Talent
Side: Yoo Jae-min
I hadn't streamed since that day.
I'd always known I had no talent as a broadcaster, but facing that reality head-on still left me feeling low.
It hadn't been a long stretch of time, but the chat that forced its way into my vision no matter how hard I tried to look away — that parrot-like spam — had genuinely stressed me out.
……Was "depressed" even the right word?
It was less depression than a kind of helplessness, a hollow letdown. Not despair, exactly. More like the feeling you get after a long, hard day, walking home with a snack you really want in mind, only to check your pocket and find you're a few coins short. That particular brand of deflation. Yeah. That felt about right.
Failing at internet streaming hadn't changed anything, really.
It just made me realize that a future I'd thought was still far off — one I could maybe sidestep a little — was closer than I'd imagined.
I had simply come to understand that I couldn't escape him.
The blessing that god had laid on me was already so tangled through my body that I couldn't even tell where to start unraveling it. Every day, without the curse loosening even a fraction, I kept discovering new snares inside it that I hadn't known were there.
Daily life went on as usual.
I'd pass the time as if nothing were wrong, then knock on his door out of habit. He'd come out smiling, take me into his room like it was the most natural thing in the world…… and play with me however he wanted.
However he wanted.
And however I wanted, too.
At some point, I'd started thinking that if this was the life I had to live anyway, I was lucky it was with him. He wasn't a stranger — he was my close friend. And his personality was…… well, fine, aside from the fact that he was kind of a pervert.
Evaluating Lee Kang-yeon as a man, now that I had a woman's body: even when we did that, whether it was because of how my body had changed or not, we fit well together.
And he looked……
No! ……No.
Why was I even thinking about this?
My chest felt tight.
……And whenever irritation built up like this, my lower belly would start to itch.
And there was only one way to scratch that itch.
Knock knock.
The door opened.
"……What."
"Do sumata with me."
"……."
"……?"
Unlike every other time — when he would casually take my hand and pull me inside like it was the most obvious thing in the world — his eyes went cold.
What was this all of a sudden?
"Why!"
"Hey, you little pervert. We did it the second you woke up without even eating breakfast, and it's been exactly one hour since we finished lunch."
"……So what."
"You know we've been at it all day this week except when we're sleeping, right? I've got to prep for going back to school, so I need to draw a little too."
……Had we?
All day?
After my attempt to change the future had half-collapsed, I'd probably lost all self-restraint under a general sense of whatever, screw it. I hadn't touched LCL at all these past few days either, which probably made it worse.
……No. Other things, too.
Come to think of it — since that day, had I done anything besides rolling around with Lee Kang-yeon?
Really nothing?
Really?
"……Shit."
The truth hit me and my face went hot. From his angle, I must have been bright red.
I was mortified.
I wasn't some actual pervert, and yet I'd spent all day — a whole week — clinging to this guy? Eating, blacking out, sleeping, and nothing else but that?
……How had it come to this?
"……Y-you're the one who made me like this!"
"Huh? Me?"
The words were out before I could stop them, and then I had nothing to follow them with. I'd just spat them out without thinking.
What had I even been trying to say?
That I liked doing it with him too much.
That he was too good at it.
That he'd made me this way.
Maybe I was already……
I didn't even know myself.
"……."
Suddenly my vision blurred. An unbearable heat gathered at the corners of my eyes, and the beads of water trembled there, ready to spill. I couldn't lift my head under that precarious weight, so I stared at the floor.
……I was crying.
Why?
I didn't really know. I wasn't this emotional of a person.
Was this because I'd become a woman, too?
"Aigoo……."
His sigh made my heart drop.
……Was he disappointed?
Did he hate me now?
Did he think I was a nuisance?
Then what about me?
What was I supposed to do now?
In the instant that a black, all-consuming panic seemed to swallow the whole world, a warm gentleness wrapped around my body.
"Why are you crying."
"……Eh……?"
I felt two solid arms pull me into a firm hug.
My mind went blank white.
No — not white. Pink.
A world that had been drowning in pitch-black darkness was suddenly flooded with bright pink light.
Was he…… hugging me right now?
Why?
Why?
Why all of a sudden……?
"Uh…… eh? Eh?"
"If you want it that bad, fine. C'mere."
"Eh? ……Ah……♥"
My heart pounded. A beat I'd never felt once in my life.
I couldn't even collect myself as his hands guided me along.
……I didn't remember much after that.
Except that it felt incredibly, overwhelmingly happy.
"You need to pick up some other hobbies."
"Me?"
"You're seriously addicted to pleasure."
……I couldn't deny it.
"What do you usually do for fun? I have a rough idea, but tell me."
"Watch anime, read web novels, play games?"
"You haven't been watching anime or web novels lately?"
"There hasn't been much worth watching."
I'd already finished everything decent a long time ago. For anime, I'd watched all the yuri and the Pretty Girl Zoo stuff that came out this season. Everything else just wasn't fun. Watching some of it even gave me a kind of physical revulsion.
I wondered why. I hadn't been this picky before.
"Games?"
"Nothing really, besides LCL."
"……You always get stressed out playing League and come running to me. Don't you have any other games?"
"I never really played much besides LCL to begin with."
"Hmm. Then I'll lend you my Steam account — find something playable and try it. Even if it's boring, hold out until at least ten. I've got to finish the comic I was drawing."
"……Okay."
I nodded. I nodded because I thought it was the right call, but inside I felt a little hurt. The thought that maybe I was the only one who wanted it kept rising no matter how I tried to push it down.
……Why was I really like this?
"Want me to recommend some games?"
"No, it's fine. I'll try that Dark Souls thing you mentioned before."
"Uh…… you know what kind of game that is, right?"
"I know."
I knew it was infamous for its brutal difficulty. But people called it a masterpiece, and it was a game I'd always wanted to try once.
"Console, then? Mine's already logged in, so just use that."
"Yeah, I will."
"I'm heading back to my room, then?"
"Yeah. Go."
"Later."
His door shut with a thud, and a small hollow feeling settled in my chest.
……No.
I shook my head to clear out the stray thoughts, then picked up the controller.
"……."
The boss's sword swept through the air.
My character rolled.
The weapon I was holding had a heavy delay, but based on the previous attack, if I timed it right I could land one hit and get out.
"……!"
This boss seemed to chain different follow-ups out of the same wind-up. I hadn't expected it, but I reacted fast and hit roll again.
Whoosh!
The boss's blade passed over my character's head.
Its attack was over — now it was my turn.
"……."
The game was fun, sure, but aside from the occasional bullshit pattern, I could see every enemy attack coming. There were situations where the protagonist was too sluggish to dodge, but once you knew them, they weren't that hard. Beating a boss without any cheap patterns was basically just repetitive labor.
"Why…… is this easy?"
It wasn't that I never died. I'd died a lot. Plenty of times I'd taken a hit from somewhere I couldn't have predicted, at a moment I couldn't have seen coming, and felt genuinely robbed.
But I had never once felt like this game was hard.
And of course I hadn't — because there had not been a single moment where I failed to react to an enemy attack in time, or where the controls didn't do exactly what I wanted.
"……My control is really good?"
Come to think of it, ever since this body, I hadn't died in LCL from failing to react either. Teamfights had felt smoother than usual, too. Until now I'd just written it off as days when my hands were loose and warm.
When I duo'd normals with Lee Kang-yeon and played ADC — a role I barely touched — I'd carried. At the time I figured it was just normals, that I'd gotten matched against weak opponents.
But what if that wasn't it?
I'd always been a top-lane main, and I'd always preferred high-mechanics carry champs. But once I hit high Diamond, I started feeling the limits of my physical skill. I realized I couldn't climb any further on high-risk, high-reward mechanical champs alone. From then on I swallowed my preferences for the sake of winning, and played tank-focused champions that could still contribute even without great mechanics.
The results were good. I'd made Master, after all.
It was the same after this body. On my usual comfort-pick champs, I almost never lost because of mechanics. But I almost never won because of them either.
"……."
I shut off the console right then and ran to my computer.
Honestly, even I was half-skeptical.
Until the game ended.
"……This works?"
If this worked, then everything I'd struggled for until now had been for nothing?
This was……
"Does this even make sense!?"
Heat rushed to my head. I was angry.
And……
I looked at the clock on my phone.
9:11.
……Forty-nine minutes.
"……."
There was still a lot of time left.
But…… rounding this up to an acceptable margin of error wouldn't be that bad, right?
Rounding up, it was basically ten o'clock.
Yeah. That was fine.
I was absolutely not a pervert, and I absolutely did not have a short fuse for patience.
So it was okay, right?
I stood up from my chair and headed there, same as always.
Knock knock.