Burnout
Streamer Taker, real name Jang Geonhee.
He had an exceptional gift for reading the current of the times.
And what was that current? The prevailing mood, the prevailing tendency — in other words, the flow of an era.
And what was the flow of an era? Put simply, it was the same thing as a game's meta.
Power levels. Trends. The heroes and comps currently considered the most effective. The "meta" in "it's a ~~ meta right now."
Like a gamer who excelled at meta analysis, Taker possessed the ability to grasp the currents and trends of streaming faster than anyone else.
And by his judgment, the current trend in personal broadcasting was…
Kayak.
That was the conclusion of the analysis he'd finished after drifting through community after community. Astonishingly, Kayak was exerting an influence on the internet streaming world that surpassed even the most viral memes of the moment.
It's spreading like a plague.
The phrasing was a little harsh, but Taker couldn't think of anything more accurate. Just as a pestilence had once swept through the Middle Ages, Kayak's influence was expanding outward little by little, starting from its home base in the Abyss gallery.
The funny part was that the person at the center of it all neither seemed to know nor care about any of this.
Popularity other people would kill for. Attention people would hire community shills to manufacture. And she'd just… picked it up like it was nothing.
Well. Not exactly like it was nothing.
Taker corrected the thought that had briefly crossed his mind. Looking at it properly, it hadn't been easy at all. Kayak's trajectory had been so bizarre you could call her a freak of nature and still feel like you were underselling it.
Those days that were now almost tiresome to recount — those were what had become her strength.
To people meeting her for the first time, an irresistible character. To people who'd known her all along, something familiar and yet entirely new.
Well. None of that particularly mattered to Taker. Whether she'd appeared as an actress on his stream before she started her own, or whether she'd ridden the wave of his Abyss Streamer War into a surge of popularity — all of that was in the past.
What mattered was now. The present. Not the past, not the future — this exact moment.
Kayak was still riding a continuous upward curve, still enjoying popularity on the level of a peak era. As far as Taker could tell, barring some major incident, that rise showed no sign of ending.
And if it kept going like that, Kayak might even shatter the four-way power structure of the so-called Twish Four Emperors — the big-agency titans that included Taker himself.
Looking at the steadily climbing viewership numbers, that future didn't feel all that distant, and the thought gave Taker a novel kind of stimulation.
"Even on Vtube, the clips with this person in them get better views…"
Whether it was the actor showdowns or the Abyss Streamer War, the segments featuring Kayak consistently drew the strongest reactions.
The comments were full of people asking who she was, and every so often you'd see what looked like members of Kayak's personal guard swarming in to like-bomb the videos.
He'd gone on long enough.
To summarize:
Taker was good at reading the current, and the current of the age was Kayak.
Therefore, he had decided to ride the Kayak coin.
In other words, going forward, he would make Kayak his first-priority booking for any content he ran.
It's the rational choice.
Honestly, among the Twish Four Emperors, he still regularly heard things like "Why is Taker even in there?" and "Taker's just boring" — and this was exactly why he was still surviving as a streamer.
He valued practicality over emotion. If something didn't feel right, he pivoted flexibly and kept his thinking open.
The bait in the streaming world turned over fast. It heated up quickly and cooled just as fast. Only people who could keep pace with that constantly shifting landscape survived in this industry.
That way of thinking was what had kept him in the top tier of streamers all this time.
It was also why he still made a daily habit of community scouting — a somewhat dangerous practice for a broadcaster, the kind of thing that could easily lead to a spiral if you weren't careful.
Anyway. Today, as usual, Taker had finished his community rounds and sketched out his behavioral patterns and the overall framework of his broadcasts.
Sadly, there was one problem.
"What the hell has this person been doing lately…?"
The target of his coin ride — Kayak — wasn't streaming.
She had to go live first before he could even contact her about anything. You couldn't exactly cold-call someone on break and ask them to come on your content.
Thinking that, Taker quietly waited for the right moment.
"—So yeah, what I said was—"
"Do you know Dr. Hong?"
"Today at a comic café in Seo-gu, Incheon—"
Swipe, swipe, swipe.
Every time a finger flicked upward, a new video on a completely different topic started playing.
Vtube Shorts — the format built around clips about a minute long.
I was lying blankly on the bed, staring at them with no end in sight. Honestly, they weren't particularly entertaining, but for some reason I just couldn't muster the will to do anything else.
"Why are eagles' beaks yellow? According to research by Dr. Hank at Johns Hopkins—"
"Oh…"
If something looked boring, I swiped past it. If it seemed slightly interesting, I watched. It felt like my brain was melting. But for lying around and doing nothing, there was nothing better.
Maybe it was burnout. I didn't know the reason — I just wanted to keep rolling around forever.
I'd left a notice for the viewers saying I was taking an indefinite break for a while. That had already been five days ago. I'd even stopped reading the comments two days back. It hurt, quietly, not being able to live up to the expectations of people who wanted me.
All I had to do was stream from my room. Why couldn't I even manage that? Had I gotten soft now that I could live warm and well-fed?
I tried to pin down the cause, but nothing really stuck. What was the reason this heart-demon had taken root in me?
Roughly tracing the timeline, it hadn't been that long. I'd been fine through the networking stream, at least… if I had to pick a point, it was around when Snow Queen Camilla dropped.
And that had been a good time, right? Camilla had gotten a massive buff, turned absurdly strong, and I'd gotten to show off in front of everyone.
I genuinely had no idea why things had suddenly gone like this. Somehow I didn't feel like playing Camilla, which meant I didn't feel like playing Abyss, which meant I ended up not streaming either — a miraculous three-step chain of logic.
"I don't feel like playing Camilla…?"
Even the primary cause was already a serious problem. Why? This had never happened before. Rain or snow, I'd never felt even a hint of burnout playing Camilla.
Even when Camilla was stuck in tier five. Even when I was getting hard-countered by every bug in the game. I'd played Camilla and only Camilla, single-minded to the end.
So why now? Sure, a nerf was confirmed, but they'd given her a massive buff and pulled out the prettiest skin of all time — so why…?
I groaned and fretted, then decided to try a different approach. Not a solution, exactly — just another angle.
I'd go live and ask the viewers. Collective intelligence. Better to tell everyone the symptoms and get their opinions than sit here thinking about it alone with my not-particularly-great brain.
These were people who treated my problems like their own. They'd take it seriously.
And so, for the first time in a long while, I went live.
Five days, four hours, and thirty-eight minutes since the last stream.
The long wait had brought the viewers to the brink of madness. Some of them already seemed to have gone over the edge.
Viewership climbed at high speed, and with no moderation in place, the chat filled with pure unfiltered mania.
She herself had no idea, but Kayak had become something like the Lich King of Twish without realizing it. And when a presence like that vanished without warning for a full five days, the ones who suffered were the innocent fellow streamers.
Mostly the ones who had any connection to Kayak. Her teammates from the Abyss Streamer War, people like Nikang and Yu Hye. Yu Hye, who'd gone head-to-head with her, had spent the past five days dealing with a flood of troublemakers and had ended up looking quietly haggard.
Anyway. The viewers rejoiced and cheered at the return of their favorite streamer.
The internet streaming world had no shortage of problems. People who posted a notice out of nowhere and then vanished without a word, just like Kayak, were far from rare.
There couldn't be any more cases like that. Especially not with an irreplaceable talent like Kayak.
And so most of the viewers who'd gathered decided to go easy on her — to, in crude terms, gently pet and spoil the Kayak who'd finally come back after so long.
Whatever she said, whatever she claimed had happened, they resolved to listen with generous hearts.
As long as it wasn't something they absolutely couldn't let slide — boyfriend bait, for instance — anything was fine.
Of course, after five full days of hiatus, there were those who raised questions about Kayak's virginity. But that was only speculation, with no clear evidence or official confirmation, so the majority position was that it didn't matter.
That was how precious a streamer Kayak was to them. Even if she suddenly took a break, even if she quit Abyss, even if she suddenly announced a marriage — they'd let it go.
"Guys."
But when Kayak, who'd been silent for a while, finally opened her mouth, the words that came out were something even the viewers who'd steeled themselves for anything hadn't seen coming.
"I look at Camilla and my heart doesn't race anymore. What do I do?"