Theory
At a glance, Foxy—Park Jaeseong—looked flawless. His weakness was simply that Jaeseong was still young. If anyone wanted to ask how a seventeen-year-old got to call someone else a kid, well, my case was a little different. This was never about age to begin with. It was about experience, and right now Jaeseong didn't have nearly enough of it.
He had debuted in March of this year. Not even half a year had passed. In that short span he was already stacking absurd amounts of experience—an international semifinal, a domestic league title—and even so, it still wasn't enough to win a championship.
One problem born of that missing experience was how easily he caught fire. A fierce will to win was, without question, a good sign in a pro. But if that drive ran so hot it started warping his own play, then it became a problem.
"Then this time, I'll take attack."
Just as Foxy had suggested, they swapped sides to start.
"Sheriff again, right?"
I flipped the sides with a custom-game cheat, then bought a Sheriff and a light shield.
"Yeah."
By now, Foxy had probably finished reviewing that last play. No matter how I think about it, catching a jump-peek on raw reaction speed doesn't make sense. He would have landed on the obvious answer: I had predicted exactly how he was going to peek.
In a way, that was only natural. React to an instant jump-peek and one-tap it? Even the exalted, oh-so-exalted Apas couldn't do that. Everyday Jaeseong might have missed it, but the Jaeseong whose head turned over surprisingly well once he was inside Project A would have caught on. His play had been read. And at the same time, he was probably telling himself this.
I can do the exact same thing.
With the reaction speed I knew he had, he would pull it off with room to spare. If I could do it, there was no way he couldn't. Whether he could truly do it the way I had didn't especially matter. What mattered was that he would believe he could. And if I jump-peeked the way he had, he would try to catch me the exact same way I had caught him a moment ago.
Get hit, and hit back the same way. That was Foxy's way. Park Jaeseong's way. It was also why he lost every one-on-one against me. I already knew exactly how he was going to play it. How was I supposed to lose?
Bang!
Just as I'd expected, Jaeseong's bullet grazed past the right side of my head. A textbook jump-peek might have been dangerous, but I hadn't changed direction. I'd jumped straight out, one way only. I knew where he was. All I had to do now was land and shoot—
Bang!
"Eh."
...
"One to one."
Jaeseong grinned, wearing the unpleasant look of someone who had just landed a clean hit.
"Haah?"
That face was more than enough to grate on me—his senior, the older one who had spent more than a year teaching this kid.
Hoo... Hold it. Don't get worked up.
A moment ago he had clearly been aiming at the wall, trying to catch my jump-peek the same way I had caught his. I'd turned that against him on purpose, jumping out instead of back behind the wall—and he still put one in my head? A monster was a monster, I guess. He was still a long way from the players they called monsters overseas, but the speed of his growth was genuinely astonishing.
"What should we use this time? Marshal? A rifle? Or the Operator?"
He said it with the easy air of someone who already thought he'd beaten me. To flatten that nose of his, I offered something he couldn't refuse.
"Foxy."
"Huh?"
"Just playing is boring. Want to make it a bet?"
"A bet...?"
Jaeseong lived for one-on-ones that nobody else cared about, or even found fun.
"I'm in!"
He was the type who went feral for a wager like this.
"What are we betting?"
I'd already settled the terms. Something had been grating on me for a while.
"Winner talks down to the loser. Loser uses a respectful title for the winner, every single time."
Speaking formally to a kid I'd been talking down to like a little brother for over a year... it really got under my skin. If someone asked why formal speech with Spax—someone I'd known since middle school—felt perfectly fine, the answer was simple. Spax was a friend. This one was a younger kid.
"So that means..."
"Um... but aren't you a year younger than me, Eunha...? Me calling you nuna is kind of wei—"
God, he talks too much.
"So you don't want to? If you hate the penalty that much, just win the bet. Problem solved, isn't it?"
"Call, call, call, call! Even if you try to back out later, I'm not letting you!"
Foxy, walking straight into the bait again. This kid really did fall for a taunt way too easily.
"Good. Then let's run it with Marshals."
"Okay."
It wasn't something I needed to worry about anyway, so I let the bet ride. That habit of his wasn't getting fixed no matter how hard anyone tried. I knew that.
Marshal in hand, I held my aim on C Main and kept my focus cranked as high as it would go, watching for a Foxy who could swing out at any moment. He peeked short and fast. His muzzle was dead on me, but—
Bang!
I hadn't let my focus slip, and that let me pull the trigger a beat sooner.
"Aaagh!"
"Hoo..."
I'd meant to go a little easy on him.
"Two to one."
There was a bet on the line now, so I had to take this seriously. Calling this kid oppa? I'd rather die.
"Ha... haha... Your reactions are actually unreal."
Jaeseong praised my reaction speed through a hollow laugh.
"You're on defense this time, right, Foxy?"
I said it to push him along. Enough. Just swap sides. I still had plenty left to show him. Getting shocked at this stage would be a problem.
This time I started on attack, Jaeseong on defense. Still Marshals, and given the map, Jaeseong on defense could set up on C Main before I did. All right. What do I do this time? Peeking the same way twice in a row was dangerous. A jump-peek like the last one was a trick you pulled out once in a while, not something stable enough to keep using. With his reaction speed, a careless peek was just suicide. It meant I had to bait the Marshal's first shot with movement, no exceptions, and only fight after that.
Ah. That was the play.
On C Main, where he was probably holding with the Marshal, I hugged the wall and tapped A and D in turn—little by little, just barely, so the Jaeseong on C site couldn't see my body. Then I crossed that razor line, showed a sliver of myself, and snapped straight back behind the wall.
Bang!
A shoulder peek that showed nothing but the very edge of me. Anyone without Jaeseong's reaction speed probably wouldn't have reacted at all. Of course, I'd only peeked like that because it was Jaeseong. I'd baited one Marshal shot. Nothing left to hesitate over.
I swung straight out toward C Main. I could see him holding the angle with the Marshal, but I didn't stop to aim. Given the Marshal's fire rate and his reactions, the stable play was to juke the next shot too.
Bang!
I slipped the second bullet clean. Caught between my shoulder peek and the wide peek that followed, Jaeseong burned both of his shots.
Bang!
That was more than enough time for me to take his head off.
"Ah, the wide..."
"Three to one."
Grind.
Wow. I could hear him clenching his teeth from here. Fair enough. He had every reason to be angry. Die to a shoulder peek or a wide peek, and you blame your own mistake long before you admire the other person.
"...From here on, I'm going for real!"
Jaeseong forced the words out through clenched teeth.
"Sure. Whenever you want."
He looked like he was saying he wouldn't hold back anymore.
...
Foxy had declared he was serious from this point on. The shape of the duel didn't change.
Bang!
"Again!"
Bang!
"...Again!"
Bang-bang-bang!
"A... gain..."
Shhk—
"..."
For all of Foxy's declaration, Eunha closed out the game without giving up a single point after that. Pistol, rifle, sniper, even Jett's ultimate—one-on-one, on every gun she picked up.
"I'll head down first, then."
There was no need to say who had won. You could tell just from the way Eunha was already talking down to Foxy.
"Y-yeah..."
But Foxy didn't even notice that the price of his loss had already started—the girl streamer a year younger than him, speaking down to him. The loss had hit that hard.
"No point dragging this out, so I'm starting the shoot right away. Rest about five minutes and come down. Got it?"
"...Yeah."
Foxy kept repeating hollow answers, dazed.
"Feels like something's missing off the end of that."
Whether she simply didn't like him like this, Eunha forced him to answer again.
"Uh, um... I mean... nu, nuna?"
Only then did Eunha nod, satisfied.
"That's right. Anyway, rest a bit and come down."
She left it at that and walked out of the practice room. Foxy stared blankly after her, then dragged his eyes back to his own monitor.
Thirteen to three. For a one-on-one, it was a complete, miserable rout.
"Ha, haha..."
He'd already known Eunha was better than him. He just hadn't known it was by this much. It was like...
Bom jogo.
Was he remembering that monster from the PCT LOCK//IN semifinal, the one who had beaten KZ three to two and walked off after saying something he couldn't make sense of? No... not quite that far. That one was a real monster. The current number one in the world at Project A, whose reactions sat on another level even among pros whose reactions had already reached the limit.
After losing to that monster, he had practiced like a madman for a while. Practiced, and practiced again. He'd thought he'd grown far past where he'd been a few months ago, and here he was, crushed all over again. Not even by that monster. By a streamer. Not even a pro.
"This is fun..."
But Foxy wasn't the kind of person a few losses could break. Find a wall, and he always started thinking about how to get over it. Park Jaeseong was a person who didn't know how to quit.
"Ah... I really shouldn't have agreed to that condition..."
Two conditions, the price Eunha had set for the one-on-one. The second of them—that it ended after a single set—felt unbearably cruel right now.
"Still..."
Apas was a player in the South American league, no question about it. Eunha, though, was Korean, same as him. There would be plenty of chances to test himself against her again. Get close to her, and a chance would come along eventually. Which meant, for the time being, he needed to get along with her.
To get along with her... did that mean he had to dutifully call a girl a year younger than him nuna?
"Easy."
If you're better at the game, you're the older brother. Eunha was a woman, and she was better than him, so she was nuna. To Foxy, it was an utterly obvious theory.