One Trick Pony, Pt. 1

Wi Chang-Min was terrified of the thought that Ji Yuan was alone in his expensive yet still unused kitchen, but nevertheless he wanted to play one round of Era of Eternals in his gaming room before breakfast, so he decided to leave his guest unobserved for a while. Since it was still early and he believed that this was the time his reactions were the quickest, he wanted to use the morning hours to the fullest. After all this was the first of only three days Chang-Min had left before the start of the EoE 2 beta. He walked into a barely unfurnished room that was flooded with the warm waves of orange light that you can only see right after the sunrise. Inside his gaming room there was just a single ergonomic chair and a table with a mini-PC right next to a screen. It looked plain and nondescript, like the work-place of a middle class man in a dead-end job inside a cubicle.

His gaming room could not compete with that of other streamers, there was no scenic lighting, no high-end gaming PC with water cooling and no number of monitors that could rival the mission control room of a NASA expedition.

Wi Chang-Min sat in front of his PC staring at his reflection on the black screen for a few seconds. His hair looked messy and he noticed that he might have to shave again soon. "I should better not stream with my cam on today," he thought. It was a decision that he made more frequently in recent times.

After a couple of minutes, Chang-Min set up his stream and started to queue up for a game. Before he could even say his first words, there have already been more than 5000 viewers watching him. And exactly at this moment his chat went crazy. Wi Chang-Min was usually able to read every single comment that people wrote in his chat, but today all the comments were flashing by too fast. Still, he already anticipated what all of his viewers desperately wanted to know: "Will you return to esports in EoE 2?"

Wi Chang-Min did not prepare any answer to this question, since he knew so little about it himself. Was there even a team who wanted him or was his reputation too damaged? Would he be able to stand his ground against today's pro players?

Chang-Min knew that those questions were unavoidable, still he did not feel well thinking about them right now. He wished to find a match as quickly as possible, so he could talk about his in-game decision-making and avoid these topics.

At the same time more and more people were joining his stream and Chang-Min felt the need to say something, so he tried to be diplomatic. "Good morning everyone. To make one thing clear, I am considering my options now that EoE 2 comes out, but there is nothing decided yet. So I…"

Chang-Min was interrupted by the signal that he found a game sounding like a gong with an echo. It was the sound of salvation for him, now he could just ignore his chat, while they could spin all possible theories for his future.

Chang-Min looked at the names of his teammates, he knew all of them, since he was usually playing with the same people. The Gunslinger player in his team was a famous one-trick pony on the Chinese Excellence Server called MiyuKing, who was regularly in the top 5 of the leaderboard. Every single game, he locked in Miyu, a female ninja character. Miyu was a ranged marksman shooting Shuriken, but during her ultimate she can transform into an agile melee assassin, dashing through her enemies and dealing bonus damage that keeps stacking every time she dashes. Whenever a unit she attacked died, the cooldown on her dash was reset and her ultimate duration was extended.

Miyu was long regarded as the most difficult champion to play in the game and Y&Y had to make changes to her in almost every monthly update in the first year after her release, because she was extremely strong in the hands of skilled players but almost absolutely useless for 90% of the playerbase.

Miyu was jokingly said to be the Main Character of EoE's Patch Notes. Despite her immense complexity MiyuKing had an intuitive understanding of Miyu since her release and never picked a different Eternal since then. He would just leave the lobby if his opponent picked Miyu or if she was banned, which happened a lot, since people in the higher ranks started to ban Miyu especially because of MiyuKing.

His incredible mastery of this champion made him famous and people loved to share clips or montages of his best outplays on different short video platforms. However, at the same time it was his greatest weakness. While he invented new combos and optimized every aspect of Miyu's gameplay, his skills were only mediocre playing any Eternal besides her. MiyuKing undoubtedly had the best Miyu mechanics in the world, since he always found unpredictable and creative ways to extend her ultimate, making it seem to be permanent. Still, it was impossible for him to play in one of the professional leagues, since just by banning Miyu, MiyuKing would lose his only strength and become a liability for his team.

MiyuKing streamed without a cam and without a microphone, so his identity was unknown for a long time. Only a month ago, a person claimed on the social media ReadThat to be MiyuKing's closest friend. His post sounded like a cry for help, "My best friend since childhood days is living in a parasocial relationship with Miyu from EoE! He ignored my messages for two months, all he does is play Miyu all day, he doesn't come to school, he doesn't even play any other Eternals because he considers it some sort of cheating! This has to stop!" The person attached a picture of a tiny room that allegedly MiyuKing was living in. There were posters of Miyu filling the walls, Miyu figurines filling the shelves and an XXL Miyu Body Pillow filling the bed.