They Said Noon, So I've Been Excited Since Eleven
Back in my room, I sank into thought, still unable to make sense of the situation.
So it hadn't been the Next-door Sister who'd saved me.
No—she didn't even live next door anymore.
Then where on earth had we met……?
If that hadn't been our first encounter, I couldn't even begin to guess how we'd come to know each other at all.
Fine, she'd shown up at my place after I'd given her the door code—that much I could accept. What I really wanted was to call her right this second and demand answers. Except I didn't know her name. I didn't know her phone number. And now I didn't even know where she lived.
It was almost funny.
She dropped by whenever she was bored. She knew my name. And I knew absolutely nothing about her—only that she was some ordinary office worker.
The suspicion kept swelling, and my head felt like it was spinning.
At least my face hadn't been caught on camera. That was something. If it had, the viewers would have fretted over me for no good reason and the whole mood would have soured again.
"I'm back. Hmm, looks like the Next-door Sister won't be able to make it."
I'd only given the viewers the short version, and none of them found it particularly strange. Over here I was in full crisis mode, and those people didn't seem to be thinking about it at all. Which was exactly why I hadn't explained—and yet, now that it was playing out this way, it still rubbed me the wrong way.
This was something I needed to talk through with Jaemin and Gabi. I could always turn the stream back on a little later. Asking them first wouldn't hurt.
Jaemin already knew about the Next-door Sister; Gabi wouldn't. If I gave them a quick rundown and asked for advice, something useful might come of it—or so I vaguely hoped.
Deep down, though, I didn't want to just let the Next-door Sister go. I liked her. That was why I couldn't be objective. Even now I was sitting here alone, hunting for reasons to defend her.
Looking back, she'd never once claimed she lived next door. The fact that I didn't know her name? Well, I'd never asked. Same with her number—neither of us had ever requested or offered a phone number.
……Thinking of it that way made my chest ache all over again.
We'd just been the kind of people who dropped by when we were bored and chatted for a while. I'd come to lean on her emotionally more than I'd realized—and the truth was, whether I was around or not made no difference to her at all. In a way, the whole relationship had only ever been held together by her one-sided kindness.
And once I faced that squarely, the storm clouds in my chest strangely began to clear.
Either way, she must have some fondness for me, right? If she'd disliked me, she never would have come over in the first place. Sprawling out on my bed like that—wasn't that because she felt comfortable with me?
So. Next time she came by, I'd ask for her name and her number.
That was what I needed to ask Jaemin and Gabi about—how to bring it up so she'd take it well. Which only made me look forward to their visit even more.
They'd said they'd be here by noon, so I'd been buzzing with anticipation since eleven.
"I should go ahead and order the tteokbokki and fried chicken now, right? That way we can eat as soon as they get here. So I guess that's enough games for now."
So I asked the viewers to bear with me, stopped queueing ranked, and ordered chicken and tteokbokki. Ordering them separately as singles felt smarter than getting a set. If it had been just guys eating, I'd have gone for two whole chickens with tteokbokki as a side—but girls loved their tteokbokki. Last time we'd gone to a snack place, both of them had ordered extra rice cakes, hadn't they?
Whether it was the chewy texture they liked, or just a vehicle for dunking in that spicy-sweet sauce, I couldn't say. I agreed tteokbokki was delicious, sure. Why they went that crazy over it, though—that I genuinely didn't get. They ate it like they had a personal grudge to settle.
Maybe I'd gone quiet on the mic from focusing too hard on the delivery order. The viewers, who'd been entertaining themselves, tossed me a suggestion.
Come to think of it, sticking exclusively to League of Champions might have been getting a little monotonous. Sure, these people had come to watch me as a top laner—but sitting through matchmaking and ban-pick with nothing but chatter to fill the time might have gotten dull for them. That was probably why someone had brought up flash games: no fussy installs, no account creation, just something light you could fire up in a browser. Or download something quick off a platform packed with little titles to kill time.
I didn't know how other streamers ran their broadcasts, but I'd seen clips of Joker streaming in the community before. During queuemaking he'd play rhythm games—and once a match popped, he'd show whether that skill transferred to other genres, nailing every beat without even looking. There were even famous videos of him switching screens mid–League of Champions game to play FreeCell, gomoku, Space Craft, solve college entrance exam problems, code, and edit his own stream—all while still securing solo kills, roaming, and winning the game.
Yeah, I couldn't pull off anything close to that. Still, with matchmaking running anywhere from five minutes on a short queue to ten on a long one, I'd been thinking it would be nice to have something to fill the gaps.
"TFT…… is that fun? Leaving the little guys alone to brawl it out does look entertaining, at least."
"Ah. So this runs through the League of Champions client. I can't queue it while I'm already in ranked matchmaking."
"Too bad. If I'm going to play something, I'd rather it work while I'm waiting in queue. Anything else that might be good?"
Unfortunately, what the viewers were recommending was awkward for me to touch. If I had the League of Champions client open, I was supposed to be playing ranked. It wasn't a game I could run on the side.
Use this to buy some fun mini-games
"Oh! Thank you so much. I guess I should make a Steam account first."
"Hey, I know the famous ones. The Half-Life series, the Left 4 Dead series, Heldun Ring, stuff like that. But back then I was buried in studying, so I never had the time to really sit down with them—and these days…… I've been too focused on League of Champions to pay attention."
Thanks to the viewers' help, I managed to pick up a few games I could play casually. Cheap, with cute little graphics—the kind you could run without building up stress or mental and physical fatigue.
……I'd reached the point where four thousand won felt cheap. Back then, that would have been four days' worth of food money.
The thought struck me out of nowhere, and I realized how much I'd changed. Well—it was a good thing, wasn't it? I was in a position where I could afford to think that way now. I didn't want to keep living pinched and miserly either. And to keep living like this, I had to keep grinding and become a pro player.
Still, between making a platform account, browsing for games, and installing them, a fair bit of time slipped by. It hadn't taken that long, really—but it looked like my chance to actually play would have to wait a little longer.
Because Jaemin had shown up early.
"Ah—everyone, they're already here. I'll be back a bit later for a collab stream with Celesty."
The whole culture of treating early arrival as a virtue felt just a tiny bit unfortunate right then—but friends mattered more than games. So I left any lingering attachment behind, headed for the front door, and let Jaemin in.
"Welcome. Whoa, what did you buy all this for?"
"Ehehe. Since Noel's treating lunch, I brought the drinks. We're having a round, right?"
For someone who'd "just brought drinks," the plastic bags in both hands were stuffed full. I could spot the green soju bottles, sure—but the fruit and snacks stood out more. Well, we'd be eating chicken and tteokbokki and all of that too, I supposed. Our place didn't have any snacks on hand, so maybe she'd brought them for that reason.
"Mm, yeah. Come on in. It must've been sweltering out there."
"Ugh, don't even start. It was brutal. We need rain already so it'll cool off a little. Gabi's not here yet?"
"Nope. She'll be here soon, though. I got a CocoaTalk message. You didn't bring any streaming gear separately?"
"For outdoor streams like this, phone-only is the whole aesthetic. Once Gabi gets here I'll ask and we can go live."
"Ah, got it."
Perfect timing that we weren't streaming. Once Gabi arrived, I wanted to ask how I should handle things with the Next-door Sister—and there was no need to bring that up on air.
But Gabi, who showed up not long after Jaemin, took one look at the early arrival and went wide-eyed.
"Huh? What? Jaemin's here too?"
"Yeah. Oh—did I not tell you?"
"I thought it was just you and me on a date! That's why I got all dressed up like thiiiis!"
Honestly, I had no idea why anyone would dress up that pretty just to hang out with friends. We weren't even going to a movie theater or a restaurant.