A Perfect Win Rate
"Alright, next challenger. Come on in."
"That's not hard at all."
Mina pulled up her match history for the viewers. I took one look at it and nearly fell out of my chair.
A hundred percent??? Is that even possible?
I already knew Mina was absurdly good at games, but a 100% win rate still caught me completely off guard.
"Anyone Platinum or higher want to give it a shot?"
Quite a few Platinum players had apparently been sitting in the chat. The game hadn't even been out that long, and there were already this many veterans. I hadn't played a single match myself. Kind of amazing, honestly.
"I'll go with the rabbit this time."
"This is my main. I don't have an alt. And even if you can't beat me, land two or more successful attacks and we'll still give you the fried chicken. That okay, Jiyoung?"
"Yeah, of course. Just don't go easy on them."
"Come on in."
Hello. I'll go with the squirrel.
The opponent locked in the squirrel — a mammal that could throw acorns as a ranged attack. Same class as the rabbit, so neither of them took a type penalty.
That was the nice thing about Arena. You didn't have to raise a whole roster of animals. If you had multiple SSRs sitting around the way Mina did, you could swap however you liked. Spec-less PVP really was the most fun kind.
"Alright, let's begin."
"Mina. You win this one too and I'll give you a prize."
"Huh? What kind of prize?"
"Hmm. I haven't decided yet. We'll figure it out if you win."
"Okay. I'll definitely win."
The opponent barely waited for the three-two-one countdown to finish before opening the gap and hurling acorns at Mina. She weaved through every last one on a sprint, closing the distance as she ran. Ranged attacks were easy enough to dodge if you could just move well — she slipped past all of them. Unless you were landing predictive shots, hitting her was close to impossible.
The opponent popped a sprint, anticipating the approach, and followed it with a dodge. Mina had already read exactly where they'd move. She landed the strongest skill in her kit — a dropkick — chained it into a combo, and disengaged at just the right moment. The opponent hadn't thrown skills wildly, clearly expecting her to back off on time. Platinum players really were a different breed.
Mina was playing beautifully even against Platinum. The moment her opponent sprinted out of range, she bolted for a support item like she'd been waiting for it, and with the gap already opened, they couldn't do a thing about it. What she picked up was a lightning strike — it wouldn't necessarily hit, but it could rattle an opponent, and a successful connect dealt no damage, just a brief stun. A very solid item.
The opponent saw the item and started pelting Mina with acorns, but she wasn't about to sit there and take them. They were so busy dreading when the lightning would drop that they couldn't play properly at all. Mina, for her part, didn't seem interested in using it just yet. She slipped the acorns and threw out an area skill. The opponent went for a counter instead of a guard, ate the whole thing, and Mina chained more hits before easing off — then dropped the lightning and stunned them cold.
The lightning item doesn't apply its stun if you fire it the instant a skill connects, because the hitstun from the skill takes priority. But the moment that hitstun wears off, there's a razor-thin window of super armor — and Mina landed the lightning inside it. A fraction too early or too late and it never would have connected. An extremely difficult technique, from what I'd heard.
I found myself marveling at her talent all over again.
Then she landed her strongest dropkick once more, chained the combo, and the opponent went down.
"Anyone else?"
For some reason, nobody entered the room. Diamond was the highest tier in the game right now, and Mina had just rolled over Platinum like it was nothing. Even the people who'd claimed to be Platinum a minute ago had gone dead silent.
"Where'd the Platinum players from earlier go?"
"Looks like we're out of challengers. That's it for the game portion of the stream."
Mina hit the leave-room button and gave me the chair entirely.
Should I just end the stream? If nobody's coming in, there's nothing left to broadcast.
"Alright, I think we'll wrap it up here."
"It's Arena content and nobody's coming in."
She'd already left the room, and firing it back up now felt awkward. If people had kept coming in even to lose, we could've stretched the stream — but Mina was so good that everyone was terrified of getting stomped, and nobody wanted to walk into that.
Talk with the viewers. Sure. About what, exactly?
That aside, I still needed to meet up with Shinye for a collab. When were we even supposed to do that? Would the weekend work?
"Shinye unnie, we were going to do a collab stream. When are you free?"
"Sounds good. Let's meet Saturday."
"I'm with her at least twelve hours a day. Jealous? Hehe."
Mina said it with a little smile. The person who spent the most time with me, when you got down to it, was Mina. It wouldn't even be an exaggeration to say she was around more than my own sister.
"I get along with everyone in my class."
"Jiyoung doesn't discriminate against anyone, as long as they're not a bad person."
"I went out to eat yesterday. We went to a hanwoo restaurant, and they gave us a shrimp dish on the house."
"I got to eat it too, thanks to Jiyoung."
As someone who loved shrimp more than was probably reasonable, yesterday's complimentary dish had meant a lot. They'd gone out of their way to make something that wasn't even on the menu — and they'd peeled it for us, too, which made it ridiculously easy to eat. With shellfish like shrimp, peeling the meat is the most annoying part.
"It wasn't grilled prawns. It was more like the shrimp meat had been stir-fried and tossed in a sauce. It was really good."
"You could make something simple with store-bought cocktail shrimp, but they'd used fresh ones."
"I don't know much about cooking, but there weren't even tails, so it was easy to eat."
"Mina's an amazing cook, too."
"Hehe. Want me to make you some shrimp, Jiyoung?"
"I want shrimp fried rice."
"Got it. I'll have it ready before your sister gets home."
Mina ruffled my hair, then left the room. I swallowed, already salivating at the thought of her shrimp fried rice. Shrimp really was the best food in the world.
"If Mina opened a restaurant, she'd be a huge success. Her mom is an incredible cook, and Mina learned a lot from her."
The food Mina's mother made wasn't just first-class — it was in a league above that. Mina herself was around first-class, I figured, which meant she still had a long way to go to catch her mom. But I had a feeling that if anyone could surpass her, it would be Mina. First-class skill in high school, no less.
"If Mina's not here, I'm not streaming. Do you have any idea how much easier it is with her around?"
Right now, Mina was both a co-streamer and my manager. The idea of running an internet broadcast by myself was, honestly, not something I wanted. If Mina ever left, I'd shut the stream down on the spot.
"Mina's place is a whole hour from here, and she still comes over to stream with me. I'm really grateful."
The round trip to school took two hours by itself. Wouldn't it make sense for her to just sleep over on weekdays? Riding the subway a full hour each way every time had to be exhausting. If Mina stayed at our place, getting to school would be easier, we could be together the whole time, and my sister would probably be fine with it. I'd ask her when she got home.
"No, I was planning to come to your place this weekend. And I'm thinking of streaming about five days a week."
Five days a week felt right, if I thought about my friends. They needed weekends off too, and I wanted the rest. We could go out, hang around, grab something good to eat.