FBPP C1

Chapter 1

“Ah, fuck.”

A man with light brown hair ruffled his hair in frustration. His eyes blazed as he stared at the words on the monitor.

Notice of Game Usage Restriction
Restricted Account: jhn.wav@cmail.com
Penalty: 30-day suspension from game access
It has been confirmed that in recent matches, this account repeatedly used aggressive language that caused discomfort to other players. Pursuant to the abusive language regulations, this account has been restricted from accessing the game until June 22, 20xx.

Abusive language and other forms of verbal violence…

All he did was say the game was fucked up because it was being played in a fucked-up way, and immediately he got slammed with a suspension. Since filtered chat only left him spamming special characters, his temper snapped, and so he deliberately typed out, “This game is fuckiiiiiing trash.” Then, insisting the opponent clearly had no brain, he told them to either chop off their brain right away or chop off those crippled fingers that couldn’t even press the keyboard properly. That was his fatal mistake.

Without realizing that the bastard who reported him was a trash account boosted by someone else, the game company penalized “HanJihanJang” for abusive language.

And these bastards, who only ever sent back macro responses when he inquired about adding new avatar colors, suddenly processed this kind of punishment with lightning efficiency.

“Damn it, it’s end of season too.”

This season had been especially rough—photo shoots and other events had kept him busy, so he had scraped together his rank only by carving out bits of time. Even in Italy, even in Germany, he had skipped every afterparty and rushed back to his hotel just to grind the game. Every single match counted, but when teammates kept shitting the bed and tanking his score, of course he’d lose his temper.

The account that had always maintained top rank had now been slapped with a neat suspension right at the door to that realm. He had no intention of taking a 30-day break from the game, but just thinking about the rank on his sub-account left a bitter taste in his mouth. Wasn’t it Gold? He only ever logged in there when there was some limited-event avatar to collect.

A buzz came from the phone charging wirelessly beside his keyboard. Ji-han, who had just closed the infuriating suspension notice, reached out his hand.

roenuu_official has tagged you in a post.

“What now.”

It was a coffee ad he had shot recently, forced by his agency’s nagging. Ji-han, eyes dulled with disinterest, opened the notification.

The pride of Korea! Pianist Seo Ji-han teams up with Roenu Coffee! Enjoy a refreshing iced latte and spend your next holiday in Bali…

He didn’t even bother reading the endless lines. Instead, he opened the comments section, pulled up the emoji tab, and dropped two orange hearts—the symbol of Roenu Coffee. It had been less than three minutes since the post went up, but the comments were already flooding in.

Seo Ji-han??? For real????

Roenu snapped lol I’m dead this ad slays

jihannnnnnnn love uuuuu plz come to brazil we’re ready for u ❤️

Holy shit he’s so handsome, preserve those genes

gorgeous

Not even a celebrity and he’s in a coffee ad? hmm lol

He hadn’t wanted to shoot it either. Without giving it much thought, Ji-han tapped back and left the page. The home screen was full of new posts, but he wasn’t interested. Right now, Ji-han’s mind wasn’t refined enough to exercise social graces over meaningless content. He had only come onto social media to fulfill his obligations under capitalism, not because he cared.

After some hesitation, Ji-han opened up a match history website. The record of his main account—the most recent search—appeared.

HanJihanJang / Master 1 / Last played 2 hours ago / Previous season: Legend

Master 1. The curse slipped out of his mouth. If he had just gained 50 more points, he would have reached Legend, but thanks to one slip of the tongue, a crack had formed in that long line of Legend-tier emblems.

Closing his eyes tightly, then opening them again, Ji-han searched a different nickname. His sub-account. He wasn’t even sure of the name, but luckily he got it right and the record came up.

JiniHaniJihani / Platinum 4 / Last played 3 months ago / Previous season: Platinum 2

“Oh, fuck?”

It was right on the edge of being demoted to Gold due to inactivity. Tossing his phone down, Ji-han grabbed his keyboard immediately. His fingers raced to type in the ID and password.

Gold was out of the question. Sure, he had half-assed matches on this account during event periods, playing casually without a care, but now that he had no choice but to use it for at least a month, the story was completely different.

A notification popped up telling him to change his password since 90 days had passed since his last login. He casually changed the first letter from lowercase to uppercase, then finally logged in. The sigh that escaped his lips was heavy.

His avatar was gone.

The character wearing nothing but the shabby basic avatar had never looked so pathetic. The limited-time costume he had gotten from an event had expired.

There was no way he could queue like this. Entering the cash shop, he opened the recharge tab and ran his credit card. The first thing he bought was a server megaphone. The common clothes for sale in the cash shop weren’t even worth considering—few options, all ugly.

[Server] JiniHaniJihani (4CH): Buying melee class 2nd uniform hidden colors (black/white) for each character, buying fox tails in bulk. Don’t whisper, send mail, I’ll check and reply.

Despite saying no whispers, a flood of thick-headed idiots filled his chat.

[Whisper] BananaGeneral: Hey, do you buy Akasha too?
[Whisper] NoeulDam: Selling 1 tail for 1800.

[Server] JiniHaniJihani (4CH): Buying melee class 2nd hanbok hidden colors (black/white) for each character, buying fox tails in bulk. Don’t whisper, send mail, I’ll check and reply.

Blowing another megaphone, he blocked whispers. Finally, the chat calmed down, and his mailbox started filling with alerts.

The 2nd hanbok would be easy enough to get, but the tails were the problem. The going price started at 1500 diamonds, and that wasn’t the issue—the supply was too low, since they only dropped from limited-time random boxes during events. For reference, the current market rate was 10,000 won per 100 diamonds.

[Server] JiniHaniJihani (4CH): Buying fox tails in bulk. No whispers, mail only.

Two hours later, all he had managed to get were two tails. He had even overpaid, falling victim to scalpers, dropping as much as 3000 diamonds for a single one.

“Shit, if I get banned again, I’m screwed…”

The game, Zenox, was a 5v5 match fought over five towers and one main base, with two tanks, one melee DPS, one ranged DPS, and one support as the standard comp. Each match, teams selected characters to ban. Five bans per team, ten bans total. This was called the “ban-pick” phase—ban and pick.

With over 90 characters available and the so-called OP characters always guaranteed to be banned, it might not have seemed like a big deal. But there was a catch: Ji-han’s main role was melee DPS.

At Legend and Master tier, bans followed logic: counterpicks against enemy comps. But that only started around Diamond. In Platinum and below, bans were nonsense: characters trolls liked to pick, ones someone simply didn’t like, or ones that had trolled in the previous match. And most often, that meant melee DPS.

No matter how many times he pleaded that he was different, it never mattered. Every melee DPS said the same thing. And since most melee DPS players were indeed the root of team conflicts, feeding if they didn’t get their way, nobody believed him.

At first, Ji-han hadn’t believed it either. But when he decided to play other roles for fun on this sub-account, he had a brutal awakening to why melee DPS were always called the culprits at this tier.

They were blind, clueless. Half of them never grew properly, failing to function as melee DPS at all. The other half sucked up every team resource under the excuse of “scaling for late game,” only to ruin the early game—and then, in late game, they’d rage at the team for not giving them openings to deal damage.

That was why in this tier, teams often ran two ranged DPS instead of a melee at all, even if it meant weaker overall damage.

And so, Ji-han’s main characters were at high risk of being banned. If, on top of that, his fox-tail-wearing characters were all banned at once, nothing could be more humiliating. Those fluffy tails were HanJihanJang’s identity. In a game played from the first-person perspective, if he didn’t see that soft, snowy tail swaying in front of him, everything felt wrong, unsettled.

But there was no helping it. With no one selling, he had to make do. His plan was simply to escape this flytrap tier and climb into Diamond, where the gameplay was tolerable.

…That plan lasted exactly two hours before shattering completely.

So this was Ji-han’s situation.

In the first match, the assigned tank whined that the only tank he knew how to play had been banned, and even revealed his nickname while begging for a role swap. Not wanting to sour the first match, Ji-han yielded melee DPS and took tank instead. The melee player turned out decent—grew well, initiated fights, and caught enemy DPS, turning engagements into 5v4s.

The problem was the ranged DPS. Complaining that the team wasn’t protecting him, he went and built defensive items on a DPS.

It was absurd. A DPS forgetting his role and stacking defensive items instead of offensive ones in the early game—his head deserved to be bashed in on the spot. But Ji-han endured. Out of pity, he even made the effort to check the mini-map and keep an eye on him.

The result? This dumbass DPS charged ahead of the support, had no mobility skills, and still chased low-health enemies all the way into the enemy base.

Then, he had the gall to yell at the support for not following him to protect him. The furious support snapped back, cursing, “You fucking DPS bastard, not only did you run ahead of me, you dove into the enemy base headfirst, and now you’re blaming me?”

From there, it followed the usual script. The team fractured. And there was no way a tank with zero damage could carry the game solo.

Defeat.