Suspiciously Popular
It was the kind of moment when you start thinking you've already seen everything worth seeing.
"So I guess that place is the only one left…"
"Looks like it's time we headed there."
Out of nowhere, Nikang and Ririyang were exchanging those words with dead-serious faces. At first I figured they were just doing a bit for the stream — some kind of banter, a little back-and-forth.
We'd been streaming for a good long while by then. Ending the broadcast with a dramatic "we're going there now" performance wouldn't have been strange at all.
But the viewers were all chiming in right along with them, which meant my prediction was completely off the mark.
They weren't trying to end the stream. So then — what exactly was this place Nikang and Ririyang kept talking about?
That question of mine was answered the moment the booth came into view.
"Ah."
How had I forgotten about this place? This was a booth Nikang, Ririyang, and I absolutely had to visit — the reason the three of us had come together in the first place, the origin point of everything.
The Ionicx booth. The studio that made Abyss.
"Alright, last stop — the Ionicx booth. After we check this out, we're heading home."
"Honestly, this has been a pretty generous stream, right? We've been at it forever. You want more? Can't do more. I'm exhausted. Just walking around in this ridiculously heavy outfit is draining every last drop of stamina I've got."
A booth's size generally scales with the size of the company running it. The so-called big-name studios take over entire sections of the floor, while mid-size, indie, and solo-dev booths get progressively smaller.
— I will kill you no matter what.
— Oh? Go ahead and try!
By that measure, the Ionicx booth before us wasn't just large — it was magnificent. A screen hanging from the ceiling played the cinematic trailer for the company's flagship title, Abyss, while a demo station for the newly released mobile version of the game was decked out in official merchandise.
Abyss had become a worldwide smash hit, catapulting Ionicx from an obscure mid-size studio nobody had heard of into a household-name mega-corp. Standing here, you could feel that shift in status all over again.
And for someone like me — who'd crossed over from an entirely different worldline overnight — the sight was especially fresh. For a moment I forgot all about Nikang and Ririyang and simply took in the booth on my own.
A game successful enough to launch a mobile version. Official merch of a quality that utterly crushed the handful of bootleg goods fans used to make back when the player base was tiny.
Of every booth we'd visited so far, Ionicx's had the most to look at. Being able to compare it against faded memories made it all the more striking — at least from where I stood.
But what truly surprised me at the Ionicx booth wasn't the advanced tech or the merch I wanted to buy just by looking at it.
"Whoa, it's Kayak!"
"Kayak's here?"
"Kayak! Kayak! Kayak! Kayak!"
It was the Camilla Legion charging straight at me.
"What the hell is…"
More precisely — cosplayers dressed as Camilla.
A Camilla cosplayer army I hadn't even noticed at the booth entrance came pouring in the second I stepped inside, as if they'd been waiting for exactly this moment.
What criteria do cosplayers use when they decide, I'm going to cosplay this character?
There are any number of factors. Looking uncannily like the character to begin with, the way Kayak did. Loving a character so much you simply have to. Or the character being so popular that a steady stream of people cosplay them every single year.
The current Camilla checked nearly every one of those boxes.
Undisputed number one in Abyss female character appearance rankings. A fan-favorite who had never once dropped out of the top three in the yearly Abyss character popularity polls.
The character herself had always been popular, regardless of whether the game was thriving or dying. Even back in the dead-game days, you'd occasionally spot someone cosplaying Camilla.
Her design alone was good enough to pull in a non-trivial number of new players.
Of course, the nightmarish in-game control difficulty meant most of those people either quit without ever playing her or switched to a different hero — but still.
If that was true when Abyss was a dead game, what about now that it was a global phenomenon?
Camilla's already solid standing among cosplayers had only climbed higher. At events like this, nine out of ten people wearing a silver wig were almost certainly doing a Camilla cosplay.
That was why a whole Camilla Legion had set up shop at the Abyss booth.
And among those devoted Camilla cosplayers, there was someone treated like a half-superstar.
A living, breathing legend. People who'd seen her in person said it was like someone had reached into the screen, pulled Camilla out, and set her down in the real world — as if Camilla herself had descended into the mortal realm.
And it wasn't just the looks. The path she'd walked was so deeply intertwined with Camilla that she'd become a kind of prophet — the one who'd united a million Camilla mains and even spread the character to the pro scene.
Without ever realizing it, Kayak had become a half-worshipped figure among a group of people who loved Camilla to a degree that bordered on the suspicious.
That was why Camilla cosplayers who loved Camilla — and who, loving Camilla, naturally loved Kayak, who was Camilla — swarmed her the moment they saw her, like rabid fans.
It was like a massive fan meet had sprung up out of nowhere. From Kayak's perspective as the person at the center of it, the whole thing was pure bewilderment. She'd been ambushed by a sudden wave of worship.
It wasn't as if she'd never been openly adored before — but that had always been online, through over-the-top posts and chat spam. Having people praise her to her face like this was a first.
"…How long do I have to listen to this? This is kind of exhausting."
As the one on the receiving end, Kayak was busy writhing in agony.
Of course, from a spectator's point of view, it was a pretty entertaining sight. Kayak, surrounded by a crowd of people, scowling and squirming every time they said something.
Nikang and Ririyang decided to offer Kayak up as a sacrifice and take a short break. Kayak kept shooting them desperate looks for help, but the two of them were, if anything, enjoying it even more.
Ririyang even squeezed her way into the throng and joined the cosplayers in praising Kayak. Her own little revenge for the surprise assault on her cheeks earlier.
Meanwhile, for the viewers, the current situation was peak content.
Nikang's stream currently had around twenty thousand viewers, but most of them were people who primarily watched Kayak. Even if you weren't a fan, the scene was hilarious — so how much better was it for people who watched Kayak regularly?
What Kayak called the fanatic corps. Their momentum showed no signs of stopping.
After surrounding Kayak for a while, showering her with near-worshipful praise and collecting autographs, they led her deeper into the booth and suddenly sat her down in front of a computer.
And then they said:
"Could you do some one-on-ones?"
"One-on-ones?"
"Yes — Camilla mirror matches. One-on-one."
As it turned out, they were all Camilla players with a decent amount of Abyss experience.
Their wish, they said, was to play a Camilla mirror match against Kayak and get completely destroyed by her.
"That's… a weird thing to make a wish about…"
Streamers and pro gamers doing one-on-ones with fans was common enough, but given everything so far — and the way it sounded to Kayak — it was a strangely unsettling wish.
Still, a wish was a wish. She figured she couldn't exactly refuse… though she also wondered whether it was okay to just take over the booth for one-on-ones like this.
"I'm staff here, so it's fine!"
Well then. At that point Kayak had no real excuse to back out. A little fan service in the form of one-on-ones was something she could manage easily enough.
And so a somewhat hastily thrown-together event was born: Beat Kayak.
There were fourteen challengers in total. Nikang and Ririyang, who'd been live-streaming the whole thing, jumped in for the first time in a while and went head-to-head with Kayak themselves.
Of course, Kayak won every single match, and the event came to a close.