Chapter 4
1.
“Wha…?”
The sudden message made my whole body freeze. I felt like a field mouse cornered by a predator.
‘Aura… That’s the person, isn’t it…?’
A big-name streamer participating in this ‘Battle of Ruin’ as a team captain. She was practically my benefactor for picking Bullet out of all those participants.
‘But how am I supposed to reply to this?’
[Aura Is the Best : Bullet, what are you doing right now? Answer me.]
Another message came in while I was floundering. This time, it felt even colder than before.
‘Her username sounds like it belongs to a little kid, but she’s fucking terrifying….’
I swallowed hard and ran my tongue over my dry lips.
Ignoring her now would be shooting myself in the foot. My already rock-bottom image would sink even lower.
‘I need to send something, at least… But what should I say? What can I say that’ll make her praise me?’
My toes fidgeted anxiously beneath the chair. If I said something weird, I’d just add another strike against myself. But if I groveled too much, I’d look ridiculous, too.
[Bullet Is the Best : I was adjusting my sensitivity in the Training Range for the tournament. What’s up?]
After hesitating for a long while, I finally managed to type out a message and send it. Not too pathetic, but still confident!
‘That should do it! It’s the kind of reply that’ll make her like me!’
2.
[Bullet Is the Best : I was adjusting my sensitivity in the Training Range. What’s up?]
“…Is this bitch crazy?”
Aura—in other words, Shin Ga-on—let out a disbelieving laugh at the reply she got.
“Does she not understand what’s going on right now? There’s no way she doesn’t, is there?”
The small-time streamers she’d seen up until now were heavily influenced by online community reactions.
When people first started paying attention to them, they naturally began searching their own names online.
‘It’s only natural.’
It was the first time so many people had taken an interest in them. That feeling was like a drug; once you’d experienced it, you couldn’t help going back for more.
The problem was when public opinion turned sour.
When negative reactions piled up online, they visibly shrank back. Their attitude on stream became passive, they spoke less, and they grew cautious even about how they reacted.
‘But most small-time streamers have to go through that.’
They had no fans. And even if they did, there were only a handful. So when people went after them, there was no one to defend them.
A big-name streamer could make ten mistakes and only get criticized for one. Their fans would jump in to defend them, muddy the waters, and change the whole mood of the community.
On the other hand, a small-time streamer could make one mistake and get criticized ten times over. Sometimes, they even got blamed for the mistakes and misdeeds of big-name streamers.
‘Because they have no fans.’
And even among small-time streamers, Bullet was about as small-time as it got. Making it into the tournament had been a miracle.
And yet she’d made a hundred mistakes. She’d followed that up with an absurd excuse and an attempt to dodge responsibility, too. Her reputation had gotten so bad that she’d somehow come all the way around to being comedy gold.
‘So I figured she’d quit streaming and run away, obviously….’
Bullet’s behavior was that of someone who clearly hadn’t thought about what came next.
That was Aura’s judgment. So she’d already been preparing to choose a new teammate. If a boosting or hacking issue came up, replacing a player was a team captain’s right.
But Bullet hadn’t run away. She was practicing instead. As if nothing had happened.
‘What?’
Aura’s thoughts came to a sudden halt. She had no idea how to process the situation.
‘Is this bitch actually crazy? More importantly, why hasn’t she been suspended?’
She was so taken aback that she wasn’t even angry. The fury that had welled up when she first saw Bullet online was pushed aside by sheer disbelief and disappeared somewhere.
‘Could she have already lost her mind?’
Even when they first met, Bullet had seemed a little unstable. The kind people called a menhera. That was partly why Aura had picked her; she needed a volatile wildcard.
But this was more than a wildcard. It was a bomb. A bomb that could take down the whole team!
[Aura Is the Best : Practicing isn’t the issue right now, is it? Weren’t you suspended in the first place?]
She took a deep breath and started by asking what she wanted to know.
[Bullet Is the Best : I wasn’t suspended. That’s why I’m in the Training Range. But why did you just assume I’d been suspended?]
Aura stared at the screen for a moment after reading the reply. Then she finally let out a disbelieving laugh.
“Wow.”
Audacious. No, that didn’t even begin to describe it. She seemed crazy.
“Wow, seriously… Wow… What am I supposed to do with her?”
Her mind was a mess.
Aura typed and erased her reply several times. There was so much she wanted to ask and so much she needed to confirm. But it seemed difficult to sort it all out over chat.
[Aura Is the Best : It’d be better to talk over voice than chat like this. I’ll call you on That’sCord.]
A reply came back right away, but Aura pressed the call button before she even checked it.
Brrrring—
The ringing went on and on.
‘She’s not avoiding me, is she?’
Just as that thought crossed her mind…
Click—
[H-hello?]
The call connected at the last possible moment, just before it would’ve timed out. And Bullet’s voice sounded much the same as it had when they first met.
It trembled, utterly devoid of confidence. In other words, she sounded like a total loser.
“Hello, Bullet?”
[Y-yes?]
At that dazed reply, Aura let out a little laugh without meaning to.
“Why are you suddenly so lacking in confidence? You were so bold over chat.”
Aura deliberately spoke with a hint of sarcasm. Considering how much stress this person had put her through over the past thirty-six hours, surely she was allowed to complain a little.
[T-talking in chat… and t-talking over voice are completely different, though…?]
Her voice still trembled. Even so, she made sure to argue back.
“I don’t know whether to say you’re confident or not.”
[I-I guess you’d say I’m not….]
“Ah, right.”
Her self-assessment was a little too clear-eyed. It was like she was talking about someone else.
“So why exactly weren’t you suspended?”
[A-as I said earlier… I don’t think there’s any reason I should be suspended… I didn’t use h-hacks….]
“…You’re saying it wasn’t hacks?”
[…Yes.]
“That aim?”
[Yes….]
The answer came a little late. Aura narrowed her eyes.
“Do you have proof?”
[Just a moment….]
A little while later, an image came through in a private message. It was the account investigation results notice from the Nova Syndicate Operations Team.
‘Your account was investigated in connection with allegations of abnormal play during the tournament… This must mean the Battle of Ruin.’
She read through the message aloud, almost to herself.
No violations of operating policies.
No penalties.
Her eligibility to participate in the tournament remained unchanged.
When she finished the last line, she leaned back and let out a hollow breath.
“…So it really wasn’t hacks?”
[Yes… A-Aura, do you… usually deny the truth right in front of you? Like a flat-earther…?]
“What the hell are you talking about all of a sudden? I was just thinking out loud.”
[O-oh, yes….]
Aura rubbed the space between her brows and bit her lip.
“I can’t believe it, but I guess that means the aim you had back then really was skill.”
[Yes… Sometimes when you’re in good form, you just get aim like that, right…? People say you’re ‘in the zone’…?]
Instead of answering, Aura replayed the video in question.
T-t-t-t-ding—
More than twenty-five of the thirty-five bullets had hit the enemy’s head. The enemy damage hero’s health melted away, and even after reloading, the crosshair stubbornly hovered around the head.
‘And this wasn’t hacks…?’
No matter how she looked at it, it made no sense. It was drastically different from Bullet’s usual aim. It was strange how her crosshair only moved around the head, and suspicious how it suddenly jerked around.
Everything seemed suspicious, but there was another reason she’d been sure Bullet was using hacks.
Circumstances.
They’d lined up too perfectly.
When a small-time streamer first collabed with a big-name streamer, they usually looked up the community’s reaction. Of course they’d want to know what people thought of them.
And the moment they found out people were trashing them, they’d get desperate.
‘I need to show them something.’
‘I have to win them over somehow!’
They started clinging to thoughts like that.
So small-time streamers would shower big-name streamers with gifts or push themselves to stand out.
The problem was that they usually did it awkwardly.
Trying to leech off someone only won people over if you did it naturally and made it fun. The moment you did it too obviously, you just came off as unlikeable.
In that sense, Bullet had the perfect conditions for using hacks.
She was on Aura’s team.
She was getting trashed online.
And she must’ve felt pressure to show them something.
But her conversational skills were so painfully bad that she couldn’t win people over with her words. Even at her best, she was below average.
On top of that, her actual skill was mediocre.
In that situation, Bullet had two choices.
One was to keep her head down and wait for the tournament to end. The other was to try something, anything.
If she did nothing, there was no risk. But there was no reward, either.
On the other hand, if she took a chance, there was a risk. But she could hope for a reward, too. Sure, if she messed up, she could make herself even more unlikeable and be forgotten forever…
‘But she could get buried even if she did nothing. There’s a reason small-time streamers apply for big servers and tournaments like this. They need to get new viewers somehow.’
And Bullet seemed to have chosen the second option. The problem was what she’d decided to do. You couldn’t improve your speaking skills overnight. And it was hard to get better at the game in a short time, too.
That left only one option.
‘Hacks.’
That was what Aura had concluded.
‘I thought she was a real handful in all sorts of ways.’
A normal person wouldn’t use hacks, no matter how desperate they were. They’d get caught eventually. The fact that she’d used them anyway meant she must’ve been so desperate she couldn’t think straight.
Given Aura’s experience as a streamer and her reasoning, Bullet had to have used hacks. And yet she hadn’t been suspended. The investigation came back clean, and apparently that suspicious aim had been skill.
Truly astonishing!
“Hmm….”
Aura’s eyes narrowed.
‘What should I do?’
She understood that Bullet was innocent. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t replace her.
The controversy had already erupted. The team’s morale was shaken. It had affected the tournament, too.
If Aura wanted to, she could ask to replace Bullet.
The truth was, someone as big as her had no need to enter a tournament like this. She’d gain viewers just by streaming. One collab or one clip would be enough to get people talking online.
The rich get richer didn’t just apply to money. It applied to online streaming, too. Maybe even more cruelly.
Even so, there was only one reason Aura had entered the tournament. To win. She couldn’t forget the rush of that moment.
‘I really shouldn’t have won that first time….’
The thrill of winning for the first time. The flood of chat messages and donations. And then rewatching the VOD to relive it! All of it was still vivid.
The problem came after that.
Aura had kept entering tournaments because she wanted to feel that rush again, but her best result in nearly two years had been making it to the quarterfinals.
Her fans had supported her at first. But after she kept getting knocked out early, public opinion slowly began to cool.
-Do you really have to enter again?
-Just collab with the others… Maybe play some private matches now and then…
-It’s kinda hard when the mood gets weird during tournaments;
As those comments grew more common, Aura couldn’t help losing heart, too. As a streamer, she couldn’t keep doing something her fans didn’t like.
That was why this ‘Battle of Ruin’ was so important to her. It was her last chance.
Aura was that desperate. If she weren’t, she wouldn’t even be considering whether to keep a woman caught up in a hacking scandal on her team.
‘Which choice would help me win…?’
There was one clear advantage to keeping Bullet.
Skill.
At least based on the aim in the video she’d just watched, Bullet was far better than the candidates Aura was considering as replacements. And now that she thought about it, she wasn’t too bad at talking, either. You could even say she had a compelling personality.
The problem was the risk.
The hacking controversy hadn’t completely gone away. Even with the Operations Team clearing her, there would always be people who refused to believe it.
To borrow Bullet’s phrase, people like flat-earthers.
Aura tapped the desk with her fingers. Was Bullet a card she should discard? Or a hidden trump card that could turn the situation around?
“Bullet.”
Aura decided to test her first.
[Y-yes!?]
“I’m making a private room, so come join. Want to go one-on-one?”
[O-one-on-one?]
“Yeah. I want to see how good you are. Is that okay?”
[I-I’m fine with it…!]
Aura nodded. Just as she’d thought. This would be Bullet’s chance to prove herself, too.
[B-but, Aura, promise me one thing….]
“Promise…?”
Her expression hardened for a moment.
Was Bullet going to ask her to keep her on the team if she won the one-on-one? That seemed a little presumptuous. Didn’t she know her place?
[P-promise you won’t… k-kick me off the team out of spite after I kick your ass….]
“……Ha.”
Aura let out a disbelieving laugh. She roughly swept her hair back with one hand.
“Get in here, you fucking bitch.”