After Retirement
If you asked what the greatest game in the world was, you would get as many answers as there were people in the room. Taste splits by country and by person. One region would name an RTS. Another would say a MOBA, or an FPS.
But if you asked what the greatest esports competition in the world was, the answer was already settled.
Project A.
It was an FPS that had swollen enormously over the last three years, and it now ran the largest esports circuit on earth. Until three years ago the throne had belonged to Legend of League. Then the player they called the GOAT—the greatest the game had ever produced—retired, and scandal after scandal on the operations side dragged the title down with him. Legend of League withered out of the market, and an FPS from that very same company stepped into the vacancy it left behind.
Europe and Japan, who had always loved shooters, came flooding in. So did the players in China and Korea, suddenly without a game once Legend of League collapsed. All of them poured into Project A, and the game took its seat, in name and in fact, among the greatest in the world.
And I was a pro in it.
No. I had been.
After we fell in the semifinals yet again, at the international held in Brazil, I made up my mind to retire. There was no grand reason.
I was tired.
When I won the domestic championship by a margin that felt unfair, I was sure I would not come up short beside the men they called the best in the world. Honestly, I thought I was better. That arrogance was shattered, miserably, at my first international.
Monsters. Those men were monsters.
In an FPS, a pro's reaction time already sits near the superhuman. Even among players like that, there were people living on another plane entirely. I felt a wall for the first time since my debut, and I did not give up. Project A was a team game. Even if I lost my matchup, I told myself we could overcome it with the others, as a team.
We drilled our coordination until we were half insane, and it earned us a reputation as the best-meshing team in the world. Tactical KZ. Teamwork KZ. We walked into the second international far stronger than before, and we finished third.
Third. Yes—third in the world. It was never a low place. But Korea was a country people treated as an esports superpower. In Legend of League we used to collect international titles as casually as sitting down to a meal. In Project A, scraping our way to third was being called a miracle. We had done better than anyone expected. I still could not be satisfied, because once again I had been beaten clean in my own matchup.
And the third international—the one that had ended only yesterday—was the same story. I was crushed by my matchup, Apas. We lost. Badly enough to be humiliating.
Every one of my teammates soothed me. It's fine. You played well. They're just that strong. I could not take it that way. The hate piled under the broadcast channel was, to my surprise, thinking exactly what I was thinking.
Four entries had climbed into those semifinals. Seeneed, Duke, Apas—and Galaxy. Eunha. I was never going to stand in the same place as those three. That was why I had decided to retire.
"Eunha. You did more than enough today. This is too emotional a decision. You're still young. You can still grow."
The coach begged me to take the retirement back. My mind did not move. There is an old saying: do not even look at a tree you will never climb. That was what they were to me.
"I'm sorry, Coach. I haven't changed my mind."
The organization held on as well, urging me to think it over a little longer, and my thinking still did not change. I was sick to death of the helplessness that came from facing people I could never reach. The contract ran out, and I retired for good.
"...Fuck."
The day right after the retirement ceremony KZ had thrown for me. My body was too used to the old hours, so I woke on time for practice anyway, and out of habit I opened the communities on my phone. I had expected something like this. Even so, the boards were nothing but me.
Maybe because the decision had been so sudden, people were holding full debates over why I had retired. After nearly ten pages of argument, they had settled it: the hate over my slump in the semifinals.
"That's not why I retired..."
Not that I needed to step forward and explain myself. If the hate thinned out, that was good for me. I had eaten so much abuse at internationals that I was used to it by now. Coach was always telling me not to go on those sites. The moment I imagined someone out there cursing me, I still could not leave it alone. At first I got plenty angry, felt wronged, even tried suing people. These days I just let it be.
"So what do I do now...?"
Twenty-one, and out of a job. I did not particularly care. I had stacked plenty of money across three years as a pro. It was the circuit for the most popular game in the world, so a pro's salary was obscene to begin with, and I had played for the best team in Korea. Half of what that paycheck brought in, I had handed to my level-headed older brother and let him turn it over, carefully.
Which is to say I had just become the shining number-one aspiration of the modern citizen: unemployed, and rich.
I thought about playing a game, then dropped the idea. Alone, it was not fun, and there was no one to play with anyway. I had cut every connection around me so I could focus on pro life, and the KZ roster was all on break besides. And I did not have the face to look at them.
"Eunha, just bear it and give it one more try, yeah?"
"Yeah... You worked hard. Keep in touch."
"You're actually retiring? No—for real? Why?"
I had promised them we would chase a championship together, and then I had turned my back and run. All of them said they respected the choice, that they understood. Even so, I was too ashamed to see them.
"...Might as well finish sleeping."
It was still seven in the morning. If you were rich and unemployed, the least you owed the world was to sleep until noon. So I pulled the blanket back over myself and went under again, with no idea that anything would be different when I woke.