I Don't Share a Table With Worse Players

That's not how you shoot a gun.

There were iron rules to the VTuber market.

Don't get full of yourself.

If you might not be able to stream, post a notice.

On any day related to a romantic partner, you stream no matter what.

︙

And never, ever get involved with male VTubers — especially the hako!

Just pretend I didn't see that.

Hako group chats, hako Discord servers — whatever they called them.

Those guys approached all soft and friendly on the surface, but the moment you set foot in, they were a swamp you could never climb out of. Once you entered their territory, they would never let you go unless you grew alongside them.

And if anyone so much as flickered bright enough to try rising alone?

They would drag that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠person back down to the bottom by every means available. Naturally, with only those kinds of people gathered together, none of them ever actually grew as streamers.

Apparently some of them even met up in real life and got up to all sorts of things. According to someone who knew, there were groups worse than anything you'd see on Animal Kingdom.

Somewhere out there, people even claimed, "Most male VTubers only debuted because they wanted to get with female VTubers!"

Even ignored, the guy kept typing in chat. They must have sent a particularly stubborn one.

Well, once her weight class got any bigger, he wouldn't even get a chance — so of course he was trying something now.

"Oh, I'm taking recommendations for what to play today."

He'd burn himself out and leave eventually. With that thought, she looked away again.

It wasn't only that she didn't want to get involved. She had a separate reason.

She needed the arrows pointed as hard as possible in that direction. Anyone could see the male VTuber was in the wrong, but she had to make the viewers' anger even hotter. Steer the situation right, and she could use all of it later.

Just when things had seemed to quiet down — now he was throwing donations!

And because a thousand won must have felt beneath his pride, he'd gone and given double.

Wow. This guy is something else.

A real hardcase. Honestly, he had to know she was deliberately ignoring him. Or had he eaten every last scrap of his social awareness for breakfast?

Well, either way, the current was flowing exactly as planned.

Gunko's relentless clinging set off a frenzy of reactions.

Yes. That's it. That's it.

Until yesterday most of them had been enemies, but now that they were allies, they felt so reassuringly solid. Being mostly zero-filter types, the chat was flooding with blunt, direct language!

"Hmm…, I don't really have a crew or anything yet…."

Perfect timing. She hadn't quite been ready to start a game anyway, and he looked like an ideal little toy to play with.

Of course, a VTuber living off the purest hardcore gachi-koi fans would have banned him on the spot — but to her right now, he was nothing but excellent issue bait.

And of course the bastard took the bait.

"Ah, I'm sorry, but…."

That seemed heated enough.

To steer things toward the picture she wanted, she tossed out a topic.

"I don't share a table with people who are worse at games than me."

Unintentionally, donations and gift subs came pouring in.

She bowed her head again and again to her precious Chairmen.

"Thank you so much! I'll work hard!"

What a blessed life this was. Roughly read the viewers' needs, toss out a few spicy lines, and money just… came out!

The more she thought about it, the more a female VTuber's very existence was a cheat code.

And then Kai — or Eggplant, whatever — answered the provocation.

Yes. That was how he had to come out. Otherwise all the buildup she'd stacked would mean nothing.

"Pff—!"

She cracked up once for the cameras.

"What game are you good at?"

The game he proposed was Sadon Attack, the most recognized domestic FPS. A fossil of a game that had survived twenty years. One of those national pastimes you still fired up at the PC bang with friends every now and then.

"We'll do the map on C Supply."

It was a gun game, but with the blood filter on it just barely scraped under the age restriction. She picked C Supply Depot — a straight-line map perfect for a 1v1 — and waited for the friend request.

After about five minutes of waiting, a mountain of friend requests had piled up. Thinking, wow, there really are this many shameless randos, she hovered the mouse over one nickname that stood out.

"Is this you?"

The user with "Zzzap" stuck on the front. But hadn't that Gunko been Kai?

He'd fully committed. Seemed like they'd sent out an elite operative from among themselves.

Normally the person who issued the challenge came to face you themselves — seeing him pull this told her just how desperate he was.

"Ah, right. Kai-nim has to put something up too!"

She couldn't be the only one carrying risk. One slip here and the mosquitoes would suck her dry. If it came to that, she'd rather graduate and reincarnate.

"Oh."

The one who seemed to be their representative put up a full two hundred gift subs. So he wasn't just trying to free-win it after all?

Or maybe the opponent was skilled enough that losing never crossed his mind — in which case he still had a long way to go before he understood Yoo Serin.

"Sounds good! Let's get ready!"

There was no need to set separate rules. Rifle or sniper — even if he cheaply lofted grenades from above. As long as she roughly mapped out the half-remembered layout, her mindset was that she would win no matter what.

Shrrk— shrrk—

She loaded straight into the game, mashed the number keys to show off a practiced hand, sprinted to the open straightaway, drew the sniper, and aimed….

BANG!

She'd only poked her body out for a second. The opponent who'd already held the angle struck first.

The moment Gunko's side took round one, chat exploded.

She paid it no mind. Her focus was solely on the game.

Shot from behind the container.

In the brief beat before the next round started, she burned the enemy side's layout into her head. Something like a collection bin on the left, one big container behind that. From her sightline, then, the places he could be hiding were left, center, and right — one each.

Old memory said you could also shoot through the gap between the container and the wall, but she set that aside until she got hit by it.

Shrrk— shrrk—

Scoreboard time ended and the next round began. He'd be holding again, but that didn't matter. All she had to do was dodge the first shot.

Whoosh—

She hit the hole and lobbed a grenade down the open lane.

KWAANG!

The enemy was too far away for her to have thrown it to kill. Pure vision denial.

Piiing—

Just as planned, his bullet skimmed past her character.

Her turn now.

In an FPS, a sniper player's job didn't amount to much. Hold the angle. Aim. Fire.

BANG!

From now on, the moment you show even a little body, you're dead.

︙

After that, it was a continuous stretch of overwhelming difference.

The only real scare came once — when a bullet slipped through the container gap and hit her. Even that was a half-shot that didn't kill, so she locked his position immediately and cleaned him up.

"What even is this, against a newbie."

Final score: 7–1.

After giving up the first round of a first-to-seven, the rest was pure stomping time. In the end, the opponent even showed the ugliness of swapping to a rifle for the final stretch of what had been a clean sniper duel.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Whether he was swallowing his rage or something else, Gunko went quiet in chat for a while.

The roast session rolled on, and then—

With a fanfare, the gift subs dropped.

Ah — so he'd been quiet because he was topping up!

"Aigoo, Chairman! Thank you so much!!"

Since their Gunko-nim had shown such sincerity, she beamed with a voice loaded full of mockery — then chambered the finishing round to close out the hako-crew kidnapping event.

"Well then. Kindly get lost."