Please Teach Me
To everyone who always wanted to play Camilla but never had the courage to try — to everyone who locked her in and got flamed into quitting by their teammates — to everyone who wanted to main her but gave up because she looked too hard: challenge yourself right now!
— Streamer Ni*: The teacher is kind and teaches Camilla really well.
— Streamer Ri*yang: Her sharp callouts are top-tier! It stung a little at first, but thanks to her I escaped Bronze-Silver-Gold!
…
Hello, this is Kayak. I tried making the above in the style of a cram-school flyer — how does it look?
Doesn't it feel like some famous instructor is about to show up and start lecturing? I put real effort into it, even slotting in the images. Pretty convincing, right?
Anyway, that was a long intro. As the title makes clear, this is a notice for recruiting students. Lately Camilla's been showing up in tournaments, hitting tier one on reputable sites, and generally climbing the prestige ladder — and maybe because of that, a lot of people have been asking me to do coaching streams. Very encouraging stuff.
So, as requested by many of you, I'll be running education broadcasts. But rather than just showing you how I play, I figured it'd be better to take on a student and teach live.
You all like to deny it, but the vast majority of Abyss players are Bronze through Gold.
Sad but true — and my viewers are probably no different. Just because the streamer is Challenger doesn't mean the chat is full of Challengers, right? So I decided the coaching needs to meet people at their level.
Looking back on past experience, I seem to have a decent knack for teaching, which is a relief. Now I just need a student who can serve as a specimen for the viewers — but I didn't really have anyone to teach.
Hence: now recruiting students. You'll get to appear on a stream watched by about fifteen thousand people, and — this is a little embarrassing to say — receive one-on-one coaching from Kayak, the world's number-one Camilla player among all Abyss users.
Eligibility: Abyss rank of Bronze, Silver, or Gold. This is a beginner class for now, so I won't be taking anyone higher. If this round goes well, I'm open to opening intermediate and advanced courses too.
Only apply if you're serious about Camilla and genuinely want to get good at her. I won't be teaching any other heroes.
We'll be coaching over Discord voice, so your mic needs to be in decent shape, and your voice will go out on stream.
If you want coaching, leave your Abyss nickname in the comments. Tomorrow's stream, I'll draw one person by lottery.
"Good evening. Hope you're having a nice night. Everyone eaten yet? The stream was offline and chat was already rolling — surprised me. Waiting for my stream is fine, but take it easy, okay?"
"Looks like some of you checked the board and some of you didn't. Today's content is a Camilla education stream. Yes. Why didn't I post it in the gallery instead of the board? …Why would I post my stream announcements in a gallery?"
Around seven in the evening, Kayak's stream went live without warning.
Even with no advance notice of the time, the viewer count climbed fast. More precisely, most of the people were already sitting in the offline stream.
On top of those who'd read yesterday's announcement and camped out early, there were the regulars who kept her channel open whether she was live or not.
Complaints poured in — why announce today's content but say nothing about the start time, the board (the community page Twish provides streamers by default) is inconvenient, let's migrate somewhere else, and so on.
Through all of it, Kayak seemed completely unbothered. Whether she simply wasn't looking at chat or was looking and choosing not to react, she just moved her mouse with a calm expression, absorbed in something else.
That was the moment the viewers' complaints shrank into petty whining. When the streamer paid them no attention and refused to engage, it was no better than a child clinging to an adult and fussing.
As a result, the grumbling that had filled more than half the chat window quietly died out. Kayak had successfully put down a minor uprising. Whether that had been her intention, no one could say.
Click.
Kayak stopped clicking the mouse, lifted her hand, and by then the stream display had already switched.
Instead of the desktop wallpaper that usually appeared at the start of her streams, Kayak's community board filled the broadcast.
The post she'd written yesterday. Under it sat a notice reading "Comments are no longer accepted," along with Kayak's own reply saying she'd stop taking applications there.
"For now, we'll do the first-round draw with this."
What Kayak pulled up was something the viewers knew well.
The Number Cannon. A program teachers used to use a lot in schools. Plenty of streamers besides Kayak used it these days too. For drawing lots among a large pool of people, nothing beat it.
The viewers' reaction, though, was pretty intense.
"This is the first round. We'll draw with this, then I'll look up their match history — if they smell like a smurf or I just don't like them, they get cut and I fire the cannon again. Oh, and no Camilla in recent games is also a cut. If Camilla isn't in their most-played…? Hmm, having her as most-played would be ideal, but someone might still want to learn even if she isn't, so maybe I'll let that slide…"
After mulling it over for a moment, Kayak decided she'd just draw first and think later, and typed a number into the cannon.
Total applicants gathered through the comments: 682. Considering it had only been a day — and not even a full twenty-four hours — that was a remarkably high number of applicants.
Thoom—
Kayak fired the cannon clean and without hesitation. The breezy, no-time-wasted delivery, followed immediately by the cannon blast sound, actually startled some of the viewers into typing.
Then the number painted on the green cannonball came into view.
521.
Meaning the person who'd left the 521st comment.
Scroll.
Having checked the number — or so it seemed — Kayak started rolling the mouse wheel without a word. She really was going to find the 521st comment.
But the speed was so fast that viewers watching the stream started to wonder. Was she just scrolling down, or was she actually counting as she went? It was impossible to tell.
She kept going, further and further down, for a long while.
At last, Kayak's mouse cursor came to a stop.
"I'm desperate, please pick me. Abyss nickname is 'SuperCuteCamilla.' Camilla most-played. Rank is Bronze but I'm serious about Abyss, I really want to get good at Camilla…. I see. Well, I like the nickname, at least."
Moving the cursor around as she read through the comment, Kayak left a brief note on the nickname, then switched the screen again.
What appeared was a well-known match-history lookup site. The viewers understood instantly. This was the second verification step. She'd search the nickname here and check the match history, most-played, and the rest.
Kayak's stream had already climbed past ten thousand viewers.
In the middle of all that, she typed in the nickname to check whether the winner was suitable.
And the profile of the 521st commenter — the applicant — came into view.