An Impromptu Autograph Session (Real Life)
A few days after that visit to headquarters, the footage I had shot myself went up on KZ's official K-tube. A staff edit turned it into a respectable little video, a little over ten minutes long, and the reaction was...
Nothing short of explosive.
In fairness, I had more or less seen it coming. KZ was the most popular team in the whole Project A pro scene, and—embarrassing as it is to say out loud—I was the streamer drawing the most eyes in the Project A broadcast world. A video with both of us in it failing to get attention would have been the stranger result. People who didn't care about the pro scene came for me. People who didn't care about internet broadcasts came for Jaeseong. A casting that killed two birds with one stone.
It helped, too, that the KZ player in the video was Jaeseong. Most pros keep a careful distance from broadcasters. Jaeseong had been on easy terms with them since his trainee days, enough that even viewers who only cared about Project A, and not the pro circuit at all, still knew the name Foxy.
So the video was a smash in the most literal sense, and my stream rode it into another boom. The name streamer Eunha traveled farther than it ever had.
"Please sign this!"
Why had I managed to forget that completely?
"H-here."
"Thank you! I'm a real fan!"
No. Careless is the fairer word.
I had allowed that someone might recognize me. I had not allowed for this. I'd forgotten the mask on the way out of the car, stepped onto the pavement, and locked eyes with the people waiting in front of the Park. The crowd lined up to get into PCK Park broke toward me all at once, and for a second it looked exactly like a scene from a zombie movie.
"Me too, me too!"
There is genuinely no end to this...
I put my seventeen-year-old body to work—allegedly—and moved through signatures and photos at a decent clip, but it didn't matter.
"Why's everybody bunched up over there?"
"Is there some event?"
"Hey, let's go look!"
The knot of people kept pulling more people in. New arrivals outnumbered the ones leaving with a signature, and the whole thing showed no sign of ending. So there I was, in the middle of the street in high summer, hosting a fan signing nobody had scheduled, cursing the version of me from twenty minutes ago who had stepped out of the car without a mask.
"Miss, if this is too much, I'll step in."
Driver Kwon, watching me wilt under the blazing sun, offered to settle it himself if I wanted.
"No, it's all right. These people are my fans."
I had been a pro gamer. I knew, better than most, what fans are worth. Being a streamer hadn't changed that. Pro or streamer, the job exists only because someone is willing to watch, so my rule was simple: give them the best I could. Plenty of pros and streamers do vicious things with the love they're given. I had no intention of becoming that kind of trash.
I was still working through them one by one, photo included if they asked, when the alarm I had set for the start of the match went off.
Brring-brring! Brring-brring!
How long have I even been out here? I am actually out of time...
Plenty of people still hadn't gotten a signature. There were too many of them left, and the match was already at the door. I had come to PCK Park to cheer for SC. I couldn't forget what I'd actually come for.
"I—I'm really sorry! The match is about to start, so... I'm so sorry!"
"Ah..."
"I waited all this time..."
"C-could you just do mine? Just mine?"
The sighs started the moment I finished. I wanted to sign for every one of them. I couldn't.
"Ugh... I really am sorry."
They had stood in that sun for a long time, and I meant the apology, but there was no time left.
"I'll hold a real fan signing soon, I promise! I'll make up today's share then... I'm truly sorry about today!"
The second the words were out, I caught Driver Kwon's eye. If he was going to step in, it had to be now. A few of the people still empty-handed looked ready to protest me bolting like that.
"The signing ends here. This way, miss."
He had been a statue at my shoulder the entire time, quiet, unmoving. The moment he moved, the crowd went dead silent.
That's Driver Kwon for you.
Under his escort I made it inside PCK Park. The building was swallowing an enormous crowd, and someone had the air-conditioning cranked high enough to bite. I felt like I might live.
"Haaa... that's better."
Water would be nice. Is there any around he—
"Here."
"Oh. Thank you."
How he'd known I was looking for water, and where he'd produced it from, I couldn't begin to guess. I didn't ask. I drank what he handed me and let the heat drain out, and that was when he spoke.
"...Why did you do that."
I couldn't parse the question at all.
"Sorry? Do what?"
He looked angry. Or dissatisfied. Either way, it was aimed at me. Driver Kwon laughed off whatever nonsense I got up to, so the idea that he was unhappy with me landed harder than it should have. The reason wasn't hard to find.
"It wasn't a scheduled signing. There was no reason, anywhere, for you to owe them that kindness. And yet you stood there pouring sweat..."
He meant my own stubbornness. Signing and signing under that sun when nothing had required it of me.
"...You're right."
I didn't have a clean answer for him. I didn't fully know the reason myself. If I had to name one, though—yes.
Because they were mine.
Back when I was active, Coach Yoo Seonho never stopped telling me how much fans mattered. A pro like me existed only because people were willing to cheer and to watch. They gave us that much, so we owed them something back. I hadn't listened. I had decided a pro repaid fans with results, and with nothing else. Hours I might have spent talking to them went into practice. Hours I might have spent on fan service went into reviewing my own play.
So my fans left, a few at a time. All I had done was pour myself into getting better, but to everyone else I must have looked like an arrogant man drunk on his own skill, treating the rest of the world as beneath him. After that, almost nobody was left who cheered for the pro gamer Choi Eunha. What remained were people cheering for Galaxy, the best entry in Korea.
Even they didn't stay.
The moment I fell short of what they expected, they dropped me without a blink and climbed aboard with the people tearing me down. By the time I lost again at LOCK//IN and decided to retire, almost no one was left who still believed in me.
So it isn't strange that I try to treat fans well now. I'm a streamer these days, not a pro, but both jobs exist only because the fans do. It isn't that different. Feeling as if the whole world hated me—once was enough. I wanted to do everything I could so the people who liked me wouldn't be disappointed, and wouldn't turn their backs.
"Even so, next time move it indoors. Keep this up and you really will get heatstroke."
"Haha... next time, I will."
"And if you're going to do a signing like this, bring more security. The bigger the crowd, the harder you are to protect, miss."
"Yes, sir."
With Driver Kwon's worried scolding still in my ears, I headed for the PCK stage, where the Promotion Series was going out on the broadcast.
Anyone going to watch, let's go.