"And that's it! That's it! It's over!" the commentator babbled into their headset. "The match goes to Klutz! I can't believe it!!"
The cheering in the stadium was deafening, and yet still Kenneth Lutz couldn't hear much. He was too busy coming back to reality and focusing on the fact that he needed to breathe.
For seven years Ken had worked his ass off to get to where he was now. Where he belonged. He had finally achieved his life's dream -- sitting on a stage, hearing people chant his name. For one glowing moment in his life, however long it would last, he was the biggest name in eSports.
Ken wasn't thoroughly stupid. He knew that people saw him, at best, as a guy who was really good at a video game. He knew that being good at pushing buttons in a fighting game and narrowly beating other people who were basically as good at pushing buttons wouldn't get him far. He'd have to go back home to his uncle, who was sweet but didn't believe that eSports was a "real job." He knew he would have to enjoy this moment while it lasted. In this moment, he had everything he had ever wanted -- demonstrated skill, people literally chanting his name, power, and, odds are, money.
Of course, he didn't have a girlfriend yet, but he was still working on that.
After taking his award, Ken said a few words to the crowd that were well-rehearsed and yet he never expected himself to be saying them, then quickly left the stage to reunite with his coach and his manager.
At first he was grinning when he saw the duo. Trophy in hand, he upgraded his walk to a light jog, a sparkle in his eyes. Perhaps even a fire, eager for more. Unfortunately, his manager's job always seemed to be the firefighter.
"Kenneth," Christopher, his manager, began. Ken's smile faded. His manager called him by his gamertag, Klutz, when he was proud of him. It seemed like the more awards he won, the less his manager graced him with the name he had earned.
The trio walked out of the stadium hall into a slightly more private hallway. "You were faced with just about the biggest moment of your career," Christopher continued in his monotone voice. "Your ending speech could have really solidified your brand. And the speech you went with..."
Ken wasn't even going to bother staying on-topic. After all, the speech he gave was the one his manager made him memorize. "Sorry, did you miss the part where I won the tournament?!" Ken replied, anger boiling through his voice yet the smile returning to his face. He was panting in disbelief. "Right now, I don't give a shit about brand, but the winne-"
"Well, that's just it, Kenneth. You don't care about your brand." Christopher continued. "You do understand that the contract you signed states that..."
Ken tuned him out and turned to his coach, DisRupt. "Can you believe this guy?" Ken asked him, still panting.
DisRupt's face was turned into a sorrowful grimace as he shrugged. "He actually kinda has a point, man." he begrudgingly replied. "It's not going to get any easier from here to keep your brand going. We talked about this -- you kind of have to play the villain card here, man. Hype people up. Make sure that your next t-"
"Are you serious?!" Ken's smile was now gone. "Okay, no, shut up. One, this was the speech I was given. If you two are seriously going to crawl up my as for following orders, you can blame yourselves for it going sour. Not me. If it even did go sour. Two, okay, two, like... I won! Can you give me a day without worrying about branding?! I expected this shit from you, Christopher. Like, I hoped not, but I still expected it. But..." Ken turned to face DisRupt. "Come on, man."
Christopher was unmoved. "After your performance here today, you're going to really need to try harder in the next few tournaments."
"Try harder?! Am I invisible here? I won! I was the best. Yeah, I'll try harder, but that's to defend my title, and I just earned it. And by the way, I just earned it."
Christopher sighed loudly. "Kenneth, your job is not to win tournaments."
"Ex-cuse me?!"
"Your job is to get the name of Klutz to reach the people. Do you know what the Twitch demographics were like during the final match? This was the last watched final match in-"
"Yeah, you know, believe it or not, I wasn't looking at the Twitch numbers when I was onstage proving myself to the world." Ken countered. "I'm making a living, aren't I? I'm keeping you two in it. Hell, I probably just got you guys your biggest paycheck yet."
"With the way you could have extended the brand, and didn't, I'd say you came closer to robbing us tonight, Kenneth." Christopher replied sharply. "We have missed out on a great opportunity, and we're going to need to take some steps to cover the ground we've now lost."
Ken's look turned incredulous. He just won. His friends should be happy for him. This almost seemed cartoonish. Not only were they this obsessed with numbers and money and marketing, but they were obsessed this quickly? They couldn't let him have just ten seconds to gloat? This wasn't fair. He turned to DisRupt, who was eyeing the floor.
This wasn't the first time Ken had to deal with his manager and coach acting like this; they had always been the more business-oriented types. He had just hoped that the duo had put that whole shtick in the past, or at least wouldn't have whipped it out tonight. Unfortunately, as the two were demonstrating, he was dead wrong.
"Okay," Ken's voice got smaller, knowing he really only had moral ground on which to argue, which wouldn't exactly get him far with Christopher, who had a mind of money and legalities. "So what happens now?"
"I'm thinking Klutz gets involved in a lot more local tournaments." Christopher clicked a pen and wrote something down in his notebook. "It works with your backstory. You are from around here."
"I'm from St. Catherine's." Ken objected dryly.
"To an international crowd, that's basically Toronto. Anyway, I want you to let loose at these tournaments. Yell a little more, see if you can get into a shouting match with one of your fellow fighters. What's that one guy, YelloJello?" Christopher turned to DisRupt, who nodded. "I think he'd be good for that. If we can push the narrative that you're cracking after an international win, then all eyes will be on you."
"Not happening. John and I are friends." Ken stood his ground. "It's fucking creepy and, um, kinda manipulative to orchestrate a meltdown. Besides, the only local tournament in this city is happening in two weeks, and regis-"
"You're already registered." Christopher interrupted, not looking up from his notebook.
"What?"
"You're already registered." Christopher repeated, no change in his monotone voice.
"But that's February 17th. I have plans with my uncle that day. We -- we planned this like a month in advance. Why did I not hear about this?" Ken protested, feeling his blood run a little cold.
"I registered for you ahead of time. If you placed poorly here, dropping out of a later tournament dramatically would have been good optics."
"Making me look like a crying child is good opti-"
"And if you won, like you did here, we wanted to keep the momentum going." Christopher sighed annoyedly. "Of course, we were hoping you'd have come out of this tournament having performed better, but-"
"I'm going to be with my uncle that day. I promised him. Going to be with him means a lot to me." Ken stood his ground.
"Bro..." DisRupt clearly interjected, sensing the tension building.
"Shut up." Ken sharply retaliated. "This is important to me."
"Sorry, but you're not." Christopher replied. "If I need to remind you, it's in your contract plain as day that I am able to sign you up for any event I deem impo-"
"It's in my fucking contract that you can override my social life with video game tournaments I don't want to enter, where you guilt me into pretending to fight with one of the nicest eSports players I've ever met?!" Ken asked in disbelief.
"I'm not asking you to pretend." Christopher clarified. "I want him to believe it too. If this ends up on his Twitter, there's going to be a lot of people from his audience looking at you. There's not a lot of cross-traffic coming from his circle, and-"
"You want people that don't know me finding out about me as the guy that yelled at him for no reason?!" Ken was now shouting. "You guys are like, cartoon bad guys here! I'm not fucking doing this!"
"Bro, come on, we're doing this for you. We want Klutz to keep on living, and sometimes..." DisRupt trailed off, gesturing with his hand.
"Brands don't last forever on their own. We have to do this, if you want a future in eSports." Christopher added.
"I'm not a brand! I'm a human being!" Ken shouted.
"Bro-"
"Shut the fuck up! I'm not your bro, I'm not your puppet, and I'm not coming to your damn tournament or picking a fight with nobody that doesn't deserve it!" Before he knew it, Ken was marching right for the nearest door. Above it, the exit sign.
Ken would have liked to say he was cool in these situations, but the same passion that brought him his victory also got him into trouble more often than not. Before leaving, he turned back around to face the two, and just started shouting, venting out his frustrations in a very immature and public manner.
"Fucking enough!"
"Go to fucking hell! Both of you!"
"Fuck you both! Fuck this place!! Fuck it all!!"
One might have expected the duo to follow after Ken, but both DisRupt and Christopher had worked with eSports players before. They knew about the hissyfits, and they knew that, just like with children, they didn't want to prove to Ken that his tactics could work. "You still haven't collected your prize money yet." Christopher pointed out. "And there will be people that want interviews. Remember th-"
"Collect it for me." Ken replied, his shouting tone wavering. He knew that if he stayed much longer, it would turn to quivering.
Before he knew it, Ken -- no, Klutz, the newest eSports superstar, had exited the building, no doubt turning a few heads on his way out. As soon as he was out of the building though, he was no longer Klutz. The man facing the chill of the early February air was Ken Lutz, 24, kind of geeky looking (go figure), and possibly unemployed, depending on how well his manager would have taken the fit he'd thrown.
As soon as he was out of Roy Thomson Hall, he just started walking. If this was the life for an aspiring eSports player, then he didn't really want to be one. He wanted to be just Ken. He kept walking until he reached a familiar sight -- a simple convenience store. He'd come here every so often for energy drinks or something like that whenever he was in the area, but ever since he came to Toronto for the tournament, something else about this place was on his mind.
He walked through the front door, a beep signalling to the cashier that he was entering. His eyes crept up from the floor to the cashier's desk to confirm that she was working tonight.
