The Tournament
“Hello, everyone.”
I was still reeling from the fact that our tournament jungler was none other than Haebin when the rest of the team filled out. Once the roster locked in, our captain pulled us into a Discord room.
While I sat there blank, the chat was surprisingly optimistic. Then again, it made sense — the team’s tiers alone looked strong on paper.
“Looking forward to working with you all. I’m Jeongin, the team captain.”
Jeongin, our mid laner and captain, was rated the second-best captain in the whole tournament. From what I’d heard, he’d even dabbled as a pro Lel player. That pedigree meant his draft priority had been pushed way down the line. He’d taken the seventh seed from A-rank and the eighth from B-rank, then swung back around and snagged the first seed from C-rank.
“Looking forward to it!”
Yeah. Fuck. That first seed he’d finally gotten his hands on had been spent on me.
“Thanks for picking me!”
“Not at all — you have the highest tier.”
“Ahem.”
For the record, Haebin’s tier was Platinum. And that was a pretty fair reflection of her actual skill. Why else would a Platinum player end up in C-rank, where the average sat around Silver to Gold? She’d been B-rank last tournament, put on a horror show, and gotten demoted.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Looking forward to it!”
The rest of the roster filled out with an A-rank Master on ADC and a D-rank streamer on support.
“…Looking forward to working with you. I’m Wayo, top lane.”
Looking at it all together, we actually seemed pretty strong.
Top was Diamond (for real), and jungle was Platinum, so maybe we were just winning on raw size? Support was whatever — the ADC would handle that — and having the highest-tier player in mid was fantastic for balance. The chat wasn’t just being dramatic for once.
“Alright, first let’s find some scrim teams.”
“Sounds good!”
But the moment scrims started, I realized our team had a critical flaw.
“Haebin, can you check mid just once?”
“Ah, yes! On my way.”
Think about it. Mid was Challenger. ADC was Master. This was obviously a bot-lane-invest composition, right?
“Yeah, good. Let’s force the dragon tempo.”
Even in the gym, if you train your legs, your upper body gets neglected by default. So what happens in the Rift?
“Ah— ah!!”
The Rift is a surprisingly mathematical game. Just as two is stronger than one and three is stronger than two, our jungle spent the entire game camping bot — which proceeded to stomp the enemy — while the enemy jungle camped top all day, and what unfolded there was a bullying so brutal it was hard to watch with your eyes open.
“Gank! Gank!”
“Hold on! You got this!”
And then it got worse.
“Hmm, Wayo — can you play Malphite or Sion?”
“…What?”
With mid and ADC as the carry roles, top was naturally forced into the human-shield tank duty.
Of course, Wayo’s most-played champions were all carry champs. My specialty was dazzling opponents with flashy plays and outplaying them with dribbles…
“Ah, I’m not really confident on tanks…”
“Huh? Looking at the season before last, those were your most-played?”
“Um… you watched that?”
“Well… since we’re teammates, I went through everyone’s in-game history.”
…Let’s just call it a remnant of a time I was chasing the meta. Back then I was desperate to climb out of Gold and would do anything.
Anyway, setting that issue aside, our scrim record was solid. Excellent, even. We had a firm win condition: the strong mid carries the early game, and late game the ADC farms off the tank and carries. That alone was enough to smash other teams in the early scrim rounds.
“Heh. Well, of course.”
Winning still felt good, though. Honestly, way better than solo queue. So this was why people played tournaments?
Well… I still didn’t love playing tank. But for the win, I could concede this much. More than anything, I could feel the enemy teams panicking. Yeah — all those highlight reels of nothing but carry champs had been for this exact moment.
“Haebin, you need to cover this, right??”
“What?? Ah, counter-jungling’s better here, no?”
Of course, separate from how well the scrims were going, I clashed with our low-tier jungler constantly. Not that we grabbed each other by the collar. Haebin wasn’t the same as before, and more importantly, this was a five-person game. We even used polite speech with each other — something neither of us normally did.
“My. Minions. Are. All. Dying.”
“Oh no… whatever shall we do.”
The silver lining was that our team had an on-call Lel analyst. Our mid was Challenger, after all. So whenever opinions clashed, we could just ask him on the spot.
“Hm? Ah… yeah, counter-jungling is probably correct here… the pathing’s awkward, and if they spot you it’s bad.”
“You heard that? Honestly, what would Wayo even know about this side of the map?”
“….”
“W-well, going top isn’t completely baseless either. Their jungler’s tier is low, so fishing for a pathing crack could actually…”
More than that, our captain had one frustrating quality: he was quietly lacking in confidence.
“No, no. You don’t need to cover for me.”
“Ahem.”
He played the game ridiculously well, but he was so locked in that his shotcalling suffered.
“Ah, I should’ve lived through that… um, sorry…”
“It’s fine. Haebin should’ve skipped the jungle camps and gotten there early.”
“What? Me? Wayo, don’t you have TP?”
“Oh dear~ I used it five seconds ago. Your spell-checking’s a little rough.”
“….”
And for the record, bot lane was…
“Jihae, go die in the brush.”
“What?”
“Die after using cocoon. Oh, and hit the ADC with Exhaust too.”
…Those two were on a lovely little date. That guy seemed to treat the support as roughly a third summoner spell and a seventh item. I felt bad for Jihae, our Bronze 2 streamer who’d somehow become a Master ADC’s personal tool… but what can you do. If she didn’t like it, she should’ve been better at Lel and come in as a high tier.
Anyway, for all our chaos, we won every single scrim we played. Mechanically, the only rough edge was jungle — every other lane was rock-solid. A tank top who could actually win lane. A mid who crushed opponents as a constant. An ADC who treated support like a third spell and was locked in for the late-game carry. No matter how I looked at it, wasn’t this excellent for a chaos-league team?
Of course, there were stronger teams out there, so the chat’s championship hype was a stretch… but still, a solid tournament finish seemed well within reach, right?
Before I knew it, the scrim period ended and the tournament quarterfinals began.
“Huuuh…”
In a best-of-five, we dropped the first two sets in a row, and I just stared blankly into space.
Uh… why do we keep losing? Did someone’s form suddenly drop off a cliff? No, that wasn’t it.
Yeah. If there was a reason, it was exactly that. We were a fundamentally strong team, so we dominated scrims. But the moment the main stage arrived and the enemy showed up with a counter to our one composition, a one-trick textbook team like us got steamrolled without resistance.
“I-I’m sorry, it’s my fault…”
“Damn, got caught at the end there.”
At least nobody was really fighting… but honestly, that was the bigger problem. It would’ve been better if we argued and actually gave each other feedback. Instead, our highest-ranked commander — the captain — just blamed himself. The ADC also assumed it was his own mistake. Even though in that last teamfight, the support had clearly used her active item wrong. That guy… did he even see the support as a person?
Anyway, this was a full-blown emergency.
“Mm…”
Was this Wayo’s first tournament — hardstuck at quarters? And as the eighth seed, of all things, hardstuck at the actual quarterfinals? That would mean the other captains’ evaluations of me had been dead-on.
I stared at the screen with a sour expression. And more than anything — I’d played tank the entire time. I’d tanked for the win, and we’d lost. So was there any reason to keep doing it?
“Hey. Haebin, you little shit.”
“Huh??”
And since sticking to the old plan was just going to get us another loss, I called out to the one person who still seemed halfway functional — Haebin.
I didn’t want to team up with this fair-weather bat again, but…
“Just one game. Do what I say.”
“It’s the last game?”
“That’s exactly why.”
This time, it was a temporary alliance. If we were going home either way, why not invest in top for once?