I'll Protect You Once
After reviving Lee Yebin, I’d even gone out of my way to create a few extra people for her to farm.
- Rat-a-tat-tat!
- Whoosh! Boom!!
One kill with the gun, one with the grenade.
That made two in total, and I’d successfully called Yebin over to my position.
Since I’d already wiped out the guys along the plane’s route, there wasn’t any real trouble with her dropping in.
“Vini has arrived!”
“What do you mean, ‘Vini has arrived’?”
“What did you just say? You want to die?”
“No, sorry.”
For now, I was the sinner here, so I had to behave.
Besides, if the one doing the beating only ever kept beating, the broadcast wasn’t as fun.
The back-and-forth, the bickering—that was supposed to be the entertainment.
Just look at the viewers lighting up now that I’d actually bowed my head once.
Wife, devoted husband, wife-whipped husband. You people are absolutely ridiculous.
Still, if you were happy, I was perfectly willing to be the clown.
Even if that clowning meant trampling my pride and grinding my dignity into the dirt.
“So what guns are you using?”
“This one, and this one!”
The guns Yebin was carrying were excellent. One submachine gun that was broken in the hands of beginners and veterans alike, and one designated marksman rifle that still had a second shot if she made a mistake.
It was a pretty solid combo. If she’d picked up some godawfully difficult assault rifle or a bolt-action sniper, I might actually have considered putting a round through her skull and playing solo.
“Good. Let’s do well together, then.”
“…But didn’t you team-kill me earlier?”
“If it let you comfortably loot the corpse and gear up, wouldn’t that still be a win for you?”
“……I’ll let it slide.”
“Thank you.”
Angel, my ass. There wasn’t a single woman as vicious as Lee Yebin.
Whether she liked it or not, the game kept moving forward, and I led Yebin deeper and deeper into the map.
Eventually, we came to a house, and decided to take it together.
“Vini-vini.”
“What, Dodo-do.”
Now she was even trying to size me up. A real bully, for a girl like Lee Yebin.
Still, I was an exceptionally kind and generous person, so I should probably let it go.
“Let’s break into this house.”
“How?”
“How do you think?”
You go in.
I started giving Yebin some very obvious not-so-obvious signals.
“You go first.”
“No! We need information before we push!”
“Aren’t you my drone? You’re not going?”
“What kind of drone bullshit is that, are you actually trying to die?”
“I revived you for exactly that reason.”
“Aaaaaagh! Fine, I’ll break in here all by myself!!”
Lee Yebin, break into a house by herself?
Sure, and I’ll win a mirrored snipe duel against the pros. That one would honestly have better odds.
Regardless, Yebin charged in alone.
“Yaaah!!”
Watching her vault the fence and storm into the house, I decided to dress it up as entertainingly as possible.
“Viniiii, the Geneticssssss!!”
“What the hell is that, you nerd!”
“If you don’t know that, you should quit being a gamer. Fake gamer.”
“That’s just framing!!”
Either way, Yebin rushed straight inside, and I deliberately started firing from a different angle than the one she’d taken.
- Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
“What are you doing? They’re going to notice me going in!!”
Apparently she didn’t even realize I was hiding her movement with the noise I was making.
- Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
I kept pouring fire out, doing my best to draw aggro, and thanks to that, the enemies started poking their heads toward my side one by one.
- Rat-a-tat-tat!
The instant I shot through the window, one of them got hit and ducked back down in a hurry.
What a shame. If I’d landed a few more shots on the head, I could’ve sent one of them packing right there.
But this was enough.
- Brrrt-brrrt-brrrt-brrrt!
ViniVini >> Kiyahou
Yebin could handle at least one on her own.
“Niiiice…!”
The moment I heard that, I shouted to her.
“Hey, get back out now!”
“Huh…? Why?”
“I’m throwing a grenade!”
“Ah… okay!”
At my words, Yebin sprinted back to the first floor, and only after a brief pause did I toss the grenade through the second-floor window.
I believed in it. I believed Yebin hadn’t been able to kill a fully healed enemy by herself.
There was no way a full-health enemy had run into Yebin and lost in a straight-up test of skill. That was impossible.
She had definitely finished off someone I’d already wounded.
So where would that enemy be now?
Right next to the window, of course. The enemy’s teammates would have clustered around it trying to save him.
In other words…
- BOOM!!
DodoDa >> Kiyahou
DodoDa >> FrogCi
One grenade could wipe out both of them.
“Good. Now go in.”
“Oooohhh~ What was that~? What was that grenadeee~ Oooohhh~”
Yebin praised me, completely out of character, and I could feel my shoulders lifting a little at the rare compliment.
“Aww, oppa~”
“Quit calling me oppa, ugh.”
“At least my flirting is better than your smug little ego.”
“Nope. I’m cute, though. I’m cuuuute~”
The second I heard that, I quickly searched up the meaning of a certain word and read it back to her.
“Could it be that, from what I know, the meaning of ‘cute’ is something like an action so disgusting and nauseating that it makes you want to vomit?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I mean you’re gross.”
“Get over here.”
“I’m skedaddling, smoooookie~”
“Seriously, just let me hit you once! Once! You little shit, come heree!!”
Before Yebin’s rage could reach me, I ducked into a room and dug in like a bastard…
- Brrrt-brrrt-brrrt-brrrt-brrrt!
…and Yebin made the insane decision to blast the door apart with gunfire.
“Hey, hey! Don’t waste bullets on this!”
“The guys you killed had ammo I needed, so I can afford this much!”
Great. Marvelous, really.
- Clang!
Yebin grabbed a frying pan and smacked me in the head, and I hurriedly took off my helmet to preserve its durability.
- Thud!
Of course, in this game, a frying pan was basically a legendary weapon. One hit to the head and anybody went down.
“Good! I’m satisfied!”
“…Could you please let me live?”
“Beg.”
Beg? Uh… hmm…
“…Honestly, for a long time now, I’ve thought you were the most beautiful person in this world. With that merciful heart of yours, could you spare me just this once?”
The viewers reacted like that to my words. Yebin’s viewers were probably the same.
As for Yebin…
“What kind of bullshit is that, seriously.”
She wasn’t fooled in the slightest.
“For real?”
“Yeah, I’m lying. In technical terms… hey, pure nonsense.”
“Just die of starvation, you freak.”
“Aaaagh! Save me, you can’t even save meee!!”
“What did you just say?”
“Madam, please grant this pitiful, lowly wretch one more chance at life.”
“Good.”
With that, Yebin saved me and even dropped a few of her healing items for me.
So she’d patch up the health she herself had chipped away at. That was worth praising, at least.
*
A few minutes later, Yebin and I were rich.
What, you ask?
The house we were in happened to lie inside the final circle, so the real estate had essentially shot through the roof.
“Hey, let’s head for Gangnam. At this point we’re seriously skyrocketing.”
“I agree~”
“Disgusting. Ugh, disgusting.”
“What do you mean, disgusting?”
While Yebin grumbled, the number of survivors had already dropped to five, and we had taken an absolutely favorable position.
Then, eventually, it became time for us to move out too.
“We have to leave, right?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Ugh, doesn’t anyone have a vehicle…?”
“A car? There’s one right there.”
There was even a vehicle sitting neatly on the first floor, ready to use as cover.
Honestly, I could only call it unbelievable luck.
Yebin and I immediately went down to the first floor, took the car, and planned to drive in along the edge of the circle.
“Let’s gooo~”
“Starting up~”
As Yebin and I pushed in, the gunfight erupted again.
- Tatatatatata!
At the end of that exchange, someone went down, and the situation became two versus two.
“Hey, there! There! On the right!”
When Yebin shouted, I looked right—and sure enough, there was someone there.
“Hey, if I just shoot oncer—”
- Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
Before I could even finish, Yebin and the car were hammered by a storm of bullets, and Yebin collapsed to the ground.
“Kyaaaah! No, what is this! Why! Why am I dying, whaaat!”
I heard Yebin’s outrage, but saving her came first.
I reversed a little and backed toward the spot where she’d gone down.
Meanwhile, the enemies kept pouring bullets into the car, and I jumped out of my seat.
“Hey, hey! The car’s about to blow! Leave me! Leave meee!”
If the car exploded, I’d die too because I was right beside it.
But that didn’t mean I had no way to save Yebin. And if I did have a way, there was no reason not to use it.
“I’ll save you, so stay still.”
I took the foldable shield I’d been keeping close to my chest, and the instant I got out of the car, I slammed it down in front of Yebin.
Of course, a foldable shield wasn’t great at blocking explosion damage. The blast radius was too wide, the damage too heavy; it might not block much at all.
Even so, if I got lucky—especially now, after I’d already driven the car as far as I could before jumping out—then maybe.
Maybe we could live. If not, too bad.
- BOOOOM!!
Under the relentless rain of bullets, the car finally exploded…
and I survived, with only the shield getting blown away.
I’d lost some health too, but that didn’t matter.
They’d blown up the car and revealed their positions completely.
- Rat-a-tat-tat!
I dropped one of them.
- Rat-a-tat-tat!
Then I dropped the other one too.
That unbelievably short skirmish lasted only a moment, but in those few seconds I had cleanly finished both of them off, and at last I saw it.
Winner! Winner!
Chicken Dinner!
The iconic victory message flashed across the screen, and I immediately threw my fist up toward the sky and shouted, “A carryyyyy! How about thatttt!”
The viewers didn’t react the way they usually did. More precisely, they were split right down the middle.
The ones admiring my gamble, and then…
The chat suddenly started pairing me and Yebin together.
For the record, I banned the ones crossing the line right away. Keep it in moderation, people. Moderation.