The PC Bang
An enemy champion raised a hand, already winding up to fire a skill. From another champion's hand, a skill was already in flight, streaking straight toward me.
Dazzling mechanical control. My eyes took in every situation on the screen at once. Both hands moved without rest, and the distinctive clatter of a mechanical keyboard drove itself into my ears. Several skills came at me, but the ones that actually landed were vanishingly few. Overwhelming physicals.
After I parted ways with the old man who'd been pulling a handcart, I spotted a PC bang sign on the way home — a name cobbled together from flashy colors and pretentious English words.
My stream currently ran as three hours of radio and four hours of gaming. Of course, the game was always the same grinding title. I didn't have any other games on my computer. I liked to think I put on a fairly flashy performance, but it wasn't even an action game. How impressive could the mechanics really look? In the end, viewers were bound to get bored.
It might have been fine for now, but I needed to pioneer a new kind of game in advance, so I turned on my heel and walked into the PC bang.
I'd been playing the same game for three hours since.
Currently occupying the number-one share of every PC bang: the MOBA Legend of League.
It was popular and famous the world over, but another defining feature of this game was its toxic player base. Sure, normal people existed, but it overflowed with users who rage-quit the moment their feelings got hurt, threw matches for no reason at all, and spewed every curse in the book at the drop of a hat. In vulgar terms, they called it a game for the mentally ill.
If you asked whether I liked it... not particularly. The game itself was pretty fun. But my life was hard enough without wanting to get stressed out playing games, so I'd deleted it from my computer a long time ago.
Why was I at a PC bang playing it, then? Because it was popular. I didn't know if I'd actually play it on stream, but I figured it would be good to run a few matches and get a feel for it. It was a popular game, so if I needed it to keep viewers entertained, I'd have to play it, wouldn't I? Not that I knew whether that time would ever come.
Anyway, after three hours of play I had a look at my body's physicals, and they were truly overwhelming. My mouse movements were precise, and my judgment was just as sure. If I simply concentrated, the enemy characters' finest motions entered my eyes, and a considerable level of play became possible.
I led my team with an endless string of super plays. The record so far was...
Two wins. Three losses.
Fuck.
Team games, it turned out, didn't end just because I played well by myself.
I stared at the letters floating on the screen and let the rising stress out in a sigh. I didn't care if people were bad. Why were they so desperate to troll?
Playing this game on stream... I'd need to think about that a little more.
As I leaned back in the chair to rest, a noisy sound spilled from the monitor on my left. Looks like a NewTube video was playing.
"A million-won donation! Thank you!"
A husky male voice. A million won — the donation amount was so divorced from reality that envy didn't even occur to me. Glancing at the screen, I saw a male streamer working hard on his reactions.
I turned my head back to the front. In the dark monitor, Geum Taeyang was reflected.
A brief melancholy settled over me, but there was no time to get gloomy. Honestly, hadn't luck been following me in its own way ever since I came to the Gender-Reversed World? Yesterday I'd been lucky enough to secure a lot of viewers, and that was how I'd hit a hundred thousand won in a single day's revenue.
Luck was supporting me perfectly. All I had to do was work hard on the stream. Enough moping around. Time to look for some other games.
I ducked into the bathroom and, on the way back, peeked at other people's monitors. The students sitting on my right were playing an FPS. The game's name was... Overwitch? I remembered playing it before, but the title wouldn't come to me.
The thought of asking the students had barely formed when my body moved first.
"Hey, friend. What's the name of that game?"
The gentle-faced schoolgirl stared at me with round eyes, startled by the sudden attempt at conversation, then her face flushed red in an instant.
"Huh? Me? Wh-what?"
"The thing you're playing. What's it called."
"This is, um... it's called Overwitch..."
"Ah. That's the one. Yeah, thanks."
I hadn't actually been planning to ask, but things had worked out conveniently anyway.
That happiness was short-lived. The moment I logged in, I found that far too much had changed. It had been years since I last played, so maybe that was only natural. I hadn't even been all that serious about it, honestly. This game was also one of the candidates for streaming, and the thought of learning it from scratch made the road ahead look bleak.
I was thinking I should ask the kids the next time I went to the orphanage when a person's shadow fell across me.
"Please have this while you play."
"...?"
Looking up, I found a part-timer standing there, a drink in her hand and an expression overflowing with self-confidence. A Post-it with something written on it was stuck to the side of the cup. If I remembered the menu I'd checked earlier, that drink had been about four thousand won.
Receiving a service I'd never gotten in my entire life, this out of nowhere, left me completely at a loss. When trouble showed up I benefited from the fierce face, and every so often I benefited from the handsome one. Times like this, Geum Taeyang's body was genuinely useful. If only the way I talked didn't change, it would have been perfect. Did the person who made this body really have to build in that particular defect?
"Yeah. Well, I'll enjoy it. Thanks."
I accepted the cup and started exploring the game screen when, this time, I felt a gaze from the side. Why wouldn't anyone just leave me alone.
I whipped my head around with irritation written across my face, and the girl in the next seat — the one who'd told me the game's name — looked away. Having someone keep staring at me wasn't exactly a pleasant feeling, so while I was watching her steadily, a pretty decent idea flashed through my mind.
I carefully struck up a conversation.
"Hey."
"......"
"Friend. Can't you hear me? Hey."
"I-I'm sorry!"
"Sorry for what."
"Well. I kept staring..."
"You that sorry?"
"......"
"I asked if you're sorry. I'm asking you right now."
"Yes! I'm sorry..."
Her friends, and the other people near my seat, started watching this way as my voice rose a little.
"The hell are you looking at?"
The spectating ended in an instant. I looked back at the girl and found her trembling with her head down.
No. I hadn't been trying to do this either. Unfortunately, it couldn't be helped. My increasingly fierce way of speaking was something even I couldn't control.
Before her condition got any worse, I executed the original plan. I pressed the complimentary drink from the part-timer against her cheek.
"Eep!"
She let out a mysterious little sound and looked up at me.
"Why're you so spooked. What did I even do."
"No, it's just..."
An extremely aggrieved expression. But she didn't seem to have the courage to talk back. The way she just fidgeted with her fingers, unable to say a word, struck me as rather cute. That was exactly how the kids at the orphanage looked when they'd gotten into trouble.
I handed her the drink exactly as I'd received it. She'd peel the Post-it off herself.
"If you're sorry, play some games with me."
"Huh?"
"It's been a while since I played this, so I don't really know it. Teach me a bit. You said you were sorry earlier. Play with me and I'll forgive you."
"Th-that's—"
Indecisive, huh. My money was disappearing in real time, and I couldn't stand this kind of waste. I rose slightly from my seat and announced it to her friends.
"I'm borrowing your friend for a bit."
Even without her there were still three of them, so it shouldn't matter. If it did, they could always say something to me.
"Send me a friend request."
"Okaaay."
Her friends were looking this way with envy in their eyes. They could stare all they wanted — getting tutored one-on-one was better than all of us playing together anyway. I narrowed my eyes a little, and they turned their heads on their own and went back to playing among themselves.
After about five games, the student in the next seat had begun looking at me with respect in her eyes. To students, someone who was good at games was simply a god.
I'd already gotten a sufficient sense of my body's outstanding performance when I played Legend of League, but the moment I picked up an FPS, it felt like talent was exploding out of me. The win rate looked far better than it had in that other game, too. This body, mysterious no matter how many times I looked at it.
If I turned on the camera and streamed at this level of skill, I could get seriously popular. Of course this game also overflowed with vicious chat, which would be terrible for my mental health — but if the stream had a high chance of succeeding, I was willing to endure that much. It wasn't as if I'd only be playing this game anyway, so there wasn't much to worry about.
Someone good at games, easy to talk to, with a refreshingly straightforward personality — a man with a personality like a woman's. Wasn't that the ideal type for women in the Gender-Reversed World?
With thoughts like that running through my head, the result of the matches was a carry. I accounted for most of our team's kills.
Continuing to queue while chatting about this and that with the student beside me, I realized a great deal of time had slipped by. Was it because I hadn't played a variety of games in so long? Or because I'd had someone to play with? Time felt like it had vanished in an instant.
It was time to go home.
After steering the last game to a perfect victory, I told her I was heading out, packed my things, and spoke to her.
"Hey, friend. You watch internet streams?"
"Yep. I watch a ton."
"Whose streams."
"Do you know Lethe?"
The kid who used to jump every time I so much as spoke to her was now talking so comfortably. Getting this close over a few games. Friends really ought to be made through games.
Well... that aside, I'd roughly known Lethe was famous, but it seemed she was popular with students too. A pretty face who was good at everything, they said, so it made sense.
Why had someone like that treated me that way? Had she taken one look at my face and decided I was a delinquent? I really didn't like that. Well... looking at the way I talked these days, even I had to admit I was a delinquent.
Anyway, I didn't like it!
"Don't watch weird stuff like that. Search 'Geum Taeyang' on Twitchy and watch that instead."
"Never heard of them? That's a pretty unique name. Must be someone with weird taste?"
"That's me."
"Huh?"
"I said that's me."
The atmosphere froze in an instant.
"Th-that's, I mean. I didn't mean it like that. Wait, you even streamed, oppa?!"
"I'm heading out. It's gotten late."
"Wait!"
The shout came from behind me, but I didn't turn around.
It wasn't as if I was sulking. This was just how a man said goodbye, wasn't it? There wasn't much time left before stream anyway. We were already friends, so we'd run into each other again someday.
Cool guy Seong Yuhan. Storming home.
On the way home, a thought occurred to me. The games I'd played today — could I even stream them on my own computer...?
The specs weren't that terrible, but...
Have I just become a PC bang youth?