KZ Headquarters (Reality)
As of 2023, the most popular esports organization in the country was KZ, and the formal name of its headquarters was simply KZ.
The building rose four floors above ground and dropped three below. Inside there was room made for the players—a cafeteria, practice rooms, a gym, an arcade—and room made for the fans as well: a merch shop, a place to hold watch parties.
KZ Headquarters was not only where the players lived. The front office clocked in here too, so there were offices for the staff who came to work and a spread of amenities set aside for them. In every sense that mattered, the building was KZ's true command center.
And how would a mere streamer know all of that so well?
Because I used to be a pro on KZ.
After that mail first arrived, I turned it over for a long time. I had thrown away the dream of reaching the top together with them and retired like someone running. Did a person like that even have the right to face them again?
Of course, the past in which I was a pro for KZ no longer exists. I am not Galaxy anymore—the twenty-one-year-old, a fourth-year pro already retired. I am Eunha, seventeen, a streamer. Even so, I still could not scrub out the guilt. I was afraid the empty seat I left had done them harm. Afraid that by vanishing I had wrecked their careers, and wrecked the road they were walking toward the dream I once held.
Fortunately, KZ was still holding its place as Domestic No. 1. A top-four standing in the world, the seat of Asia's No. 1, the record of Domestic No. 1 at home—all of it remained. Only after I learned that could I set a little of the guilt down. At least they had not suffered a loss because of me.
A thread of it stayed anyway, and I was not able to wipe that thread clean until recently. Not until I saw KZ in this final.
In the final, KZ was perfect. There is no other word for it. Coach Yoo Seonho's plans, Kim Seungtaek's in-game leadership, and Park Jaeseong's fight power laid over both of them—KZ had been reborn as a far stronger team than the one that had me in it. When I was on the roster, even Domestic No. 1 had to swallow a loss now and then. Now they had written an undefeated title. I didn't need to say the difference out loud.
The KZ that carried Galaxy at entry lived on Coach Yoo's tactics—sharp enough that fans called him Yoo Galyang, after the mastermind Zhuge Liang—and on the team play that comes of a roster long together. That was its strength. On teamwork and strategy especially, the praise went so far as to say they could aim not only at the top of Asia, but at the best in the world.
That did not mean they had no weakness. Set beside teams in the world rankings, the players' individual weight class was widely called short. It was not a flaw that showed much at home. The moment they met the players and squads the world stage calls monsters, it showed all at once. Against Lord above all—a team that uses its own fight power as the strategy—they learned that no plan, however good, means anything once the weight class is different.
The KZ of now is not that team. Unlike then, they are clearly raising a secret weapon.
Foxy. Park Jaeseong.
Even before he stacked experience at LOCK//IN, this was a KZ that took Apas's Lord to a five-map knife fight. By now they have been charging through an undefeated domestic title, so the experience ought to be there as well. Worth expecting something from. Jaeseong, especially, carries a hunger to win that does not run on the same track as other people's.
When most people meet a wall they truly cannot cross, they despair. The way I did.
He was the kind of kid who worried, all the way to the end, about how to get over that wall. Even if it really was a wall no effort on earth could clear.
In practice, he never beat me in a one-on-one before I retired. He also never quit. That hunger is why I rated Jaeseong higher than myself. Unlike me, already bent, he does not bend. He is young, and he still has room to grow. So long as he doesn't break, I couldn't help the certainty that he would become a far better player than I ever was.
And besides—
The Jaeseong of now has grown by an absurd amount. If we fought today, I could not say with any confidence who would win. Seeing him grown like that, and seeing the KZ that has him as its main entry, I could finally erase even the last scrap of guilt. The KZ of now can go further than it ever did with me.
"We've arrived, miss."
"Ah—yes."
I had been sunk in the thought, and somehow we were already at the building. KZ Headquarters sits in Hongdae. It isn't far from our house, so there was never a reason for the ride to take long. I stepped out under Driver Kwon's escort and looked up.
It's been a while. Truly.
Half a year. Someone else might call that short. For me, who had lived in this place like a home, it could only feel long. I walked slowly toward the entrance, and two people were waiting in front of the door.
"Thank you for making the trip. I'm Yoon Jaeha, a coach with KZ."
"Hello. I'm Han Seoeun, team manager for KZ."
Both faces were ones I knew. Coach Jaeha, who helped Coach Yoo Seonho build KZ's plans and tactics, and Manager Han, who ran KZ's K-tube and planned the content. Seeing them again like this, I was genuinely glad. But one slip at a first meeting had already been enough—the one with Spax—so I offered the greeting as calmly as I could.
"Ah... hello. I'm Eunha. I stream."
Somewhere inside I had hoped Coach Yoo would be the one to meet me. Apparently my inflated sense of my own importance still hadn't been corrected. The head coach of the country's top team was hardly going to be idle enough, in the middle of a bright afternoon, to come out and greet one mere streamer.
...But wasn't Coach Yoo himself the one who sent the mail inviting me?
"Um, and Coach Yoo Seonho?"
The more I thought about it, the invitation had come from him, so it wouldn't have been so strange if he had come out. I decided to ask.
"Ah, the coach is down with body aches, so I came in his place."
...Body aches?
That Coach Yoo?
"Ah... I see."
I didn't really believe it. Digging any further would have looked strange, so I let it pass.
"Would you like to come in first? It's terribly hot out."
Manager Han smiled and kindly waved me and Driver Kwon inside. Still—why had the two of them been waiting out in weather like this?
The first thing to meet us through the door was a rush of cold air from the air-conditioning. The domestic-league final was over, and most of the players and staff ought to have been deep in their vacation, and yet the AC was running. Probably because I was scheduled to show up.
We went into the first-floor cafeteria that doubled as a staff lounge and took a reasonable table for four.
"This is the cafeteria the players and the staff use. Sometimes we hold meetings here, too. Oh—what would you like to drink? We have juice, and we have coffee."
She laid out the menu and told us to order whatever we liked. On an ordinary day I would have taken the juice, but...
"Peach iced tea for me."
I knew how bad the juice in this building was. Honestly, it isn't that it has no taste at all. My palate has just been ruined by the housekeeper's special juice, so I can no longer taste any other juice and call it good.
"I'll have to decline—"
"An iced americano for Driver Kwon. He doesn't do well with bitter, so make it weak, and two pumps of syrup, please."
"...Miss?"
Driver Kwon doesn't really eat outside. If it isn't takeout, even less so. Treating everything with iron caution is exactly like him, but I trusted KZ Headquarters, so I ordered in his place.
"All right, then—one weak iced americano, and a peach iced tea."
I couldn't quite tell whether I had come to KZ Headquarters or to a café. Still, they were being kind, so I told myself to drop the useless thoughts, and shook my head until they fell away.
"Um... would it be all right to think of this gentleman as Miss Eunha's guardian?"
Coach Jaeha glanced at Driver Kwon and spoke carefully.
"Yes."
Well, I'm still a minor, and outside the house Driver Kwon is always with me, so calling him a guardian isn't strange.
"Ahem... hm."
I couldn't tell what about that word, guardian, pleased him so much, but Driver Kwon looked quietly satisfied that I hadn't hesitated at all.
The drinks came. Maybe she decided the heat had broken a little; Manager Han quietly moved on to the point.
"First, today's filming concept is you touring our KZ Headquarters. One of our KZ players will help you through the building, so you don't need to worry too much. For the record, your guide is Spax. You know him, right? He was on the same team as you in the exhibition..."
It was already written in the email, so I nodded instead of answering.
Sluuurp.
The reason I had nodded instead of speaking was that I was in the middle of the iced tea.
"...The footage will be uploaded to KZ's official K-tube. If you'd like, you may also post it on your personal K-tube. Just not the full cut—you'll need to trim the parts we ask you to trim."
"Sluuurp... oh, you don't have to worry about that part. I don't do K-tube."
Ask most people how an internet streamer makes money, and they think of donations. A big one in the thousands of dollars, a small one about a buck, and that's how they picture a caster getting by. What streamers themselves treat as the important thing is something else entirely: K-tube. Clear a certain view count and you can pull in several thousand dollars a month without much strain, and the viewers who find a livestream because they watched the K-tube video are no small number either. For a streamer, K-tube is a land of milk and honey—a rich utopia there is no reason to refuse. Of course, it is just as hard to succeed there.
But I don't stream to make a living in the first place. It's a hobby, so I never reached for K-tube. Run one and you need an editor, and you have to look into this and that. Too much of a pain. Why would I put myself through that?
"Ah, I see... Then if you'll read this consent form and just sign it, that's all we need. You can start filming whenever you're comfortable, and the guide will be our team's youngest—"
"Whoa. You actually came."
A young man's voice cut straight through Manager Han's. Honestly, I wasn't sure whether to call him a young man or a boy. The voice sat right on that vague border. Right now that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was whose voice it was.
"Foxy?"
"J-Jaeseong? Weren't you supposed to have gone down to the family house?"
"Player Foxy?"
I didn't slip this time. The voice had startled me, I'll admit that. The kid looking at me had both eyes shining, and those eyes were burning with unmistakable competitive fire. If you asked me how I knew that light was hunger for a fight—
"Hyung, one-on-one, it's been a while, yeah? Aw, don't give me that we-played-yesterday stuff. You've gotta give me one a day. That's how your hands loosen up~"
Because that brat used to wear exactly those eyes every time he challenged me to a one-on-one.
He wasn't running. That was the only difference. Park Jaeseong closed the distance in long strides at a speed that was a sprint in everything but the name, and Driver Kwon must have decided he might do something sudden—he showed his wariness without hiding it. Jaeseong came right up to me and held something out. Contrary to Driver Kwon's worry, what he was offering was...
"Miss Eunha, I am seriously your biggest fan!"
A sheet of printer paper, and a pen.