Abusing

Pests. Yeah. Pests.

It was a word I had not heard in a very long time.

By the dictionary, a pest is any insect that does harm to human life. For a while, though, the Project A community had used it to mean something else entirely.

When I first started Project A, back in middle school, it was a dead game that only the devoted still bothered with. It was buried under Legend of League, made by the same company, and inside the FPS genre it lost, over and over, to Overwatch, Sudden Attack, and Battlegrounds. Even so, loyal players remained. With Rioat’s backing they even held pro tournaments, and little by little Project A carved out a place for itself in the domestic scene.

Until those pests showed up.

Abusing.

In an online game, abusers are the ones who take an unfair profit — exploit bugs, run cheat software, fix matches, steal other people’s accounts. They spun up alt after alt, manufactured Chaser-tier accounts, and sold them. They rigged the ladder. All of it broke the terms of service, and none of them hesitated. Queue into the same lobby and they would throw to hand each other points. Queue into one specific person and they would troll on purpose to drag that user’s rating into the dirt. Every vicious variation of it.

From the company’s side, it was a problem that needed fixing yesterday. Rioat’s response, back then, was pathetic. Ranked became such a battlefield that you could meet, in the very next game, a user who had openly announced they were abusing and then thrown on purpose.

How bad was it? From server rank 1 down through rank 10, you could have called every single one of them an abuser and nobody would have argued.

Plenty of Project A players on the Korea server got sick of meeting a thrower every match, and of Rioat leaving it alone. Most of them quit. The rest fled to the Asia server. People like to say Korea-server players moved to Asia because they wanted a higher level of game. The more fundamental reason was this. The abusing.

I got burned by those abusers plenty myself. Because of them I had to give up the server rank 1 I had been aiming for. I really wanted to quit back then. Those were the nights I stayed up until morning just to touch rank 1 a single time. The day my own team threw on purpose, with rank 1 right in front of me, Spax and I made accounts on the Asia server. From that day on — through my debut as a pro, all the way to retirement — I never turned my eyes toward the Korea server again.

“...Pests?”

No matter how I looked at it, Yoru’s and Jett’s play was suspicious. Suspicious enough that I had to wonder whether they were even trying to play the game. It was obviously not the kind of play you would see in a Chaser lobby. It was bad enough to set beside Bronze or Silver, the very bottom of the ladder.

But if those two were abusers, that was a different story. Even this incomprehensible throwing suddenly had a clear intent.

Jett and Yoru were feeding Killjoy in the open, and just now Killjoy had taken a double kill in a two-on-one without even buying a gun. A Sheriff, against two players armed with Spectres. A Spectre is weaker than a pistol-class Sheriff at long range, sure. Judging by where the two of them died, though, it was nowhere near a position that favored the Sheriff.

After dropping Jett and Yoru, Killjoy sprinted all the way to the attackers’ spawn. Sova and Omen, armed with nothing but default pistols, died one after the other. Well. The two of them had already given up on the game, and they were not even moving.

Jett and Yoru had died on B Main. The kill log had barely been up for any time at all, and she was already running into the attackers’ spawn? Without even knowing where we were?

“Ha. This Killjoy’s an abuser too.”

That was the moment suspicion turned into certainty.

Our Jett, our Yoru, and the enemy Killjoy were all in it together. I had two reasons. One: for two rounds in a row, Jett and Yoru had thrown themselves straight into wherever Killjoy was. The other: they were not shooting at Killjoy at all. Think about just those two things and it was obvious what they were after. Pump the enemy Killjoy’s ACS as high as it would go, hand her the win, and shove that account’s rank up as far as it would climb.

“...So Killjoy’s an abuser too.”

There were plenty of reasons to pull something like that. Sell an account you had parked in high rank. Take money to snipe a specific person and drop their score, or raise it. Whichever it was, it violated the game’s terms, and it was a vicious thing to do to ordinary players.

Bang!

“This is pissing me off...”

I do not think of myself as someone who shows anger like this. Right now, though, I was a lot angrier than usual. Because of bastards like these, Project A had, quite literally, started to rot.

The viewers were right. Getting angry was not going to change anything.

“Hoo... haah... I should surrender this one.”

FFing fast and queueing the next game was the smart call, time-wise. A surrender would be ruled a 13–0 loss, and the points would drop hard. That was still better than letting this game keep grinding down my time and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my mental.

My mood was filthy, but the sooner we surrendered and moved on to the next game—

“Ah.”

Right. Those bastards were on our team.

In the end I wasted the time on top of everything else, and only then did I escape a game that abusing had dirtied from top to bottom.

“Haah... this filthy game is finally over...”

The surrender had died on Jett’s and Yoru’s no votes, and with the two of them throwing, the game was unwinnable. It was not even just that they died for free. They seemed to be calling out our teammates’ positions as well. The team had caught on, at least faintly, and given up long before the end. For all practical purposes it had been a one-versus-five.

If the other side had been low-tier players, maybe. Not when my own position was being briefed to them. There was no overcoming a gap like that.

That did not mean there was nothing I could do.

“This counts as getting in their way, right?”

Against Killjoy, the abuser on the other team, I had been able to lay down a bit of sabotage of my own.

I used the fact that Jett and Yoru would sprint in to donate kills to Killjoy. The moment the round started I followed them and took Killjoy first. Being an abuser did not mean Killjoy was bad. From what I saw, she genuinely had the skill to reach Chaser. But Jett and Yoru made such excellent shields that she never got as many kills as she wanted, and she closed the game on an ACS of 230 — a muddy number for a 13–1 line.

I killed Killjoy so often that Yoru and Jett started dumping flashes and smokes just to get in my way. Not that I was someone they could stop like that. Out of fourteen rounds I caught ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Killjoy in ten, and I shut them down completely.

Ugh. I still was not over it.

“Yeah. I should...”

They were right. Me being furious would not change anything, and the points I had lost were not coming back. Twenty points, all told. Set against the forty-five I had gained yesterday, that was more than I wanted to admit. I needed to queue fast and earn them back. Then the road toward rank 1 would open again.

“I’ll forget it and just queue the next one. Don’t get too mad, everyone.”

Luckily, the queue popped fast again this time.

“Hmm... what do I play?”

In a single game I had lost about forty percent of the points I had banked yesterday. If I wanted them back, this one had to be a win, no exceptions. For that, it was better to play with the mindset that I would carry, rather than trust my teammates. And for that, the smart pick was an entry agent.

A good while had passed since the match was made, and my teammates still had not picked a single agent. They were clearly waiting to see what their allies locked, then taking whatever position was left.

“Mm... if it’s like this...”

I picked Jett. The agent I was most confident on, and the one with the highest carry potential.

The viewers lit up the moment I brought Jett out. From their side of the screen, a flashy agent like her was clearly more fun to watch. Jett was the most fun of the entry agents for me too, so I did not particularly mind.

“Then I’m gonna run to the bathroom real quick.”

Maybe because ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I had been so worked up earlier, I had chugged the sikhye — that sweet rice punch — and the water in my tumbler without even noticing.

“Ugh...”

“I-I’ll be right back~”

The picks looked normal too...

The buys were normal as well. Skills and guns, balanced the way a real round should be.

“No abusers this game, right...?”

They were actually in team voice, which nobody had joined last game, and each of them was taking a defensive position. Looked like there was no intentional thrower on our side. I felt relief that there was no troll, and a hollow ache that I even had to worry about one, both at once. I was just about to focus on the game when a donation came in that I could not let slide past my ear.

“...For real?”

“Everyone on our team is a normal person, right?”

“Hoo...”

Thank god. I could take my revenge with a clear head.

“You’re dead.”

I had said I would forget the last game. I was absolutely not the coolheaded type who could easily forget being done dirty.