What the Tournament Left Behind

The tournament championship went to rising star Yoo Serin.

With a record no one else could even approach.

After that, Seol Yunha couldn't focus on the interviews running through third place.

The chat was just as noisy with talk about Yoo Serin.

They'd collabed together before, and she was mid-interview right now, so of course those kinds of comments would come up.

Watching it, Seol Yunha felt a wave of relief.

So they didn't hate us after all.

When she'd contacted Jia about Arin, Jia had said as much.

That Arin might resent them for leaving her alone on Pazijik and walking away.

That until Arin sent a signal first, it was better to keep their distance if they could help it.

Of course, the situation at the time had basically been "sign the contract or get your channel nuked," so there hadn't been a real choice — but from Arin's perspective, it would have been easy to take it badly.

Thank god.

She'd been suffering over it for a long time.

The guilt, and the longing to stream alongside this Arin who had somehow pulled off a successful re-debut, and then, sometimes, the fear of running into her on some big server someday and getting openly snubbed.

Should they just have stayed on Pazijik?

But then again, keeping a steady stream schedule on the side had been incredibly hard…

Or should they somehow have coaxed Arin into transferring with them?

Those regrets had only gotten worse after the new Yoo Serin appeared, and after she and Jia transferred back to Pazijik.

For some reason everything from start to finish had felt wrong.

The day she received that contract from the fledgling platform still came to her in her dreams.

"…Hic."

And now all of it had come undone.

No — she couldn't confirm it yet, but that was how it felt.

The knot that had been squeezing her chest for who knew how long was gone, and it was as if blood was finally flowing through her whole body again.

"…Huuup."

What kind of tears these were, pouring out of her now, Seol Yunha didn't know.

Relief? Atonement? Overwhelm?

Or if none of those, the petty, worldly joy of finally seeing a path to success?

A tangle of complicated feelings began to soak her brain, and because of that she couldn't hold the crying back any longer.

And then, all at once, she understood.

That Arin hadn't hated the unnies who had left her behind — that she had even been the one to reach out first — and that she was so proud of her for it.

And that, compared to that, she herself was pathetic: a small-time streamer still scraping by, getting comforted by a little kid.

That was why the tears were coming.

"W-wait, I'm muting for a sec…."

By age she was a full-grown adult.

But on the inside, she was still far younger than a thirteen-year-old child.

There was so much to read that her eyes were getting tired.

Once the official broadcast shut off and the crowd flooded over to first place, the viewer count hit a full 5,000!

It was a brand-new peak.

If I'd been on cam it would've gone even higher.

A little disappointing, sure.

There were plenty of viewers who just didn't like VTubers, so the hype came out a bit softer.

Well — if she thought of it as the price of not showing her face, there was nothing to be disappointed about.

Exposing your personal identity to a random mass of people wasn't easy, after all.

"Thank you for the donations! And thank you to everyone who cheered me on!"

She bobbed her head in little bows toward the facial-tracking phone.

If not for the viewers in the first place, she never even would have been able to put in a registration for Paraksil.

The win itself had been a foregone conclusion given how good her game sense was — so it was no exaggeration to say she owed everything to the viewers.

"Alright, I didn't promise anything, but I'm in a good mood so I'm dropping burgers!"

Donations were still popping off, and on top of that she'd pocketed prize money.

Not dropping some now would basically be a crime.

"Waaow…."

All she could do was genuinely marvel.

Chat moving this fast was even possible?

It was so rapid it kept stuttering and cutting out in the middle.

"I-I'm starting the raffle right now!"

If she dragged her feet here a revolution would break out on the spot, so she flipped the raffle site ON immediately.

It was a system where anyone who typed in chat got added straight to the list.

The moment recruitment started, chat got even faster.

In no time at all there were already over a thousand applicants.

"I'll count to five and then draw!"

And right after, the countdown.

"5! 4! 3! 2! 1!"

Click—

She finished the count and pressed the button, and the roulette that appeared spun round and round.

And the winner was….

A blank account with no donation badge and no sub badge.

They weren't even following her!

She thought the same thing.

Either someone from another room, or an alt.

But if she had the spirit of a big-corp streamer like Hanryang, the right thing was to give it even to people like this.

They'd come to watch her either way, and if they became regulars from this, that was a win too.

Besides, if she ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠inspected every single winner one by one while dropping prizes, she'd run out of time.

"Please type in chat."

Still, she had to at least check that they were actually here.

She scanned chat while waiting for a reply to appear in the window under the nickname.

Nothing special showed up in the raffle window, but it seemed like they were actually in the room.

Not that she could find them, though.

Chat was lagging so hard right now that reaction speed was a joke — her eyes couldn't keep up.

A little while after that, a notification popped with a frantic TTS right on its heels.

The winner, desperately trying to secure their hamburger.

That desperation came through bone-deep in the typos.

"Confirmed. I'm going to post on the Pazijik community right now, so please leave your email address."

She helpfully showed on stream where the community was, then uploaded the post.

Comments started slamming in almost immediately.

Haa… you had to know when to hop in and when to hop out.

It was always the ones with zero social awareness who had to go and mess up a prize giveaway.

"I'm warning youuu."

This was the kind of thing where you had to put the fear of god into them.

People who maliciously disrupted content were not her viewers.

"Anyone who commented here who isn't the winner — if you don't delete it right now, even if you win later I'm skipping you."

She waited after that with a thoroughly darkened look on her board, and when it felt about right she hit refresh —

— and cleanly, only the winner's comment remained.