When I Was Young, I Wanted to Be a Warrior in the Colosseum
When I was young, I wanted to become a warrior in the Colosseum.
But that was never going to happen.
The water had already been spilled.
She typed into the chat right away.
……Ha.
“Am I the weird one for trying to talk to her this whole time?”
Was the only thing on her mind a 1v1…?
“……The reason I used a Silver account.”
It was an awkward story to tell the person in question directly. At the same time—
Hm…?
Question marks bubbled up in her mind.
-?????????????
……Huh? What? What did she say?
Wait, had she ever introduced herself?
“……….”
……What?
……What the hell……? This person……?
Kim Daeun felt a chill run down her spine.
***
Until yesterday, she hadn't been certain that the person behind the StrawberrySmoothie mask was HrinHaneul.
But now she was.
Even though she had already created a custom room, she kept checking the match history of that Silver account on the stats site while waiting for the frustrating opponent to join.
That was when she found traces of HrinHaneul's smurf queuing with the Silver account around two months ago.
Yesterday she had only looked at matches from the past month, so she had missed it.
Normal games. A slaughter by an indiscriminate active Challenger smurf. And even in those games, the familiar mage with a miserable KDA.
Not just an accidental meeting in a game, but seven consecutive matches on the same team.
A clear duo. The account owner's terrible skill. And the fact that streamer HrinHaneul was close enough to duo with her on off-stream days.
Heh. How interesting.
A player whose tiny habits and movement suspiciously resembled HrinHaneul, who just happened to play the gore Ruru that HrinHaneul had sucked dry on the test server with godlike skill, and who duoed with HrinHaneul's smurf in normal games.
Wow. What a coincidence, right?
The coincidence was so extreme that anyone would think the account had been borrowed for a bit.
She didn't know what would happen if someone misunderstood, really.
With this level of coincidence, it would be stupid not to poke at it a little.
She had only lightly poked once, yet the other person bounced like they had been pricked by a thorn.
-Heh.
So that was the answer.
No wonder she knew Ruru's strange skills so well.
She could have just denied it, but she admitted it herself.
Wasn't she being too naive?
The chat went quiet for a moment. Was she checking the match history?
Pfft.
A laugh slipped out at the thought of her frantically closing the stats window.
From the YouTube videos alone, she had seemed like a completely cool and calm person.
How unexpected.
Was this what they called gap moe?
A message finally arrived.
StrawberrySmoothie has logged out.
After waiting a few minutes, a whisper arrived again.
HrinHaneul honestly confessed everything. The guilt that had been tormenting her forced every word out.
That she was the one managing the gallery.
That she had really hated CockroachSlayer.
That she had done those things to drive her out of the gallery.
After reading every message that slowly appeared, Ha Yunseo fell into thought for a moment.
Then she typed.
Then, suddenly, Ha Yunseo had a good idea.
A memory from when she was very young.
A small dream from back then, now covered in dust and no longer shining.
Ha Yunseo's lips curled upward. She looked like a little devil smiling wickedly.
It felt as if Ruru's Insolence had activated.
-Heh.
***
As noon approached, her eyes opened on their own. She sat up groggily and brushed aside her long, bothersome hair.
-Ugh.
Her whole body ached, so she had to stretch. It was nothing but a moment of pain for a body that refused to listen.
The afternoon sunlight was brightly illuminating the house.
The neatly arranged room came into sharp focus on her retinas.
…Ugh, too bright.
She squeezed her eyes shut, then slowly opened them a little before closing them again, repeating the motion.
When she could finally keep her eyes open somewhat, she crawled out of bed.
After waking up, yesterday's events somehow felt like a dream.
A fleeting, pleasant dream.
What was it called again? One long… something.
Her mind wasn't working.
…Tired. She had clearly slept a lot, yet she was still exhausted. Bleh.
She picked up her phone right away. As if to confirm, she opened the Discord app she had installed yesterday.
Only one person registered. HrinHaneul.
And the chat history that caught her eye.
It felt strange.
Using an app like this to talk to someone.
She had never contacted anyone personally through any means other than the game client before.
This was also the first time she had used a messenger app.
To her, who had never formed a single human relationship, a messenger app was nothing more than a useless piece of junk that only took up storage space.
She read the conversation on the screen once more.
Yesterday she had been so fired up about the 1v1 that she hadn't really processed it, but she had been talking to the streamer she had been watching most passionately lately.
Just like memories from last night slowly returning after sobering up, a sense of reality began to seep into her body.
Even though she had only started watching three months ago, her passion for the streamer was no less than anyone else's.
She played hundreds of videos on loop all day long, except when she was actually playing the game herself.
Recently, she had even started visiting the live streams often.
Even though it was right in front of her, it didn't feel real.
Having a direct conversation with HrinHaneul.
Her first messenger contact being HrinHaneul.
Not to mention, she was even setting a stream date with the 680,000-subscriber YouTuber HrinHaneul.
…Wow.
This can't be real.
-Heheh
Ha Yunseo's mood soared as if she could fly, right from the morning.