Chapter 2: Carry, what should I do?

“No.”

“Whyyyyyyy.”

“You’ve been asking the same thing for a week now, Hong Eunseol?”

“Whyyyyy.”

“No means no. What makes you think I’d let you play games all day?”

Our Mrs. Ahn, who was peeling fruit under the living room sofa, said so with a very determined face.

“You’ve just been filling her head with hot air. It was better when she was just a fan of the players.”

“Still, she seemed pretty sincere…”

“What difference does it make if she’s sincere? She’s going to high school soon, what’s with the games.”

My mother was never really positive about games in my previous life, but perhaps because of the gender issue, she was a little stricter than before.

“And who’s going to let just anyone become a pro? I hear there are tons of boys who want to become pros for that Roll or Lock thing just walking around near the school.”

“I’m a hundred times better than them!”

“You haven’t even played games much before. Have you been playing a lot lately?”

“I don’t have to play a lot to know. I’m definitely better than the aspiring pros out there.”

At my confident answer, Mom seemed to have lost her mind.

“Oh, really. Is that so, our daughter?”

“Yes!”

“But why did you do so badly on your midterm exam? You said you had to be smart to play that game?”

“…It uses a different part of the brain.”

“Are you a neuroscientist now, not a pro gamer?”

“No, I really want to do it. I want to be a pro gamer. Huh?”

Mom’s resistance is strong, but I’ve become just as strong.

“Mommm……”

The affection of a usually blunt child surprises parents.

And if it’s a girl, the destructive power is incomparable.

For now, ‘I’ was always blunt, so if I see myself begging like this, my heart will move a little.

‘And well…’

Every morning when I see my reflection in the mirror in the bathroom, I think it might be okay to act like this for a while, maybe forever.

“Honey. Still, since she wants to do it so much, how about letting her try it before she goes to high school?”

In the end, Dad, who shouted his full support for the challenge on the day of the game, first lent a hand.

From taking me to the LOC stadium in the first place, Dad is totally the type to push for what I want to do.

With Dad saying that at the right time, Mom finally sighed.

“I knew it from the moment you came back from watching that game last week and started singing.”

It was a virtual permission.

“But, there’s a condition.”

“…What is it? I can’t do anything about my school grades.”

Unfortunately, studying is not my forte.

“Since you’re going to be a pro gamer, I have to set a condition related to that. Mom’s not that closed-minded.”

Our Mrs. Jang briefly searched the internet on her phone and showed me a familiar emblem.

“I see this is the highest tier in the game, you have to reach there to at least knock on the pro door, right?”

It’s a time when solo rank is still valid.

Later on, even 2nd and 3rd tier pros will play a game of lining up their smurf accounts as a hobby, but for now, there’s still a bit of a fantasy about ranked games themselves.

I can’t help but smile.

Maybe it’s because I can predict what she’ll say next.

“So this, achieve this and show it to Mom.”

The emblem symbolizing Challenger was displayed on Mom’s phone screen.

“Until when?”

“Just before the end of this semester.”

Roughly three months from now.

It was more than enough time.

“But you won’t say anything about my test scores in the meantime, right?”

“Did our daughter have any more points to lose?”

“……”

…I should probably study a little during queue times.

‘…It’s easy?’

I don’t know about the exams, but since it’s a decent public middle school, the class difficulty was quite low.

I devoted my whole life to being a pro, but since the game was doomed, I started preparing for the college entrance exam late, so I don’t think I’ll be scolded for my test scores.

Anyway, the most important thing right now is that school is over for today.

“Why are you packing your bag so quickly?”

“I have somewhere to go.”

“You’re always lying down and sleeping, what’s going on?”

They were friends who were both familiar and unfamiliar.

Compared to the time when I lived half my life in the spicy taste of the pro scene and the chat window, they were soft and cute.

“Oop, oop.”

“Chaewon, don’t touch my cheeks, touch your own! You always do this when you have bigger ones. Her cheeks are mine.”

“The rich get richer…”

‘I’ do that kind of joke often, so what can I do if my hand moves automatically.

While we were squeezing each other’s plump areas, Chaewon didn’t let go of her question.

“So, where are you going?”

“PC bang.”

It’s not that the device at home is bad, but since it’s not the latest model, in order to easily adapt to the new system, it’s better to do it in a good place.

For reference, I heard that PC bangs have practically become the main body of VR devices, but anyway, everyone seems to be calling it a PC bang out of inertia.

“Are you going to buy tickets for the stadium again?”

“Really, even boys aren’t as serious about Lock as you are.”

“They’re practically free-to-play, just buying skins. Our Eunseol’s life is Lock.”

It seems that the popularity is different from my previous life, seeing that even girls have a basic understanding of Lock.

“No, I’m going to play Lock, not buy tickets.”

Even though I’m a student, seeing that the player’s goods fill one side of the room, it’s more natural to think that I’m going to the PC bang to buy tickets rather than to play games.

But that misunderstanding was until today.

“I’m going to try to prepare for pro.”

It’s time to normalize my life.

“…Really?”

Meanwhile, at my words, the whole class suddenly became quiet for a moment, and suddenly a buzzing sound came from the group of boys.

“There are those guys who can’t get enough of Lock.”

“They say tier is god to them.”

“Our Eunseol, if bad oppas come to the PC bang, you’ll run away saying no, right?”

“What are you saying.”

I should play one more game in that time.

The PC bang in front of the school was always like this, but today it was packed with male students.

“Is Hong Eunseol really playing Lock?”

“It looks like she’s really playing if she turns on the game?”

“Turn on spectate, spectate.”

“Who knows her ID?”

“Looking for a brave soul to ask her.”

“Is there one?”

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that there were no male students who didn’t know Hong Eunseol, even though she didn’t talk much at school and was always sleeping.

First of all, her appearance goes without saying, and it was rare for a girl to know about Lock.

Lock—LOC—hit the world’s gaming scene on the back of a VR device that is said to have transcended this era, but that doesn’t mean that everyone in the world knows about the game.

Even though VR devices themselves are now at a level where everyone has one, there were many cases where people used them but didn’t know that the game company made them.

Therefore, the Lock craze was certainly an unprecedented success in the history of the game, but it did not spread much among girls who did not have much interest in the game.

But at school, Hong Eunseol was very interested in Lock.

Of course, it was a little different in that the interest was based on fandom rather than the game itself.

Still, just having a common topic was enough to make the male students’ liking for Hong Eunseol quite high, even though they had never spoken to her.

Of course, her appearance contributed more than half to that liking.

“Oh, she turned on the game.”

In the case of high-end PC bangs, it is said that individual spaces can be made virtually semi-closed with egg-shaped chairs that pros use, but as is usual with PC bangs in front of the school, performance and cost-effectiveness are somewhere in between, so there was no such thing.

So it was possible to peek from behind and from the side.

It was a joke that Hong Eunseol’s seats on both sides were empty.

“Talk to her before she logs into the game.”

“You talk to her.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m confident I’ll be arrested just by talking to her.”

Originally, if it’s too high, you don’t even think about challenging it.

“Weren’t you Grandmaster? Why don’t you go and ask her to duo?”

“…It’s obvious that it won’t work because of the tier difference, what’s the point.”

Jeong Jihwan, who always came to play Lock as he aimed to be a pro mid laner, just watched the culprit of the noisy PC bang today.

“Huh?”

Then, for a moment.

He met Hong Eunseol’s eyes.

He had definitely never met her, but she strangely looked happy to see him.

“…She’s gesturing to you.”

“Why aren’t you going?”

“Drag that guy out.”

“I haven’t even played a single game yet…!”

With that trivial gesture, he was half-dragged in front of Eunseol.

“You’re Jeong Jihwan, right?”

“That’s right. Have we met before?”

“You should have reached Grandmaster by now…are you Grandmaster?”

“…Yes.”

Aside from how she knew his tier, Eunseol’s tempo was so fast that he couldn’t figure out how the situation was going.

“Sigh. Then we can’t duo.”

Then the number of people chattering next to him increased.

“Tell her it’s okay even if it’s flex rank!”

“Please, just one game together…!”

“You may not know, but three of us need to be saved!”

Although Jihwan, who heard those words, was just stunned, Hong Eunseol continued without hesitation.

“Then first, I’ll put him in because he’s Grandmaster, raise your hand if you’re Diamond or above.”

Five people raised their hands, and fortunately, there were not many people with overlapping positions, so it was not difficult to fill the remaining positions.

“Good. Then let’s play one flex game with these 5 people. I need to get used to VR.”

That’s how the middle school representative team was formed in a daze.

“Drive the bus well, Jihwan.”

“If we lose this, return your Grandmaster.”

“Our flatfish roll is good.”

In the chaotic team that was created, Hong Eunseol declared confidently.

“What are you talking about? I’m going to carry.”

As soon as the queue popped and the ban-pick window appeared, she picked an assassin sword champion as the first pick.

“……That’s a mid champion?”

“Yes. You go top.”

He was at a loss for words at the line that was taken away so naturally.

Since she knew his rank, Jihwan thought she would go to the top lane, the remaining position after picking people based on their positions, but that wasn’t the case.

“You’re perfect for top.”

With Eunseol’s bright smile and the cold gazes of the other guys, he was eventually exiled to the top lane.