21 - Mega Server Invitation
A three-way collab stream was the kind of content no streamer could ever really avoid.
It could pull another streamer’s viewers over to your side, create a kind of entertainment you’d never get alone, and came with enough other advantages that avoiding it was practically an act of stupidity.
And among all the content that pushed those advantages to the limit, there were a few formats that really stood out.
One of them was the streamer server—a multiplayer server for internet broadcasters using games like Dig Craft or GBA, built specifically so they could play together.
Inside that space, every first meeting with another streamer, every new synergy with someone you already knew, every incident that unfolded along the way—it could all become content. And every one of those things was an advantage, a weapon, something you simply couldn’t get from a normal broadcast.
A streamer server could also launch a rookie streamer into a completely different league.
Most of them revolved around big-name creators, popular streamers with influence.
As long as you got even one good shot on their camera and made the right impression, you could grow to a level that was literally in a different universe from where you’d started. I wasn’t exaggerating. It really worked that way.
At the same time, big streamers could use the server to accelerate their own growth even more, or carve out new ways to make money.
That was why I’d deliberately applied to the streamer server. My application already cleared the conditions comfortably enough, and I’d become surprisingly famous on this platform, Peonchi, before I knew it.
Why was I famous, you ask?
...Because I was doing a fake marriage stream with Lee Yebin, and for the simple reason that our thing was so different from a normal fake marriage setup, it had gone viral over and over again.
Especially after that Shooting Ground collab stream, where I’d team-killed Lee Yebin four separate times. All those clips spread across NewTube and every kind of community out there, and whether people had known me before or not, they all ended up looking my way.
As a result, I’d picked up an unusually high level of fame on both my stream and my NewTube channel. The growth that came with it was just a bonus.
So of course I passed the moment I applied, basically on a free pass—but...
“Why didn’t I get in!? Why!?”
...she, for some reason, didn’t.
Why not? She should have met the requirements with room to spare.
“Did you ask the staff?”
“I asked once, but they never answered.”
“When did you send the question?”
“Yesterday.”
If she’d sent it yesterday and still hadn’t gotten a reply...
“They’re probably just working through the backlog. Relax and wait.”
“Hey! So you get to stroll right into the streamer server and act all cool, huh?”
“That’s right, Alchemist.”
“God, this is so infuriating. Hey, you’re home right now, aren’t you? Just you wait.”
“Yep. Yeoni isn’t home today either, so nobody’s opening the door for you~”
That was when I was happily tormenting Lee Yebin over the phone and a message came through on Concord.
It was none other than Refu, the organizer and person in charge of this streamer server, Refu Mountain.
“Hey, Lee Yebin. Shut up for a second. I’m not taking your call in a minute.”
“Hey, hey, what the hell!?”
“Another woman. Sorry.”
“What!?”
I hung up on her, then started a call with Refu.
Since Refu had asked me, “Would you have a moment for a call on Concord?”, I figured the least I could do was ring her right back.
“Hello, Refu.”
“Yes, Dodo. Have you been well?”
“Ah, yeah. I’ve been doing great~”
For the record, Refu and I already knew each other. We’d met a few times in real life, too.
Refu was also a streamer whose main game overlapped with mine, and our broadcasting styles were similar, so we’d collabed a few times and gotten along pretty well.
Of course, Refu herself was a social butterfly with absurdly wide connections, so it went without saying that she had plenty of close streamer friends besides me.
“Anyway, the reason I called you, Dodo, is that I have a favor to ask.”
“If it’s something I can do, I’ll do it~”
“Then I’ll get straight to the point.”
What she said next was something I never would have expected.
“You’ll be getting one invitation, right?”
“Yes, yes.”
“We’ll toss in another invitation after that as a prize or something, so could you invite Vini first, as the very first person?”
“...Her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
My question made Refu give me an answer that sounded both absurd and perfectly reasonable.
“You know you two are the most famous fake-marriage couple on Peonchi right now, right? Anyone watching Peonchi these days knows the Dodo-Vini couple.”
“Yeah, I know...”
“So in that sense, I’d like the very first person to enter this server through an invitation to be Vini. And I want it to be you who invites her.”
...Ah. So that’s why she’d rejected her.
Wow. Clever. Very clever. Uh-huh...
“...Okay. Got it.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Along with that, a gift voucher arrived through Concord.
And the gift was nothing less than a 2-kilogram beef set. Hanwoo, no less.
“It’s a small token of appreciation...”
“Ah, thank you...”
Honestly, when I thought about Refu’s stream size, reputation, and the whole rest of it, I was way lower on the totem pole, so I’d been planning to just quietly accept whatever she said. But she was giving me a gift, too?
Then I had no choice but to say yes. Of course. Thank you. Really, thank you. Thanks. Arigato. Merci. Xie xie.
Anyway, after that call, I cut off contact with Refu and...
“Hey, Lee Yebin.”
I called Yebin again right away.
“You said you weren’t taking my call, you cheater.”
“Cheater? What are you even on about?”
“You went off to talk to another woman and left me behind.”
“Don’t gender-flip Refu.”
“Huh? Refu? Hey, you said it was a woman!!”
“Who knows?”
I took one shot at her right away, then told her exactly what Refu had said.
Basically, Refu wanted to use the relationship between me and Lee Yebin to make the first invitation as flashy as possible.
To do that, she’d intentionally reject Vini’s application and give me one extra invitation.
On top of that, she’d sent beef as a gift.
The moment she heard everything, Vini nodded and asked,
“Then I just go in on the day itself?”
“Yeah, pretty much. Just make sure the story matches up.”
“Okey-dokey~”
Lee Yebin started humming happily, like she was in a great mood.
Then, all of a sudden, she said something strange.
“But, Gyeong-do Gyeong-do.”
“Yeah?”
“...Are you going to eat that beef all by yourself?”
Beef? Oh, the one Refu had sent?
“Yes.”
Obviously.
“Why?”
“Why, she asks? Because it was a gift to me.”
“A gift to you?”
“You really have a talent for stating the obvious like it’s some kind of revelation.”
I got it, so it was my gift.
“That’s basically a present you couldn’t have gotten without me!”
“Quit talking nonsense. This fake marriage only happened because I suggested it in the first place.”
“You quit talking nonsense too. It was your manager who brought up the fake-marriage idea!”
We started bickering again, but to be honest, I had no intention of eating it only with my family.
“Hey, if we’re eating it, bring your parents too.”
“My parents?”
“Let’s buy a little more and make it, I don’t know, four or five kilos, then have both families eat together. Since she sent us two kilos already.”
“Oh...! Are you a genius?”
Lee Yebin suddenly started praising me. What was with her?
“Genius my ass. I’ll message you again when the beef arrives.”
“Okey-dokey~ Then see you at the streamer server~”
“It’s not like that’s until the day after tomorrow.”
“Still! Anyway, I’m off, bye~”
I let her hang up and left her to it, then decided it was about time I got on with my stream for the day.
Today’s stream was a Battle of Legend solo queue broadcast. A proper solo queue grind.
Right now I was in Master, and I needed exactly two more wins to reach Grand Master.
I was going to hit Gma and then head off to the streamer server.
“All right, chat~ I’m ending the stream once I hit Gma~”
“There’s no way I’m failing.”
So how did it go?
It was a cursed loop of one win and one loss, over and over again. This was seriously hard.
About five hours after I’d started the stream, just as I was beginning to get irritated, a video donation came through.
The video that had been sent was none other than Lee Yebin’s current stream.
She was playing the deduction game she normally played, and during the stream someone had left behind a completely garbage request: “Please send an encouragement message for Dodo, he’s stuck one win away from Gma and keeps failing.”
What kind of answer did Lee Yebin leave for that? Obviously, exactly the kind of answer you’d expect from her.
...For the record, I’d already hit Legend before—the rank reserved for the top 300 Grand Masters.
And she was trying to provoke me like that?
Unforgivable. Lee Yebin needed to be punished.
With that thought in my head, I queued up again.
And then...
Thanks to Yebin’s provocation buff, I’d managed to snatch a clean victory.
“Aaaaahhh!!! That’s my brother! That’s meeeeee!!!”
Seeing me this happy, the viewers all reacted the same way.
...You three just now—the one who made the real-dating joke, and the one who made the “support” joke.
You’re both getting a one-minute timeout.