A New Star (1)
“Can you all hear me okay?”
Park Jimin said with a smile.
Streaming again after a long time. It wasn’t his first or second broadcast, so nerves weren’t even a factor. All he felt was excitement.
“Ah, there was a little error for a second.”
Barely two minutes, but as a pro player’s stream, he figured he ought to offer an excuse.
“Anyway, it’s been a while, everyone.”
The official reason for the broadcast hiatus had been so the players could focus on their matches. But there wasn’t a single person who didn’t know that was nonsense. Even so, with that awkward incident tangled up in it all, Jimin found it hard to dwell on the timing of the break for long.
“Huh, but…”
Jimin glanced at his viewer count. The way people were pouring in today felt distinctly different. Too big a jump to chalk up entirely to the end of a dry spell.
“…”
This is making me nervous.
Back in his pure streaming days before his pro debut, a sudden spike in viewers had always been both a critical opportunity and a source of mounting pressure.
“Thank you for the 20,000-won donation. Yeah, good to meet you.”
Jimin let out a short laugh. It might have just been something to say, but new viewers were always welcome.
“Thank you for the 1,000-won donation! Hmm.”
Jimin pulled up Render’s match history. A man who ran a single account with no smurfs whatsoever.
“Hahaha.”
He didn’t know when Render had fallen from Master to Diamond, but looking at the record, Diamond 2 was coming up fast.
But still.
Full-damage Aatrox was the kind of pick you had to weigh against both team compositions—and this guy clearly wasn’t weighing anything at all.
“Thank you for the 1,000-won donation. Yeah, if I can lock it in, I will.”
Jimin said with a smile. On the current patch, Aatrox was hardly a difficult pick to get out.
“Huh?”
But the chat’s reaction felt distinctly different from before.
“…”
The viewer count kept climbing. Ever since his pro debut, more and more people were speaking in a register that felt a little different from his old regulars.
“Hmm.”
A review stream, huh.
He didn’t stream with a fixed concept anyway, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
“Alright then, let’s run back through the last match.”
Jimin took the viewers’ request.
This time, instead of solo queue, Jimin pulled up the already-finished Game 2 between P1 and Gen.G from the site and hit play.
“Aatrox still gets better and better as you put skill points into him, so I locked him in with confidence.”
He started the video at a leisurely pace and began sharing his thoughts on the match, starting from the ban-pick phase.
“Ah, yeah, that’s a fair point. But taking electrocute into full damage has a high ceiling when it comes together, and our whole comp was built around cutting one of them down.”
Not an impulsive result—a choice with its own reasoning. Jimin kept explaining from his own standards.
“Oh, but bot really did play well.”
He’d been about to skip the video forward in five-second jumps when a key bot-lane laning sequence came up.
“When bot does this for you, top gets so much freer.”
If the diagonal side stomped their opponents into the ground, the opposite side got easier answers and a lighter mental load.
The video kept rolling forward.
“This is where the laning phase completely opened up.”
The moment he’d forced a hard trade into Renekton and driven him off.
“Early on you can’t just beat Renekton outright, but it gets better as you put points into Q.”
He hadn’t been trying to win on pure mechanics alone. This was the product of countless hours of practice and study. From a pro player’s perspective, Jimin laid it out for the viewers.
“Ah… did I?”
Jimin laughed, but he didn’t particularly agree. By his own standards, if you’d only gone even and the matchup wasn’t one where you could completely shatter the opponent later, it didn’t mean much.
“This is where Minhyeok hyung got cut off.”
The situation right before the play that had sent so many SCK fans into a frenzy.
“The enemy was hitting Baron, and the calls kept coming that it was doable. Rakan’s ult still wasn’t up, and Orianna had already used Shockwave.”
He advanced the video slowly.
“Right here.”
The moment Aatrox had dodged Rakan, Varus, and Nidalee’s skills all at nearly the same time.
“I was going to flash if it looked like it would hit, but I judged I could dodge it.”
Jimin was replaying the feeling of that moment in his head.
“Junyeong hyung played so well here. Oh, but Sangjin hyung went in way too fast.”
He’d said it after watching Neeko’s full bloom ultimate go off.
“Yeah, and right here I suddenly thought, wait, Varus and Orianna are stacked on top of each other.”
The exact moment Aatrox had flashed in. Even on a rewatch, the speed at which Varus’s HP evaporated was staggering.
“Three abilities and four auto attacks.”
The play that had decided the teamfight.
“…”
A quiet little laugh. All he was doing was rewatching last match and sharing his thoughts, and thousands of viewers were genuinely loving it.
He thought of something Dahye had once said half-jokingly, back when all he did was stream—that once he got popular enough, people would watch and cheer even if he just reacted to a few videos.
“With a bit of a level lead, even if you build like this you don’t die easily.”
The final slaughter sequence the casters had praised as the end of the world. Greatsword in hand, Aatrox had simply torn champions apart without mercy.
“Ah, yeah, thank you.”
The video ended. Autoplay queued up his own POG interview, and that felt far too cringe to watch.
“Shall we hop into solo queue now?”
There would be plenty of fans who wanted to see him play live. Jimin immediately started queueing.
“Thank you for the 1,000-won donation. Fighting—uh, but if you’re a college student, why am I oppa?”
Jimin was thrown by the strange donation message.
“…”
The world of streaming still had plenty left that could fluster him further.
A quiet snort. Jimin smiled as he read the messages.
“What’s so funny?”
“Huh?”
Jimin spun toward the side. Crap—he’d completely zoned out.
“Nervous about starting Game 1 too?”
“Huh?”
Kang Jun said it with a swagger. Jimin just found it ridiculous.
“You’ve barely been starting yourself.”
“Yeah, but still.”
“Haha.”
Sangjin said what Jimin had wanted to say for him.
Of course, the fact that P1 had been shelving Blur in recent scrims was something every insider already knew secondhand.
A murmur ran through the P1 spectator section.
“…”
The cheer signs with Jimin’s name on them kept multiplying.
VVK’s top laner Band into Gnar. Game 1, with Jimin on Gnar. From the earliest laning phase, Gnar’s poke came in hard.
“Waaaaaaaaah!”
A jungle-backed bot dive had netted P1 a massive lead.
Enemy top, jungle, and mid all collapsing for a top gank. VVK’s champions sealed off Gnar’s escape routes and waited for the wave to arrive.
But right before Mega Gnar unlocked—a sudden flash into ultimate, a skill chain that sniped the enemy jungler Nocturne.
A play that twisted the diagonal law sideways.
A super play born of pure instinctive sense.
The game ended in barely twenty-five minutes. Destructive P1 form.
A champion with no mobility, but one where the finest of movements could change everything. Jimin locked in Rumble. The enemy took Gnar—the champion Jimin had carried on in Game 1.
Before the highly mobile Arin hit level six, Luca’s Yone and Oz’s Vi had sniped the enemy mid laner Arin.
A rising murmur. Up top, every time Jimin’s Rumble sidestepped Gnar’s boomerang with pure footwork, the crowd rustled.
Jimin pressing the top lane. With the enemy Gnar’s HP already halved, if Vi came for a gank, all he needed was the Equalizer.
Expectations had risen. And Jimin’s carry was answering them and then some.
VVK’s champions, bodies leaning forward to catch P1’s ADC Cherry. Yone’s ultimate and Rumble’s ultimate landing together at the perfect point—they simply melted.
P1’s players had made the wait until today’s second match feel endlessly dull.
“Hello, I’m announcer Baek Yujin. Joining us now are P1’s Luca and Jimin, who showed us a fantastic series today.”
Game 1 POG Jimin and Game 2 POG Luca sat in front of her.
“Jimin, today was your first time starting both Game 1 and Game 2. Were you nervous at all?”
“Uh… well, I thought of it as not that different from usual, and we’d prepared well, so I was fine.”
“Yes—pfft, haha, thank you.”
An answer that had come out of a young player’s carefully thoughtful expression. A twenty-six-year-old adult woman couldn’t help but laugh naturally.
“Luca, as team captain, one word of resolve ahead of the big match against Maehwa Life Esports.”
“They’re a strong team, but our momentum is really good right now, so I think it’ll be an exciting contest.”
“Thank you. And Maehwa’s Hwasan said in an interview that against Jimin—the top laner who’s been drawing so much attention lately—he’s more than ready for it, and that he’ll show a senior’s presence. What’s your take on that, Luca?”
That P1’s Luca and Maehwa’s Hwasan were personally close was an open secret. A connection that stretched back to their amateur days.
“Hmm… yeah. I think Cheongmyeong’s saying that because he hasn’t gotten hit by him yet.”
An instantaneous roar erupted from the P1 cheering section.
“Ahahahaha—well, interest in the next match just went up another notch.”
“…”
The announcer cracked up. Jimin’s face looked a little flustered. But with the P1 fans somehow loving it a little too much, he still had to manage his expression.