Q: How does it feel to play with relatively low expectations on DSG?
huhi: I think it’s pretty nice, honestly. I think we don’t have that many expectations going in, so I think as a team, we’re like all trying to be healthy towards each other, and everyone is capable of doing that. We have a strong mental and we know where we started. I feel like with this roster, it’s about where we end.
I feel like even today’s game, we definitely had some shining moments — in both games we had some gold lead, but we ended up throwing. The team also saw what kind of improvement we can make on strategy in-game. So, I personally thought it was a really healthy thing. I just feel more confident and more confident, the more I play with my teammates currently. In the beginning, I didn’t know what I was supposed to expect when joining the team — now that I’ve started learning more about them, I’ve started seeing like a lot of like bright moments even in scrims.
At the beginning, our early game was the main issue, but nowadays I feel like we just have to stabilize. After we get our early game lead, [we need to] improve on midgame. We can always take it step by step.
Q: Do you and Castle ever comm in Korean?
huhi: It’s mostly English. There will be times, really rarely — maybe once a game — that me and him will talk in Korean. It doesn’t even happen every game, it’ll be if it’s something really specific between me and him that I have to get across fast, such as in lane swaps. But other than that, everyone is capable of speaking in English.
Q: How has it been connecting to the team as people?
huhi: On this team, we have kind of a unique environment where everyone cooks for each other. After scrim blocks, we’ll go Costco shopping together as a team and someone will buy a pack of steak and I’ll cook them a steak. And then the next day, someone else will cook me a meal, stuff like that.
Everyone kind of cooks for their own breakfast, at least. But for dinner meals, I think me and Felix [have] cooked, and I’ve seen Jerry cooking too. So I think three of the players can cook at least. Castle and eXyu always make like Ramen for themselves, or spam and eggs with rice, those kinds of things.
Q: But you and Abbe are like, proper chefs, cooking enjoyers?
huhi: I definitely enjoy cooking. And [Abbe] made me a New York steak once and it was actually really good.
Q: On DSG or 100?
huhi: On this team. [Back then] I remember me cooking for them, but I never [had] Felix’s cooking — usually on teams that I join, I try to not only be in game and practice, I’ll try to invite them on off days [and stuff] like that. Or have a board game night and I’ll cook dinner.
Q: What’s it like being the mature “older brother” for the team?
huhi: They call me team captain and all that, I am the oldest player and I have a little more responsibility. I think I’ve had that throughout my career, especially from like when I role-swapped to support. So, at this point, I’m kind of used to that [close relationship].
Like, the people that I’m working with currently, when I talk to them, I can talk to them human to human, and when I’m wrong, they can tell me that I’m wrong. And when they’re wrong, they take accountability and stuff. It’s not like I’m in an interview [so] I want to say nice things about my team — I genuinely enjoy my interactions and my relationship with my current teammates, and that was one of the main reasons why I chose to play again. Before joining the team I was calling exYu and Jerry, and Jerry is much younger than me — so yeah, sometimes he calls me “huhi unc”, but [that’s] just funny.
I like that relationship, you know? We have an environment already that like we can talk about any problems that we have with each other, and whatever I say he’ll try to absorb as best as he can. He’s really fun to be around, it kind of reminds me of like why I started playing this like game professionally. Back then, every team used to have a team house and it kind of [becomes] not only like a co-worker relationship, but like a kind of a family relationship.
Q: I saw you and Jerry reviewing hard after the series. Is that common?
huhi: Literally, after every game, he will come to me and he will ask, ‘Jae, did you say anything that you wanted me to do or anything like that?’. Anything that we have to improve on as a team, or just himself. Even after today’s game he was telling us as a team that ‘It was my first LTA game, is there any feedback like you guys can give me?’ Not only to me, but to everyone. […]
That’s why I was so surprised and I’m genuinely enjoying my time with them. [At one point] he wasn’t happy with his own performance in scrims, so like he thought that I would think [negatively] towards him, because he was thinking that about himself. So we had our first big team talk about it about it, like we had to like tell each other, like, ‘Don’t worry about making a mistake because […] as long as like we’re being professionals, our goal is to perform as a professionals.’ To [do that], he has to know that we trust him as a team and [know] that as a player that he’s going to improve in the end. […]
Like, [Jerry’s] not the only one making mistakes right now. I’m making mistakes. Everyone else is making mistakes. So I [told him], ‘Don’t ever think you’re losing us the game,’ and he felt a lot better. And literally the next day, I saw him playing way better. And even in today’s game, after the first game, when I was just roaming around on Elise, [he] felt really bad [about his performance]. He said like, ‘I didn’t have any control of the game,’ and I was just being honest with him — like, ‘Yeah, I think that’s because of me. I started roaming too early.’
Truthfully, we got a huge lead in the early game. We basically won the early game, and as long as we kept that, the game was over. Even in game, we were talking to each other like, ‘This game is over as long as we snowball it properly.’ In the end, we just failed to do that. And at that point, it wasn’t on Jerry, it was just on us. I felt bad that it was the playstyle of his LTA game, but he was completely fine. He was asking genuinely if there was anything that he could’ve [done to] impact the game.
Q: Any funny stories you want to share?
huhi: I mean, it might be a little inappropriate. In game, me and Lawrence [make] calls a lot, and then there’s this one specific term where I mean it as ‘Don’t give them [the objective] for free, we can still contest it.’ Like ‘Make it hard for them.’
But English is still my second language, so [in game] I would say ‘Make them hard, make them hard.’ And I didn’t know, because they just told me yesterday that Jerry always cracks up like whenever I say that, but like they understood what I meant.