Curry Is Free
Curry was free.
Or at least, that was the fantasy. From the moment the collab with Barcode began, Curry had been feeling—with every fiber of his being—that something had gone terribly wrong.
Take the Q&A segment he'd thrown in to pad the opening, for instance. Remarks like "Barcode's voice is so damn hot" kept tumbling out of her mouth, each one leaving him flustered in a way that felt suspiciously like he was being toyed with. It put him in a weird mood.
This was the first time he'd ever spoken with Barcode by voice. The collab proposal had come through the Leori messenger, and all the post-agreement logistics had been handled over a Discord server. Aside from a handful of purely transactional exchanges, they were essentially meeting for the first time.
He'd expected the atmosphere to turn awkward more often than not. It hadn't. Not even close.
In truth, Curry had planned to go easy on her—Barcode had only ever streamed for a single day, after all, and he wanted to make sure the collab wouldn't be too much. That was the whole point of the Q&A corner, something he never normally did for an opening. He'd even prepared a full set of talking points in advance, ready to deploy his gift of gab and ease whatever nerves she might be feeling.
But Barcode wasn't nervous. Not even a little. If anything, she seemed to be enjoying the situation.
Ask a question and she'd fire back something dizzying. Try to fill airtime with banter and she'd maneuver him into a corner every single time. Curry found himself thinking of her as some kind of enchantress. All they'd done was talk, and yet he felt like every last drop of his energy had been drained dry. Even his high-tension energy—one of the few real strengths he had—had cratered in an instant, and it was entirely Barcode's fault.
The real problem was that he'd felt this exact sensation before.
That bastard…
The lunatic who'd rotated through three accounts to stream-snipe him. The one who'd sniped every single game of his promotion series and dropped him with a loss-loss-win-win-loss record. Not once, but over and over—a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool toxic player. Being around Barcode felt unnervingly similar to being tormented by that guy.
What the hell did I do in a past life…
Was this just what happened when you attracted people from the so-called "toxic" category? He'd thought preseason had finally freed him from the misery of stream sniping, at least for a little while. Now his life force was being siphoned off in an entirely different form.
"…rry."
"…Curry?"
"Ah—yes. What did you say?"
Maybe it was the energy drain. Curry answered like a machine, registering Barcode's voice calling his name only after a delay.
"I'm shoving this wave and roaming up. Cover me."
"Ah. Got it."
Curry had been locked in a no-breathing, no-thinking laning phase, but at Barcode's roam call he managed the wave—neither shoving too hard nor letting it crash too deep, holding it right on the knife-edge of tower range. Among top laners, it was the kind of wave they called a "die-push": a line you had to shove even if it killed you.
The enemy Darius overextended, forcing a shove. The moment he used his Q to clear, Curry's Jake dumped all six skills in a blink and engaged. The burst combo landed clean, but Darius still had about half his health. Apparently deciding he could win the trade, Darius popped Ghost and committed to the all-in.
And in that exact instant, Yune arrived on the top side and landed a flawless ER combo.
For all his swagger, Darius met a thoroughly anticlimactic end. Curry used the free window to farm tower gold.
"You're seriously good. Like, all I can do is sit here and be impressed."
"Flattery won't get you anything, you know."
"Come on~ Do I look like the kind of guy who compliments people because he wants something?"
"A little?"
"…Well, if that's how I come across, I've got nothing to say."
"I'm kidding. You're not mad, are you?"
Barcode's voice was thick with teasing and laughter, and Curry went silent—not because he was sulking, but because he was chugging water, trying to replenish the life force she'd just vacuumed out of him. Apparently she read the silence differently.
"Curry?"
"Cough—! Cough—!"
The sudden drop in her tone made him swallow wrong. He whipped his head away from the mic, barely dodging a full-blown sound-terror incident, and allowed himself a private sigh of relief—
"Answer me."
—only for Barcode's voice to go ice-cold. He spun back and opened his mouth in a panic.
"Y-Yes! What is it!"
"I thought you were ignoring me because you were mad."
"Please. Who gets mad over a joke like that? I'm not a kid."
"Right?"
Just like that, the chill vanished as if it had never been there, and her voice snapped back to normal. Curry felt his mind short-circuit. Not as a bit. Genuinely.
"When did they get here?"
"Aw, man."
"Ah, that is genuinely unfortunate."
Harassed by Barcode for what felt like forever, Curry couldn't lock in. He kept dying. He failed to respect a jungler spotted in the tri-bush, didn't back off, and got dived. A minute later he greedied for the last of a dying tower's gold and got collapsed on by a roaming support and jungler. He split-pushed on autopilot, missed Sylas rotating down, and died again.
He'd been fine in laning phase. He just couldn't focus on the game. Curry had a vague sense of why, but saying it out loud in front of the person responsible was not an option.
Final score for Curry: 3/7/3. Considering he'd been sitting at 2/1/2 before laning even ended, he had thoroughly failed to repay the investment his jungler and mid had poured into him.
"Curry."
"Yes…"
DOMINATING!
Curry watched, through the gray of his own death screen, as Yune massacred the enemy team. At this point it was hard to tell whether this was Curry's personal stream or a black-and-white broadcast dedicated to Yune. He waited for Barcode to speak with his head slightly bowed, the posture of a man awaiting judgment.
"I pinged it. I called it. I told you Sylas was coming down. Why didn't you back off?"
"…"
"And earlier—I told you not to greed the tower gold and just leave, didn't I?"
"…"
"Were you wrong? Or were you right?"
"…"
"Answer me."
"…I was wrong."
Like a child being scolded by a parent, Curry sat quietly and took it.
"But from my perspective, that two-versus-one bot fight earlier was honestly doable—"
"So you're saying you didn't do anything wrong?"
"…No."
He'd tried a tiny bit of resistance. One look at Barcode's overbearing tone and his tail went right between his legs. There were a few points he found a little unfair, sure—but he had messed up. That much was true.
"Will you try doing exactly what I tell you? Just once?"
"Mm… alright."
He pretended to deliberate, then accepted. Truthfully, every death so far might as well have been from ignoring her calls.
Curry's Jake respawned and headed bot. The enemy had no Teleport; Jake's was up; Baron was still alive. Bot-side split was the correct play. He started the shove again, moving carefully, locked in as hard as he could manage. Then he caught the enemy support—Leona—pathing low and disappearing from the map. He ran the pathing in his head and decided this wave, at least, was safe.
"Curry, back off."
"Huh?"
"Back. Off."
"…Okay."
The question had been pure reflex. The moment Barcode punched each syllable, he swallowed the protest and peeled off the wave.
"If you've got a ward, drop it mid-lane. Then you'll see why I told you to leave."
"Yes, ma'am. Got it."
He obediently planted a ward in the middle of the lane. The second he finished retreating to safety, Sylas materialized right next to where the ward had gone down.
"…When did he come down?"
He'd seen Sylas path into the topside jungle ahead of Leona. How had he beaten her to bot? How had he gotten there at all? Looping the entire map from a topside entry shouldn't have been possible on that timer. It didn't make sense.
"It's a fake that abuses minion vision. He pretends to path up, clears the minions stuck on the Tier 2 tower, then wall-hops straight down right before the next wave's vision connects. From your side, you assume Sylas is still near Baron or headed top… though honestly, their Sylas doesn't really feel like Diamond material."
"Ah… I see! Understood!"
"…You didn't get it, did you."
"No. I did."
"If you're lying…"
"I didn't get it."
Pride had almost made him double down. The gradual cooling of Barcode's voice forced the truth out of him. At this point, just hearing her tone drop was enough to make his hands and feet start shaking. In a matter of minutes, Barcode had tormented him to an absurd degree.
From then on, Curry did exactly what she called. The macro locked into place, and they closed out a clean win—though the one physically grabbing the team by the collar and hard-carrying was still Barcode's Yune.
Only after finishing the game with her did Curry finally snap back to reality and remember he had content to run.
"We've played a game together, so—any hidden Yune tips or tech that regular players might not know?"
"Of course. Though if you've paid even a little attention to Yune, most people already know these…"
"That's fine. There are still way more people who don't know than people who do."
"Then we'll need a custom lobby…"
"Figured as much—I already made one. Sending invites now."
Curry fired invites to Barcode and the friends he'd prearranged as practice dummies. They hit start; both of them locked Yune. Once inside the Rift, everyone first hit level six.
"I'm going to skip the absolute basics—Q-Flash, W-Flash, that kind of thing. I assume you already know those."
"What I'll show you first is the secret of the E mark."
"Curry, use E on me and then attack me until I'm almost dead. Just watch the mark."
Curry did as told—landed E, started hitting her. He kept his eyes on the mark floating over the enemy Yune's head and swung for a while.
"Huh…?"
The red mark's color shifted to black. Not all of it—just part of it. And the moment E's return damage resolved, the enemy Yune dropped dead.
"If the return damage from E would kill them, part of the mark turns black."
"Whoa. I genuinely didn't know that. That's wild…"
From there, Barcode ran through a whole catalog of Yune tips and tech on Curry's stream. Things like using the ultimate to clear a thin wall and a thick wall in sequence to land behind a Tier 2 tower. Using the returning E to break Zoe's and Lillia's sleep. Information any halfway decent Yune player would already know—but for someone just picking her up, or someone who barely knew the champion, it was gold.
The master's tips-and-tech segment wrapped successfully. Next came duo ranked, so the audience could watch the master apply it all in real games.
They ran about five games together. Curry pulled off countless multi-kill angles—and by the end he was so thoroughly drained he might as well have been a walking zombie, silently praying for the clock to run out.
And before long, the end of the "Meeting the One-Trick" content finally arrived.
Freedom!
He wanted nothing more than to end this collab and scream it out loud. Curry was free!
Of course, none of that inner monologue made it to the surface. He laid the disappointment on thick and spoke with carefully manufactured regret.
"You really worked hard today. I can't believe how fast the time went… I'm honestly sad it's over."
"Huh? What are you talking about. We still have the Part Two stream."
"…What?"
For a second Curry was sure he'd misheard. He asked again. Barcode continued as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"We agreed I'd give you live feedback while you play Yune in solo queue for Part Two. Remember?"
"When did I ever…"
"I didn't even turn on my own stream—I spent the whole time helping with yours. And now that you've gotten everything you needed out of me, you're just going to throw me away…?"
Barcode asked it in a voice on the edge of tears, and Curry felt the room tilt. He had never agreed to any Part Two. He had never told her not to stream. But looking at the situation objectively, refusing the Part Two she was describing would make him look like absolute garbage. That much was locked in.
How was he supposed to get out of this?
He fretted for a moment, then turned to his staff for opinions.
A boss who couldn't even get boss treatment from his own employees. Curry wept tears on the inside, opened his mouth in utter defeat, and said:
"Fine. Alright. Let's do the Part Two stream…"
And so Barcode's stream went live—and for Curry alone, a hellish Part Two began.