P1! P1!"
Even though this was Academy, even though this was Hongdae and not Jongno—fans were still chanting full-throated for the young players wearing the P1 name.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
The P1 players stepped out of the booth. The crowd rose to its feet to welcome the team's young sprouts.
"Well played!"
"We could've closed it faster."
P1 Academy's head coach Kim Hyunjin was usually pretty strict in practice—but even he couldn't help celebrating a performance this dominant.
Kang Jun, though, tilted his head like something still wasn't a full hundred percent.
"……"
Got caught weird once mid-game.
Jimin, too, was replaying the moment he'd gotten collapsed on by enemy champions in a side lane—quietly reflecting. Overall the lanes had opened up well this game, but if it had been a match where he needed to be the team's last line of defense, that death could have been fatal.
"Alright—joining us now are P1's Jimin and Rapid, who put on a truly spectacular showing today! Congratulations on the win."
"Thank you."
"Thank you……"
Kang Jun answered with ease. Jimin, by contrast, was extremely tense.
I'm shaking.
He had streamed in front of thousands of viewers before, but a few hundred spectators in person were ten times scarier. Every one of them was looking at him with a different face. And the perfume and cosmetics scent coming off the announcer next to him only made the nerves worse.
"When I play aggressively and it works out, it makes me want to play even more proactively."
"Well said. And Player Jimin."
"Yes."
"In game two against Gnar, that Lethal Tempo Yasuo was really something. What do you think about such an aggressive Yasuo into Gnar?"
"……"
Jimin smiled awkwardly at the announcer's question.
What am I supposed to say?
Plenty of people asked similar questions on stream, and back then he could just answer comfortably. This stage was completely different. Jimin hesitated over whether to just say whatever came into his head.
They should've made us practice this kind of thing too.
"Uh…… um…… Yeah. I just think it's good."
"Hahahaha—alright, well said."
Jimin immediately regretted the weird answer, but the announcer—and the crowd—burst out laughing.
This is hard.
The win was great. He was grateful to the fans who had come to cheer. But he desperately wanted someone to get him out of there already.
"Thanks for the five hundred Dal balloons, hyung-nim."
Former pro and current Charcoal streamer Temujin thanked a viewer.
"Games are going really well today. Hmm—yeah, Jax is good."
Temujin's first pick was Jax, strong in the current meta—a champion top laners were using constantly in both tournaments and high elo.
"Camille Galio? I'll just beat the Camille, right, chat?"
Temujin was feeling good and said it with confidence. Before the Camille–Galio synergy could come online, he would just stomp the Camille in lane and side lane. With over a decade of experience, he was confident in the Jax–Camille matchup.
"Oh, it really is Jimin-nim? Ah—smurf account."
It was the second-highest-rated account among Jimin's accounts.
Tsk.
Coincidentally, this would be their first time matching top versus top. But Temujin still remembered being impressed when he'd played with Jimin's main account as his allied ADC before.
"He's a player who's been absolutely crushing it in Challengers lately, chat. But I'll give it everything I've got."
The fighting spirit he'd had as a pro top laner had long since been packed away. These days he thrived as one of Charcoal's most popular SOL streamers. Even so, he couldn't help the strange pressure already settling over him.