The Trophy (Reality)
Once the challenge that had left me with nothing but bruises was over, Jaeseong and I headed down to the second basement.
The building was seven floors in all—four above ground and three below—but the third and fourth floors were player dorms and staff offices, and an outsider like me had no business there. The third basement was the parking garage, which meant the second basement was, in practice, the last stop on today's tour.
The shoot that had felt endless was finally winding down. I was taking the stairs when—
"You okay, noona?"
As if he weren't irritating enough already, this former little brother of mine had started needling me. He could have just let it go. Why did he have to keep bringing it up?
"...Shut up. Drop it."
I spat the words out, sharp enough that the meaning ought to have been obvious. Don't bring that up. But—
"Aw, come on. You're not a guy, you're a girl, so of course that can happen. It might feel light to me, but you're a girl, and your strength's lower than mine, so it's only natural it feels heav—"
Our tactless Jaeseong, of course, didn't catch a word of what I meant.
God, this kid. Seriously.
"Jaeseong. We're filming right now. The editor will cut it, sure, but if it gets out that you call me noona, it's going to be a pain in all kinds of ways. I'm telling you."
"Oh, right, you did say that... Yes, ma'am! Understood!"
Watching a minor snap off an exaggerated salute and apologize like that, I felt whatever anger I had drain clean away. Right. This was just how he was. A big-hearted person like me would simply have to understand. Obviously.
"Anyway, what's the second basement for?"
Back in my pro days, KZ headquarters had been as familiar as home, but there were still rooms I didn't know. The staff offices on the fourth floor had been somewhere a pro gamer like me couldn't go, and I hadn't owned a car then, or been much for working out, so I'd had no reason to set foot underground at all.
"Mm... this one's better if you see it yourself than if I try to explain."
Jaeseong smiled and told me to look with my own eyes. What could possibly be down there that had him this excited? I was curious, but I had no intention of badgering him into telling me. Because—
"We're here."
—seeing it for myself would be enough.
"Want to go in first?"
"Yeah, sure."
I opened the door to the second basement, and what waited on the other side was nothing at all.
"What? Why's it so dark?"
Well. The lights were off.
"Oh, right. Nobody comes down here, so you've got to turn them on. Hang on a second..."
Click.
Jaeseong hit the switch, and the room that had been too black to see a thing in flooded with brilliant light.
"Ugh... that's blinding..."
Brilliant to the point of excess. I had no idea why anyone would install this many lights, but this was too much, wasn't it?
Little by little my eyes adjusted to a room that had gone bright all at once. Only when I slowly opened them did I understand why the place was lit like that.
"Wait, hold on... this is...?"
"Ta-da! This is our KZ trophy room, where all the championship trophies are on display!"
If you wanted trophies that splendid to look the part, you needed a great deal of light.
"Cool, right? Every one of these is a trophy KZ won!"
Those trophies were plainly his seniors' achievements, but Jaeseong spoke as proudly as if they were his own. Fair enough. He had looked up to the franchise starters on the first team, his seniors, ever since his trainee days. Nothing strange about that.
More than that...
"There's a lot. A ridiculous amount."
The cases held trophy after trophy. Seven identical ones sat at the very center, and around them pieces of every shape and size. Some weren't even from official events run by Rioat. They were from tournaments held by other associations.
"Of course there are! You know how many titles this team has won."
"...Yeah."
Back when I'd been chained to a world championship, grinding without a break, I hadn't noticed. Seeing them like this, I realized all over again just how much we had actually won. From 2020 through 2022 we had taken every one of six domestic tournaments. It would have been stranger if there were no trophies.
Thinking that all of these countless trophies were ones I had won felt unreal. Until now I had thought of myself as a player who had nothing to do with winning. No—calling them mine was already the wrong way to put it. These trophies weren't mine anymore. Nowhere on them was the name Choi Eunha, or the handle Galaxy. The trophies in this room were not mine. They had nothing to do with me. I had no share in them.
I knew that perfectly well. So why did they ache like this—so distant, and so close?
"Ah! Don't touch them! If you touch them, I'm the one who has to clean them!"
I came back to myself and found my hand already reaching for a trophy. If Jaeseong hadn't been quick, I would have been stroking it.
"Ah, sorry. I didn't even realize..."
I was an outsider with no connection to KZ, nothing but a streamer. This trophy belonged to KZ. It was a precious ornament. I had no business putting my hands on it.
"I get it. First time I came in here, I touched one without thinking and the manager tore into me."
For once, I was grateful he had no sense. If it had been anyone else, I couldn't have explained why I looked so bitter.
"They're beautiful..."
"Right? They are, aren't they?"
When I was still active, back when those trophies really had been mine, I hadn't so much as looked at them. Why they looked so beautiful only now... I honestly couldn't say.
The headquarters shoot—long if you called it long, short if you called it short—was finished, and Jaeseong and I returned to the meeting room on the first floor. There was nowhere left to film, and even if there had been, it would have been somewhere I couldn't go. Lingering here wouldn't give me anything to do. The hope of seeing the other teammates had already fallen through, since they were away on break, so going home as I was seemed the sensible choice.
"Did the shoot go well?"
"Yes. Thanks to you. Here's the camera."
"Was the food to your taste? From what I hear, your standards are incredibly high..."
Mm. It wasn't that my standards were incredibly high. One of the rumors that got passed around wrong among my viewers was that I was absurdly picky. I had said on stream that food from outside didn't taste like anything, that food at home was the best, so a rumor like that was, in a way, inevitable.
"Yes. I was really satisfied. Could you tell the auntie one more time that it was delicious?"
The picky part of my palate had only ever been Korean food. Western, Chinese, Japanese—I couldn't really call myself fussy about those—so the meal the headquarters auntie had made today was more than good enough.
"Hehe. I'll tell her. You worked hard today."
I had already thanked the auntie, but she seemed to have taken it for a spotless white lie, so I asked the manager separately. If I were her, and someone ate barely a bite and still said it was delicious, I would have assumed they were lying too.
"Then, would it be all right if I headed out? I have dinner plans..."
There was nothing left for me to do here, so I brought it up in a hurry, ready to leave. The plans, of course, were a lie.
"Ah, one moment, Eunha!"
"Yes?"
The manager caught me urgently as I tried to go. I had known Manager Han for quite a while, but I had never seen her this flustered, and it threw me a little.
"Could you spare about ten minutes?"
"Uh... ten minutes?"
What I wanted was to go home and rest.
"All right."
Still, there was a history between us, so I decided I could give her ten minutes. She rummaged frantically through her bag. She could take her time. I wasn't going to run.
"Just a second. Let's see... ah, here it is."
The few sheets of paper she set on the desk...
"This is KZ's content creator contract."
An exclusive streaming contract with KZ.
"So... KZ wants to sign me as a content creator?"
"Yes."
"Uh... why me, of all people...?"
I didn't really know what an exclusive streaming contract was, but I was curious why KZ would bother making one with me. Even if my broadcasts were fairly large, I was still a rookie who hadn't even been streaming for half a year.
"Why you, she says? Someone of your caliber is a creator we very much want to secure—no. A creator we have to secure."
Contrary to what I had thought, KZ seemed to rate me highly.
"Come on, I don't think I'm at that level..."
"You are. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call you the broadcaster drawing the most attention right now."
"Uh... is that so."
Hearing praise like that to my face was... a little embarrassing.
"Ahem. Eunha, you've been having a hard time lately with the malicious spam, haven't you?"
"Yes! Exactly!"
If there was one real headache on my stream these days, it was malicious viewers flooding the chat. Demanding I turn the cam on. Demanding to know what was going on between me and Han Seongun. People souring the mood and ruining the broadcast over nothing. Just thinking about them made my head hurt.
"If you sign an official contract with KZ, our staff will manage your chat for you."
"Oh..."
If I signed exclusively with KZ, their staff would run my chat, and I wouldn't have to deal with people like that. The managers on my stream already watched the chat, but all of them were helping on what amounted to a volunteer basis, so when this many bad actors piled in, it was hard to keep up.
"And you'd be able to plan content with our KZ players. Call it a privilege of being a KZ-exclusive streamer."
"Oh... I see."
The second part didn't actually appeal to me. Being able to plan broadcast content with KZ, the most popular pro team in Korea, was, in a sense, an enormous advantage. But I had no intention of growing the stream any further, and no particular desire to do content with the KZ members. Besides, if I took that as a plus, it felt strangely like I was losing to them, and that put me in a foul mood.
"And also..."
As if she wanted my signature on that contract, the manager kept preaching the merits of an exclusive deal. I don't know how much more time passed before her relentless pitch finally showed an end, and only then did it hit me that it was time to choose.
Hmm. What was I supposed to do?
An exclusive contract clearly had real merit for me. Even if I signed, KZ wouldn't be able to force anything on me, and the deal could only work in my favor. It was generous enough that if I turned it down, I wouldn't have a word to say when someone called me an idiot. And yet something snagged.
I worried over it for a long while, and at last I was done worrying.
"I—"
I gave the manager the answer I had settled on.