The Feeling Called Jealousy
"I don't like this."
Kang Ah-yoon muttered the words as she watched the broadcast. The computer she'd powered on to edit was drowning in a dense tangle of interface panels, and framed at the center of the screen was Unknown, together with a streamer named Bernie — footage Unknown had sent over today. It was the video she was supposed to finish by tonight, and yet Kang Ah-yoon's eyes were pointed somewhere else entirely.
The hands that had been traveling between keyboard and mouse had long since gone still.
On the monitor to the right of her desk, it wasn't the editing software that was running. It was Unknown's stream. She hardly ever used that screen — the angle was too awkward — but right now she was staring through it so hard she didn't even register the ache crawling up from her twisted posture.
Her gaze drifted to the chat window floating on the right. Comments were still trickling in, insisting Unknown had been in the wrong. Kang Ah-yoon's face tightened.
Those people had already branded Unknown guilty in their hearts. Strictly speaking, Unknown hadn't done a single thing wrong, and they still wouldn't listen. There was a saying that people only saw what they wanted to see, and Kang Ah-yoon was no exception. Once a thought had set, you had to shove proper evidence in someone's face and refute them before they would ever change their mind.
She was just considering whether to block every last one of those irritating comments when—
"Nngh... s-stay back!!"
Still slumped on the ground, Amber flicked fearful glances upward as she spoke, and Unknown closed the distance. The firearm Amber had been holding lay scattered across the floor. She had nothing left but her own huddled body, trembling so hard there wasn't a speck of will in her to keep the duel going. It barely even looked like a normal state.
"I think I went too far. I'm sorry."
Faced with that streamer, Unknown remembered that this was not a battlefield. Not everyone walked around with a tolerance for the terror of dying. These were not mercenaries prowling a city with uniformly savage eyes, forged in brutal country. Even among mercenaries raised inside a war, the ones who had truly overcome the fear of death were a vanishing few.
Yes. This was a game.
The thought kept unspooling until, at the end of it, Unknown's mouth curved into a bitter smile.
What the hell am I doing.
In the end, what she had done was no different from committing an atrocity against a civilian. Like a child amusing itself with a toy. An act no different from toying with someone who had no power to resist — and she had done it while pouring out a killing intent so thick the other person couldn't possibly bear it. That was what she had done.
Even now, Amber's terror-struck face kept catching in her vision. The hands shaking uncontrollably. The way her body had moved like a puppet's. Even if it was only a game, that couldn't have felt good.
Yes. Even the streamer named Amber standing right in front of her was, in the end, a user who enjoyed a game. She was not the same kind of person as Unknown, who felt the risk of life and death every day, chased that thrill, and set her course for the battlefield. She was nothing more than an ordinary person playing a game.
So Unknown put her weapon away and, carefully, opened her mouth toward the streamer named Amber.
"I'm sorry. I didn't do it on purpose, either. I was playing the way I do when I teach Jump, and I guess I overdid it. You... felt pretty awful, didn't you?"
"...Ah, I... um. Pardon?"
At Unknown's sudden change in manner, Amber — still too dazed to string a sentence together — looked up at her with a vacant face. That sensation of her own body moving as if it belonged to someone else. The instant she had become aware of her limbs lurching in directions she had never intended, boundless fear had ripped a scream out of her before she knew it. Only now was she starting, little by little, to come back to herself.
Which one is even the real her?
The woman who had worn a cold smile and danced around her as if playing with a toy was gone. Unknown standing there with a serious face, offering an apology, felt so different it was like facing another person entirely.
Amber lifted her other hand, clamped down hard on the arm that was still trembling as if to make it stop, and pulled herself together.
"N-no, it's fine... More than that, y-you're incredibly skilled."
Even so, she couldn't do anything about the shake still living in her voice.
"Can you stand? I'll give you a hand."
"Y-yes! Th-thank you."
Amber caught the hand Unknown held out and slowly got to her feet. Like someone picking through ruins after a storm had torn through, she gathered her scattered gear with that same vacant look.
Ah.
Then, all at once, she remembered she was still live.
"Ah, fuck."
Even as she registered the curse that had slipped out on instinct, Amber snapped her eyes to the chat.
Amber clutched at her head. Her long black hair spilled every which way and cluttered her vision, but what filled her deeper than that was a thick, sinking self-loathing.
Of all days, why did a stream that barely had anyone watching have to blow up today? Even accounting for the influx from Unknown's broadcast, this was far too many.
"Aaaagh! I don't even care! Just so we're clear, if you upload today's footage to Newtube I will actually kill you. I'll hunt you down somehow and kill you. Did I say that!? I said don't upload it!? I really said it!!"
She kept shouting, and no one knew better than Amber herself that the words had neither force nor meaning. Even so, if she didn't scream right now, the self-loathing would be too much to bear.
The sparring that had just happened — no, not sparring. The way she had been toyed with, one-sidedly — would be all over Newtube in less than thirty minutes. Trying to compose her face after the fact was already useless. Everything was already over.
The way she had screamed as if terror had swallowed her. The way she had answered with that stupid look on her face. If she had at least fought back properly — or even just lost a real duel — it would have been different. The thought of every last disgraceful second of herself spreading across Newtube at speed pulled a hollow laugh out of her.
From a streaming standpoint, this was a gain. That much was true. But the image she had spent so long managing had crumbled in a single instant, and the mental hit was more than a sound mind could easily take.
Then, all at once, the viewer count beside the chat caught her eye.
Viewers: 201
...Insane. I can't even.
Whether word had spread among Unknown's viewers or not, it was a number she had never imagined. When she turned on her stream, the count had never once left the single digits, no matter how many people showed up.
The moment she confirmed the number, Amber kept letting out that vacant, hollow laugh as if her mind had checked out — then, suddenly, she hurled the gear in her hands to the floor. The gun struck like she was taking her anger out on it, bounced, and skidded far away. At the same time, her voice, honed to a raw edge, rang out loud.
"I, I don't caaare. For reeeaaal!!"
Amber screamed with a voice packed full of spite. To the people watching the stream, that only made it more entertaining.
Chat kept climbing without a pause, and Amber wailed as if she had lost her mind. To settle her down, Unknown patted her shoulder the way you would soothe someone. In the end this had happened because of Unknown's own mistake, but offering at least a little comfort still felt like the right thing to do.
"Thank you. This actually worked out for the better. They say you should row when the tide comes in. I might as well use this as a chance to ride the wave."
Someone else milking Newtube views off her footage? She had no intention of sitting still for that. She wouldn't be able to stop the clips from going up anyway, but the thought of other people making money off her disgrace made her teeth grind. If it had come to this, she would upload it herself and row.
"Give it your all."
"Yes! And, Unknown... if it's possible, could I... add you as a friend?"
"That much is nothing."
The words had barely left her mouth before a line of text rose at the edge of Amber's vision, saying Unknown had accepted the friend request.
Unknown has accepted your friend request.
As a streamer, Amber had never had anything that could be called connections. Looking at the first name to appear on her friends list, she smiled, bright with delight.
"Thank you so much!"
Amber lit up as if she were a child who had just been handed a toy. At the sight of her, a short laugh slipped out of Unknown before she could stop it.
Wow... she really is pretty when she smiles.
Watching that faint curve of Unknown's mouth, Amber thought exactly that.
Meanwhile, there was someone who found the two of them hard to look at.
Smiling at someone who wasn't her. Talking without a shred of distance, as if they were old friends. Every last one of those little motions sat wrong in Kang Ah-yoon's chest. She didn't even notice she had crushed the plastic bottle in her hand.
Watching Unknown on the corner of the monitor, she made up her mind. Next time they met, she would do that too. No — she would go even further than that.