Is This Okay? - 1
Day 2 of ABCD’s water festival.
This glittering festival naturally became a hot topic in every VTuber community. Hundreds of people in raincoats enjoying games and a mini concert was something that could not even be compared to most paid shows.
More than anything else, the very fact that a mere VTuber company had rented out a pool near the Han River felt like a thrilling little act of rebellion. There, without embarrassment, people could let their inner child run free.
So the community was full of praise.
- Damn it, I’m the only one who can’t see it, again.
- Oh man, Beatiful Pink!
- Knew this would happen lol
- Mod, ban this bastard already
- What the hell template is this?
- Seriously, shouldn’t this be reported to Big Plan? Just in case, I’ve already secured the PT drill routine. Good work, me.
- When I see the pink raincoats, it’s just a bunch of bald middle-aged dudes....
└ Hey, hey, hey
└ Don’t say they’re all sex-starved just because they can’t even get it up
└ Wow, that one-line fact actually hurts like crazy lol
└ You’re the ace, damn it
└ The boomer boomerang guy really got triggered lololol
The pool was way, way bigger than I expected, so with almost three hundred yellow raincoats in there, it was still spacious as hell and totally possible to swim around like a maniac lol. We played around splashing in the water for about two hours, then during breaks we spread out picnic mats and ate snacks, and at the end listening to Aki-chan play guitar was ridiculously fun lol. It made me think this is what it feels like when the in-crowd goes to Water Bomb for real.
- Damn, it already looked amazing just from the relay stream
- For real, it looked insanely fun
- This shit only benefits people living in Seoul
- I’m thinking of going today, but will there be a lot of people...?
- Don’t know? They counted people while handing out raincoats, water guns, and towels as soon as you went in yeah.I heard they only take up to 1,000 people, and anything over that gets cut for safety yeah.
- Holy shit, a thousand people lol
- What snacks do they have?
└ Boneless fried chicken and hot dogs yeah.
└ Do they give out drinks too?
└ Yeah, you pick one of cola, cider, or bottled water
└ Are there bathrooms or showers?
└ Yeah, just use the pool facilities lol. You leave your bag in storage and have to change into swimwear or clothes you don’t mind getting wet
└ Are there a lot of girls?
└ Aki-chan and Berryri Clara are there yeah.
- No, seriously, damn it, it makes no sense for Doda to be absent.... She barely showed up since I came in through Defense, and now she’s out right away? For real?
- Hey, Doda’s a person too, you know lol
- You gobble up a week’s worth of content and then say that lol
- She really did slack off hard lol, wins first place and runs off
- After digging through the archive, Doda’s segment alone was almost 50 hours lol. The kid’s going to die lol
- Isn’t it just the pros going easy on her?
- And there’s the RD relay version and the pro gamer reaction compilations on top of that, so there’s mountains of stuff to watch, right??? Where’s your conscience, bastard???
- Uuugh... VTuber loser, she ate up all the pro gamer reactions too....
└ Then go find and consume the small-time ones too lol
└ Small-time ones?
└ The ones getting allowance from Bigman yeah. They sometimes do reactions to ABCD or RD streams, and those are pretty tasty in their own way
└ Then that’s, like, hundreds of people, damn lolololol.
└ See? Bigman is holding up the VTuber industry lolololol.
└ Ha, is it worship time again?
And with that, they praised Bigman and moved along in the familiar current.
But.
Even if one admitted that Doda’s Defense game tournament was a one-of-a-kind piece of content, there were still people who doubted the truth of what had happened there.
They pulled opinions from all kinds of gaming communities and raised the theory that the tournament’s outcomes had been rigged.
- Damn it, how many times are you going to post the same thing.... Doda’s just a deranged gaming addict, that’s why she’s Challenger, okay? Even when I post screenshot proof, you still clamp your ears shut and ignore it;
- Isn’t the tier just account boosting too? Feels like the company rigged it to make her look like a gamer junkie
- Aurora Prism didn’t have that kind of money back then....
- Right lol, it really does look rigged, but people are treating it like a documentary
The conspiracy theories spreading like that slowly drifted in a stranger direction. The claim was that Big Plan’s habit of holding events only in Seoul itself was suspicious.
- Isn’t this just staged to hype them up by force?
- If they had come to Daejeon too, I would’ve gone in person to check lol
- Looks like they just gathered everyone together and put on a rigged show
- It’s suspicious as hell that their events are always only in Seoul too....
Of course, most fans reacted negatively to the claim. There were dozens of hours of archive footage left behind, and the claim itself was absurd.
- I went to take a dump and came back to find you guys stirring up nonsense bait that doesn’t even make sense; I’m banning all of you, so just keep the Berryri bikini bait rolling.
- Mod! Mod! Mod! Mod!
- Promote this guy to permanent chief mod, go go go
- Sneakily steering the conversation toward Berryri literature lol
- Damn, this Berryri simp is insane lol
- The bait was stupid as hell, though
In an instant, things were settled. Since the suspicion had gone well past the point of childishness, the community atmosphere quickly returned to normal.
*
Sunday lunchtime.
Seo Eun-hwa was by herself in Kang Do-dam’s arcade, D-GAMERS, tossing a basketball into the hoop. Of course, there was nobody around, and since Dodam had given her unlimited access, her chances were endless.
“....”
With a careful look on her face, Eun-hwa raised her slender arm and threw the ball. It traced a beautiful arc and got sucked cleanly into the hoop.
Thump!
With a heavy sound,
the lights nearby flickered.
Ding-dong!
“!”
Eun-hwa smiled brightly and said, “Ah! I got it in! I made it, Manager!”
Then she looked back.
But Seonwoo Taek and Kang Do-dam were each occupied with their own tasks. Seonwoo Taek was measuring the length with a tape measure from the management office, whose door stood wide open, while Do-dam was looking at her phone and wearing a small, quiet, bitter smile.
Anyone would have thought they were just doing their own thing.
Eun-hwa awkwardly adjusted her glasses.
“Ahaha....”
“I was invited by Dodam last night, so I thought we were getting a little closer. But somehow it still feels awkward to speak up first....”
So she had tried to play a game, at least,
and break the ice....
At this rate, it looked like she would just end up playing unlimited games alone and then leaving.
“....”
Come to think of it, it was astonishing.
Seonwoo Taek had a convenience store,
and Do-dam had an arcade.
Eun-hwa let out an absentminded little sigh of admiration.
“Is it normal these days for everyone to have a side business in addition to their main job? I’ve saved up some money too, but I didn’t think I’d ever get to the point of owning buildings like this.”
Should I look into a loan...?
Just as Eun-hwa was thinking that,
Seonwoo Taek pressed the button on the tape measure in his hand. The extended tape snapped back with a whir. Then he walked over to Do-dam and said, “I’ve measured it. The width should be more than enough. When the furniture shop comes tomorrow to install the desk, you should be able to put it wherever you want.”
“....”
“Do-dam?”
“....”
Do-dam finally lifted her head.
“...Huh?”
“Is something wrong?”
“No, well....”
She scratched her head hard, then shoved her phone into her shorts pocket and said, “About that tournament the other day. Someone kept saying it was rigged, so I was watching it because it was kind of funny. Now they’re saying events only being held in Seoul is suspicious? Like Seoul’s Big Plan’s front yard or something.”
“....”
Heh heh heh.
Do-dam laughed.
“I thought I’d won everything by myself and become champion. But if you look at it that way, all I really did was hold a local event and be satisfied with that.... So this is what people end up saying.”
She was still a long way from feeling the void.
To become the world’s strongest gamer, after all.
That fact was a little funny.
But Seonwoo Taek didn’t laugh. He said quietly, “Is this from the community?”
“Yeah. Boss, don’t you read the forums?”
“I don’t.”
“I see.... That’s actually a healthy habit.”
“....”
Seonwoo Taek opened his mouth with an unreadable expression. But his voice had dropped a little, and unlike usual, it carried a faint edge that made him sound slightly frightening.
“Is this something that requires legal action?”
“!”
“!”
Eun-hwa jumped in surprise. So did Do-dam.
Somehow,
that one sentence felt incredibly heavy.
“I-Is this really something I’m supposed to be hearing...?”
“Oh no, did Boss get angry...?”
The two of them were a little confused.
Even so, he went on.
“I’ll contact the law firm immediately. If I explain the situation to the attorney in charge, then...”
“N-no! It’s not like that!”
Do-dam shook her head violently. Then she waved her hands around, trying to calm things down. Her face was a little red as she spoke.
“T-this kind of thing is just internet play...! No need to take it seriously. Sometimes they go a little overboard, but you can just show some action like professional wrestling and that’s enough. I’m not really taking it seriously either. I just didn’t think they’d start saying stuff like this.”
“....”
Seonwoo Taek nodded.
“I see. Understood.”
“S-still, thanks.”
“Not at all.”
The excuse that wasn’t quite an excuse passed by.
In the arcade, a brief silence followed.
“....”
“....”
“....”
Looking at Do-dam, Eun-hwa said, “Still, when something you carefully prepared gets dismissed, it does feel kind of... bad, doesn’t it? I had my red pill leaked ages ago, so I went through that a lot. People would say, ‘You were a announcer and that’s all you could do?’”
“Hmm, well.... Can’t be helped. You can’t expect everyone to react with the same mindset.”
“Yes, it can’t be helped.”
The two of them exchanged tired little smiles.
It had only been for a moment.
But then Do-dam tilted her head slightly and said, “Setting that aside, the convenience store meeting is temporarily sealed off. So if you’re coming, come to the arcade instead.”
“Y-Yes?! Why...?”
“Not telling you. Besides, isn’t it fine if we just spend time together here?”
“....”
No way....
Eun-hwa made a complicated face. She had thought the biggest obstacle, Aki’s permission, had already been cleared, but an unexpected ambush was waiting for her.
“And the manager herself is just standing there with this dazed look, doing weird things.”
This too,
that too,
everything was a total mess.
And yet, strangely enough, it was becoming more and more fun.
“Because...”
Thump!
“!”
“!”
At the sudden sound, Do-dam and Eun-hwa both turned their heads.
Before they knew it, Seonwoo Taek had gone over to the basketball game and was throwing balls. And every single one of them went in with suspicious accuracy.
Ding-dong!
Ding-dong!
Ding-dong!
Eun-hwa smiled bashfully and moved closer, near enough for their shoulders to touch. Then she picked up a ball and said, “I want to try again too! The more I do it, the more I’m starting to get the hang of it.”
“....”
Seonwoo Taek tilted his head. But he quickly stepped just one pace away from Eun-hwa. Then he started explaining how to throw from the side.
“If you use both hands and think of it like firing a cannon, that should work.”
“Wasn’t the one hand just supposed to be for support?”
“That’s for someone with enough arm strength....”
The two of them began chatting softly.
Watching them, Do-dam let out a long sigh inside. Her feelings had become complicated in several different ways. So she pretended not to notice the small fire burning in some corner of her chest.
“....”
First of all, there was the fact that Eun-hwa was growing accustomed to it bit by bit.
“Looking at her, she’s oddly becoming numb to this pretty fast. Even when she’s next to Boss, she just acts like it’s nothing....”
Just a
little
tiny
bit
annoying.
- Wow! I got it in!
- Very well done.
Aki, why on earth....
“....”
- Would it be okay if I hold my hands like this?
- No. A little more to the side.
- If the manager would just hold them for me directly....
“Hiiih?!”
Do-dam could not pretend ignorance any longer. She hurried over and stepped between Eun-hwa and Seonwoo Taek. Then, pretending not to notice the startled Eun-hwa, she threw the basketball herself.
Bang!