The Only Woman

Thanks to Jerico wholeheartedly taking my suggestion, the team name became Curry Crusher.

Once the name was settled, we waited for the last teammate to arrive.

Honestly, I barely knew who Streamer Latte even was, so while we waited I looked him up.

Streamer Latte.

Unlike most other Leori streamers, Latte was thirty-four this year.

Physical skill was the kind of thing that usually fell off a cliff with age—yet Latte was the sort of player who smashed that stereotype to pieces.

With overwhelming mechanics that papered over whatever he lacked in game sense, he held onto Grandmaster like it was nothing. A living veteran of Leori, plain and simple.

Married, and he still holds down a regular job…

The truly shocking part was that Latte was just an ordinary family man—stable career, household to look after, the kind of guy you could run into anywhere.

Maintaining Grandmaster on pure physical skill while juggling work and a family?

Latte was so far outside the ordinary that I half wondered whether we were even the same species.

"Ah—Latte hyung just messaged. Looks like today's not going to work for him."

"Is that so? I was hoping to at least say hello. Shame."

"Well, I figure we should properly introduce ourselves tomorrow evening and go over the schedule then. Are you free tomorrow night?"

I couldn't answer Jerico right away.

Evening was prime time for sniping Curry's solo queue stream.

After a brief internal debate, I decided to treat it as one step back for two steps forward and opened my mouth.

"Yeah. That works."

"Great. See you tomorrow, then."

A soft chime sounded as Jerico left, leaving me alone in the call.

There was no reason to sit in an empty voice channel, so I dropped out right after him.

"I'm wiped…"

Lately I'd been burning through stream hours at the expense of even my workout time, and it was catching up to me.

Today I'd stayed parked in front of the computer for another half hour after going offline, and the fatigue hit harder than usual.

I shut the PC down, threw myself onto the bed, and was out within minutes.

News that Ain—the mid laner on Jerico's team—had been injured caught a lot of people off guard.

Of all times, right before a major Platform War?

When Jerico, who was close with Ain, filled everyone in on what had happened, the fans couldn't help but worry.

Worry for the injured Ain, and worry that Jerico's team might dissolve entirely.

But the notice Jerico posted today wiped those fears clean away.

A statement that they'd found a streamer to replace Ain, who could no longer compete because of the accident.

And once word got out that the person named in that notice was none other than Barcode—the female Challenger who'd been blowing up lately—the fans went wild, packing the collab scheduled for today with sky-high expectations.

Which was how I found myself prepping for a collab that hadn't even been on the original plan.

Before dropping the notice, Jerico had floated the idea of all of us hopping on together.

Antenna and Coldog had agreed without a second thought.

With Jerico already on board, that was more than half the team saying yes—not exactly a situation where I could refuse. Not that I'd wanted to. I'd been fine with a collab from the start.

One hour left until the scheduled time.

I could've waited and gone live right when the collab started, but I had nothing better to do, so I hit the stream button early.

After going live, I put on some music and stepped away to the bathroom for a minute.

In that short stretch, the viewer count had climbed to three thousand.

Glancing sideways, I watched ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the word Bahi scroll endlessly up the chat.

Short for "Barcode hi," apparently. Every time I saw a nickname like that, it hit me all over again that I was actually a streamer now—a strangely complicated feeling.

Then again, grinding streams this hard and still insisting I wasn't a streamer was pretty funny on its own.

I scrolled chat upward, picked out one of the more aggressively baiting messages, and read it aloud.

"Barcode-nim please say hi attempt #2. Hello there, qyer1723."

I pulled up the chat history of the viewer who'd been spamming aggro nonstop.

The living embodiment of chat bait, honestly.

The viewer under the ID qyer1723 had typed nothing—absolutely nothing—except variations of "Barcode-nim please say hi attempt #n."

Even scrolling all the way to the top, the very first message was the same aggro greeting spam.

"Congratulations on successfully getting a hello. As a celebratory gift, here's a ban."

I moved the mouse and executed the Specter of Greetings, then leaned away from the mic so the stream wouldn't catch me clearing my throat.

"Looks like most of you already know, but for anyone who doesn't—quick rundown. I'll be playing mid for Jerico's team."

I saw a message I absolutely could not ignore and rushed to answer.

"I didn't cut Curry. Curry cut me."

I checked the mood in chat and smiled to myself.

Keeping a perfect poker face, I pressed on.

"After the collab he never even contacted me… never sent a recruitment offer… Ah—but please don't go into Curry's stream and start blaming him or anything."

Shooting the breeze with chat like that, time ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠slipped by fast.

Before I knew it, only about twenty minutes remained until the collab.

A sudden alert chimed, and I checked Discord.

Jerico had messaged—something about Latte wanting to say hello ahead of time.

We'd be greeting each other again during the collab anyway, but there was no harm in doing it early, so I hopped into the call Jerico and Latte were already in.

"Ah, there you are. Latte hyung, this is Barcode—she'll be taking mid for us in Ain's place."

"Pleasure to meet you. I'm Streamer Latte."

"I—I'm Streamer Barcode. Looking forward to working with you."

I'd done it yesterday too, but introducing myself as a streamer still refused to feel natural.

"I'm a bit of a boomer, so if I ever do something out of line, please don't hesitate to tell me."

"In that case, first thing—could we do something about the stiff formal speech…? Just talk however you're comfortable."

"Ahem. If it's that awkward, I'll just speak casually then."

The viewers seemed just as smothered by Latte's stiff formal speech as I was.

Right up until I'd said it out loud, part of me had wondered if I was the weird one.

Thankfully, I wasn't alone in finding Latte's awkward honorifics unbearable.

"What… is my formal speech really that weird?"

"Latte hyung. Want ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me to be honest?"

"Go ahead."

"It's fucking weird."

"You. Stay after."

"…You know I'm joking, right?"

Muttering it in a shriveled little voice only made me sound less convincing.

I had no idea what Latte's "stay after" actually meant, but I could already guess that whatever it was, Jerico was terrified of it.

Two soft chimes rang out in succession.

"Hii~"

"Hello."

As collab time drew near, Antenna and Coldog joined the call too.

"Since everyone's here, let's go over today's collab real quick. Anyone still not live?"

Nobody answered Jerico's prompt.

That meant everyone was already streaming. Confirming there were no issues, Jerico moved on.

"The schedule's tighter than expected, so originally I wanted us to do proper introductions and all that—but the important thing right now is the Platform War, and getting our synergy ready for it, right? We've ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠already said hello among ourselves anyway, so we'll skip that and jump straight into scrims. That's the entire collab agenda."

"Rico hyung, I heard you were prepping a ton of stuff. That's really it?"

"What, you got a problem with that?"

At Jerico's comeback, Coldog—who'd been the one to speak up—promptly shut his mouth.

Having wrapped the collab opening with ruthless speed and efficiency, Jerico sent out the invites.

Accepting dropped us into a custom lobby, where today's practice opponents were already waiting.

Two Challengers, two Grandmasters, one Master.

A composition built to match Platform War rules—no more than three streamers who'd finished the previous season in Challenger allowed on the same team.

"Aren't the practice opponents a little too stacked?"

"We've got two Challengers and three GMs. How is that stacked."

Coldog said it half-joking; Antenna answered dead serious.

He wasn't wrong—on our side, Jerico and I were Challenger, and everyone else was Grandmaster.

Truthfully, Coldog and Antenna both had Challenger-level skill.

Last season just hadn't gone their way, and both of them had closed it out in Grandmaster.

Once everything was ready, we moved from the lobby into champ select.

The ban phase rolled out, and of course the enemy side banned my signature pick—Yone.

I glanced over at chat and found a lot of viewers fretting on my behalf.

Funny thing was, thanks to the whole "mysterious Yone god" image, Barcode had gotten locked in people's heads as someone who could only play Yone.

I'd even tried Yasuo on stream once to shake that reputation, but it hadn't moved the needle much.

The amusing part? I'd been holding Challenger long before Yone even existed.

Not on this Barcode account, of course.

The other account I fired up whenever I was bored.

The one I now used as a sniping account, after collecting friend requests from all kinds of BJs and streamers.

I'd been hitting Challenger on that account consistently since Season 6.

And people still wanted to ask someone like me whether I could play anything besides Yone.

"Barcode, what are you picking?"

As my turn approached, Jerico asked with quiet expectation in his voice.

The enemy mid had already first-picked Galio—strong into teamfight comps.

Galio was favored into AP mids.

Not that he was particularly weak into AD either.

Our jungler had taken a safe first-pick Elise.

Weighing all of it, my champion still didn't change.

No—if anything, there was no situation more optimized for this pick.

"I'll take Talon."

"Mm. Got it."

I locked Talon, and the rest of draft flew by.

At last the first practice game began. Nothing happened in the invade phase, and laning started clean.

"I'll clear three camps and look for a top gank."

"Got it. I'll play a little safer then."

Jerico called his pathing, and Latte shaped the wave to set up a gank-friendly lane.

"If I land the hook we kill him."

"Ah, missed it. Still burned Lulu's flash though."

Just as Coldog and Antenna were winning their lane—

From mid—the only lane that had been dead silent—an unexpected victory cry rang out.