My Streamer Gets NTR'd Right Before My Eyes
It was the next day.
"Hnnngh..."
The moment I opened the Frolik app, a groan slipped out of me. Because, well.
"...Painting Octopus."
Painting Octopus. Put simply, it was a game of hide-and-seek—though not an ordinary one. The hiders had a painting ability, the power to draw, and used it to tuck themselves away all over the map. The seeker had to find them and catch them. Yeah. That kind of game.
And lately, it had become quite the topic across both the streaming world and the games industry.
Which meant—
"Choe Seohyeon, you bastard..."
I was mad. No, seriously—why did a man who lived and breathed Knight of Fury suddenly feel like he was drifting off into variety games?
...No. Now that I thought about it, yesterday had been the same, and the last few days had been off too. The stalking business had pushed it out of my head for a while, but this guy really did seem to be playing other games more than KoF lately. The moment that landed, a hot little surge of resentment welled up. If I had to put a metaphor to the feeling, it was like a friend I'd been gaming with had suddenly found a more fun game and walked out on me.
In other words—
"Haah. This is exactly why you've got to watch out for NTR..."
My streamer, getting NTR'd right before my eyes. A truly vicious, horrifying scene.
Even so, I couldn't chew him out over it. I couldn't chain Choe Seohyeon to nothing but Knight of Fury for the rest of time.
Think about it. Everyone else was collabing in Painting Octopus, and Choe Seohyeon alone stayed on KoF? Then his chances to collab—and to mix with other streamers at all—would dry up on their own. His stream would stagnate. Vicious bungtang viewer or not, I didn't want to take it that far. Honestly, it didn't even sound fun.
"A bungtang only stays enjoyable if you know where the line is."
Mindless bungtang just earns everyone's contempt in the end. So I decided to forgive Choe Seohyeon for getting NTR'd by Painting Octopus.
"I forgive you, Choe Seohyeon."
With that declaration, delivered as if it meant something profound, I fired off a donation message the way I always did.
And then—
"...??"
No answer.
What... the hell?
Any other day, a donation like this got me a sigh, or a crease between his brows, or something. So why today...
Why was he looking at me with eyes like that?
Choe Seohyeon saw my donation and gave absolutely no reaction. The viewers tilted their heads too.
The viewers seemed to feel it too. Something was off.
The silence stretched, and in that gap a thought hit me. He'd already gone as far as seeking advice over my bungtang stunts, after all...
"...No way."
Suspicion hardened, bit by bit, into certainty. Had I really bungtang'd so much that he'd decided not to react to me anymore?
For real?
"Ah, uh...?"
The thought actually scared me. Truly. For the past seven years, watching his streams was how I'd barely managed to keep living. And recently I'd even made a vow—to take my joy from his broadcasts, and to help him make those broadcasts more fun. Yeah. I had only just sworn something like that. And now he'd resolved to ignore me?
"..."
For the first time in my life, I understood what fear was. Seriously. Enough for a thin cold sweat to break out. I was still standing there stammering uh, uh when he spoke.
"...Is there anyone here who's seen an old drama?"
"You know the one, right? The one with the line, 'Even a cancer cell is a living thing.'"
Not one of the viewers understood what he was getting at. Neither did I.
I swallowed hard and watched in silence, and then he went on.
"It's just... I've been thinking about it lately. Even if that person is a malicious bungtang, they're still my fan, aren't they? One who's watched my stream for seven years, at that."
"And once I started thinking that way—the same way even a cancer cell is a life—I caught myself wondering, without really meaning to, whether there might be some way to embrace that person too."
A way to embrace me, he said.
That catastrophic wording stunned me and the viewers alike. How badly?
—
—
The chat stopped cold.
"What the..."
For the first time in my life, Choe Seohyeon made me feel bewildered.
That was when it happened.
One brutally direct donation came flying in. Choe Seohyeon let it sit for a beat, then opened his mouth.
"I didn't eat anything strange. If anything, my head is perfectly clear right now."
At that catastrophic wording, people flooded the chat and the donations, demanding to know what on earth he was thinking. He seemed to realize a misunderstanding was taking shape, and started to explain.
"I feel like this could be misunderstood, so I'll be honest. This is... how should I put it. I happened to get a piece of advice recently, and thinking it over, that person does bungtang, but they're also someone who always helps our stream. A good person. That's right, isn't it?"
"Exactly."
He smiled, soft and bright.
In Choe Seohyeon's words, I felt a warmth I couldn't quite name.
That is—
"So I thought about it. Maybe, just sometimes... I could say something kind, instead of something unkind. That's why I tried it."
...No. This isn't it.
Sure, I was relieved he wasn't trying to cast me out. But the way he was now felt excessively sentimental. Yeah. Right now, he was far too sentimental. And I didn't like it.
Think about it. What do people who watch internet broadcasts have in common? They watch for dopamine. For fun. So I could not tolerate him manufacturing some forced, unconvincing melodrama in the middle of it. I sent a donation on the spot, the fear from a moment ago forgotten in an instant.
Cut the bullshit and turn on KoF right now.
The chat answered in exactly the same mood as me.
Everyone rejected his idea and sided with mine. Seeing that, Choe Seohyeon closed his mouth and let out a sigh.
"...Even when I try to say something nice, this is what I get. I suppose there's nothing to be done, then?"
"Ah, I'll play Knight of Fury too. Only—today I'll do this for a bit first, and then KoF. I was thinking of streaming a little longer today, so..."
So he was going to play KoF, but he meant to do Painting Octopus first and run a longer broadcast. Well, then I had to give him that. Anyway, I relaxed and decided to watch quietly until he switched over.
But...
"...Huh."
An hour into watching his Painting Octopus gameplay, a hollow breath escaped me. Because...
"...No matter how hard I try, I just can't get used to this game..."
It was his catastrophic skill.
I started to doubt whether what I was looking at was even real. Fortunately, I didn't seem to be the only one.
As the chat made plain, Choe Seohyeon wasn't just bad. He was hopeless. And there was exactly one reason.
"Hah, that's on me. I tried it because it's trending, but I didn't think it would suit me this poorly."
The reason he was god-awful at Painting Octopus was simply that his drawing was terrible. Yeah. That was the only reason.
"I really didn't think he'd be this bad..."
It wasn't that Choe Seohyeon couldn't hide at all. The problem was that he drew so poorly that no matter how he moved the brush, it came out a mess.
In other words—
"Hmm. This isn't it, is it..."
Moving on to the next round, Choe Seohyeon started slapping paint around just as clumsily as before. And our eyes, watching the result, began to rot all over again.
His drawing was so shoddy the chat started flying again. This time I couldn't hold it in either.
A single line, and I meant every word of it. The chat agreed.
Maybe because everyone was saying the same thing, Choe Seohyeon took the advice seriously.
"...Should I do it that way?"
When everyone said so, Choe Seohyeon finally accepted it. Only then did the chat's tone ease, as if their hearts had settled.
And right in the middle of that—
"...No matter how I look at him, this bastard's only problem is his drawing."
Even then, I was turning it over a different way. His brushwork was a mess, sure, but his basic sense was good, the way it is with people who are actually good at games. Really—the spots he'd hidden in so far had been pretty decent places. And if I thought about the reflexes he'd shown when he got caught earlier...
"...I saw something like that on Shorts."
Honestly, I'd never tried it myself, so I couldn't be sure. But with his mechanics, wouldn't it be possible?
"Yeah. That's it."
I immediately sent him a piece of advice that might actually help.
With movement.
I figured it was possible. His viewers, apparently, did not.
Most of them seemed only half convinced. That was when—
A fair point, to a degree. Clips circulating as YouTube Shorts were obviously the moments that had gone well, cut out of a longer session. Even so, my mind was made up.
Staying stuck to the wall in that state wasn't good either. Unless the seeker had unusually bad eyes, getting caught was obvious.
Choe Seohyeon seemed to be weighing my words quite seriously. Then, as if he'd decided, he nodded.
"...All right. Fine—I'll give it a try."
"If I just stay stuck to the wall, it isn't even anything for you all to look at. Then I'd rather at least take the challenge."
As if determined to keep his word, Choe Seohyeon moved his character and came off the wall. Then he walked straight out in front of the seeker.
The approach was so brazen that not only we, but the seeker, froze for a second. The seeker stared at Choe Seohyeon standing there and went still. It didn't last. They snapped out of it and started firing a paint gun at him.
And immediately—
"Hup!"
Choe Seohyeon threw a movement dodge. Tremendous reflexes, or a read. He slid his character to the right and slipped the seeker's paint-gun shot.
"Huh? This actually works—!?"
Choe Seohyeon broke into a beaming smile at the fact that the movement was landing. But this was no moment to relax—the seeker's assault hadn't stopped. The opponent, the seeker, sprayed that paint gun like a lunatic, hellbent on catching him no matter what.
And every single time...
He juked with ridiculous precision.
Right, left, left, right.
Once the movement started to sit in his hands, he began copying the Shorts move for move.
"Whoa, so this really works. Everyone, you see this? The movement's landing better than I thought?"
Choe Seohyeon laughed and changed his stance. Sometimes prone. Sometimes with one foot kicked up. He kept swapping poses—coy, infuriating, the kind of thing that would tilt a seeker into madness—while he juked.
It was dazzling enough that...
...every single person in chat cursed Choe Seohyeon's movement in one voice.
And it was the real thing. Just now, from a dead stand, he'd spread his legs and jumped to dodge the shot. The seeker's paint whistled straight through the gap between his character's legs.
Just as the chat said, his movement was beginning, in earnest, to cross into the realm of art.
The seeker, of course, kept firing with everything they had at the Choe Seohyeon who was making a fool of them.
But.
"Hoi."
His movement was a league beyond them.
And then the time ran out.
"Whew. How was that, everyone?"
He wiped the sweat from his brow, looking thoroughly satisfied. In the middle of that, someone's donation came flying in.
...A question that sounded like it was going to be very, very fun.