Episode 57 — Platform Exhibition, Day One: Youngest and Oldest vs. Pravengers
Kwitch's representative team's first scrim, a practice match against NPT, ended 2–0.
Map one, 13–3. Map two, 13–5. The scores were that lopsided, and the gap between us and NPT was just as wide.
Once the scrim was over I thought about streaming a little longer, but the team and the viewers talked me down. I ended the broadcast and stretched out on the bed to rest.
I was perfectly fine, for the record.
I was lying there scrolling K-tube when the housekeeper's voice came through the door.
"Eunha! The chairman's here!"
"...Dad?"
Dad usually got off work and came home around eight. Now and then he turned up earlier, and now and then he didn't come in until dawn, but most days it was eight.
It was six. Two full hours early.
The reason... well. I didn't need anyone to say it out loud anymore.
I opened the door at once, went down to the first floor, and bowed to Father, who was still standing by the entryway.
"Welcome home."
"Eunha! They said you were sick! Shouldn't you be at a hospital right now?"
Knew it.
"No. It's just a cold. If I rest, I'll be better in no time."
"Even so..."
He hesitated. Moments like this called for a decisive finishing blow.
Choi Eunha deployed Father-Conquest Pattern Number One: speak while staring at him with desperate eyes.
"Come on, Dad, I told you I'm really fine. If I rest up at home, I'll get better."
"Haa... All right, then. I'll speak to the school, so for the time being you stay home and rest properly. Understood?"
The effect was tremendous!
"Oh, thank you, Dad!"
"Heh... Yes, yes. In exchange, ice cream is banned for a while. Banned even after you're well."
"What."
I should have eaten it in moderation.
My ice cream...
Five days later. Kwitch's official broadcast channel.
"Good evening, viewers. After PCT LOCK//IN in São Paulo, we welcome you this time to the 2023 Kwitch & AFS Cup Platform Exhibition. Opening day has finally arrived!"
"Yes, yes, chat is already boiling. We'll be with you for three matches today, but first we ought to introduce the teams, shouldn't we?"
Four platforms had entered the Platform Exhibition—AFS, Kwitch, KKT, and NPT—and four teams built from the broadcasters who lived on them. Every single player was a top name in skill and recognition on their own platform, so from each audience's point of view they might as well have been dream teams.
"First up—NPT's representatives! Team Pravengers! NPT's squad is the only one of the four with no roster changes from last year. Every starter who played in the 2022 AFS Cup Platform Exhibition is back!"
That was the introduction to NPT. NPT itself was nowhere near as large a platform as Kwitch or AFS, and this was a Kwitch broadcast besides, so the viewers spared them very little interest.
"Next, the team that will face them—last year's defending champions of the Platform Exhibition! Kwitch's representatives, team Youngest and Oldest! True to the name, both the youngest player in this entire event and the oldest are on this roster."
"Sadly, every Kwitch player from last year's exhibition sat this one out. Even so, Youngest and Oldest has already shown in scrims that they can fill that empty space. They are, in name and in fact, one of the title favorites of this tournament!"
Every champion in the history of the exhibition had come from either AFS or Kwitch. Considering those two had split the domestic streaming scene between them, it was a curiously fitting result. The audiences didn't even like each other much. Age and taste ran differently on each platform, so there had never been much reason to get along...
AFS viewers and Kwitch viewers in particular got along so poorly you could fairly call them sworn enemies. For people like that, the exhibition held every year was an arena where pride itself was the stake. Whichever platform won earned a full year in which it could tear the other side down at its leisure. It was the perfect chance.
"Before we go to the match, let's hear some trash talk from the aces on both sides—Kwitch's Nebula, and NPT's Jongheon!"
Trash talk: a little pre-match event in which athletes provoke each other, and an excellent device for winding up the crowd. It hadn't existed as recently as the last tournament. This time, short trash-talk interviews had been prepared before the teams' first meeting, before the playoffs, and before the final.
The scrims had gone the way they had gone, and the event ended as Nebula's one-sided win.
"Then, at last! NPT versus Kwitch—the first match of the Platform Exhibition—begins now!"
"Wait! Something is wrong with Kwitch's picks!"
"They aren't calling for a pause, so it seems to be a legal pick... wait, they actually locked it?"
Saturday, the day the exhibition truly began. The opener, and our first match, was us—Kwitch—against NPT. Our first scrim had been NPT, and our first official would be NPT as well.
Through every scrim we had been so dominant we hadn't lost once, and the team's confidence had climbed just as high.
"God, I feel amazing. My aim is sticky as hell."
"So today we can count on you to carry, hyung?"
The scrims were paying off. Of course, AFS—the other title favorite, right there with us—had flatly refused to scrim, so it was hard to call the run a true perfect record...
"Nah. Eunha and Bula will carry."
"Hyung, that is a serious lack of responsibility."
"I knew he'd say that."
Scrims were over, the real matches were here, and the objective read on our team was a two-man squad: me and Nebula. A team that wins on the explosive aim of seventeen-year-old blood. That was the image viewers had of Kwitch's Youngest and Oldest.
That didn't mean Oldboy, Pola, and Zzangdol were only along for the ride. Their aim didn't stand out the way ours did, so instead they gave me and Nebula a great deal of help in the utility setups. The biggest reason the two of us could shine was their help. So long as all five of us did our own jobs, you could fairly call it an ideal team.
"Eh—ehhh..."
"Eunha."
"Ehhht—! Yes?"
A sneeze had almost gotten out just then.
In the old days I would have dumped a bucket of curses on him. Right now, though, Spax and I were complete strangers. No—coach and player, for the exhibition.
Hold it in, Choi Eunha...!
"How are you feeling? Are you all right?"
"Ah, I'm better, more or less."
It had already been five days since the body aches started. I couldn't say I was fully recovered, but—
"Don't push it. Extra's here, so we can sub you."
"No, it's not that bad. The coughing's mostly stopped."
The runny nose and the occasional sneeze were still a nuisance, but compared with the first day I was clearly improved. It still got in the way of my play... still, that much risk was worth taking.
A soft chime.
"Players, is everyone here?"
"Yes, yes, we're all here."
"The match starts in five minutes, so please get ready."
"Understood."
"Eunha, are you ready?"
"Yes."
"If we lose this, I am genuinely going to eat curses by the bucket. Please don't let that happen to me."
He was an old friend, my closest friend, so picturing him in that kind of trouble was honestly pretty funny. Even so—
"Of course."
However bad my personality was, I wasn't the sort who enjoyed getting an old friend cursed out.
"I'll make you the greatest coach in the history of the exhibition."
I didn't even need to step in. Someone of Spax's caliber could earn a title like that perfectly well on his own. Still, a good thing is a good thing. I was more than willing to help raise an old friend's name.
And I would do it in a very special way.
"Whoa. They're actually doing this."
"Puhaha! Let's go, let's go!"
The opening match of the 2023 Platform Exhibition. An agent had taken the stage who would stoke that already blazing mood even hotter.