Scary Teacher or Spring (2)
Truth be told, a game-focused broadcasting network called Conbata had already run a similar program before.
But even on a general cable channel, there were limits to the language you could use on air. So the main entertainment value came from watching the invited guest flail around the whole broadcast while the resident scolds bit their tongues and tried, somehow, to pet and soothe them into compliance.
…Or at least, that was how it used to work.
The Conbata episode with Jin Gyeo-wool as the resident scold had a completely different atmosphere.
Mid laner Jin Ju-yeong was the kind of guy whose pride far outstripped his skill—he was barely clinging to Gold IV. Teacher Jin Gyeo-wool, on the other hand, had spent months managing the Winter Legion and was thoroughly seasoned at wrangling stubborn idiots just like him.
But human beings are truly mysterious creatures. No matter how terrifying the threat of a scalp harvest loomed, the second a low-HP enemy appeared in front of them, their first instinct was still to blow Flash and go for it.
The lower the tier, the worse the symptom got—and Jin Ju-yeong was no exception.
"Back off."
"That guy—hey, if I just land one more hit…!"
"You're going to die."
"Ah, screw it. Flash auto!"
"Hey!"
"Ah, damn. Couldn't finish him?"
"You're dead too, you know."
He'd whiffed the low-HP kill and then donated his own life to tower aggro on top of it. If he'd just listened to the teacher, none of this would have happened.
Jin Gyeo-wool's furious glare stabbed into Jin Ju-yeong where he sat in the gaming chair. Feeling that razor-sharp stare, Ju-yeong whipped his head around and yelped.
"W-wait a second!"
"I can't take it anymore. I may not be able to grab anyone else's hair, but yours? Yours I have to pull."
"Aaaagh!"
Ju-yeong's cam was off to protect his privacy, but the single male scream was all anyone needed to know the Harvester had been activated. Not a single viewer of Jin Gyeo-wool's weekend stream was unfamiliar with the lore, so the chat flooded with Harvester sound effects.
After receiving a dizzying scalp massage, Jin Ju-yeong groaned like he was about to cry.
"Ow, my head…."
"Are you going to listen or not."
He'd listen this time. So please stop yanking his hair. Ju-yeong's sulky protest carried over the mic.
Neither the viewers nor Jin Gyeo-wool believed a word of it. What the viewers didn't know was that the reason Gyeo-wool had grabbed Ju-yeong's hair just now was because she'd already burned through all five charges of Warm Spring Breeze.
There was no HUD lighting up in her vision, so she had to go by feel—but after going through this enough times, Gyeo-wool could tell. Hon Gyeo-wool's instincts were starting to rev their engine.
"I'm serious. From now on, if you don't listen, I'm grabbing your hair and coaching you like that."
"…Fine. I'll listen."
Reading the chat, Jin Ju-yeong shouted in outrage.
"Excuse me. This is absolutely NOT a good thing, okay?"
"Stop reading chat. At your level, do you have time to read chat?"
"Yes ma'am."
Ever since the Presidential Cup amateur tournament, her fanbase had grown considerably—and a fair number of those fans were fellow students at Hwasong High.
Jin Gyeo-wool's Hwasong High rampage chronicle had suddenly become famous too, and her fiery personality had naturally settled into meme status.
During Part 1, when she'd been playing solo, she'd been so quiet it was basically three hours of a Jin Gyeo-wool mad movie. The second Part 2 started, the atmosphere flipped completely.
Ordinarily she was like a single white lotus drifting serenely on the water—someone you wanted to keep close. But the moment she got angry, she stopped being a rose and became the thorned vines themselves, wrapping tight around whoever stood nearby. Wasn't that reversal of charm exactly Jin Gyeo-wool's identity?
Someone who was always gentle and consistent was less interesting than someone whose true nature only surfaced when a certain trigger was pulled. It felt more human. More magnetic.
Without even realizing it, Jin Gyeo-wool was naturally branding a very particular image into people's minds.
"Bot. Get to bot, now."
"Why? Shouldn't I be catching the top wave right now? We've got our Jax on bot?"
"A fight's about to break out, so hurry up and go."
"Aaaah!"
Two hours and forty-five minutes into the stream. By the time the final game was underway, Jin Ju-yeong's head had become nothing more than Jin Gyeo-wool's personal joystick.
If he'd just listened when she said things reasonably, how nice would that have been. Why on earth wouldn't he listen.
"Drop a ping."
"On-my-way ping…."
"Three-way. Flank."
"Not going through the river?"
"You're supposed to hit them from behind."
Ju-yeong had his reasons for pushing back every time.
Of course he was curious. Right now Jin Ju-yeong felt exactly like a math-illiterate high schooler sitting in front of a genius mathematician.
Right before his eyes, the genius would casually mention some incomprehensible formula, shrug, and say that if you just solved it this way it would all fall into place instantly. The solution written on the board was a single line.
Naturally questions were going to come up. So what exactly is that formula?
"But nobody's showing on that side—aren't we just walking into a 2v5?"
"I'm going with that in mind, so just—do you actually want to get better at LoC or not?"
"No, I do, but you have to explain why so I can underst— aaagh."
"You can study later by watching my streams and the replays on your own time."
She hadn't started this stream because she wanted to teach Jin Ju-yeong in the first place, so Gyeo-wool went full "not my problem." What did she care. From the beginning, she'd only been using this forcibly assigned break time to get her name out there.
"No, but… if I don't even know what I don't know, how am I supposed to understand anything from watching a replay?"
The tier gap between Jin Ju-yeong and Jin Gyeo-wool was heaven and earth. No matter how many replays Ju-yeong watched, he would never understand why Gyeo-wool had made those calls.
Her rather selfish attitude only made the viewers laugh harder.
"You think I'm explaining this so you can understand?"
"……."
Chat opinion had long since swung entirely to Jin Gyeo-wool's side.
Not a single person was defending Jin Ju-yeong. He was being turned into a clown, but so what. As long as the stream was entertaining. Even people watching who were in the exact same boat as Ju-yeong were laughing at him.
This stream had made one thing crystal clear.
Jin Gyeo-wool's game-reading ability was at the level of current pros. No—maybe even beyond that. And as the old footage showed, she had only killed her personality for the sake of going pro. Inside, a great deal of anger was still piled up.
But the rage that had once run wild without direction had undergone a major transformation.
Like a protagonist who finally learns to control an unmanageable, overwhelming power and awakens, shifting the entire tone of the story—Jin Gyeo-wool was naturally learning how to sublimate her anger into something else.
Ju-yeong's hair follicles were tingling so hard they were standing straight up—but as long as you got to Seoul, who cared if you took the long way around.
Over three hours of gaming, Jin Ju-yeong had screamed more than fifty times. Viewers estimated he was already bald.
A flood of praise poured out for the pitiful oppa who'd suffered so much.
"Thank you…. I'll be heading off to edit the video now…."
The moment Jin Ju-yeong stood up from the chair, Jin Gyeo-wool burst out laughing.
Poor Ju-yeong's hair was sticking straight up toward the ceiling like a freshly sprouted potato. How was anyone supposed to hold that in.
He glared at Jin Gyeo-wool with a face full of resentment on his way back to his room, but Jin Ju-yeong couldn't say a single word to his little sister. The output on her thresher had clearly weakened compared to before.
Still, the pulling sensation in his scalp was unavoidable. Ju-yeong gently massaged his scalp with both hands as he returned to his room and sat down in his chair.
"Why'd she get so weak."
The old Jin Gyeo-wool used to charge in like she was going to rip a person's scalp clean off. Ju-yeong was bigger and stronger than her—so how had he ended up dodging her? The killing intent she'd carried back then had been murderous. She'd been packing venom that could bite an elephant to death.
But ever since she decided to go pro, her personality really had mellowed a lot. He was relieved his little sister seemed to be becoming a proper human being—and yet, at the same time, a strange thought crossed Ju-yeong's mind.
"Somehow… she still has Do-jin on her mind, doesn't she. She said she had amnesia, but that part she keeps remembering."
For years now, there had been something Lee Do-jin always used to say to Jin Gyeo-wool.
It had been meant to peel off a Gyeo-wool whose obsession was terrifying—but somehow, looking at things now, those words might end up becoming the very thing that tripped Lee Do-jin up.
Jin Ju-yeong still remembered clearly what had happened at the house that day.
Jin Gyeo-wool, sobbing and clinging to Lee Do-jin, asking if he really hated her that much. And the cold words Lee Do-jin had fired back at her.
Sorry, Gyeo-wool. I'm not interested in any girl who isn't better at the game than me.
He didn't have time to take care of anyone while living the pro life.
If he couldn't take care of her even if they dated, it was better not to date at all.
He wanted to focus on the game. And so on.
He'd tried all kinds of lines, but the delinquent little sister who never listened to a word had, for the first time, gone quiet like a real person.
What are you gonna do if I actually get better at the game than you, oppa?
Then I'll date you.
Lee Do-jin hadn't shown it on his face, but inside he might have been snorting. After all, back then Jin Gyeo-wool had insane mechanics, but no matter how much you taught her she couldn't control her rage and just kept making brain-dead plays over and over.
At first, watching her climb straight from Silver all the way to Platinum, even Lee Do-jin had been a little startled.
But one year passed, then two, and she was still stuck in Platinum. Confirming there was no further growth, Lee Do-jin had been relieved. At this rate, no matter how much time passed, Jin Gyeo-wool would never be better at the game than him. His form might drop with age, sure—but hers would drop right alongside it.
"This…. Jin Gyeo-wool was a scary woman. No. Is Lee Do-jin the crazy one."
Lee Do-jin, who cared about Gyeo-wool but still liked gaming and pro life more, and so rejected a beautiful girl.
And Jin Gyeo-wool, who took that rejection and climbed all the way to Challenger just to try and beat him somehow.
Honestly, both of them were abnormal.
There was no chance of the two of them facing off immediately—but that opportunity was coming soon. The biggest cup tournament in Korea, the Korean Cup, where most CCK and CCKC teams participated, was exactly that stage.
How the two teams got grouped would be the key, but even without a direct matchup, you could roughly gauge things by which team—Seoul or Hyeonseong Universe—climbed further up the bracket.
Whichever team it was, the moment they lost to the Seoul squad the LoC Gallery would explode. But if the opponent was Hyeonseong Universe, home of Lee Do-jin, widely called the best player in the world—that would feel completely different.
Jin Ju-yeong found himself in the position of having to decide who he'd root for if the two teams actually met.
His old friend Lee Do-jin's Hyeonseong Universe.
Or the Seoul team of Jin Gyeo-wool, who'd grown from a personality monster into a skill monster.
"…. Can't I just root for both teams."
In the end, his conclusion was: this way or that way, what did it matter.