Advice (Reality)
A sleek little studio, barely two hundred and fifty square feet.
For all the polish of the interior, a comforter lay sprawled across the floor as if nobody cared, and the mess said more than enough about the state of the man who lived there.
"Nngh... cough... cough!"
And no, it would not have been wrong to say that the room's owner was, at a glance, in no condition anyone would call fine.
Yoo Seonho, master of the place, was suffering through a summer cold in the middle of summer itself. There was no strength left in him. Fever and coughing on top of that, and work was out of the question, so he had chosen to rest at home—and with nothing else to do there, he had been sleeping the day away.
How long had he been under? Hours later he woke from the long sleep and was wetting his throat with a glass of water when—
Bzzzt!
A text arrived from a colleague.
"Hm... failed, then."
The message was from Coach Yoon Jaeha, his direct subordinate and something of a younger brother. The gist was that the task Seonho himself had ordered had failed, but Yoo Seonho did not mind in the least. He had never ordered it expecting it to succeed in the first place.
The proposal to scout Eunha as KZ's exclusive streamer—that plan had been pushed by Yoo Seonho himself.
Ask a pro-team head coach why he had thrown his weight behind recruiting a partner streamer, and he would have answered like this: Because I thought we needed it.
And he had. Seonho genuinely believed that bringing Eunha in as a KZ partner streamer would be good for KZ.
Not that her mere existence would do the org some favor. Signing one streamer with no connection to the team was never going to raise their level of play.
...Except for one of them.
Even so, the reason Seonho had pushed the partnership was that he was wary of the day Eunha stopped being an ally and became an enemy.
He ordinarily paid the streaming world little attention. He had known only that she was a skilled streamer with real ability, and he had never dreamed she was a monster on that scale. If the team's youngest hadn't been singing Eunha, Eunha around the dorm until Seonho went and watched her play for himself, he might have gone on not knowing.
For now she was only streaming, and she had said she had no interest in the pro scene. But would that stay true?
No matter how little interest someone claimed in going pro, nobody could guarantee the thought would hold to the end. Not even Eunha herself. Human life can't see an inch ahead. How could anyone be sure of a thing like that?
If a rival of KZ signed her, could KZ really keep the overwhelming seat they held now? Seonho didn't think so. He didn't particularly believe KZ would lose. Her existence, though, would be a serious threat to them.
Seventeen years old—and play so precise, so finished, that the age was hard to believe, plus the bursts of explosiveness she showed now and then. There was no need to spoon-feed her experience and wait for her to grow. The Eunha of now was already the completed article.
It felt awkward to say it of himself, but even Seonho, famous in the pro world for being sharp as a knife, saw no waste in her play. It was as if she had spent years under a highly capable specialist.
An Eunha like that was far too large a variable for KZ. Not a variable you could afford to let slide. So he had tried, somehow, to get it under control, and the plan had been to bind her to KZ with a streaming contract. Under contract she couldn't join another team, and even if she debuted as a pro, that team would be KZ. The monster would be on their side.
Unfortunately, Eunha had not accepted the streaming contract, and the plan had failed.
Nothing to be done. He had already done everything he could. All that remained was to pray that things ran the way he wanted.
Besides, Seonho had confidence. Even if she really joined a rival and became a monstrous enemy they absolutely had to face, he and KZ's players could beat her. If they couldn't clear a wall of this size, how could they talk about conquering the—
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Ah."
The sudden noise dragged him out of the thought.
The source was the front door. Judging by the rhythm and the volume, it was unmistakably a person pounding. Leaving a perfectly good doorbell alone to hammer on the door—utterly senseless.
Rattle!
And Yoo Seonho could roughly guess who that senseless human was.
"Hey!"
What appeared when he opened the door was a scruffy-looking man in a baseball cap, a sleeveless shirt, shorts, and slippers. Kim Sangho—the man who had promised to visit today, and the one the world called Yoo Seonho's soul rival.
"There's a perfectly good bell. Why the hell are you beating on the door?"
His guess having landed, Seonho unloaded the curse without a moment's hesitation.
"I... couldn't tell which one was the bell..."
Couldn't tell which one was the bell. What kind of idiotic thing was that to say?
Seonho let out a long haah and pointed at the doorbell's black button.
"...The round one in the middle."
"This? I pressed it all I wanted and nothing happened."
"Hold your finger on it for about a second."
Ding-dong.
"Oh. So that's how you do it..."
Kim Sangho pressed the button a couple more times, marveling at it. It was hard to believe this idiot was really a man in his mid-to-late thirties, the same as Seonho.
"Mosquitoes are getting in. Get inside."
"Excuse me, then— For God's sake, clean your damn house once in a while, you bastard."
"I've been flat with body aches, so I couldn't clean. Cut me some slack. More importantly, the food?"
Honestly. Lives in a mess himself and still nitpicks like a demon.
Thinking that, Seonho decided to change the subject.
"Don't tell me you didn't buy anything."
Wait. Why were his hands empty?
He had gotten up and starved all day because of the man in front of him, the one who had promised to come. Half convinced Sangho hadn't even brought food, Seonho glared at him with everything he had.
"Would I show up empty-handed? I left it in the car. I went out of my way and bought samgyetang. Native chicken, too."
"...What's gotten into you?"
"I set today's meeting on short notice, and I'm the one who came to ask a favor."
So the guy was capable of a considerate thought after all. Figuring that, for him, this counted as remarkable growth, Seonho set a hand on Kim Sangho's shoulder.
"What?"
"Yeah, yeah, just go get the samgyetang. I haven't eaten a bite since I got up. I'm hungry."
"All right, all right. It's hot as hell—turn the AC on. Tidy the room a bit and set out some plates while you're at it."
"Sure, sure."
...
After a brief commotion, the two of them finished eating at a small round folding table. All that remained were cleanly picked chicken bones and the bowls. The samgyetang that had looked so good had long since gone straight into both their stomachs.
"Ah, that hit the spot. I feel better already."
"Good, right? I go to that place a lot myself."
"Honestly, I didn't think it'd be real samgyetang. I figured you'd buy chicken porridge and then bullshit me that it was samgyetang."
"What do you even take me for..."
"Can you say for certain you'd never do that?"
"For certain... no. Hm."
They were letting the food settle when Seonho was the one to open the real subject.
"So why'd you come. We're not the kind of people who sit around sharing a leisurely meal."
"Fair. We're not."
To a third party it might have sounded absurd, but the two of them did not acknowledge each other as friends. They called each other rivals—at best, bad company. Friends, never. Of course, that was only what the two of them thought.
"You said you came for advice. What advice?"
"The kids... I don't know how I'm supposed to manage them."
As expected. Kim Sangho had come looking for advice on managing players as a coach. He had always been highly regarded for his eye and for developing talent, and just as consistently hopeless when it came to their mental game. A coach sued for assault by one of his own players—this guy was probably the first in the world. Landing a world-first title he had never managed even in his playing days, and in a category like this. In a way, impressive.
"Start by talking. What you think the problem is, and what you think won't work."
First he would hear Kim Sangho out. Only after that could he give advice worth giving.
"So..."
Kim Sangho's story went on for quite a while. As if it were a worry he had been sitting on for a long time—very long indeed.
...
The 2023 PCK Promotion Series.
It was a tournament held twice a year, once in the first half and once in the second, and it ran so short that the whole thing was over in two days. The field was the bottom two of the first-division PCK and the top two of the second-division PCLK. Nobody much cared about the second division, and even out of the first division it was only the lower-table sides, so you couldn't call the event a major draw...
But it fell in the so-called empty house stretch, after the league and before Masters, when there was nothing much to watch. People who cared about the Project A pro scene still came looking.
"We're here. Coming all this way, and it's already the third time."
And of course I was one of those people.
"Ahaha... is it?"
Come to think of it, how many times had I been to PCK Park lately? I had meant to watch the broadcast in comfort at home. What kind of favor from a friend makes you go out and buy yourself this much trouble? He had better treat me right.
"Will you be all right dressed like that...? It's going to be quite cold inside."
What I had on was a white short-sleeve tee and the short shorts people call dolphin pants. At first I had thought they showed too much, but the weather was brutal, and everyone else was dressed the same. Of course, when I left the house my father saw the outfit and clutched the back of his neck... Dad, kids these days all dress like this.
"I brought something to throw on over it, so I'm fine."
The arena would have the AC blasting and might be a little cold, but I had an outer layer, so everything was fine.
"Hoo... the staff are going to have their hands full today."
"Sorry?"
"It's nothing."
Driver Kwon looked me up and down with a worried eye. He was probably afraid I would catch a cold. I thought it was excessive, and when I opened the door and stepped out of the car, what I saw was a building front already packed with people.
"Shall I go ahead and get in line?"
"No. This is a red ticket, so I don't need to line up. I got it from a player..."
Tough luck for those people, but on this side I had borrowed the power of connections and had no need to stand in any line. If they were that bitter about it, they could go make friends with a player.
Hmm. But was it my imagination?
Why did it feel like those people over there were looking my way? Was my outfit weird? No—no matter how I thought about it, it was ordinary. They kept glancing over and murmuring among themselves.
"Miss... you aren't wearing a mask..."
Only after Driver Kwon got that far did I realize what the problem was.
"Ah."
Shit... I forgot.