Interview (Reality)
To mark the launch of a new agent, specialist Project A broadcasters had been invited to a five-on-five exhibition match.
It was a single map, and it ended in our team's overwhelming win, 13–3.
"Ah, good work, everyone!"
"Good work~!"
"So where do we go now?"
"Just a quick wave from the stage. After that you can head back to the waiting room and watch the final, or you can go home."
"Oh, then I'm staying to watch."
"If you watch the final from the waiting room, your face might pop up on the broadcast between rounds."
So that was why the waiting room had cameras. They were running it like a viewership party. If you didn't want that, you could just go home and rest—nothing about it was mandatory. Not bad.
"What about you, Eunha?"
Hm? Me?
"I'll... probably stay and watch. I came all the way to PCK Park, after all."
There were two big reasons I'd signed on for this event. One was to try the new agent for myself.
"Right, you said you were a KZ fan, didn't you?"
The other was to catch even a glimpse of my old teammates on KZ.
Whether I'd actually get to meet them was another question. My entire pro career as a member of KZ had been erased, and aside from Spax I was now a complete stranger to the rest of the roster—we'd never so much as been introduced. I might have come all this way and still leave without seeing a single face. They were the hottest pros in Korea. No—in the world. And I was just some streamer. My name had been climbing lately, sure, but I still wasn't in their league. Project A was the most popular game on earth, and KZ was a true top-tier team, steady semifinalists at every international. Their following overseas was enormous. At home, it went without saying.
"Huh? I thought you were an SC fan. That's what I heard, anyway..."
A teammate, doubtful that I was really a KZ fan. The match was over, so maybe I ought to call them a fellow broadcaster now.
"Ah, I do like KZ. These days I'm cheering harder for SC, though."
I still didn't really know this person's name, and dropping a who are you? into the middle of the conversation would have landed badly, so I let it pass. Back when I'd briefly co-streamed PCT LOCK//IN at the very start of my broadcast career, I had introduced myself, in my own words, as a KZ fan. Anyone who knew the whole tangled story would understand. If I weren't actually a fan, I wouldn't have had an answer for why I rooted for them. And I did root for them, so in a sense, calling myself a KZ fan wasn't even a lie.
"SC? You mean that second-division team?"
But the team I was cheering for now was unmistakably SC. Han Seongun was on it—the only person I could call a friend—and so was Pola, who'd fought on my side during the exhibition. The biggest reason was simpler still. My father was the chairman of H Group, the company that ran SC. If I was going to cheer for someone, better the family team, right?
"Yeah, that team. The one with Pola and Nebula..."
An ordinary second-division side wouldn't be this well known, especially not to someone who barely followed the pro scene. But Nebula, billed as the greatest prospect of all time, had dragged a lot of attention onto SC. It had fallen off quite a bit by now, of course.
"Oh... I heard SC made the Promotion Series. If they do well, we might see them in the first division."
After the match against JG, SC had changed, for better or worse. They'd gone from a team that prized coordinated movement to one that solved every situation with blunt, stupid force. Nebula, who used to love playing initiator, had been locked into entry after that series, and the smart movement SC had been so proud of was nowhere to be found.
"Uh... y-yeah?"
Personally, I thought Nebula belonged on initiator, with Pola back on entry. The current roles might be better for results right now, but if you thought about their ceiling down the line, Nebula really ought to be the one on initiator—
"Looks like it's our turn. Shall we head up?"
Ah.
While I'd been turning all of that over, BS's team had apparently finished their interviews. I wasn't even SC staff. Fretting any further was pointless. Then again, as the daughter of the H Group chairman who owned the team, I wasn't entirely unrelated.
"Shall we go, then?"
For the winners' interview, my teammates and I left the booth and walked out to the center of the arena.
When was the last time I'd stood in this spot? Here—the place where a PCK MVP gives their interview. If I counted it out carefully, it hadn't even been half a year since I retired, and still it felt like something from a long time ago. I didn't know why, or how, but my body had changed and even my age had been wound back, and everything inside that half year had stretched out endlessly.
"I see. I'm sure the viewers, and everyone seated here today, feel the same way. All right—we have one last player's interview left, don't we?"
After each of my teammates had finished, the interviewer finally came over, and a microphone was put in my hand.
Waaaaah!!!!
Eunha, you're incredible!!
One more wink!
The roar hit the second I took the mic, hot enough that I couldn't tell whether these people had come for the PCK final or for the exhibition. The match had been meant to promote the new agent and warm the crowd for the final, an appetizer. By that measure, it had done its job.
"Then let's meet the MVP of today's exhibition match—Eunha! Hello!"
The referee had told me ahead of time, so I already knew. The whole team had expected it. I'd finished first in ACS, average combat score, aced the opening round, clutched more than once, and I was the one who'd played the new agent, Echo. In a way, it was obvious.
I'd done interviews dozens of times as a pro. I'd been through this so often that I wasn't particularly nervous. Same as always: stock questions, decent enough answers. That would be enough.
"Ah, hello..."
Or so I thought. The voice that came out of my throat was shaking, no matter how I listened to it.
Damn it.
I swallowed a quiet shit and cleared my throat. Okay. Calm down.
"Ahem. Hello, I'm the streamer Eunha."
"Yes, Miss Eunha. What you showed us today was really impressive. You've been named MVP of the exhibition—how do you feel?"
How did I feel...
"I wasn't planning to play Echo at first, but the others let me go first because I was the youngest. It's a new agent, so the cameras were on me a lot. I think that's probably why I got MVP."
"Aha. So your team got to play the new agent because you were the youngest, and BS's team because they were the oldest. If I remember right, you were on the same side as Oldboy and Zzangdol at the Platform Exhibition a few months ago, and today you met them as opponents. How did that feel?"
"Mm... honestly, I barely knew anyone among the streamers who played today. Oldboy, Zzangdol, and BS were about it. BS I understood, since I'd heard he was a captain too, same as me."
The moment I heard I was going to be a captain, I'd tried to get on a team with Zzangdol and Oldboy. We'd already found a rhythm together at the exhibition, and playing with people I knew had to be easier than strangers. But.
"The two of them joined BS's team instead of mine. I was a little hurt."
I knew they were closer to BS than to me. Still, they didn't have to pick him that coldly, without even hesitating. Looking back, that might have been why I'd locked in a little too hard today.
"I see. Sounds like you got a very satisfying bit of revenge on the two who abandoned you. Next question—"
The stock questions I'd heard over and over as a pro settled the shake in my body. I wasn't stumbling over my words anymore. Yeah. You really can't ignore muscle memory.
The exhibition MVP interview.
It was only supposed to be an appetizer for the final, but they stretched it out while the opening was being set. The audience never felt the drag. The exhibition itself had been that fun. In-game footage of the new agent, Echo, plus a five-on-five between popular broadcasters, was more than enough to hold them.
The arena filled with laughter the moment the interviewer finished. It was that funny a question.
Viewers had all kinds of predictions for how Eunha would answer. Her reply was nothing like any of them.
Her whole attitude said she had no idea when she had ever tormented BS.
Her face wasn't playing along. She genuinely didn't know, and the viewers quietly accepted it. The perpetrator never remembers what they did.
When the exhibition interviews ended, I went back to the waiting room where the other streamers were waiting.
"You're here."
"Oh, Eunha! You're staying for the final too?"
The moment I stepped inside, Driver Kwon, Oldboy, and Zzangdol were there to greet me.
"Yeah, that's the plan. Where's BS, though?"
Someone was missing. Hadn't BS been with them?
"He said he was heading home to rest first. More importantly—was what you said in the interview true?"
So BS had left to rest. Was what I'd said in the interview true...
"Yes. You abandoned me, and I was hurt."
I hadn't actually been that hurt. Still, being dropped was annoying enough that the interview had been payback.
"No, not that—BS... ah, never mind. We're sorry about that. BS kept begging us to be on his team..."
"I'm kidding. I wasn't that hurt."
"Whew, thank god. I thought we'd gotten on your bad side. Scared me."
"When you put it like that, I feel like some kind of thug. Anyway, there are more people in here than I expected?"
Even a rough count put more than ten people in the waiting room, and that was excluding the Rioat staff and Driver Kwon's people. Only ten broadcasters had played in the exhibition. This shouldn't have been possible.
"Ah, they didn't play in the match. They're here for the viewership party. If we stay in the waiting room, we're in it automatically too."
"Ah."
I'd thought the faces looked familiar from somewhere. So they were Project A broadcasters. I glanced around at them once, then killed time on my phone.
"Oh, it's starting."
At someone's voice, every eye in the room swung to the big monitor.
The opening of the final had finally begun.