Streamer Kim Hanbyul
"Whew."
After playing a genuinely fun game for the first time in a while, a warm wave of satisfaction washed over me.
I'd turned my stream off earlier in case I ended up raging on camera, but the moment I flipped it back on, a familiar sight filled the screen.
On the post-game results screen, Hanbyeori was mid-argument with her teammates.
Streamer Hanbyeori. Real name: Kim Hanbyul.
A popular streamer who'd built her brand on sharp banter and the rare concept of a genuinely skilled female player. In the future, she would even become a team streamer for ARK — the team I'd once belonged to.
She was a fun person.
ARK's relationship with Hanbyeori hadn't grown out of pure fandom. It was a relationship bound by money. She'd barely even watched the pro league before our team approached her, so all anyone really expected from her was a decent level of reaction content.
But she threw her whole heart into cheering for our team. On the days we lost in the finals, she got angry like it was her own defeat. That sincerity earned her real friendships with the players — she started showing up at official fan meetings and events, and became a regular face in our YouTube content.
Nostalgia, huh.
I never would have imagined that the first esports connection I'd run into after becoming a woman would be her.
I was still sitting with that strange feeling, about to queue up another game, when—
"An invite?"
Someone had sent me a game invitation.
The nickname was Hanbyeori...?
Something felt off, so I checked the stream window I'd left running small in the corner.
Not an impersonator. The real Hanbyeori had just invited me.
What is this.
In Legend of Legends, there were usually only two reasons someone sent a friend request or invite after a game ended.
One: they wanted to bus off a skilled player.
The other: they wanted to flame someone they couldn't stand.
Why bother sending a friend request or invite just to cuss someone out?
Because one-on-one chat doesn't get you reported or banned.
Legend of Legends had a penalty system. Trolling or flaming got you anything from a chat mute up to a month-long ban, with the severity climbing over time. The system cracked down harder on verbal abuse than on actual trolling, which earned it plenty of complaints — but the important part was that one-on-one conversations almost never triggered a ban.
Why?
Because Riot being Riot, basically.
To get someone banned you had to report them, and one-on-one chat had no report button. If you really wanted to file a complaint, you had to log into the website yourself and use the inquiry form — and who was going to bother with that? On top of that, one-on-one chat was nearly impossible to take legal action over.
That was why a fair number of players sent friend requests or invites after games.
But I don't think Hanbyeori invited me just to flame me.
I still had no idea what this was about, but I hit accept anyway.
"Did she block me? Why won't the friend request go through?"
Something felt wrong. She tried sending another friend request, but—
Failed to send request. Please try again.
—all that came back was an error message.
"She's not accepting my friend request?"
Streamer Hanbyeori. Who was she, exactly?
A rising superstar of the Legend of Legends scene — a major-league streamer so popular that group chats existed solely for people trying to snipe a game with her.
The SeolheeYam incident.
There was a major streamer named SeolheeYam who maintained an average of ten thousand viewers doing nothing but Just Chatting. Feeling like her content needed a change, she started a game stream — and the game she picked was Legend of Legends.
After mercilessly slaughtering the AI in the tutorial, she convinced herself she had talent and queued into a normal game. The result was a complete wipeout. Right after, she naively accepted a friend request from one of her teammates and got hit with a full verbal assault.
She was a soft-hearted person, so the sight of her breaking down in tears over the abuse went out live on stream.
The fallout: Riot changed the system so that brand-new players had to manually enable friend requests before they could receive any. Instead of actually policing abuse in one-on-one chat, they just turned the feature off and left it to players to deal with the consequences if they turned it back on.
Classic military-style problem-solving — exactly the kind of handling that got Riot, supposedly a top-tier company, mocked as operating like a mid-sized indie studio.
Hearing the chat point out that they'd already duo'd before, Hanbyeori swallowed a bitter taste.
There was only one reason she was this desperate for a duo partner.
Less than a month left.
There was a tournament called the VLL — Virtual Legend League — a competition for top-tier streamers hosted by the streaming platform. A streamer she was close with had offered her a spot on a team.
Looking at the VLL's average viewership and YouTube numbers, it was a genuine shot at breaking into the major leagues for good.
But the entry requirement was either being a former pro player or hitting Grandmaster in the current season. Her actual rank — Diamond 2 — wasn't even close to qualifying.
They said I just need to hit the rank, bus or no bus.
The team she'd be joining wasn't aiming for a championship. They were going for entertainment value. A former world champion who was currently on a losing streak in Master. A rank-one player whose level dropped to Diamond the moment their one-trick got banned. That kind of roster.
So riding the bus was fine — they just needed her to hit Grandmaster. But—
This might actually be impossible.
That was what she'd heard during a collab with the rank-one player. Even they had judged her Grandmaster climb to be out of reach.
And honestly, that made sense. Early Master was called the demon bracket for a reason — the skill gap from high Diamond was massive. Trying to climb that with a local who was stuck thrashing around in Diamond 2 and 3?
Not easy.
But if it's that person...
The one who'd completely dismantled a Diamond game so thoroughly that nobody could even play — maybe, just maybe, it was possible with them.
That was the slim hope she was clinging to.
A glance at chat confirmed the mood was turning restless. Figuring this was her last shot, she sent the invite.
"Huh?"
para has joined the lobby.
The moment the other person actually accepted, both Hanbyeori and her chat went dead silent.
A beat later—
An absurd exchange of greeting answered by greeting, answered by greeting again.
Does she not know who I am?
Normally, people who so much as laid eyes on her would start performing for a chance to appear on stream. But this mysterious smurf named para showed zero reaction at all. The silence was so complete she had no idea what to say next.
What... am I doing.
Even she had to admit the duo proposal was completely out of nowhere. No matter how desperate she was for Grandmaster, asking a total stranger to duo — live on stream, no less — was a lot.
She'd planned to apologize and smooth things over the second they said no. But—
"Ah."
Right. The other person was a mid laner, same as Hanbyeori.
She could play support well enough, so she briefly considered switching lanes — then dropped the idea. They were joining as an entertainment team anyway, so it wouldn't cause real controversy, but she still had a baseline of pride.
In Legend of Legends, once you hit a certain rank, locking in a main role — even a main champion — was the smart way to climb. Even someone who smurfed mid could go top, die on repeat, and lose the game.
Still, I asked first. If we lose one game, we can just end it naturally.
.
.
.
.
.
"What do you mean... top inhibitor at twelve minutes..."
A ten-win streak.
Five hours into the duo, Hanbyeori's personal best win streak was shattered.