Is It Just Me?
Is it just me who finds this uncomfortable?
That was the email that landed in my inbox one afternoon. When I checked, the same message had also come through as a whisper on Twich.
It would be a lie to say I hadn't hoped for this at all—but I hadn't let myself hope too hard, either.
More accurately, I had deliberately refused to get my hopes up.
If you don't expect anything, you can't be disappointed. The thought of building myself up only to miss out felt like it would leave a hole too big to fill, so after I applied I did my best to scrub the tournament from my mind.
Besides, not getting picked wouldn't have been strange. My streaming career was short, my viewer count was lower than the other applicants', and—most of all—the highlight reel I'd submitted was from an older version of the game.
Just in case, I'd queued a few solo ranked games and sent those recordings as extras, but the only real highlight was that ancient clip at the front of the package. If the organizers had taken one look and gone, What is this fossil? before tossing me aside, I wouldn't have blamed them.
And yet here we were. The result left me a little dazed—but in a good way, all the same.
Teams. Right. Teams mattered.
I read the rest of the email carefully, noting the schedule and the rules. Teams would be decided on the official broadcast—that was something I absolutely had to watch.
Let's see, the date is…
"That's today…?"
And just like that, I rewrote my planned stream for the evening.
"Yeah, that's how it went."
"Aigoo, don't make such a fuss."
The chat was on fire. They seemed determined to pile the pressure on—already talking about winning the whole thing, already wondering how famous I'd be when it was over. They weren't entirely wrong. Streamers with low name recognition had rocketed up overnight on the back of a high-traffic tournament before. But I couldn't swear that would happen to me. Life didn't work that way.
Even if the odds were there, counting those chickens now was pure overreaction. Pure fuss.
The moment I told chat I'd made it into Taker's tournament, today's content basically wrote itself.
Kayack
— Watching the team draft broadcast together.
Co-watching the official stream… the ultimate free content only qualified streamers got to run. Easy for me, and chat had zero reason to skip something this satisfying.
"Anyway, today we're watching the draft together. Sit back and get comfortable. Who do I want on my team? Uh, I don't even know all the participants yet…"
We were still chatting when the official broadcast left its waiting screen and cut straight to people on camera.
"Hello, everyone. The 2nd Taker Cup Abyss Streamer Tournament, brought to you with the support of Ionic. Before we get into the format and team selection, allow us to introduce ourselves. I'm caster Lee Hyeok-jin."
"Streamer Taker here."
"ACK announcer Kim Ye-ji—hello!"
A three-person booth opened the show with a quick round of intros. I'd heard Taker used to handle commentary alone; the fact that they'd brought in a full cast meant Ionic's "we're not holding back on the budget" talk wasn't empty hype. The tidy studio they were sitting in already felt like a real, official event.
It was basically a festival atmosphere—the opening ceremony of the whole thing. I was happy to have made the cut, and excited about meeting teammates for the first time in a long while…
But not right now. Right now a weird, nagging discomfort had me in a grip, and I couldn't enjoy it the way they were.
Wait—has nobody else noticed? Am I the only one this bothers?
I couldn't sit with it any longer. I opened my mouth.
"Guys. Over there."
"This part. Doesn't it bother you a little? The font sizes don't match, so there's leftover empty space."
I dragged my mouse over the screen and pointed out the thing that had been itching at me. Up at the top of the broadcast, the title read 2nd Abyss Streamer Tournament—and the final character, "ment," was ever so slightly smaller than the rest, with spacing that didn't line up either.
I circled the area with the cursor while I explained, and only then did chat catch on and start agreeing.
"We're one, after all."
Close friends share the secrets they can't keep to themselves, right? Open up, find common ground, and the bond only gets stronger. That was the spirit in which I'd said it—but for some reason everyone just looked furious.
"Alright, that wraps up Nikang's player intro. Man, that Miriam mastery in the highlight reel looked serious, didn't it?"
Through all of that, the booth kept rolling through the roster. Before long, it was my turn.
"Next up, let's meet our next player. She's been stirring up a whole new breeze on Twich with her Abyss streams—streamer Kayack! Word is the name is short for 'Camilla's weak,' and as you can tell from the handle, her main hero is Camilla. For her preferred role she wrote… 'all of them.' Camilla on every role… is that what they call a one-trick? Compared to the other entrants, that intro reads a little more confident, doesn't it?"
I was a little nervous, and a little embarrassed. More than anything, I hadn't expected the caster to read my application answers out loud word for word. Wasn't that just for internal review?
Chat, as if they'd never been mad at me at all, turned into a flock of gentle sheep and sank back into the broadcast. I did my best not to look at the top of the screen and tried to focus with them.
"There's something else worth noting about Kayack. Amazingly, among every streamer in this tournament, she's the only one who has been playing since launch—and she hit Challenger in Seasons 1 through 3. From the old point-display days, no less. I've been around a while myself, but next to Kayack I have to take a step back."
"…You're hyping me way too hard."
Because I was watching the official stream, the co-stream chat scrolled right past my eyes—everything from "that's some real roots" to "wait, people like that exist?" Judging by the reactions, my résumé wasn't exactly common.
"Alright, enough talking—time for the highlight reel."
Not long after the caster finished, the screen switched.
It was the clip I'd submitted half-doubting they'd even use it. I'd wondered if they'd actually play it. They actually played it.
It opened on a pop song I'd heard somewhere before. Then a faintly weathered Abyss UI filled the frame, and the camera found the silver-haired girl inside it.
I couldn't deny the editing was old-school—vintage, even. But there was a reason I hadn't hunted down a newer reel. Even if the cuts were dated, even if the UI no longer existed in the live game, the core of it—the swelling satisfaction of a proper mad movie—was still intact. I was sure that what I wanted to show would come through.
And my prediction landed dead-on. To that familiar track, Camilla began to tear across the battlefield in full color—
—and the official broadcast chat, sitting at roughly fifty thousand people, started thrashing like a storm.