Position Assignments (Just Chatting)

"…Pardon?"

Spax sounded thrown, and he had every right to be. From where he stood, a complete stranger had just addressed him in casual speech out of nowhere—and not just any stranger, a girl at least four years his junior. The Kim Seungtaek I knew wasn't the sort of man people called a rigid old-timer, but even so.

"Th-that's…"

This was the kind of moment that would leave anyone speechless, rigid old-timer or not.

"You know you just said that to Spax, not to me, right?"

A lifeline dropped into the mess I'd made of things.

"Ah—I thought it was you. I'm sorry, Spax."

A new friend, cleaning up a slip I'd made in front of an old one.

"Ah, no, you don't have to apologize. Anyway—nice to meet you, Eunha."

Thankfully, Spax let it pass without a fuss. He wasn't the type to pocket something like that, and a second ago he'd been thrown himself.

"Ah… right."

How to put it. It tasted a little bitter. My closest friend—the one who had been my closest friend—didn't even recognize me. I'd known every tie from the old life was already cut, but meeting it face to face still hurt.

…Nothing to be done. Becoming a woman, and the life I'd lived changing with it, had happened before I was given a chance to choose. Force majeure, in the plainest sense. All I could do was adapt. There wasn't another option left to me.

"I've really wanted to meet you. I also wanted to apologize, at least once, for what our trainee did."

"Ah, that…"

Streamer ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Eunha had gotten famous, more than anything, by standing in the middle of one controversy after another. There was the time she put Yangjeon in his place after he'd made himself the face of the smurfing mess, and the time a KZ trainee unloaded on her, among others. The trainee incident in particular had been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠big enough that a KZ official came on her broadcast in person to apologize in public. It had happened at their own workplace, so Spax and the rest of the roster would know at least the shape of it.

"No. It wasn't your fault."

The fault belonged to Cries, who had hurled the abuse, and to the KZ Academy staff who had failed to keep him in line. Not to Spax. If anything, the mess had soured the org's image and landed on the KZ players who were in the middle of PCT LOCK//IN, a major international event. They were closer to victims than anything else.

"I appreciate you saying that."

"All right. Everyone's here, then?"

"Yes. All seven of us."

Me, Nebula, Zzangdol, Oldboy, and Pola—five starters—plus guest coach Spax and the substitute, Extra. The whole Kwitch representative side was in the call.

"Then shall we start by settling positions?"

It was the moment so many people had been waiting for: the Platform Exhibition, officially underway.

"Zzangdol, could you start us off? Positions you can play, and your agent pool. For the bar, let's say… agents you could confidently lock any time."

Everyone except me, Nebula, and Extra was Chaser, so they'd be familiar enough with agents outside a main role. Even so, the best move was simply to take the main-role agent you trusted most. The roster had been picked on only two things—skill, and name recognition—so those main roles were likely to collide, and sorting that collision into the best possible assignment was the first job in front of us.

"Um… I can play every Controller. Honestly, I'm not confident on anything else."

"Yep. Oldboy, you're next."

"The ones I'm confident on are entry agents, Jett and Reyna… but there's someone here who's a better entry than I am."

I wasn't even doing anything. Why was chat losing its mind?

Keep that up and someone was getting scolded. Once the rowdier viewers had been reined in, I went back to listening to Spax.

"Come on, you don't need to worry about that yet. Just name the agents you're confident on. We'll sort the rest later."

"Then those three, I think. Jett, Reyna, and Chamber."

"Copy. Pola, then."

"…I mainly play initiator. Honestly, though, my ability usage is pretty rough."

"Uh… initiator is your most-played, and you're saying you can't use the util?"

Pola hadn't been on Project A for long, so ability use was clearly giving him trouble. Initiator, though, was the role where util mattered more than anywhere else—the one that took the enemy's information with aggressive ability play and lifted weight off the entry. You could argue that no agent in Project A had unimportant skills, but initiator sat on a different track entirely. Ability use was that central to it.

"Understood for now. Next, Eunha."

"Mmh— yes!"

Aigo. I'd nearly slipped into casual speech again without thinking.

"The ones I'm most confident on are entry agents, like Jett."

She was the agent I'd played most in my active years, and I'd even been praised, in my own way, as the best Jett in Korea. Jett was as good as another self.

"And I'm confident on sentinels, too. Killjoy, for one."

It wasn't as if entry was all I knew how to do. I'd taken sentinel for the team now and then, so Killjoy sat comfortably in my hands as well.

"Okaaay. Next is Nebula… is there even a point in asking?"

Nebula, after all, was good on every agent. As I'd said before, the KZ players and I rated him extremely highly, and that hadn't particularly changed now that I'd become someone who had never been on KZ.

"Honestly, there's no agent I'm outstandingly confident on. They're all about the same… Initiator's just the most comfortable to play."

"Mm. Copy."

Preferred roles so far: Zzangdol on controller, Oldboy on entry, Pola on initiator, me on entry and sentinel, Nebula as an all-rounder. Even so, we couldn't just build the comp around everyone's first choice.

"Oldboy, don't take this the wrong way."

"Yep."

"Honestly, I think the team gets more out of Nebula on entry than out of you."

Entry was one of the most important roles in Project A. If you had to compare it to something, it was mid lane in Legend of League: the position where the players judged to have the best aim and the fastest reactions gathered, and, because the play was flashy, the position where the fans gathered too. Important enough that Spax had clearly decided the better choice was handing it to Nebula, the one who could carry it best. From Oldboy's side, it was the sort of thing that could bruise a pride. Being slid onto a secondary role because someone else was better at your main.

"Yeah, I've been thinking the same. At my age, entry in a tournament like this might be asking too much."

Fortunately, he didn't look offended. If anything, it felt as though he'd been hoping for exactly that.

"Then the base is Nebula on entry, Pola and Oldboy on initiator, Eunha on sentinel, and Zzangdol on controller."

Nebula and I had duoed plenty with me on entry and him on initiator, so I'd half expected the role to land on me. Living up to the name Nebula was never going to be easy. Honestly, I'd wanted entry so I could step on that piece of trash—Pilleulo, or whatever he called himself—with my own hands. A little disappointing.

"Hold on."

Just as the roles were settling into place, Nebula cut across the flow.

"Yeah?"

"Nebula?"

The truth was, through all those duos, Nebula had barely reacted to my entry play. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I'd wondered if I simply wasn't up to his standard, and it had pricked my pride more than once. So he'd just never shown it. Well—I had been called the best entry in Korea, once. Even Nebula couldn't refuse to acknowledge—

Ah.

A piece of the past surfaced without warning, and my mood curdled.

…No. That was a past that didn't exist anymore. It had nothing to do with me now. No point dragging it up just to feel worse. Mm.

"Hmm… that so? Then Eunha on entry, and Nebula on sentinel."

"Eh."

He could just decide it like that…?

Whether he was deferring to Nebula's read or not, Spax swapped me onto entry without a word of objection.

"Then that's how we go, I guess."

None of the others raised a protest against Spax's call either.

"Then shall we take this as the base for now?"

And that was how the Kwitch roster's positions more or less locked in.

A weekday morning after the weekend had passed. I woke early to the sound of the bell.

Or tried to.

"Cough—!"

Today, of all days, something felt wrong with my body.

"Cough… ugh, my head…"

I was stiff all over, my head ached, and I was hot. Waking at this hour was familiar by now, so it wasn't lack of sleep. And it wasn't that time of the month, either.

"Eunha, what's taking you so long… Eunha?"

"Cough—! Cough! Ugh… good morning…"

It was already time for me to have washed and come down for breakfast, and I still hadn't, so the housekeeper had come up to check. One look at me coughing and she stepped straight out of the room, then came back with something in her hand.

"Eunha, over here a moment…"

"Cough! Uegh…"

What she held was a thermometer.

"One hundred even…"

"Hack— cough!"

Ugh. I'm actually going to die.

Something was seriously wrong.