I'll Stand in the Sky

A bombshell of a line. The aftershock shoved the live count past the seven hundred who'd shown up for PUG's first official broadcast and all the way to twelve hundred.

She was already someone you could call a rising actress without anyone arguing. For a person like that to volunteer herself as a glutton, and for her game sense to sit comfortably above the average civilian, was more than enough for the news to start traveling well beyond the official broadcast.

I still hadn't caught on to any of that. Until the delivery showed up, I just kept working the evening mission.

"So what you're saying is one piece of sushi per kill, right? But is that even possible? This is a game that starts with a hundred people. Even if you wipe everyone except your four-stack, that's ninety-six. The odds of that are tiny. If a Survival Ground pro drops ten to fifteen kills a match, that's one game. Two, if you're lucky. And I'm supposed to do what with that, exactly?"

Chat piled onto my side so hard that if they didn't feed me, a riot felt thirty seconds away. The window was a solid carpet of abuse aimed at the Game Director.

"Hey now. Please don't curse anyone out. Director-nim is just trying to make the broadcast fun. That said... I agree with you. How about one plate per kill instead? If I can land around five kills... that's fifty pieces. Nice and simple, right?"

"Oh... fifty pieces. Haha. Then I'll add one more condition."

The Game Director was not about to fold that easily. The new term was this:

"Get your kills with a pistol only. How's that?"

A pistol.

Weak damage, short range — not a gun many people actually liked. On the plus side, you could grab one fast at the start, the reload was quick, and the recoil was gentle. Not a bad deal.

If I played safer than the first match and cut out the gambling, it was doable. The real problem was landing a decent squad.

I looked at chat, the corner of my mouth lifting into a careful little smile.

"Everyone~ this time, if you all work really hard and pass your kills over to me, I would be so grateful."

Originally I had planned to save the aegyo for right before we signed off and use it to squeeze donations. Per Little Boy, my smile and aegyo were enough to make a grown man lose control of his bladder.

I wasn't going to argue. Even looking at it as the man I'd been in my previous life, it was a face that worked. Across both lives, I had never seen a face prettier than my own.

"If you pass your kills to me... I'll take a photo with two of you and give you an autograph too."

Wow. The heat coming off the viewers was so thick I could feel it through the monitor.

"Haha! Everyone's really fired up. So... if you pass me a kill, that means a meal date with me?"

A meal date. Officially, a light little content bit where a streamer and a viewer sat down for food or a chat. On the surface it looked like ordinary fan participation. Every so often, though, someone wrote "date" and meant something rated nineteen-and-up. People were sharply split on the whole format.

I was still a seventeen-year-old student, so in practice it would be a photo, a handshake, and an autograph — nothing more. Even so, the chance to meet a rookie actress on a genuine hot streak was more than enough to hook the room.

"Little Boy, were you thinking of joining too? Why don't you just pass it to the viewers?"

"That's... a shame."

He sounded genuinely crushed as he clicked us into the match. At the same time, two viewers dropped into the waiting lobby.

"Huh? They're in?"

"NIIIIICE!! Jiwoo-nim! I'll spoon-feed you every single kill!"

The second viewer's voice blew the speakers out. I jumped and yanked the volume down.

"Could you two introduce yourselves before we start?"

"Yes! I became an actress Lee Jiwoo fan through Ghost Singer! Twenty years old! College student!"

"Should a college student really be doing this right now? Isn't exam season coming up?"

"Hahaha... that's already a lost cause, so no worries!"

The way his voice wilted said there were, in fact, plenty of worries.

Next.

"I run a three-million-subscriber NewTube channel. Name's Arahan."

"Oh~ Arahan-nim! I know you! You're a partner NewTuber for Survival Ground, right? Nice to meet you!"

"Yep, yep, hello. I'm a fan of actress Lee Jiwoo too. I even followed your socials recently."

"Wait, really? Then I should follow you back..."

"I'd love that!"

We were still tossing around light talk when the match finally loaded in.

The mission I'd been handed: get kills with a pistol. Grenades were allowed. Not an easy ask for a beginner. Sitting next to me, though, were a twenty-year-old college kid who might actually be good, and Arahan of the three-million NewTube channel.

Little Boy was... a non-factor.

"Where should we drop?"

"Hmm... somewhere quiet would be better. Jiwoo-nim, where do you want to go?"

"I'm good with anywhere."

I said it with my chest out. The first match had already shown I wasn't a pro, but I could play.

"In that case, let's drop at the ocean. Not many people land there, and we can grab loot and rotate out easy."

Arahan laid out the plan.

"Sounds good."

Everyone moved. We bailed from the plane, chutes blooming, coming in to land one after another—

"H-huh? Why is this..."

"Ah..."

The kill log was so stupid I actually lost the ability to speak.

"Aaaah, come on! It's all ruined! Why would you die there?!"

Dying to an enemy was already infuriating. Dying to a failed landing was something else. At this point I had to wonder if he was a spy planted specifically to starve me.

"H-haha. Please don't look at me with those terrifying eyes. I didn't do it on purpose... this is just my skill level!"

Little Boy tried to laugh it off. My face, and the mood in chat, were already past saving.

No choice. I'll have to carry from here.

I shook out my hands and locked in harder than before. Not a single enemy step, not a single footfall, was allowed to slip. I snatched up a pistol and loot on the move.

The ocean unrolled in front of us.

"Haa... dropping on this godforsaken island twice..."

"Jiwoo-nim! This isn't the time to— N160, enemies! Two of them!"

At Arahan's call I spun the mouse and confirmed. Two hostiles. They still hadn't spotted us.

I killed my footsteps and closed in. Same method as the first match: draw a wide circle, slide in from the flank, and dump everything I had. My aim still wasn't perfect, so I had to be careful about every shot.

"Now!"

Bang. Bang.

Two cracks of gunfire, and the kill log climbed.

Yes! One kill!

While I dropped one, Arahan cleaned up the one beside him. Two players gone in a blink. Eighty-three left. Plenty of room.

You could feel the production team's fingerprints all over this mission. Little Boy, though, wasn't worried. The players who'd queued in were Arahan, a Survival Ground partner, and Jiwoo, who clearly knew her way around a keyboard. If he just rode along, one or two kills didn't seem like a problem.

What he couldn't have known was the scheme sitting behind that sunny smile.

"No way..."

Of all the timings for his keyboard to stop registering. Dying without even getting to start had not been in the dream.

"Let's just leave Little Boy behind and do this ourselves."

"Enemy up front! They've seen us too!"

"Jiwoo-nim, heal up first. We'll pull aggro."

No, seriously — why did everyone look so happy?

He was in the same game, on the same broadcast, and somehow he still felt lonely. He glanced at the production staff, wondering if this was even allowed. They just grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. They had already deleted the fact of his death from their heads.

"H-hey, everyone! I'm still right here!"

"We know! Be quiet for a second! I can't hear the audio!"

"This is a broadcast, you can't just tell me to be quiet..."

"Tsk!!"

Jiwoo shot him a look that could cut glass. Faced with a beautiful woman's glare, socially awkward Little Boy's shoulders jerked on instinct.

The viewers seemed to find his getting roasted hilarious, because they piled on with one heart and one mind. He wasn't even mad about it. If he could use this as a chance to grow the game and pull back the players who'd lost interest, he could keep the caster's chair for a few more years. In a way, it had been the plan all along.

And yet.

Huh? Why are there tears?

The match rolled on under the mockery. I already had four kills. Forty players left.

"Four kills at last! ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠One more and we hit the target! Come on, everyone, just a little more!"

My voice came out packed with fight. At this rate, first place wasn't a fantasy, was it?

Of course it wasn't. We had to take first. That was the only way I was sleeping with my legs stretched out tonight.

"Love that energy. Confident you'll take first?"

"What kind of question is that."

I stared a hole through the screen and worked the keys. One look at my character — strapped in the highest-tier gear the match could offer — told the whole story.

The words landed with my chin up, and then it started.

"Everyone, charge!!!"

"UWOOOOH!"

"Die! Die! Die!"

Three characters tore across the field, and nothing was left standing in the space they passed through. A bulldozer would have been a fair comparison.

"Flank!"

"Cleared!"

"More incoming up front!"

"I've got that one!"

The three of us might as well have had telepathy. We never had to turn around to know where the others were. We just kept cutting people down.

Total filming time: four hours and twenty minutes. We blew past the scheduled two-hour slot, and not a single person complained.

My placements: fourth, first, first, third, second.

And eighty pieces of sushi.

It was a record no one would believe belonged to a beginner. I called the end of the broadcast over a chat that was still screaming for more.

"Sorry. It's already way too late. See you next week!"

A sunny goodbye was the only thing that finally let us kill the stream.

"J-Jiwoo! Another commercial offer just came in!"

Whether it was because the Survival Ground broadcast had landed so cleanly or not, from the next day on the agency's phones would not stop. PUG's competitors, home-shopping networks, offline events — they all came calling.

"What's it this time?"

"A sushi commercial."

"Sushi... tsk. Okay, that one's making my mouth water."

"Then how about this?"

Hoyeon held a commercial inquiry out in front of me.

This was...

"Call. We are so doing this!"

A menu that hadn't even launched yet, and I got to eat it early? Even if I couldn't eat it, that was still a go. All the way.

A few more days slid by, and Friday arrived at last. The day of the field trip.