Quitter le Nid — To Leave the Nest
By: Samuel Rossignol
Tags: Esport, Runaway, Thoughts And Feelings, English

A glister in my darkness, a burning in my heart. I am writing down, in this quarantine times, because today I want to give back a snip of what have been once given to me. Those lines are dedicated to Lee “Flowervin” Hyun-Ah, Yoon “Runner” Dae-Hoon and to all of these players that are a little bit more special.

RunAway wins the Contenders Korea 2018 season 2 Finals

The day is the 17th of February 2019. The Overwatch League 2019 has just been launched and amidst the new teams joining the party, there is one whom already had me all. The yearning that lasted for an entire off-season would finally blossom as fear and doubts were only beclouded by my eagerness of seing these players again. But no more time to think, here they are, under the lights of the Blizzard Arena. Once in game, angst and dread, all vanished. As if they never left, I saw them reawakening under my glance. They wore different colours but the very same fire was blazing. I told to myself “They are back, RunAway is back”.

My story with RunAway begins back in 2017, the long-haired and self-doubting teenager I was back then was going at his cousin’s place to share an afternoon of some good ol’video-gaming. I dropped my bag and joined him in the living room, he was playing, he was playing Overwatch. If I did take part in the open beta one year from then, I had not been hooked in by this new colourful FPS by Blizzard Entertainment which seemed very haze to me. He offers me to sit down and to try the game out and as a large panel of characters opened to me, the visual quality that was displayed delighted me. As my eyes were moving from one character to another, I got to know them better, a bond grew onto me. My first choice was the high mobility granted cybernetic hero Genji. The first hours were chaotic but rather fun and on my way back home I only had one thought in mind : to get my hands on this so entertaining curiosity named Overwatch.

A few days later, eager to know more about the game, I tuned in on Twitch.tv/OGNGlobal which hosted the 2nd season of the Overwatch APEX, the major Overwatch competition at that time.

Overwatch Apex season 1 stage

Why now, why here, I’d never get the answer to these. Never would I have imagine what was ahead of me when I opened the stream as a handful of young koreans wearing pinky sweats took their seats on the stage. Right before the start of the match, a name on a screen, a name that would carry on with me for the 3 years to come : RunAway.

From the first glance they already had all my notice, Kaiser, Bumper, Haksal, Stitch, KoX and Runner, the energy that was sparkling out of these kids had never been matched. With my eyes still dazzled by Haksal’s genji plays the match came to an end as one of the most legendary plays of all time took place. LW Blue was wiped, RunAway rose to the Finals and I was brought into what would be a running and moving journey.

If eventually the players would change, the soul of the team would still burn as bright as the sun. One day Kaiser, one other Bumper. One day Coma, one other Slime. But it was always with the same grin and hindering anxiety that I would turn on the stream to see them play. I saw them losing, winning, laughing, weeping, breaking the moon, entwined to each other. Those memories that come to me incessantly while writing this down, are etched in my mind forever. Without understanding a single word, I was part of their odyssey. On the stage of Contenders proudly brandishing their trophy, confessing sweet courtesy to each other on camera, under Vancouver’s colours, tenderly introducing themselves under the glance of Runner, in the spaceship looking booth of Apex’s stage, fiercely posing for an advertisement spot, as signatures under love filled farewells, under the eyes of Flowervin shimmering with pride, hugging each other as tight as they could, under the tangerine spotlight of Philadelphia, never once they had stopped being RunAway.

Because I can’t write, this sums it all up — Video by Bonnie Qu

Within 3 years they made me experience everything esport had to give, from unexpected triumphs to heartbreaking breakdowns passing by tumultuous times, unforgettable moments and above all that , what it felt like being part of a family. I cried when they lost and when they won, I wept as well. For not all tears are an evil, some are more precious than others, I mean these that are to remember. This shelter they gave to me, never I could repay them for that. They changed my life for the better, they were a light to follow when everything went darker. They sparked joy in me when I thought there was none to bloom. They gave back to me the will to live. Because they never gave up, because they always stood as one, because they were RunAway, I followed them, until the very end.

Today the turmoil rumbles once again. We do not know anything about what will be of the team under Vancouver’s colours. I thought they were invincible, I thought they were higher than the skies. I’m writing down all this because I don’t want to carry any regrets, I want to give a glimpse of what have been once given to me. By my words, I want to settle what this team really means to me, I want to describe the indescribable. I want to write Love the way RunAway wrote it to me. I want to thank the people who saved my life and to fly by my own wings.

I want to leave the nest —