The First Viewer
Re-min was not one to eat a lot of food.
He did like tasty things, and during school days he would happily stop by convenience stores with his friends after classes. But even then, after mom prepared dinner, he would finish everything on his plate—his stomach for rice and his stomach for dessert in perfect balance, like a classic high-school girl.
Still, Re-min was definitely not someone who ate large amounts. After all, if you scrolled through YouTube, you’d see people casually announcing that they boiled six packs of ramen for the day and claimed two kilograms of meat was only one portion, putting on a modest tone. Of course, even without that level of exaggeration, Re-min thought to himself that he had a naturally small appetite.
If he ordered chicken, he’d split it into two meals, and if he ordered a whole pizza, only three or four slices would remain. That was the way to eat—neither gaining nor losing weight, so that his body type could stay the way it was. His chest had some volume, but his waist was still slender. Noel probably had the same thing, no matter what.
Everyone had different basal metabolic rates, but at the very least they needed to take in enough nutrients to survive. Yet Noel’s words had sounded so strange. She had said she was going to survive on just two slices of pizza for the whole day. Even that—she had only eaten one slice and already felt full.
If it had been just one slice per meal, he could have brushed it off as Noel’s small appetite. No, even that alone would have been hard to accept. But one slice for the entire day? No matter how short and skinny Noel was.
That was why it was a miracle she was still alive. - Tti-hwak-jjit: Whoa, the kid actually survived on just one pack of ramen? That’s straight-up an exaggeration!
- SilverPantea: Lmao I was thinking of the same guy as the Koswon Hero… boiling one pack of ramen, eating just the noodles in the morning and wrapping rice in it for lunch…
- LexiaQueenNim: Parents raised her like that for over ten years? For real, that’s insane…
- LexiaQueenNim: She doesn’t look like she comes from a family that can’t afford it anyway… but why?
That was the barrage of chat messages from the viewers.
Such a frail constitution couldn’t be created overnight. A person who normally ate three meals a day would lose weight if they dropped to two. Adaptation would come eventually, but it would take a long time. Therefore, Noel eating a tiny amount that only barely sustained her life, yet still saying she felt full, meant she had eaten that amount her whole life.
One meal a day. And that meal was only about half a normal portion. In Re-min’s mind, Noel had already become the child surviving on leftovers from her parents.
When he had carried her out, she had seemed so weak that she kept complaining about the weight. Of course. She had no other choice.
Noel, who had stubbornly offered him the pizza, Re-min couldn’t bring himself to eat.
No matter how long he refrigerated it, once the pizza had been cooked and exposed to the air, it would spoil quickly. So the best plan in his head was to eat what he could, gift the remaining Gift Card so he could eat something new next time. But the moment he thought of it, it felt as though he was devouring the very food that kept her alive. He simply could not bring himself to do it.
Yet when Noel came out of the room, she was looking up at him with empty, unfocused eyes. One eye was completely blind. And because she had crawled out of the room like that, her whole body trembled slightly.
Re-min could read the faint hope in those eyes. Despite the abuse from her harsh parents, did she still carry a kind heart that found joy in giving something to others? Thinking about it, he had never once been cursed at in the League of Champions community. Among the countless players who hurled insults at each other, Noel had never said a word back.
That child, subjected to such malice and torment, must have suffered terribly in her heart. Yet she had come to Kancho’s Studio, spoken calmly about what she would do, said nothing more, and left. Even afterward, there were people in the League of Champions community who tried to stir trouble, yet instead of insulting them, she had said she was going to die and had left.
That tore Re-min’s heart even more. How could such a child be alive? How was such a reality even possible?
Re-min felt like crying right then and there, but he held it in. If he cried in front of Noel, how would she react? How embarrassed would she be?
“Then… I’ll eat it well. I’ll eat and then come back. Or if you’re already doing the broadcast, that’s fine too. Once I turn on the game, there will probably be a lot of people who want to watch.”
“Ah, okay. I’ll do that.”
Unaware of Re-min’s conflicted heart, Noel crawled back toward the room, one painful inch at a time.
Only then did Re-min sit at the table and cover his eyes. The viewers who liked to tease him didn’t use him as a joke this time.
Well, he had been worried that they might be unhappy if he gave away the leftover pizza, but thankfully Celesty was already slicing the pizza and putting it in the microwave to heat it.
If Celesty ate some, Re-min could at least finish the rest before it spoiled. About half a plate would be nice, but that might be too much to hope for.
As he thought this, Celesty told him to go back to the room and do the broadcast.
Apparently, it felt awkward to watch while someone who didn’t even eat with him was present. Although eating shows existed on the internet, Celesty wasn’t that kind of streamer. She wasn’t even showing viewers this side of herself, so showing it to the person right in front of her would be several times more embarrassing.
Therefore, Re-min returned to the room out of consideration for Celesty. Honestly, even though he wasn’t exactly like a father, his body hadn’t frozen up completely. Still, ever since he had become this body, interacting with people had become uncomfortable. Maybe it was because he had been locked inside the house for several months and his social skills had declined.
So Re-min thought that while he was at it, he could try cultivating his social skills through the broadcast. But then the thought followed: what was the point of cultivating social skills if no one would use them?
Well, but he had received help today. He shouldn’t be so negative about it. He should at least treat the people who helped him with kindness.
Pushing those thoughts aside, Re-min executed the program that Celesty had installed. Then, when he launched League of Champions, the game appeared in the broadcast program and the screen came up. Was the broadcast actually running?
He tilted his head at the confusing situation, and only then did he realize he didn’t even know what his own broadcast channel was. Wait, didn’t he even have an ID?
To create an ID, he would need self-verification, which required a phone… Right now he couldn’t do that.
Yet the program was running perfectly, which meant the broadcast was being sent out. Tilting his head, he entered the broadcast site, and he was already logged in. And right next to it, the “broadcasting” mark was floating. Ah, apparently he had created an ID on this site in the past. And it had automatic login enabled.
Thank you, Google Automatic Login! It was nice that he didn’t even have to call Celesty who was eating.
But what made him reconsider was the broadcast title. No one would watch a stream titled simply “Noelyoon1492’s Stream.” If he just displayed his account name and started broadcasting, who would find it interesting? Famous people were different, but the name Noel was common, and the numbers on the back of his phone were, honestly, not distinctive at all.
So Re-min scrolled through other people’s titles and decided on something simple. 600+ Top.
Most people titled their streams with their score and position. Professional gamers just said which team they belonged to, but they were famous, so that was fine. As a new streamer like himself, he needed to show what kind of stream he was making…
Wait, was he getting excited? He had only turned it on because people told him to. He had known it was for survival reporting, but secretly he had felt happy that someone was recognizing the things he had accumulated in the game, and that had led him to hope many more people would watch his stream.
Well, if many people watched, there was no harm in that. Of course it wouldn’t make him money like professional streamers did. But as long as he had people who liked his gameplay until his money ran out, that alone would be enough.
So, 600+ Top—let’s do our best.
How long had it been since he changed the title, and already the stream had two viewers? One was him, so that was fine. Had one more slipped in?
- Noel: Hello
In response to the greeting from his first viewer, the person simply did not answer. Maybe they had just turned it on and gone off to do something else. That was unavoidable.
Before that person left, he should at least play a game. After all, that was the only thing he had to show.
While waiting for matchmaking and during ban-pick, his first viewer stayed without leaving, patiently waiting. - Noel: That side’s concept is very clear. If we all get the bang, we’ll lose. - Noel: I’ll do a side-lane operation with a strong line-fighting pick.
In return for such a viewer, Re-min added a short explanation of his pick in the chat. Even there, there was still no reply. Well, if they were watching on mobile, typing in chat would be troublesome.
But communication with the viewer ended there. Once the game started, there was no time to even glance at the chat. He had to focus completely on the lane battle, and when there was a moment of peace, he had to check the status of his teammates and the enemy. He had to compare growth stages and worry about how he would choose items later.
Still, because he had set the game to creator mode, his broadcast status in the corner of the monitor was visible whenever there was no fight. There was still one viewer who hadn’t left. Excluding him, no other viewers had entered yet, but the fact that someone had come without even sending a chat message made Re-min happy, and he could continue playing with genuine enjoyment. Ah, this was what it felt like when someone was watching him play a game. He wanted to do better, show off a cool figure, and be proud of himself. The game had become a kind of motivation for him.
In the meantime, Celesty came back to the room, having eaten enough pizza. “Um, you’re playing the game. Are you broadcasting?”
“Yeah. One person already came in and is watching. Ah, it shows two because I’m watching too.”
Celesty probably hadn’t expected anyone to enter her stream from the beginning. When Re-min spoke a little excitedly, Celesty paused for a moment before answering. “Um…… that’s just a helper bot.”
“…….”