Suspicious Teammates (Project A)
"Ugh. I really didn't think it'd be locked already..."
It was Driver Kwon who made me realize I'd left my bag behind. I hurried back to the classroom, and the door was already shut. In the end I had to go all the way to the teachers' office, get the key, and only then get the door open. So much for being right back. It took forever.
Driver Kwon was surely still waiting outside. It was only May, but the day was already hot enough that I understood what people meant when they said spring and autumn were vanishing out of the four seasons. His clothes made it worse: a black suit, jacket and all, in weather like this. An outfit practically tailored for heatstroke.
When I reached the main gate I saw the sedan I always rode in, and Driver Kwon beside it. So he really had been out here.
"I'm sorry! I took way too long— huh?"
Two people stood in front of the car. One was Driver Kwon. The other was Han Seongun.
I had been sure he'd gone home, but Han Seongun was still at the gate, and he was in the middle of some conversation with Driver Kwon.
"You're here, miss."
The heat must have been getting to him. Sweat was beading on Driver Kwon's face. I wanted to tell him to get into the car already, if only out of consideration, but there was something I wanted to know first.
"...Yes. Sorry I'm late. Before that, what were the two of you talking about?"
Not long ago he had been watching Han Seongun with open hostility. Now that look had softened a great deal.
"I was only asking how school has been for you, miss. Whether anyone is giving you trouble. That sort of thing."
Driver Kwon doubled as my security, but he couldn't follow me onto campus, so of course he worried about my life at school. Asking Han Seongun—my one and only friend—how things were for me there wasn't strange at all.
"Y-yeah... that's right."
Han Seongun still couldn't meet anyone's eyes, and now he was stumbling over his words, too.
"Hmm. Is that so."
Well, Driver Kwon wasn't treating him like an enemy anymore. Whatever misunderstanding had sat between them seemed to have cleared, at least partway. That was a relief. Driver Kwon would be attached to me whenever I went out, and Han Seongun was, at present, my only friend. The two of them getting along was nothing but good news for me.
"Driver, let's go. You're soaked in sweat!"
"It has certainly gotten hot. Please get in, miss."
I had pointed out that he was drenched, and he worried about me instead. Grateful for the courtesy, I climbed into the back seat.
"Then, Seongun. We'll see you next time."
"Ah... yes."
He still wasn't comfortable around Driver Kwon. I had thought he was pretty good with people... Getting close to an adult really was a different matter, wasn't it.
"Hey. If you've got a long way to go, want a ride?"
He was every bit as sweat-soaked as Driver Kwon, so I offered. He had clearly been waiting because of me, and driving off alone felt a little unfair.
"I—I'm fine!"
Flustered in a way that didn't suit him at all, Han Seongun looked back and forth between me and Driver Kwon.
"I—I'll get going! Take care, sir!"
"Yes. Get home safely."
And then, before I could even tell him to wait, he bolted off in the opposite direction.
"Uh..."
"We'll be off, then."
"...Right."
What is with that guy. I go out of my way to be nice, and this is what I get.
"Was it weird of me to offer him a ride?"
"No. Not particularly. He may simply have felt burdened."
I asked in case I had done something wrong. Apparently I hadn't.
"Miss. About young Seongun."
"Yes?"
"He struck me as quick on the uptake. Sharp. He seems a friend fit to remain at your side."
"You think so?"
I couldn't see what there was to like about an irritating-looking guy whose only talents were teasing people and smiling in that unpleasant way. Still, hearing my friend get praised didn't feel all that bad. At least it wasn't You would do well to keep your distance from that friend, miss, or I will report this to the Chairman and see that he stays out of sight. I didn't think Driver Kwon was that sort of person. But... you never know.
"Oh, on the way, could you stop at that cafe we went to? Their blended drinks are insanely good."
M Cafe, where I had bought Driver Kwon a coffee last time. Stopping in on the way home from school had turned into a habit. The mint chocolate chip blended I had then was genuinely out of this world.
"You mean that strange-tasting ice cream thing from before?"
"Strange-tasting? Do you have any idea how revolutionary this flavor is..."
I was about to preach the gospel of mint-choco to Driver Kwon with everything I had.
"No."
One flat refusal, and I wilted on the spot.
"W-why not...?"
Driver Kwon wasn't the type to put his foot down like this.
"The last time you were coming down with a cold, miss, the Chairman banned cold food entirely."
"Ack."
Dad, that is way too far.
I really hadn't thought he'd come straight home.
I tried the housekeeper anyway. She said no—it was the Chairman's orders. If I was that hot, she would sooner bring me sikhye, the sweet rice drink. So I gave up.
"Sluuurp."
I did take the sikhye. It couldn't touch M Cafe's mint chocolate chip blended, but it was sweet, and good in its own right.
"All right, then..."
Just because I had climbed a long way yesterday didn't mean I could get comfortable. Forty-five points yesterday was no promise of the same today. Put bluntly, a losing streak now could cost me those forty-five. I might fall even further than that.
My current bracket was Chaser, the highest tier in Project A, and the people up here were anything but easy. Unlike the ranks below, I couldn't assume I would win every fight.
Because I had left my bag, today's broadcast came on about twenty minutes later than usual.
"Late? I've never posted a set time for the stream."
I hadn't fixed my hours in the first place, so calling it tardy was a stretch.
The viewers folded without a fight. The stream hadn't even been live for five minutes, so chat was still readable without me pausing it. I skimmed the messages as they stacked up and switched the broadcast over to Project A.
On a normal day I would have waited for the viewers to pile in and warmed up first...
"Then I'll skip the preamble and queue right now!"
I didn't have that kind of time to spare.
The queue hadn't even been running five minutes.
"Oh, that popped fast."
At this rank, ten minutes was nothing unusual. The Rank-1 Race really was having an effect. Chaser games didn't fill this quickly otherwise.
The map was Ascent—my favorite, and the one people called the most popular and the most fundamental map in Project A.
"Map's good... let's see..."
"Uh... huh?"
I had meant to watch, just for a moment, and see what my teammates were going to pick. Then third and fourth slammed in instalocks out of nowhere. They had taken entry agents—my main role—so the position was gone before I could claim it.
That alone I could have lived with. What made me more uneasy was fourth pick's Yoru. Yoru wasn't a staple. It was a conditional, off-meta pick, and that left me deeply unsettled.
I wasn't the only one who felt it. With MMR in the state it was, dodging would have cost a serious pile of points, so Player1 and Player5—who had been airing their complaints with no filter at all—quietly locked agents for whatever roles were left.
"Hmm... so what do I even play. Initiator? Sentinel...?"
The comp we had was two entries, one initiator, and one controller. Filling the empty slot with Killjoy, a sentinel, would have been fine. KAY/O, who was excellent on Ascent, wouldn't have been a bad choice either.
Omen was asking me to lock a sentinel. I had been frozen in the middle of choosing, so I was glad to take the request.
My choice was Killjoy—the undisputed top of the sentinel role, and an agent the current meta was calling OP.
In a normal game they would have said that on voice. Nobody was in voice chat. Whatever. As long as they actually briefed once we were in the game, it didn't matter much.