Eunha, What Are You?

On the Tuesday night I accepted Geonmo's offer to collab, he invited me into a Discord channel.

They called it the Project room — the place where streamers who mainly broadcast Project A all gathered. It wasn't only streamers, either. A few pro gamers had been invited in as well, so it was fair to call it a channel where Project A's famous faces sat together.

Back when I was KZ Galaxy, Choi Eunha, I'd had an invite of my own.

"I should really head in soon..."

It was Friday, four in the afternoon, the hour the collab was set for. I'd finished every bit of the stream setup ahead of time, but I still hadn't stepped into the Project room. The reason was simple. Those guys were in there.

KZ — the most popular team in the domestic Project A pro scene, and one you could call the strongest without stretching the word. The people I'd lived and struggled beside for something like three years were in that channel, and I couldn't walk in easily.

They had forgotten me. No. We had become people who had never met at all. But I remembered. They wouldn't, of course. I was the one who had broken our promise to win a world championship together. My debut itself had been turned into something that never happened, and even so the thing still caught in my chest. I was ashamed to face them.

I also couldn't stay out of the channel with a collab waiting, so I squeezed my eyes shut and stepped into the invite.

This damned Discord yanks the spotlight the second someone new walks into a channel. I'd wanted to slip in quietly, with nobody the wiser.

I entered to a scatter of waves from named streamers I'd heard a few times around the scene, and from people I was hearing of for the first time.

A few of the guys I'd known in my pro days — Rabbit, Texter — sent me a hello as well. Not that they'd remember me as anything more than some streamer who'd blown up lately.

I returned the greetings well enough and was just about to start getting ready for the collab when one wave, among all those emotes, snagged my eye harder than the rest.

"Ah..."

I rubbed my eyes and checked again, in case I'd misread it. The name on the screen didn't change.

Spax. KZ's captain, and its IGL — the one who made the calls. And, from middle school on, the closest friend I'd had. The one who'd dropped out of high school with me, both of us dreaming of going pro together.

Right. Had been my friend.

I was Choi Eunha now, a girl born in 2007, and I was no longer someone the KZ roster knew. Whatever Spax and I were to each other amounted to one streamer and one famous Project A pro. Nothing more. Nothing less.

"...It's a little bitter."

People say that if you have even one friend you can trust no matter the situation, you've already succeeded at life. The fact that I had no relationship left with that friend at all — it sat a little bitter.

The collab opened with a stretch of questions Geonmo had warned me about beforehand. My own viewers knew me well enough, but GOandMO's viewers wouldn't. Just because I'd been sitting at the center of one Project A controversy after another lately, I couldn't go assuming the whole world knew my name. That would only be self-importance.

I answered him without stumbling, and then, just as we'd planned, we went ahead with a Project A duo ranked stream.

"Wait — a hundred dollars every time we go past fifty kills?!"

"Huh?"

Looked like a mission had landed on Geonmo's broadcast. For a big-company streamer like him, missions of that size came up pretty often. I'd asked my own viewers once why they never stuck missions on me, and they'd said it was because I'd clear them too easily.

"Eunha, an absolutely insane mission just came in."

"What kind of mission?"

"If our kills combined go over fifty, a hundred dollars for every kill past that."

So if Geonmo and I put up fifty-five together, that was five hundred dollars, and sixty was a thousand?

"That really is huge..."

The most I'd ever been given on stream was two hundred dollars, and that had been a donation from someone tied to KZ Academy, apologizing to me. From the moment our combined kills hit fifty, every kill either of us took would be worth a hundred dollars. It was, plain and simple, a chance to rake the money in.

"Right? Ah, we're gonna have to sweat from game one."

"Same here."

Even without a mission I'd meant to show Geonmo's viewers what I could do, so I was already planning to tryhard.

Were these people kidding me?

"Excuse me?"

On the select screen, a spectacle unfolded: three entries locked in before three seconds had even passed.

"Guys, why is everybody instalocking?"

Says the man who instalocked Raze.

"Didn't you instalock too, Geonmo?"

"Ahem. Ah, I'm different."

I wasn't entirely sure what was different about it, but I understood anyway. In Project A, duelists eat kills the easiest, and with the mission hanging on our kill count, picking Raze — easy frags, and the agent he was most practiced on — was only natural if you looked at it a certain way.

No info. No sentinel. No smokes. Just three duelists, and a mess.

Our second pick seemed just as dizzy from the chaos.

Second pick took smokes, so at least we were spared the disaster of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠four duelists. What came out was three duelists and one controller — a comp with a skeleton, if nothing else. How finished it would be depended entirely on whoever locked last.

"Eunha, which agents do you play a lot?"

"Um... me?"

In my pro days my main role had been entry. Depending on the map, I'd taken sentinel a few times too. Jett, Raze, Chamber, Killjoy — those four were the agents I'd played most often back then. Jett and Chamber had taken the largest share, but I could cover other agents and other roles to a point. Being a pro had never meant you only needed to know a handful of characters.

"Initiator, I can do KAY/O and Sova. Sentinel, Killjoy and Chamber."

"Oh, you play Chamber a lot?"

Among Project A's agents, Chamber leans on aim more than almost anyone. Headhunter, Rendezvous, even the ultimate, Tour de Force — all of it swings from one extreme to the other depending on the player's aim, so the agent itself becomes a completely different piece of software from one person to the next. Geonmo was probably just startled that I, a woman outside the game's core audience, played Chamber often.

"Yeah. I'll show you."

If we were judging the comp properly, an info agent like Sova or Fade — something that could pin an enemy's position for certain — would have been the better call. But—

For actually taking kills, Chamber beat an info agent. And hey. Winning was enough, wasn't it?

Pistol round. On Pearl, B site sits wide open like a flat plain, so guns that win long-range fights — Headhunter, the Sheriff — are what people want. Of the eight hundred credits you get in round one, I spent six hundred on Headhunter rounds and the remaining two hundred on my C, Trademark, and set it on the mid doors. I was placing Rendezvous and getting ready to hold B main when Geonmo's voice came through.

"So... you said you're seventeen, right?"

"? Yeah."

"Ah, I'm twenty-four. Would it be all right if I dropped the formal speech?"

Ah. So that was it. Geonmo was famous for speaking casually the same day he met someone, even a stranger. By his own account, you got close faster if you dropped the politeness first — or something like that. So whenever there was someone he wanted to get close to, he asked first whether he could speak casually. That was the version he told.

"Sure. I'm fine with it."

I was more comfortable with him talking to me that way anyway, so I agreed without a fuss. More than anything, formal speech just doesn't suit him...

"Ah, okay. This is way more comfortable."

We filled the wait with this and that and set up for the defense.

Geonmo suggested the Jett on our team push up A main, but Jett didn't answer. No ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠yes, no no, nothing you could call a reply. In the end Geonmo gave up on the push and rotated to hold Art.

"Why won't these kids use their mics?"

For people who'd migrated from the Asia server to the Korea server, like Geonmo, team voice was the thing they struggled to adjust to most. On Asia, team voice was something you basically had to use if you wanted the round to function. The Korea server wasn't like that. Over here, most people left the channel or muted their own mic and only listened. I'd learned that myself recently, climbing the ranks.

Jett, who hadn't so much as twitched at Geonmo's call, flipped a mic on and answered the instant I said I'd watch B main. And unlike Geonmo's call, mine hadn't even needed an answer.

"Look at these bastards. Dead quiet when I talk, then the second Eunha turns voice on, their mouths open."

"Come on. It's just a coincidence."

"I'll bet on it. They heard your voice and turned their mics on. For real. One hundred percent."

Oh, please. Even so, they wouldn't. Female gamers might be rare, but there was no way...

...Okay. Maybe there was a way.

Anyway, Chamber's Trademark rings an alarm for the whole team when an enemy comes close, so I decided to use it and watch both angles they could take — the mid doors, and B main. Come through B main and I'd see them. Come through the mid doors and the Trademark would catch them. I zoomed the Headhunter and stared down B main, but no matter how long I waited, nobody appeared.

Not B main. Not the mid doors where the Trademark sat. Not Art, where my teammates and Geonmo were waiting, and not A main. If the enemy was nowhere, then the odds were high they were on a default — sitting back, waiting for us to take space, and meaning to catch us when we did. If you suspect a default, you don't get greedy and push for ground. You hold until you've confirmed their main path of attack—

"Huh? What! Where did this guy come from?!"

"Huh?"

The Trademark was still up. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I was sure of it. And yet the enemy had walked out of the mid doors and put a round through the back of Raze's head while he was watching Art.

"Eunha, your Trademark is off!"

Huh?

At his shout I checked the map, and the Trademark really was off.

"Huh? Why is this thing off...?"

This is actually so unfair! I was definitely inside the range...