According to sources close to
Sheep Esports,
REJECT have signed Yuma “Dep” Hashimoto and “XoNs” for the 2026 Challengers Japan season, finalizing a major rebuild of their roster. The Japanese organization is one of the country’s biggest and was also among the first to fully commit to
VALORANT competitively, jumping into the game as soon as it released in mid‑2020.
REJECT is bringing back Dep, who was there at the very start of that
VALORANT project before leaving for ZETA Division, where he played the first three seasons of the VCT Pacific circuit. On the opposite end of the experience spectrum, the team is also signing a young South Korean player, XoNs, who has never played in an official competitive environment before. He has only just turned 16, the minimum age to compete in official Tier 2 tournaments, and is expected to keep his Duelist role in this project, a position where he already looks very comfortable in ranked.
Dep, for his part, was also used to playing Duelist with ZETA, having spent most of his career on that role before role‑swapping in 2025 Split 2 and frequently picking up Viper or being moved over to Sentinel duties. That switch did not help the Japanese club reverse its negative trajectory, as ZETA finished 9th–10th in both stages of the regular season and 9th–12th at the Kickoff event. Those results marked a clear step back from 2024, when ZETA hovered around mid‑table, and are a long way from the dramatic late qualification for Champions 2023 the organization had managed to secure.
This new duo now joins a club that is used to fighting at the top of the Japanese league and that is only retaining its captain, Hiroki “hiroronn” Yanai, from last season’s roster. Hiroronn joined in March after one season at ZETA alongside Dep and recently played with John “Yoshiii” Kawakami, a Filipino Duelist who is very familiar with the Japanese league after two seasons with SCARZ. The final addition, Jeremy “Jremy” Cabrera, is also Filipino but comes from a full VCT career, having played three seasons against Dep with Team Secret before being removed from the team at the end of the year.
