Streamer Debut (5)
“Uh……”
A hundred-thousand-won donation. A fortune. And the donor was someone he actually recognized—a major streamer he’d just faced in the previous game. Park Jimin’s brain simply stopped working.
“Thank you so much for the 100,000-won donation, Render-nim!”
For a second he had no idea how to handle it. A famous streamer had just dropped by and thrown money at him—what was the right reaction? Compared to the usual thousand- or five-thousand-won donations, how big did a hundred-thousand-won reaction need to be? But if he sat there overthinking it, people would call him stiff, so Jimin simply offered a polite thank-you and moved on.
The next game loaded. He locked in Yohone. The enemy top laner came out as Sion.
“……”
He swallowed hard.
Viewers: 305
Render’s presence had pulled aggro, and the viewer count had exploded. They had to be people who’d followed him over, right?
“Thank you for the 1,000 won.”
He wasn’t sure the word “lesson” really fit him, but he decided to just play hard anyway. Early-game Yone wasn’t that strong, and the enemy was a tanky Sion, so the laning phase stayed a little dull.
“Huh?”
The two aggressive junglers collided over the top scuttle. Ally jungle Nidalee versus enemy jungle Viego. When his jungler dropped a help ping, Jimin sprinted over.
A brutal skirmish. Nidalee nearly died for a second but popped Heal and barely survived. Then Jimin’s Yohone slipped every one of Viego’s skills with uncanny timing while landing every single one of his own.
“Oh……”
Dead Sion’s fist barrage had nearly finished him, but Jimin let out a breath of relief just in time.
“Thank you for the 1,000 won. Nidalee played really well there.”
It was obvious who “a certain someone” meant. Jimin caught it immediately but carefully avoided saying the name at all. You couldn’t ignore chat, but you also couldn’t get sucked into it—that was one of the tips he’d read online more than once.
“Ah, so close.”
After the double kill, his Yohone had real momentum. He shoved Sion around and nearly took the kill, but the tank barely escaped. Still, with no teleport on the enemy, just forcing him out of lane left Jimin in a great spot.
“Huh?”
He came back from base only to find enemy jungle Viego ganking. Once again Yohone slid past every skill and landed every auto and ability of his own.
The already-broken top lane tilted even further, and the enemy jungler got put behind as well. Yohone’s super plays had the whole team feeling the win probability spike, and they didn’t hold back the praise.
Jimin was putting on a show, but there was no question that a sudden flood of Render’s viewers had hijacked the chat energy.
Huh?
Thankfully Jimin caught Render’s message in time.
“Yes, thank you, Render-nim. Let’s play again sometime.”
His voice shook a little, but he still finished the polite line cleanly.
“Ah…… yes, thank you for the 1,000 won.”
Jimin still didn’t have that many games under his belt, but the absurd win rate already had the chat predicting a rocket-fast climb.
Another obliterating carry. Jimin finished the game.
“Thank you for the 10,000 won!”
The fun of the game, the number of viewers, the donation total—on every front Jimin felt the pure upward climb of joy as he ended the stream.
Click-clack, click-clack.
Jimin dropped his own stream link into the community post comments, then spent a while browsing clips and photos of Dahye while he was at it.
Wow, she looked insanely pretty that day.
Looks he’d never caught on YouTube or live. To only be seeing them now…
“……”
The clip of Dahye holding a hair tie in her teeth while tying her hair up. Jimin had been stuck on that gif for a solid five minutes.
“Huh?”
By some coincidence, a message from Dahye popped up.
“Ah!”
Flustered for a second, Jimin had blurted nonsense. He hadn’t been doing anything bad, yet somehow guilt still crept in.
“Huh?”
So Dahye already knew.
He didn’t say it out loud, and he didn’t really have the experience yet, but Jimin already knew those viewers weren’t truly his. Even when he tried not to get swept up, he’d still been watching chat mood—and then it had suddenly filled with nothing but Render talk.
He snorted. Even while texting, a smile kept tugging at him. It wasn’t anything special—so why did it feel this good?
Jimin sat up on the bed.
“Ah……”
There was no time to feel embarrassed.
He swallowed. A girl who made his heart race and his hands shake at the same time.
“Wait, for real?”
“That’s insane.”
“……”
Glug-glug-glug.
While his friends freaked out, Jimin quietly drank his soda.
“You said you were starting a stream, and it’s already going this well?”
“You not doing YouTube?”
“I’ll probably start later.”
“I was deliberately not watching because I thought you’d be nervous, but dude, that was a legendary stream.”
“Right? Render of all people.”
“You had a ton of viewers too.”
Jimin hadn’t realized Render was famous even among his friends.
“Bro, his numbers are way down now.”
“Yeah, back when we were in elementary school he was on another level. Average viewers almost twenty thousand.”
“Seriously?”
“He was basically the president of Mimecraft back then. Every YouTube upload cleared a million easy.”
Yoon Sangcheol, the resident internet-broadcast expert, was giving a full lecture.
“Back then a ton of streamers lived on toxic chat, but Render was super nice and kind and still good at games, so a lot of little kids watched him.”
“Yeah, I used to watch YouTube with my mom.”
“Me too.”
Jeon Jaeyeong and Go Yuseok piled on from the side.
So that’s how it was.
It was all news to Jimin.
“I stopped watching much after he quit Minecraft and came back later.”
“Why’d he take a break anyway? Military?”
“His wife cheated and they got divorced.”
“Oh right! I remember hearing about that on the forums a few years ago.”
“……”
Jimin ended up hearing even the stories he hadn’t particularly wanted.
“Where’s Jonghyun, though?”
“Went to cover someone’s shift at work.”
“Kid’s living hard.”
“Maybe we’re the ones just coasting?”
“Hey, we’re still only sophomores.”
Jimin laughed at his friends’ ridiculous conversation.
“Haa…… Honestly we shouldn’t even be sitting around like this. We have to win tomorrow.”
“Dude, come on, at least C-Play should be free wins.”
“Even fourth seed is fine, I just want them to take tomorrow.”
“You’re talking about SCK, right?”
“Yeah.”
By now Jimin could follow most of the conversation.
“This year they at least have to make Worlds.”
“If they lose this one I’m dropping P1 for good.”
“Didn’t you say that last year too?”
Two hardcore P1 fans and Sangcheol, who was less locked in. Jimin listened with real interest.
It’s wild.
The second pro Sol talk came up, his friends completely lost it. Even the Render nostalgia from elementary school hadn’t hit this hard, and at some point Sangcheol had stopped bringing up Dahye at all—apparently he’d never been that big a fan to begin with.
Even the world of streaming felt full of mysteries the deeper he went. What would pro matches feel like?
“What time’s the qualifiers?”
“Tomorrow at five p.m.”
“If I’m free, can I watch with you guys? I’m streaming during the day right now anyway.”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s do it.”
“Yo, another P1 fan just got recruited?”
“That’s not it……”
P1 this, P1 that—they kept saying the name, but Jimin still couldn’t picture himself cheering for any particular team.
I’m looking forward to it.
Watching a pro match together with his friends. Jimin was already impatient for tomorrow.