Bronze Cut!

I searched for the streamer named Seoyeon and found a broadcast pulling a pretty solid seven or eight hundred viewers. And there was my username, plastered right on the screen — a little embarrassing, honestly. Chat was tossing my name around too.

I could see she had a mission up to hit Silver before the day was out, which immediately explained why she'd asked to duo with me. Succeeding at that mission didn't do a single thing for me, but I figured I could treat it as a good deed for someone stuck in the trenches.

As for the streamer herself, Seoyeon wasn't a face-cam kind of broadcaster. She'd stuck her character's face in the bottom-right corner of the screen instead — a 2D image of a blonde girl with red eyes.

Some streamers put their whole face out there. Some don't show it at all. Seoyeon was clearly the latter. People like that would sometimes show everything below the face, and I'd heard they got called dummy-cams for it, and not in a nice way.

Not that it was any of my business how she ran her stream.

"Can ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you hear my voice? Thank you so much, unnie!!"

Her voice, though — that was nice. With no face on camera, she'd have to win people over with her voice and her talking, and on the voice front I was happy to give her a passing grade. Bright and bouncy, the kind of voice that could've belonged to a voice actress.

Chat was insisting that duo-ing with me was way over the line, but she was ignoring them completely.

"Come on, everyone, getting to watch a skilled unnie play and having a fun stream is a good thing, right~? Aww, is chat getting grumpy? Tehe~"

I couldn't see her face, but watching her playfully poke the viewers who were cursing her out gave off a real professional-streamer energy.

"Anyway, uh... I'll call you Gosu unnie, okay? Gosu unnie, do you have a mic by any chance? If you do, I think it'd be even better if we could talk while we play."

No mic, so I couldn't answer out loud. I typed it into the in-game chat instead. Not that I would've used one even if I had it — not if I wanted to keep being a guy under wraps.

"Ah, no mic. Well, that's fine — Gosu unnie's gonna carry us anyway, so what's the problem!"

She wasn't wrong. Me carrying was not going to be a problem. We were in Bronze. Winning was the easy part.

"Ah, then we should hurry. If Gosu unnie says let's start, who am I to argue~~"

Seoyeon and I queued up ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as a duo and jumped into a game.

"Gosu unnie, do you only play Genji? Or do you play other characters too? Looking at your match history, it's almost all Genji..."

"Huh? For real? Then... think you could take every head on the enemy team with Shadowmaker?"

Shadowmaker, huh. A pretty fun character in its own right. If Genji was all about mobility, sweeping through the enemy team up close, Shadowmaker was a sniper — hanging back, lining up heads, stacking kills on headshots.

Alright. Let's see how wild we can get with this.

I insta-locked Shadowmaker and typed out another declaration that I'd be carrying. Someone on the team must have checked my match history, because a protest came crackling over voice chat — but Seoyeon put her streamer name on the line and swore I'd carry, so the rest of the team just sighed and went along with it.

"Okay, okay, this Gosu unnie is actually really good, alright? You guys don't need to worry. Seriously."

"Yeah, yeah, you brat! Quit yapping and keep it down! Let us focus on the game."

Anyone listening in on voice chat would've thought they were about to throw hands. I decided to ignore it.

Alright. Control point map this time.

Two teams, one zone, first to hold it all the way to a hundred percent. Honestly, Shadowmaker was not what you'd call good here. This map was based on some European city, and some of the capture points sat inside houses with roofs over them, which made a sniper's life even harder...

But if a man's already drawn his blade, he's got to cut something — even if it's just a radish.

Ah. They probably don't have that saying here, do they? If a woman's drawn her blade, what's she supposed to cut? I'll have to look that up later.

The starting bell rang, and my team and I charged the point. I hooked Shadowmaker's grapple onto a rooftop, launched myself into the air, and picked out the enemies pouring toward the capture zone.

Even a clean headshot from Shadowmaker wouldn't drop a tank in one hit, and no matter how well you landed your shots, the enemy healer made it nearly impossible to confirm a kill fast. The first things you wanted to look for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were the 200-HP damage dealers and the healers — the ones who actually died to a single shot to the head.

At the start of a match you had no idea what the other team had picked, so I scoped in on the pack of them jogging in completely unprotected, lined up the head of the Zenyama trailing at the back, and clicked.

Bang!

I opened by deleting their healer, which meant our team got to start the capture first.

"Oh!! That's our Gosu unnie! That's actually insane? How are you this good and stuck down here in the trenches?"

I couldn't exactly answer with because this world's version of me played like garbage, so I kept it vague.

"If it's Gosu unnie, you'll shoot straight up! I guarantee it!"

I took the lip service and kept taking heads off every enemy that tried to approach the point. I must have been getting under their skin, because they swapped to Winston — the monkey — and started diving me. Every time he came flying in I just calmly relocated, lined up his head, and shot him anyway. The Winston that had come to hunt me ended up getting farmed instead.

After that, it was nothing but easy wins.

I played whatever other characters Seoyeon asked for, dragged the games around by the collar, and put on a carry clinic. Every time I did, her delighted cheering rang through the duo voice chat.

Even when I was good in my original world, I'd never had a girl cheering for me like this. Awkward, I guess? Still felt pretty great. Getting praised nonstop by someone with a voice that nice had me getting pumped right along with her.

The two of us duo'd until we lost all track of time, stringing wins together one after another.

But...

"Ugh... why won't it go up to Silver...!"

Midnight came and went, and Seoyeon's rank still hadn't budged. She sounded genuinely wronged, her voice wobbling like she was about to cry.

"Gosu unnie even helped me and everything... Waaah! I still can't get there...!"

Seoyeon was miserable. Chat, on the other hand, was basically throwing a festival. Well — that was the whole charm of watching streams, wasn't it?

Viewers lighting up at the sight of their streamer getting griefed by the rank system...

Just another ordinary day on the internet.

"Ah! Gosu unnie, you really worked hard today carrying a deadweight like me~ Can I send you a friend request?"

I accepted Seoyeon's friend request, shut the computer down, and stood up to start getting ready for bed.

Tomorrow I needed to go check on the university I was returning to. Staying up too late was not an option.

"Haa... alright, everyone. That's it for today's stream..."

"Like I said in today's announcement, I've got something tomorrow, so I can't go long tonight."

Being a streamer meant I barely ever had a reason to leave the house — but tomorrow I did. I had to go file a leave of absence at my university.

I'd started streaming as a hobby, and somehow it had climbed to the point where I could actually go full-time. I didn't have time for school anymore. So, reluctantly, I'd decided to put university on hold.

If I just dropped the stream with no warning, chat would catch fire. I'd put up an announcement ahead of time this round, though, so it was only smoldering instead of fully ablaze.

"Alright, see you all tomorrow. Seo-bye, seo-bye~~"

I said goodbye to the viewers and ended ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the stream.

"Phew... ahh~~~ today's stream was so packed, for real!"

I pushed my stiff body up out of the chair and stretched right where I stood. When I pulled the hair tie free, the blonde hair I'd had bundled up came tumbling down and brushed against my shoulders. My throat was dry, so I walked over to the fridge, pulled out one of the Dr Peppers I'd bought in bulk, and drank. I must have chugged too fast — it spilled down my neck and ran all the way to my chest — but I didn't care and kept going.

I had to shower after streaming anyway.

"Glug, glug! Pwahhh... now that's the water of life."

I set the Dr Pepper down, stripped in a hurry, and headed into the bathroom. I ran the water hot and washed myself clean, and I was toweling off when I caught my own reflection in the mirror.

"Oh... damn, girl. You're gorgeous. ...Ha. And what's the point of any of this..."

I stood there striking poses at the girl in the glass, chatting cheerfully with myself, until the emptiness hit and I got dressed in a hurry.

Looking in the mirror, I thought I was pretty enough, in my own way. It was just too sad that I was a total mossol who'd never dated a guy in her life.

Guys had never given me a second glance. My face was decently pretty, my figure was slim and nice to look at — so why were there no men anywhere around me?

Even my fellow streamers were all women.

If I'd been born a guy, I might've been able to run a cam stream and have a much easier time of it... I'd heard male cam streamers on Paprika TV had donations exploding left and right, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little jealous.

But what was I supposed to do? Born a woman. You just had to live with it...

I finished my shower and lay down on the bed, already thinking about tomorrow's stream.

I'd burned through every piece of content I'd planned out in advance. Now I had to figure out what to do tomorrow...

When you were a woman streaming every single day, if you couldn't keep the interesting content coming, the viewers just left. It really wasn't easy.

That Gosu unnie I'd duo'd with at the end, though. She'd stuck with me.

If we'd both had mics on, it would've made for even better stream content. That was a little disappointing.

But who even was that person? When I'd first looked at the match history, I'd figured they were a worm who was even worse than me. Then they'd actually played like they were almost pro.

Someone that good... maybe it was a smurf account they were boosting?

Well, I'd already sent the friend request. If we ran into each other again, I'd ask to queue together.

Or maybe building a whole content series around learning Overmatch from them wouldn't be a bad idea either?

I had to go to the university tomorrow. Time to sleep.