A Drink That Lifts Your Spirits
Nikang was, personally speaking, not a bad student at all.
Just the fact that she had tried to play Camilla on her own already earned her massive bonus points, but even setting that aside, she measured up.
First, she had drive. Competitive fire, really. You could feel how hard she went every single game just by watching, and that pulled me deeper into the matches myself.
Whether it was the secret of a popular streamer or something else, having that hunger was a good thing. Teaching someone who had no passion was pure torture from the instructor's side.
There had been people like that in the past. Someone who begged me to teach them Camilla, then bolted after a mere thirty minutes.
We had gone through the same process as with Nikang—finding a playstyle that fit the builds I had researched—only for them to suddenly claim something urgent had come up after a few games and quit. I had brushed it off coolly enough, but the incident left a pretty deep scar. After that, whenever anyone asked me to teach them Camilla, I stuck to pointing them at the guide posts I had uploaded to the gallery instead of giving private lessons.
Hmm. Thinking about it, this was the first time since then.
My first disciple… had deserted, so Nikang was effectively my direct pupil now.
It had started as a sudden lesson born from wanting to show her how fun Camilla could be, and from pure admiration that she was even trying the character—but maybe it was because the student had grown on me more than expected.
Unable to hide how pleased I was, I headed back to the fridge.
"Hmm, hmm…."
Humming came naturally as I scanned the cans of beer stocked by type.
It was a good day. Making money off stream, and someone actually wanting to play Camilla… no reason not to drink on a day like this.
"This one, I guess…."
Another light can.
Feeling the pleasant chill seep through my fingertips, I returned to the monitor.
Can of beer in one hand.
Streamer Nikang—Lee Seol-ha—was the type who rejected the whole "mental game" theory.
Not spirit in the philosophical or occult sense, but mental fortitude. The idea that patience and grit alone could make anything possible, or that if you just kept at it long enough, it would eventually work out.
Those were the words Seol-ha hated hearing most—and the ones she snorted at the hardest.
If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
That was simply how her life had gone.
Nothing was achieved just by desperately wanting it. The world was full of things beyond anyone's control—so-called inevitable forces—and every one of us was just an individual swept along in that vast current.
That was the realization seventeen-year-old Lee Seol-ha had reached after an injury forced her to abandon her dream early.
If people could do whatever they wanted just because they wanted it, everyone would be living their ideal careers and realizing their true selves.
But as everyone knew, that world did not exist. Some people—no, most people—ended up living lives far removed from their dreams and ideals. That was the biggest proof that willpower and grit alone could not get you what you wanted.
To Seol-ha, Napoleon with his "impossible is not in my dictionary" and the adults who clicked their tongues about kids these days having weak mental strength were not so different.
Grit-theory, mental-theory boomers.
Napoleon himself had been born with a kind of talent, and the era and luck had simply aligned for him to pull off those feats. It was not as if he had just blindly kept going until it worked.
Of course, she was not about to deny that he had worked hard himself. The famous Napoleon sleep method of only four hours a night was widely known; he had cut even his rest short to push himself.
But that, too, had only been possible because he was Napoleon. If you had sat someone with no ability or talent—or someone whose talent lay in a completely different field—in that same seat, could they really have achieved what Napoleon did?
Seol-ha was certain the answer was no.
People were each born gifted in different areas, and those talents varied wildly.
A dolphin specialized for swimming could practice flying all it wanted—would it ever take to the sky?
She had been so sure of that….
"It… worked?"
Why did the thing she had thought impossible actually happen?
Seol-ha stared straight ahead with a dazed expression, as if even she could not believe what she had just done.
Camilla standing perfectly fine. The greatsword warrior Lenox collapsed on the ground.
The pilot controlling Lenox was Kayack; the one controlling Camilla was Seol-ha herself.
The fact that she had just knocked down an opponent who had always felt like an insurmountable wall sent a considerable rush of pleasure through her.
How did I do that?
Seol-ha briefly replayed the last exchange in her head.
So… she had sidestepped Kayack's incoming sword strike with a forward move, used W to eat the damage while closing the gap, then Q….
She had no idea. That play had been pure beast-mode instinct, honed razor-sharp.
In a moment of absolute immersion, her body had found the best move without her even realizing it.
"Maybe I wasn't a dolphin. Maybe I was a hawk…?"
Maybe Seol-ha had never been able to see herself objectively.
Overestimating or underestimating yourself—it happened all the time.
In reality, most people in the world never even drew out their full potential before dying while doing work completely unrelated to their talents.
In that sense, Seol-ha had seized quite the stroke of luck today. She had shattered the limit she had set for herself, the quiet fixed idea she had been carrying around.
Of course, she had not seized that luck alone. Someone had shown her. Your limit is not just there. You can go further than that.
And that someone was now respawning, dragging a greatsword as she walked back in.
—That combo would work even against celestial-tier players.
—Nice. Let's do a few more just like that.
Like a gym trainer who kept shouting "just one more," she gave feedback immediately.
Someone whose true thoughts were impossible to read. Seol-ha looked at her and wondered.
Is this person a dolphin, or a hawk?
Maybe a dolphin with wings. Or a chimera, even.
That silly fantasy drifted briefly through Seol-ha's mind.
—Ah, and one more thing.
—I'm hopping on voice. My fingers are killing me from all this typing.
"Yes, take your time coming in."
Fingers hurt, huh. So her teacher was human after all.
Showing a little human side like this.
Earlier she had almost wondered if Kayack was a machine instead of a person.
The endless 1v1s and the feedback chat flying in at the same time had felt far closer to a machine than a human.
Kayack's behavior was barely different from an AI that diagnosed a player's problems in real time and typed them out in chat.
But AIs did not have fingers. So they would never type that their fingers hurt.
"Hello~."
And they certainly could not produce a voice this languidly soft.
Kayack had already clicked the program link Seol-ha sent and connected the call.
Maybe the endless drills had left her craving a little human warmth; Seol-ha welcomed her cheerfully.
"Teacher! You're here!"
"Yeees, the mic is… mm, not great. I was going to stick to chat, but… my fingers hurt and sitting in front of the computer this long is killing my shoulders, so… talking feels easier… I hopped on."
For once, Seol-ha completely understood the chat's explosive reaction.
From the moment voice connected, Kayack's tone and way of speaking dragged along the floor like something heavy being pulled.
Even Seol-ha, who was on the call, was so thrown by the delivery that her reply came late.
"Ah, ahh. I see. Voice is definitely more convenient…."
"Right…? Mm…? Ah, one second."
Kayack, with her poor audio quality and rather limp way of speaking, asked for a moment.
And the sound that followed was one both Seol-ha and the viewers knew all too well.
Pssst—
Click—
The sound of a carbonated can being opened.
A rather late hour. Kayack's sudden appearance. The impulsive lesson. The drawn-out speech.
…At this point, even someone completely dense would have to notice something was off.
Seol-ha's question that followed was less genuine curiosity and more a confirmation procedure.
"Um, Teacher, may I ask what you're drinking right now?"
Kayack's answer came about five seconds after the question.
"Ah… just a drink."
"I see…."
Whether that drink happened to be the kind made by fermenting barley that lifted your spirits a little when you drank it—
Seol-ha deliberately did not ask.