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The highest mountain. The longest river. Unkillable.
When Lee Sanghyeok first began receiving these titles, it flushed him inside out with pride.
Look, dad. I was right, I was right! He wanted to gloat to his teammates, to the classmates who doubted him, to the entire world if anyone would listen. For the first time in his life, he was someone, and he could be even more.
It continued, building on and on.
What did it mean, to be synonymous with God as just a teenager?
The first to stand on top of the world twice, then again, back-to-back.
It took years, but those words eventually became like shackles.
A team he’d disposed of so efficiently just a year ago, tore him down from his throne.
Still, the masses lifted him up from the rubble and praised him regardless.
The hero, They called him, watching his stone golem descend time and time again to no avail.
It’s alright, nobody can win all the time, they’d said.
But a hero would, he wanted to shout back. A god would!
They continued to tear him down again and again, year after year, using the same words to herald him, like they could strike fear in people’s hearts the way they used to.
So gods can bleed!
But he saw right through them. When they looked at him, he could see the recognition, a split second of excitement, before it settled to see him for what he truly was.
A man. Mortal, just like all those before him.
So would that be his legacy then? A fool who was called God so many times he really believed it.
Why would he keep pushing then? If he’d just retired early, those precious early years would have perhaps been enough for a legacy. He could’ve let himself dwindle out quietly, hidden away from the spotlight. Instead, he bared himself to the world, splaying his mortality on the biggest stage, climbing back up again for years.
He really is a fool then.
Lee Sanghyeok. Faker. God. They were inseparably intertwined, one could not exist without the others anymore. So even if he had to play God just a little longer, it would hurt less than the alternative of living without.
He grows too, finds new ways of thinking and alternative outlooks of life. They help, somewhat.
Winning is not everything, you can find joys even in the process of doing.
He understands it all, really. It helps him navigate loss better, the processes of unlearning and relearning everything and tackling every challenge. But there is no competitor that competes without the dream of winning it all. Even while knowing it might be a fruitless battle, the only person he has left to prove something to is himself.
Maybe it’s because he was so focused on chasing after himself that he felt the loss more this time too.
It hit him, somewhere in the middle of his career, what being immortal meant. The coming and going of those around him became second nature. There are faces that gaze at him from across the international stage only once before they fizzle out, never to be seen again. There are long-term rivals, who move from fighting against him face to face to strategising behind enemy teams instead.
There are people he’s fought hundreds of battles beside that have taken off to new challenges too. He likes to think he got used to it early enough in his career, likes to think he knows better than to get attached, but that’s the thing about being mortal too - he craves companionship.
Long ago, before Faker and Lee Sanghyeok had fused into a singular entity, companionship seemed trivial. His teammates were great because they were chosen to support him. When you’re the star of the team while being the youngest at 17, it’s hard not to let that get to your head. He’s embarrassed to admit the things he said, the attitude he had towards his teammates, as he stood in the centre of it all.
If he’s being honest, even until today, he hardly recalls a time he wasn’t in the centre of his team. The trend continues, even when almost the entire team is replaced a couple of years later, with the exception of Seongwoong-hyung, who has always had the patience of a saint. This time, his teammates are even stronger, dominating across the board over and over again, cementing themselves as rightful legends by his side.
He meets Junsik and Jaewan, who are the same age as him, but they’ve been together much longer than he’s known them. They talk about amateur leagues and inter-team drama about people Sanghyeok has never even heard of. It made him feel sometimes like he was an alien in his own skin, but that’s alright, because no matter how isolated he was in the team, Jeonggyun-hyung would be by his side. It’s especially alright because they kept winning anyway.
This is when Sanghyeok learns that you don’t need to be friends to be a good team.
He meets Euijin and Haneul a couple years later, friendly to a fault, and learns that the reverse can be true too.
It’s all blended together after that, standing as the only constant in the onslaught of people walking through the revolving doors of T1, nameless rookies to diamonds in the rough to certified all-stars.
Seongwoong leaves. Junsik leaves. Jaewan leaves. Even Jeonggyun-hyung leaves. He’s long since learned better than to dwell. It pays off in the long run. He remains unmoving for the years as they go by, and eventually each one of them finds their way back.
It’s relieving even, as they return outside of the context of their team, outside of the pointed comments and passive aggression that persisted during their seasons, now assuredly ‘friends’ and not just coworkers.
It’s not a bad deal, to be fair. By the time Jinseong leaves, Sanghyeok has already seen so many of his friends return after finding their own paths, and he’s almost certain the same could be said for Jinseong too.
It feels a little different this time round.
He supposes it’s not the first time. After all, he still feels a pang of familiarity whenever he walks past Jinseong backstage, but even then, Sanghyeok had only met Jinseong in the middle of his career.
He’s not sure how it started.
They were just like any other roster when they first started out, three unproven homegrown names alongside a genius support and a legend veteran of the game who hasn’t seen international success for over three years. Sure, when they went undefeated for their first split together, there were plenty of joking stories of how he was a wise old mastermind controlling four mechanical geniuses, but that was far from the truth.
First, it was his dad. Then, Seongwoong, then Jaewan, then Junsik. One by one, they tell him,
It’s nice to see you act like a hyung.
But he’s not sure if he can take credit for it.
Was it not Minseok who started shyly but bluntly challenging his strategies in their feedback sessions? Was it not Hyeonjun who patiently explained every joke whenever he asked? Was it not Wooje who refused to treat him differently and instead whined to him for food and attention? Was it not Minhyeong who never left him alone in case he struggled?
Was it not each of them that had made him feel like for the first time in his life, he was truly their brother?
Was it so much that he let his guard down, or did they tear down his walls without abandon?
Maybe it’s because they are so much younger, so much more inexperienced than himself, yet so similar.
For so many years of his life, he’d imagined himself as an observer looking in, unable to understand the minds of those around him. But when he sees Wooje poring over a VOD of himself, obsessing over every second of every trade when everyone else had already left to draft for their next series, when he sees Hyeonjun sacrifice his own comfort picks to spend every spare minute they have in-between scrims to practise other champions to grant their coaches that much more freedom in draft, when he sees Minhyeong painstakingly load into every game knowing he would spend most of it under pressure on his own so that Minseok could roam like no other support does, and when he sees Minseok speak of nothing besides draft for an entire day straight, mind running a mile a minute, he sees himself.
It’s inescapable, the feeling of pride that surfaces inside him when he sees them. But he’s undoubtedly the highest authority in the world to say that the price of dedication and love to this extent is crushing disappointment.
He finds himself in the same place he was five years prior, standing defeated on the largest stage in the world.
It hurts, of course it does, but it hurts even more when he thinks of the two people on either side. Minseok had just turned 20. He thinks of his life when he was Minseok’s age, already touted as the best player in the world, the precedent.
Maybe that’s when it all changed for him. Seeing the way each of them had laughed and enjoyed the game together throughout the tournament, and falling apart at the end because they cared.
For the first time in his life, Lee Sanghyeok was struck with the feeling of wanting to protect each one of them, knowing too well himself how painful it was when he fell at the final hurdle all those years ago.
“I’ve been in that situation many times before, so I checked on my teammates first.” Though accurate as it may have been, it never fully encapsulated the way the way he felt, wondering just when they’d become so precious to him.
They change after that, the crushing loss still bitter on their tongues going into the next year. Sanghyeok feels like he’s watching them grow before his very eyes. When he’s reminded of his mortality again, this time devastatingly irreversibly, it should feel like his entire world was shattering around him, but it doesn’t. Maybe the years have strengthened him, or more likely, it’s his new ambition to be a pillar for his teammates.
He hardly confides in anyone, but the thought that he is the reason behind their failures, that he is unable to keep up with other midlaners of the new era, essentially anchoring their team down eats away at his thoughts. He wonders if forcing them through all these trials, unlike anything any other team would have to go through, would fester into animosity.
Would they come to despise him?
He’s dealt with jealousy. He’s dealt with greed. He’s dealt with condescension and doubt. All of it a part of being around so many different people for so long, but he’s never feared anything more, the thought of wasting away their youth to chase the same old dream he’s always had.
He’s not sure he could ever forgive himself if he did. So he pours everything he has into healing, watching every game they play like a hawk, wanting more than anything to bring this team to the big stage again.
The team is at an all-time low when he returns, all the trust they’d built up over the past year and a half seemingly smothered into nothingness, but Lee Sanghyeok did not return to lose. They never blamed him for taking a break, trusting that he would return soon, no matter how terrifying the injury had seemed. It’s the least he could do to trust them back.
When he gets to lift the trophy with them a couple months later, it’s liberating. A part of him is graceful in victory, but an uglier part of him resurfaces, vindicated by the win. The familiar hunger that had been dormant for so long reignited again. He suppresses it, as he had so many years ago, after so many disappointments, afraid of something unsightly rearing its head, afraid of the person he’d become if he lets it consume him again.
They may have come back into his life as friends, Junsik, Jaewan, and even Euijin, matured by their experiences from the outside world, but Sanghyeok can never forget the words he’d said to them when he had yet to soothe the creature inside of him, when all he wanted was to win, it didn’t matter how.
He’s a little placated at the thought that he feels it again after they’ve already won.
“Hyung!”
He’s torn out of his own spiralling thoughts when the Wooje calls for him, realising he’d spent most of their car ride zoned out and lost in his own head.
“Hm?”
Wooje rolls his eyes jokingly, “We were saying that it must feel super good for you to show everyone again, huh.” He’s been absolutely glowing the entire night, and now is no different. His eyes glint mischievously.
Minhyeong scoffs from behind him. “If I had to see another ‘Faker downfall’ post then I would’ve shut them up myself.”
Minseok makes a noise in agreement from his corner, absolutely vibrating with energy now, and Hyeonjun hums noncommittally, already back to scrolling on his phone.
It’s not much, if anything at all, but he as he turns back around in his seat, he can’t stop his lips from pulling into a little smile.
By the next week, they’ve signed themselves away to another year together, this time promising each other even more, and by the week after that, they’re everywhere. It’s schedule after schedule, and Sanghyeok finds his photo gallery running out of storage, now filled with new photos of each of them, falling asleep in varying states of makeup, costuming, and hair, in possibly every green room in South Korea. Haneul says he looks like a proud father when he’s browsing through his gallery, and he can’t argue much against it.
There’s a common illustration within their fanbase.
They call Gumayusi the second sun of T1, after Faker himself, matched together with the radiant moon, Oner. It’s fitting he thinks. In his downtime, he toys with the idea a little. They’d called him the sun before, omnipresent and eternal, but Minhyeong is different.
Minhyeong burns brighter than anyone else, passion searing into every move he makes, every word he says. Hyeonjun being the moon makes sense too, a steady companion throughout the darkest nights. Then there’s Minseok. Sanghyeok thinks he’s a lot like the stars, sparkling chaotically, glittering throughout the sky with his creative ingenuity. Wooje is probably the easiest of them all. Crashing thunder, striking lightning. He’s impossible to look away from, savouring every bit of attention he gets.
Sanghyeok… he doesn’t know where Faker fits in all this. Every moving part seems to fit together, but he can’t seem to find himself in it all.
“You’re the sky,” Hyeonjun says matter-of-factly, the only other one awake on their way back to their hotel after spending hours frolicking, for lack of better word, in the Berlin snow. Wooje is drooling unabashedly onto his shoulder, but Hyeonjun is unfazed.
Sanghyeok hadn’t even been expecting an answer, mostly rambling his thoughts to himself, but he smiles back at Hyeonjun anyway, “Why do you say that?”
Hyeonjun shrugs, “You’ve been here since the beginning, and you’re sure as hell going to be here at the end,” he starts, “and you’re kind of our protector.”
The last part trails off a little, like he’s a little embarrassed by his own words. Sanghyeok lets them settle in his mind.
The sky.
He really likes the sound of that.
Of course, the nature of their jobs means that their period of happiness has to dissipate by the start of the next season.
And it’s gruesome.
They’d promised so much more to each other, while they were on top of the world and anything could be possible. Another domestic title, another international title, a golden road.
They miss the mark every time.
And he’s right, the ugly beast inside rears its head once things start going south again. It thrashes as they are forced to give in to every defeat, victory snatched from their grasp so many times, just as it had been a year ago exactly. Winning worlds doesn’t change anything, after all.
He bites his tongue when it wants to lash out at someone else, knows the regret that would follow would certainly destroy him. He doesn’t expect the consequences.
It’s a culmination of everything really. The moving of goalposts every time they fail to meet one, the targeted attacks with no foreseeable solution, this fucking injury.
He lets it all fester inside, letting it consume itself, until the frustration builds up and finally comes to a head on its own.
It’s bruising and terrifying, but they stay by his side through it all. Minhyeong, the embodiment of an eternal sun, burns brighter, almost blindingly. And in the final hour, Wooje crashes through the rift, catastrophically, carrying them to the international stage for another time.
There, they take the time to settle in early before starting their preparations for Worlds, not once looking back at the past. They never break from it, knowing most of anything they say in the coming weeks will be wholly centred around taking home another trophy. It’s a far cry for the buzzing energy they had two years ago in San Francisco, but they don’t even have the agency to mourn the loss.
Now, deep inside, Sanghyeok wonders if he would’ve caught on earlier if they weren’t so busy. Would he have seen that one of them had been pulling away? Would it have made a difference if he did? It’s futile to dwell on it now, but he can’t stop his mind from drifting back to it every once in a while.
When they destroy the nexus together for a final time, it doesn’t feel real. After all those hours of planning and preparation, it’s finally over. The disbelief only lasts for a second before Hyeonjun is excitedly wrapping his arms around him and Wooje comes barreling in after.
It feels special this time, the climax of their story as a team. He can’t stop the emotions from overcoming him.
I love you. He thinks despairingly, for the fact that he might never say these words out loud, but as if they could hear him all along, Wooje’s head tucks itself under his chin and Minhyeong’s hand is grips desperately into his back, trapping each one of the five of them into this moment forever.
“Hyung, I need to talk to you about something,” Wooje approaches him in the lounge as they’re about to fly back. Hyeonjun’s off to the bathroom and Woongki-hyung is bringing Minseok and Minhyeong around to browse the restaurants.
He lowers the book he’s reading and peers at Wooje’s face, uncharacteristically serious. “What is it?”
“I… Don’t tell the others, but I think I might be leaving the team,”
He should’ve expected it, after all, no team can last forever - this he should know better than anyone. It still feels like a bucket of ice water has been dumped over his head.
When he doesn’t respond, Wooje continues to ramble, “I’m not sure yet, but my agent talked to me and said it could be a good opportunity for my career,” he scratches his head nervously.
If Sanghyeok were a different person, if he were more like Minseok, always concerning himself with other people’s lives, maybe he would’ve said something. Maybe he would’ve even begged Wooje to reconsider and convince him to stay one more year.
But he’s not, and he has a feeling that Wooje came to talk to him because he’s not the type to.
“It’s nothing against you, hyung,” he continues, “I think I just want to try something different for once… see if I can do it.”
The thing about Wooje is this - he’s Sanghyeok’s favourite. It’s not something he’d ever admit out loud, not to Wooje, not to the media whenever they’re bound to ask during every interview, not even to any of his friends when they tease him about being a father of four.
Shy and mischievous in equal parts, he adores the way Wooje lights up when he thinks he got away with something he shouldn’t have, be it a dropped honorific or an uneven trade in lane.
It’s ironic too, when he laughs during an interview and says, “Jeonggyun-hyung is probably extra attentive to Wooje because he’s a baby,” knowing he might as well have been talking about himself.
And maybe he’s not trying that hard to keep his affection for their toplaner under wraps, not with the way Minseok always jokingly whines at how he has no problem calling Wooje ‘cute’ while the rest have to scramble for compliments from him.
He’s far from the first teammate lost to the idea of testing themselves outside of the endless shadow of the tallest mountain, though none have come and admitted to his face quite like this. He knows then, that no amount of lip service or coddling could change his mind about the need for more, the need to validate for himself, it would only postpone it.
“Whatever choice you make,” he starts, still collecting his thoughts, “I’m honoured to have played with you.”
“Ah… hyung…” Wooje whines back, “that obviously should be my line!”
Their conversation is interrupted when Hyeonjun returns and drapes himself over Wooje’s back tiredly, completely missing the way Wooje’s expression freezes on his face guiltily. They drop the subject and neither of them bring it up again.
They go home. Minseok prepares to enlist. Wooje doesn’t join him, though they’d joked about going through it together so many times before. His decision is clear.
They don’t hear from Wooje for weeks.
The eventual news destroys Minhyeong and Hyeonjun, devastates perhaps their entire organisation. They’re advised to practise silence, to refrain from contact. The contact stays untouched in his message list. It’s not like they’d ever punish him for it.
In fact, he finds himself being more rebellious than ever before, swiping every message he receives from their managerial team.
Still, he doesn’t receive a message from Wooje. He doesn’t let it dishearten him, choosing instead to log into his League client, which has been dormant for months now.
The God Thunder account glows from the top of his friends list, one of the only people he knows who’d choose to use his off-time for solo queue, though most of the reason is probably to avoid thinking about anything else.
He lets the client run in the background as he goes to read the next patch notes and gets a ping from it a few minutes later.
God Thunder #dufma:
hyung
i don’t know what to say
i think I made a mistake
Hide on bush #KR1:
Wooje-ah
Where did you disappear to?
It’s a poor attempt to lighten the mood, even to his own eyes.
God Thunder #dufma:
i don’t know
i just thought I’d be too easily swayed if i talked to any of you
i shouldn’t have done that
i didn’t know it would turn out like this
Hide on bush #KR1:
How are you?
God Thunder #dufma:
i’m alright
got the solo bedroom in the dorms ヽ(ー_ー )ノ
Hide on bush #KR1:
That’s good.
Take care of yourself.
-
I’m here
If you need anything.
There’s not much left to say. He’s never really contacted anyone who is still an active player before. Junsik and Euijin would probably laugh at his attempt to talk, and he’d be inclined to agree that they would be better in these situations, but it’s always been a little different with this team. Somehow, he’s sure Wooje will understand.
Yet somehow it still hurts a little, just a few days later, when he’s live in front of thousands of waiting fans.
He can’t stop the smile that threatens the corner of his lips whenever Wooje shows up on screen, walking around looking dazed as always while an intense monologue plays in the background.
The chat fills up.
Who?
Get out.
Who is Zeus?
Yep. We don’t care.
Traitor.
He glances back to the video, where Wooje slouches throughout his walkout all the way from the doorway to his desk and thinks of how Wooje had walked up to him backstage a couple months ago and asked to stretch with him so that he could fix his posture. He thinks of waking up early during the Asian Games to make the most of their facilities and have a session with a trainer, of which Wooje had only attended two before ditching every time after that in favour of sleeping in.
He thinks of how Wooje’s foreseeable future would be riddled with these comments.
There’s probably only a handful of times in his long career that he’s ever brought up someone no longer part of his team, becoming an expert at avoiding questions and practising the silence the organisation emphasised so much. But he’s broken so many rules already, so what’s one more?
Let hyung protect you one last time.
He thinks about that final fight they had, now with the added context that it’s the final game they’d ever play together. Wooje playing unapologetically in his own style, greedy to no end, pushing on his own into the enemy turret even as the others call for him to back off. When the enemy team eventually and inevitably collapses onto him, he turns and starts trading, calling frantically for his Sanghyeok-hyung to back him up, trusting him to descend from the sky and rescue him, as he had so many times before.
In all the years in his career, Faker has become the master of too many champions and too many play styles. Where any other player would glow just to have a single champion be recognised as a signature, he has more than he can count on one hand. First, they called him a mechanical assassin, able to outplay anyone in any matchup, just from his hands alone. They criticised him then, when the game had begun to evolve around him and he could not keep up to the controlled play style of the dominant mages until eventually, he became the master of that too.
Minhyeong tells him while they discuss their skins after their victory dinner, that of all these champions that have long since become synonymous with ‘Faker’, perhaps the one with the greatest meaning of all is the Colossus, Galio.
“Everyone says you’re the final boss of League of Legends, and that’s cool,” he takes another bite of the cup ramyun they’d brought for supper, “but I feel like you’re more like a hero.” He pauses, mouth full of spicy ramyun, and shrugs, “Or maybe that’s just to us.”
He wonders if Minhyeong has any idea what those words mean, of how the very term felt like a slap in his face seven years ago, a reminder of all his failures and his own helplessness.
He’s long since resigned himself to being the villain. It makes for a good storyline, they told him years ago, when he was still a child. He had no choice but to agree and stand watch as they built him a demon throne every year to jeer at him, wanting no more than to tear him down from there.
He thinks of how Wooje had thrown himself directly into the enemy team, knowing certainly that a hero would descend.
It’s a fitting end, Sanghyeok thinks. Ultimate trust forged from the years, displayed to the world one last time.
epilogue
It’s a little fun, he has to admit. How many years has it been since someone truly new has made their way into their little circle? As comforting as the familiarity they had was, his guilty pleasure in life was definitely still using his persona to tease other players.
It’s the very reason Boseong is never going to get his number if he can help it.
Wooje, no matter how shy he is, is the type to look for openings to forgo formalities right off the bat, and he’s gotten away with it for as long as he’s had a career. Doran is someone who is the exact opposite. He’s spent years having to readjust himself to different teammates, too used to balancing precariously rather than steamrolling right through.
It doesn’t escape him either, that Junsik, Jaewan, and Euijin are constantly making up for their awkwardness by taking the reins and organising party games. He’s always been difficult to approach, a fact that they’ve teased him about for years already, so he’s still a little touched that they would do that.
It still feels a little strange, like missing a limb. They’ve always been a team that felt like it was greater than the sum of its parts and it’s only one change, but it feels like a rebirth of sorts. The excitement, of learning about each other again, learning how to fit together and bring out the best of each one of them, so that it feels like there’s magic in the air.
He wonders a bit bitterly if Wooje will go through the same, learning his role in his own team once again, though he’s been whisked away from them to do his training before even settling in. He knows he should be able to trust Wangho with it, but trust has never been one of his strong suits. He’s not the only one either, if Hyeonjun’s late night prolonged Discord calls with Wangho where he tries to casually skirt around the topic is anything to go by.
It’s going to be a challenge, for all of them, but it’s one he’s faced many times before. He hears a cacophony of laughter through their terribly soundproofed walls now and knows he has nothing to worry about.