Chapter Text
October, 2016
Wangho was only eighteen when he had to face the world crumbling before him for the first time. It had slipped from his fingers just like that, even though he had come so close. When his screen contorted to black and white as his Elise was knocked down, he couldn't bear to watch the Nexus fall, convinced it was all just some cruel nightmare he was about to wake up from. He can't cry, he shouldn't.
As heavy as his head felt on his shoulders, he still had to straighten up and greet the winning players in succession. Them moving past him, and him rooted in place, like wind blowing through barren land. SKT T1 bowed before the roaring crowd of Madison Square Garden as Wangho fought to stand upright. It felt unfair, that they were there, and he was where he was. Hollowed out with a chip burrowing its way into his shoulder. He hadn't quite settled the bitterness that pooled in his mouth even a month later, even when he was winning again. The bitterness will stay, and it will continue to reinvent itself, but for now Wangho just had to learn how to mold it in a shape that he could stomach. Even if it takes all of himself, because nothing else mattered more.
~
Seongwoong was twenty-three when the world was put on his shoulders for the innumerable time. Looking back, it was as if he never truly did relax a single muscle in his body as he watched the second and third game unfold from the practice room. Finely adjusted to be put in the ring if anything went awry like a well-oiled machine. When he was to replace Sungu as SKT T1 puts one foot in the grave, he wasn't shaken. He was ready. He had to believe he was.
The faint trembling in his hands was a familiar feeling. He understood how to keep it in check, had been in stages this big more times than the average player could brag about. Had been the Hail Mary pass in dire situations his team found itself in. Whatever throe that threatened to rupture from inside him had to wait, however much it ached. When silver scrapes was sounded and again when a winning game five bought the team another life to hang onto, Seongwoong was swept in ecstasy. It's easy when everybody else in arm's length were too. Only when he was away from the noise did his knees give out from the crushing weight of a sensation he thought he'd long hammered in and beaten numb. In the elevator around strangers, Seongwoong asked himself whether it was all even worth it.