Chapter 19
[Hye-Bam's fucking comeback after a monthㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ]
What do you mean, six months of self-reflection~ One month is plenty.
-Don't they care about public opinion? Shameless.
ㄴ??? Hye-Bam didn't do anything wrong in the first place. Are you running your mouth without knowing the facts? ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
ㄴAre drive-by users a science or something?
ㄴThe public sentiment that tried to bury Hye-Bam just for collabing with ‘those members’ once or twice was a bit muchㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
ㄴFact) The people here worked harder than anyone else to bury Hye-Bam
-After getting burned by collabs, their first comeback stream is another collab?
ㄴTheir mental has been tempered by countless simps
[If Hye-Bam was gauging a comeback too, then Fedor and Ymir will be back soon, right?]
Even if not Ymir, Fedor probably won'tㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Honestly, Fedor did make it pretty obvious they were too close with Bebegood.
ㄴGasp
ㄴGasp gasp, Homuri
ㄴPlease go easy on the banned words.
“Great, public opinion is looking fantastic.”
Sia was browsing various online communities, checking the reaction to the announcement of her return to streaming.
At the time, when she'd been swept up in the public sentiment trying to bury her, she was so indignant she could barely sleep; but she had also been relieved to spend a month free of stress, focusing on her main job as a college student.
Since it had been so long since she'd streamed, she had prepared meticulously.
Sia had been streaming for less than three years, but it was after appearing on ‘Docu 4 Days’ that she truly became famous.
Perhaps she had become even more famous than ‘Retro,’ the top-tier pro gamer who had arguably been the true protagonist of ‘Docu 4 Days (Legacy of Legends),’ because she was the only female player currently in the highest ranks.
It was probably also because, on Twitch, where avatars and voice changers made it impossible to tell whether a streamer was male or female, she had made her own gender unmistakably clear.
Just in case, she checked the comments on the announcement again to see whether there were any strange reactions.
[I’m Hye-Bam, a Twitch streamer. To celebrate my return, I’m planning a collab with someone who’ll really surprise you.]
-No way, Bebegood?
ㄴThey're in prison right now.
ㄴDo you really have to crawl all the way in here just to stir shit up?
-A comeback stream and a collab too? This is too sweet~
-If you're late to stream again today, I'll come over, rip out your ponytail, and turn it into twin tails.
ㄴThat's somehow scarier than saying you'd come over with a knifeㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
“Ready? Then shall we start the stream?”
“Do I really have to wear this?”
The cat-ear headband was terribly cumbersome.
But she'd been told the bizarre headband was actually the voice-sharing microphone for the collab, so she couldn't just say no and throw it away.
“It’s cute! It’ll be fine; you won’t even notice it much once we’re playing. The stream starts in five seconds.”
The countdown began.
Was she nervous? Of course she was. Very much so.
She had never liked putting herself in front of people, even by nature.
Her circle of relationships had always been small and deep.
One might question whether they had really been deep now, but there was no doubt they had been small.
In Sia's waiting room, cluttered with brightly colored posters and wallpaper, the lights suddenly snapped on.
[Starting stream: 0:00:01 - Hye-Bam]
“Bam-ha~ Hii hii!”
-Bam-ha
-Bam-haBam-haBam-haBam-haBam-haBam-ha
-Bam-ha
-Why does bro sound so awkwardㅋㅋㅋㅋ Is it because it’s been so long?
-Congrats on coming back
-Bam-haBam-ha
The camera still only showed Sia.
She expertly adjusted the camera angle and lighting, showing the professionalism of a seasoned streamer.
“It’s been ages since I last streamed, so I’m nervous! I almost died of boredom during my month-long vacation... I mean, self-reflection period.”
[‘OneHeadOfTofu' donated 10,000 won!]
-Here’s some tofu.
“Thank you, OneHeadOfTofu, for the 10,000-won donation! Anyway, I’ve been safely released. That’s what happened!”
-Are there people who voluntarily go to prison?
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Did you go somewhere fun?
“Where would someone as antisocial as me go? At first I tried to preview my classes, then gave up and just spammed preseason solo queue.”
[‘Delete' donated 50,000 won!]
-We all already knew, no need to explainㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ Congrats on coming back, Hye-Bam.
“When you put it like that, it kind of hurts, Oppa Delete? It’s been ages since I’ve seen you, but you’re so cold, so cold. Anyway, thanks for the 50,000 won.”
-This person slams ten ranked games a day, I saw it myselfㅇㅇ
-Noona won't scold you, so please go outside for once...
-Take a shower once in a while, too.
-Clean your room, too.
-And stop ordering delivery for every meal.
“Ah, I told you I’ll take care of myself! And I shower every day! Are you guys my mom?”
Her emotional state swung wildly several times within a short span. Was this what a live-streaming crash course looked like?
Sia also received several more welcome-back donations and exchanged greetings with her viewers.
Once she'd roughly settled things down, she readjusted the screen ratio. As the camera pulled back, the frame felt emptier than before.
“All right, as announced, I’d like to introduce today’s collab content. Why didn’t I tell you who I’d be collabing with or what we’d be doing today? There was a reason for that. It’s a real, properly prepared surprise.”
[‘Rebranto' donated 2,000 won!]
-For a surprise, you wrote the announcement pretty hastily this morning. Was this collab decided at the last minute?
“Well, I suppose there’s some truth to that, but I’ve been planning this for years, so saying it was last-minute would be inaccurate.”
-What are you talking aboutㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Bam nonsense ON
-Busted, right? You can already smell the disaster, right?
“Before I introduce my partner, today’s content—or rather, this week’s content—has been decided: to celebrate the new season opening today, we’re climbing solo queue. Bam, bam, bam.”
-That’s what you do every day.
-Is this heading for rock bottom?
“But! Just playing normally would be boring! So I thought we could try solo-queue duos, which have been brought back this season. They were originally removed because of fairness issues, but I guess they reintroduced them because they thought the fun factor was lacking?”
Sia’s lips curled into a grin. In the game information window, she proudly displayed her rank from the previous season.
“Can you see it? The difference in class between you and me?”
[WhenHyejiBecomesNight Challenger / Ladder Rank 186 / Top 0.00239%]
“So this is the person I’ll be duo-queuing with today. It wouldn’t be fun to reveal them right away, so I’ll show you their match history first.”
[■■■■■■ Bronze Ⅲ / Ladder Rank 6,880,996 / Top 88.71%]
She deliberately hid the nickname. It was her strategy to keep the viewers curious until the game began.
She couldn’t identify one of the countless users around the world from an avatar alone, after all.
“All right, come on out!”
At Sia’s beckoning, I stepped up beside her. The viewer-count indicator behind the camera had just passed 3,000.
“Hello.”
-Who is this...?
-That avatar is so kawaii.
-Well, nice to meet you.
The reaction was lukewarm. That was only natural: Sia’s explanation had been lacking, and my avatar was just an ordinary girl’s avatar, nothing special.
The viewers kept bombarding the chat with question marks.
“This person is really, really, really, really famous in the LoL scene, okay? But honestly, today is the first time I’ve ever talked with them like this, too, so we decided to use this collab as a chance to get to know each other.”
-They’re famous, but I don’t really know who they are (said completely seriously)
-Did you just bring some random normie?
-So, to sum it up, this is Bronze and Challenger doing solo-queue duos, right?
After that, she put forward the donation condition commonly used on Twitch for reaching a tier.
However, this time she modified the condition as follows.
“How about we make it reaching Master within a week? I don’t really know how good this person is, but I don’t think they’re going to be absolutely terrible.”
[Mission - Master within 70 games]
* * *
Master.
It was a term used to refer to someone who had mastered something.
Swordmaster was one example.
But in the modern era, there were far too many Masters, enough to tarnish the title’s prestige.
Across LoL as a whole, their number was estimated at roughly 10,000, but as a proportion of the player base, they were by no means a common sight.
Perhaps that was why the viewers were cold-blooded.
No matter how much of a Challenger someone was, taking a Bronze player all the way to Master was an unreasonable proposition.
But just as stories that shatter such assumptions are more moving, they bet their own money on the mission Sia had set.
You definitely won't succeed—but if you do, you'll show me a scene worth more than the money I wagered.
[Invitation sent]
[Solo Rank Season 2051]
[Entering]
[NoName has entered]
“How about it? You all think I’m going to fail? Are you sure?”
Six alphabet letters appeared above my avatar’s new model.
The nickname that had now become my name.
“Hello. I look forward to working with you again. I’m NoName.”
It was time to announce myself to the world.