The Platform Exhibition (Real Life)
Honestly, I'd always figured a day like this might come.
It had simply arrived faster than I expected, and from a direction I hadn't seen coming, so all I felt was a little thrown.
The email KZ had sent me said, in so many words, that they seriously wanted to bring me in as part of a KZ team. Not to sign some streamer riding a wave of fame and skim the advertising off her, but because they truly wanted results.
That didn't mean an offer to the KZ first team that had just played LOCK//IN, and it wasn't from the second squad or from KZ's second-division side either. Project A was the most popular game in Korea right now—no, in the world. Young prospects were spilling out of every country in absurd numbers, and someone like me, who had only just clawed her way to Immortal, wasn't nearly impressive enough to catch eyes like theirs.
The offer had come from KZ Changers. As I remembered it, KZ Changers was a women's pro team. In their eyes, a player who had hit Immortal in two months on a high win rate, ACS, and KDA must have looked like some once-in-a-generation prospect.
I'd heard that companies were pouring money into the esports market these days, but I never thought they'd go so far as to build a women's pro circuit. It was the moment Project A's popularity finally felt real. Until now, the people who actually consumed game culture had mostly been men.
Interesting was interesting. My answer was already decided. This wasn't even the first division, and the man I used to be had no intention of walking into a women's pro tournament.
Every recruitment email from every team went straight into the trash. I didn't bother replying. Even without a reply, a few days of silence would tell them it was a no.
"Now that I think about it..."
Back when I was a man, the trainee offer from KZ Academy had come around this same time. First semester of my first year of high school. Back then I'd snatched KZ's offer without a second thought. I was a game-rotted shut-in who lived for nothing but Project A, a clueless kid dreaming of becoming a pro like Lee Seonghyeok of Legend of League.
I wasn't that person anymore. I knew the ceiling of my talent now, and I knew how far someone like me could actually go.
Lee Seonghyeok, the GOAT, the greatest pro Legend of League had ever named. That was who I had dreamed of becoming. I had wanted to be called the greatest pro in Project A, the way he was called the greatest in his.
I could never become that man.
I knew it far too well now, and having felt it in my own skin had hurt far too much, so I had no thought of going pro again. I had decided to stop dreaming dreams I couldn't reach.
A handful of emails, and I'd sunk into useless brooding. Get it together. I'd opened my mail for a reason in the first place.
Among the messages lined up newest first, I found the one with Kwitch in front of the sender's name and opened it at once.
"...A Project A platform exhibition?"
Looked like a pretty fun event was about to open.
Once the international tournament in Brazil, PCT LOCK//IN, was over, Kwitch meant to team up with its rival platform, AFC, and run an event tournament. Four of the big domestic platforms—Kwitch, DWP, AFC, and CCT—would each field five starters and one substitute, six players in all.
Most of the internet-broadcast audience would have their eyes on it, so if you wanted to grow a channel, simply being in the tournament was an enormous advantage. For a former pro, it was a rare chance to play a team game again. For a full-time streamer, it was a chance to push the broadcast higher.
Of course, the spot they'd offered me was only the substitute's, so there was a real chance I wouldn't play a single game. Even so, the upside of showing up was enough to tempt me. The Kwitch manager had said an answer within a week was fine, so I could afford to think a little longer.
"I'm heading out!"
"All right. You be careful."
If anyone asked where a shut-in whose whole life was gaming in her room was going this early in the morning... school. From now on I was a student who had to show up five days a week.
"Good morning."
"Yes. Good morning, miss."
I offered the greeting to Driver Kwon, waiting at the front door. Until recently he and I had been nothing more than a protectee and a bodyguard—no more than that, and no less.
"You look really tired. I knew asking you to get up ten minutes early was too much..."
Since the entrance ceremony, though, we'd gotten a little closer anyway.
"No, I'm fine."
I'd woken ten minutes earlier than usual because I didn't want to draw a crowd at drop-off. Driver Kwon was under my father's orders. He wasn't going to listen if I told him not to bring me, so the best I could do was pick a time when fewer students were around. Asking a working man to clock in ten minutes early was the sort of request that ought to have annoyed him, but he'd accepted it without a fuss.
"Then have a safe day. If anything happens, call me right away."
"Yes. Please, just wait in the car today. You'll catch a cold."
"I'll think about it."
I said goodbye to the driver who had brought me all the way to school, put on my mask, and got out. Today, as yesterday, he let me off right in front of the main gate, but because I'd left ten minutes early there were far fewer students around than there had been yesterday.
"Whoa, what kind of car is that?"
"Holy shit, that Benz is insane."
"This neighborhood's full of rich people, you know."
Even so, the looks at me and at the car I'd stepped out of hadn't vanished entirely, so I decided to hurry to the classroom.
Um... so... first-years were on the fourth floor of the main building, right? At the entrance ceremony the homeroom teacher had held the closing assembly in the gym, so today was my first time actually going to my class. Luckily there was a building map posted on the first floor, and I found the room from that.
Someone had arrived before me. The door was open, and inside were one boy and two girls—already at their desks, studying, the textbook image of kids who looked like they got good grades. When I opened the door they glanced my way, then lost interest at once.
...Did we just sit wherever?
I had no plans to pay serious attention in class, so I took the very back seat by the window. Someone who doesn't study, the way I don't, does the least harm by sitting in the back and not wrecking the room.
Thirty minutes until morning roll. Plenty of time left.
I decided to spend it browsing the boards I hadn't been able to open in a while. One way or another, I'd been a community addict for a long time.
The boards were in an uproar over the Project A platform exhibition about to start. It was a tournament with three years of tradition behind it, and this time two platforms had even landed sponsors, so it was opening at the biggest scale yet. If you played Project A or watched internet broadcasts, there was no way not to care.
Community users, especially, were the kind of people who could blow the smallest spark into a bonfire, obsessed with anything worth talking about. LOCK//IN was over, there was nothing left to say, and then someone had tossed a platform tournament out as one giant piece of bait. Of course it was loud.
Every hot thread at the center of the community's bait was plastered over with the platform exhibition. While I was reading them properly, one post caught my eye: streamers GOandMO and BunnyRabbit weren't entering.
GOandMO and Rabbit, out. Two of the handful of people on Kwitch you could actually call good at Project A had declared they were sitting this one out. Even as a substitute, it had seemed a little strange that someone who had only just hit Immortal was getting an invite. Apparently it wasn't just Geonmo-oppa and Rabbit-oppa—several other Kwitch streamers famous for skill broadcasts had pulled out too.
The spot had been passed down and passed down again until it reached me. If I wanted to grow the stream, a chance like this wasn't coming twice.
...All right. I'm in.
The biggest audience of the year would be piled into this thing. If I looked good, I could grow the broadcast even larger than it already was, and I was confident I could look good. I was only a sub, so I might not even get to play—but that was still better than not going.
"All right, phones away, everyone~ Taking roll!"
Before I knew it the classroom was full of students, and thirty minutes later the homeroom teacher walked in. Did this part never change? Roll book in hand, he called them one by one, and when my turn came I answered.
"Choi Eunha."
"Here."
The moment I spoke, the class's eyes swung toward me. All kinds of feelings sat in those pupils. Some held goodwill. Others held hostility. If I let myself notice every one of them, I'd be the only one who got tired, so I made a point of ignoring them.
"What's with the mask? You catch a cold?"
I was wearing it because I was sick of my face pulling stares, but I couldn't exactly tell him that, so I brushed it off.
"Yes. My throat's a little off."
"Aigoo, be careful. It's cold out these days."
"...Yes."
Roll call ran on without a hitch, name after name, and then it snagged on one.
"Han Seongun."
"Han Seongun? Wow. Late on the very first day."
The class laughed at the teacher's exaggerated, dumbfounded gesture, and speak of the devil—the classroom door opened. I checked the time. 8:35. Already five minutes past 8:30, the cutoff for morning assembly. Late.
Wait. That kid?
"Han Seongun?"
"Yes."
The guy who'd stayed behind at the entrance ceremony and fallen asleep. If I hadn't woken him, he probably would have kept sleeping there for ages—that freeloading, older-brother-looking kid. The one who couldn't even answer properly through the drowsiness had kicked off school with a spectacular first-day tardy.
"It's the first day, so I'll let it slide. Go sit in that empty seat over there."
Maybe there was a reason the class was already calling him a true teacher, a real educator. Five minutes late, and instead of marking him tardy, he just let it go.
"Thank you."
Han Seongun came striding straight toward me.
Why this way? The teacher clearly said to sit in an empty seat...
Oh.
Only then did I realize the seat beside me had been empty this whole time.
This guy. Right next to me.