Sometimes It's Fun Playing Just the Two of Us
Yebin had been sulking pretty openly, so I figured I'd better put in a little effort and coddle her for once.
Carrot and stick, right? Hit her with nothing but the stick and she'd just get even worse and come back to torment me. A little petting and praise was the responsible move.
"Hey, Vini."
"Hmph."
She was broadcasting I'm mad at you! with every fiber of her being. The chat's reaction to that was…
They were putting on an absolute circus in there.
I'd already planned to soothe her, but watching those idiots act like that made me not want to do it at all. If anything, I wanted to mess with her even harder.
Even so, for the sake of future me, I shoved that very confident impulse aside and decided to take one for the greater good.
Of course, the problem was that you still needed something worth praising before you could actually praise someone.
A little while later, a skirmish broke out over a special item.
In that fight, Yebin started inching forward with a little more courage, almost like she was mirroring Elia's movement.
Whoosh! Crack!
Yebin pushed up and landed a poke on the enemy. A truly historic moment.
This was exactly when the praise had to land, so I launched straight into full Yebin hype mode.
"Yeah. That's it. Step up and hit them."
"Am I… actually doing okay…?"
"Yeah. For real. Way better than before."
And I meant it. She really was much better than earlier.
Before, Elia had been the one forced to shove the whole lane by herself. Now that the two of them were applying pressure together, Elia had a lot more breathing room.
Maybe that was why.
Whoosh! Boom! Whoosh! Boom!
Elia's rocket launcher started landing cleaner and cleaner, every shot burying itself into the enemy damage dealers.
Of course, as a poke specialist, she still couldn't secure the last hits. The enemies were left at that heartbreaking threshold—one more hit and they were gone.
And that was when Yebin locked the angle down for real. Yes. That Yebin.
Shuuuuuu…!
The character she was playing, Cicely, had an ultimate that dealt damage to every enemy inside its range.
And that range was massive—truly, absurdly massive—so she could clean up the targets Elia had just left hanging.
PAAAK!!
Ding!
The skill sound effect hit, a kill popped, and Yebin immediately screamed like a dolphin.
"Kyaaaaaaah! Did you see that!? Did you see that!? I got them! I got theeeem!"
"I'll chase!"
"Yes!"
She barked the order to Elia and sprinted forward, and after that the fight turned into a pure one-sided chase.
We cleaned them up one by one without missing a beat, won the skirmish, and clawed back everything we'd lost. Everything.
"How about that! How about that! This is me! This is Vini!"
"Yeah. You actually did well this time."
"Really?"
"Yeah, really. You did everything you were supposed to do."
"Praise this noona a little more~"
More praise?
Suddenly that rubbed me the wrong way. Give her one carrot and she starts begging for another.
"We only won because the other side got scared of Elia's poke and refused to commit."
"If you're going to praise me, just praise me. Why add a whole footnote."
"Hey, that's just the facts."
It really was the facts, too.
Elia had landed every single skill, so the enemy hyper-focused on her and backed off. Once Yebin's skill entered the equation on top of that, the risk got too high and they bailed.
"I did well too, you know? I did well!"
"We won because they played badly. In-story fact. Please do not fabricate."
"Ugh…! Elia! I did well, right? Right!?"
"You did great~"
"See! Elia said I did well!"
She was treating Elia's polite kindness like hard proof.
Kid, never leave streaming. How does a person this socially dense even function.
Anyway, after that we looted the dead enemies' money, bought upgrade items, and started gearing up in earnest.
Naturally, in that process, we prioritized Yebin's items over mine as the tank.
"Use this and this and craft your item."
"…What? What's with you today?"
"I'm teaching you. I can't just completely neglect your gear."
"What is this? Did you eat something weird?"
"I try saying something nice and you still make it weird."
"You're the one who's always weird to me."
We immediately started bickering again, and Elia just sighed and went back to calling the shots.
"Everyone, we need to rotate to the next objective right away~"
"Ah, yes~"
"Yes! Understood!"
Yebin was being ridiculously polite only to Elia.
"Hey. Why are you only that respectful to Elia."
"Want me to do it for you too?"
"You're not going to."
"Yeah. Why would I ever talk to you like that in the first place?"
"Because I'm your teacher."
"My teacher is Elia, not you. I'm copying Elia's movement, you know?"
"That isn't copying. That would be more accurately described as doing things with zero thought."
"Do you actually want to die."
The back-and-forth with Yebin showed no signs of stopping, until Elia finally stepped in to take the bullet.
"At this point, aren't you two actually married? You're real, right?"
It was a bullet, all right. Just not the kind of bullet I'd expected.
"We're not!" we both snapped at the same time.
"See? You even answered at the same time. Definitely married."
"Hey, why are you copying me."
"You copied me first, you copycat."
"Wow. Vini just went full elementary school."
"You're the elementary school one."
Our fight showed no signs of ending. At least not until the next fight inside the game started.
After that, we closed the game out with a win.
Regardless of Yebin's skill level, stomping a regular match with me and Elia on the same team was trivially easy. In a way, the result was inevitable.
Not satisfied with just the win, Elia and I kept drilling Yebin on Endless Return.
At first we'd only been teaching her what to do in fights, but…
"At the start, if there aren't many people around, path as close to a teleport as you can and farm. You want to cut even a little farming time."
"When you're moving, it's fine to path with the enemy's vision in mind. The vision key is this one."
"Playing around a wall and harassing them from the other side is also solid."
We started feeding her every useful tip we had. Naturally, we made sure not to overload her—once she digested one thing, we moved on to the next.
I hated admitting it, but Yebin was smarter than me. I called her a brick-head all the time as a bit, but raw brainpower-wise she had me beat. Her learning ability was that much better, too.
Maybe that was why she always managed to absorb whatever we taught her. Infuriatingly so.
Once that strangely heartwarming stretch of coaching finally ended, it was time to wrap the stream.
"Elia, thank you so much for teaching this little gremlin today."
"Aww, not at all~ You picked it up really well, didn't you?"
"Dodo! What did I tell you! I said I learn well!"
"Yeah, yeah. You're amazing."
"More! Say it like you mean it!"
"Aww, good job, our little Vini."
"Whoa. Okay, no more of that 'our Vini' thing. I think I just threw up a little."
"Yeah, that one made me nauseous too."
We ended the stream the same way we'd spent the whole thing—bickering and trading jabs. Elia left the voice chat first.
And then…
After shutting off the stream, Yebin suddenly queued into another game of Endless Return.
"Hey. Why are you solo queueing Endless Return right now."
"Oh, right. I never left the Discord call."
"No, I'm asking why you're playing alone."
Yebin answered my question with total calm.
"I do want to just turn it off and rest, but if I do that, I feel like I'll forget everything."
"Then… yeah. You should keep going."
"Why all of a sudden."
Why, indeed.
…Seriously. Why was I even pressing her about this.
While I was stuck wondering how to dig myself out of the conversation, I just decided to mess with her some more instead.
"If you go alone, the comps won't line up and the only people who suffer will be whatever teammates get stuck with you."
"So what. Why. What do you want me to do about it."
"Let's queue together. Come on."
"I already found a match."
"……Dodge it."
"Why should I?"
It suddenly felt like the roles had flipped and she was the one teasing me, but I had nothing to lose.
"Then I'm out. Have fun all by yourself~"
"Ah—ah! Fine, I'll dodge! I'll dodge it! I'm dodging, you bastard!"
Yebin scrambled to stop me from leaving, and just like that I ended up queuing with her again.
No stream this time. Just the two of us, pure and simple.
Of course, maybe because Elia wasn't there, the game itself immediately went to absolute hell compared to earlier. Which, well. Obviously.
"Gyeongdo! You came to save me!"
"No, I just got jumped too."
"Huh?"
"How am I supposed to win a 1v3 by myself!"
Beep!
Sometimes I went to save Yebin for no good reason and died with her.
"Runnnnn!"
"What about yooou…!"
"This is my final ripple, Yebin! Take iiiit!!!"
Sometimes I tried to save her and died alone instead.
"Hey, what is that guy doing!?"
"What even is that. I don't know. I'm scared."
Sometimes a teammate would randomly hard-commit into nothing and we'd both write them off together.
"You absolute brick! If you can't pull that…!"
"What was I supposed to do! He just outplayed the movement!"
"I'm sorry. I demanded too much of you."
"What was that, punk?"
Sometimes I just pure-hated on Yebin for the fun of it.
It was a complete disaster, but even so, there was one thing I could feel for sure…
Sometimes, not worrying about the stream at all and just playing games together like this wasn't half bad.
Yeah. Sometimes. Just sometimes.