Real Recognize Real
Red-nim wasn’t just some ordinary We Got Married Content stan. Calling him an obsessive freak still wouldn’t have covered it.
After talking with him for a while, I realized he was the kind of deranged WGM addict who had taken fixation to a whole new level.
"So, where exactly did you fall for her?"
"If you keep this up, I’m not joining the tournament."
"All right, I’ll stop."
Only after I held the tournament participation hostage did he finally stop. Still, was the tournament really that big of a deal?
Since I had him on Discord anyway, I figured I might as well ask him to take a look at my aim and the rest of my basics.
"Red-nim, do you have some time after this?"
"Why? Are we going over the We Got Married Content stuff?"
"...Red-nim."
"I’m kidding! I’m kidding. There’s nothing else behind it."
"Then could you take a quick look at my basics? My aim sensitivity and stuff."
"Nice. Then let’s boot up the game first."
At that, I launched Battle Sky. When I was just streaming, I hadn’t really thought anything of it, but the moment Red-nim said he was watching, my whole body tightened up. Man, what was I supposed to do now?
"Red-nim, I’m suddenly really nervous."
"Come on, it’s fine. You said you watched my YouTube video on how to adjust your aim, right?"
"Yeah. It took me ages to get it right back then."
"Let’s start with your posture first. Do you know FPS posture?"
"There’s a separate posture for FPS?"
"Ah, is your desk really narrow? I mean front to back, not side to side."
"No, it’s not narrow."
"Then put your arm on the desk and stretch it out. Like, until your elbow reaches the edge."
Following Red-nim’s instructions, I laid my arm on the desk and stretched it out. Even with my elbow lined up neatly with the edge of the desk, there was still room in front of me.
"Does it need to be exactly lined up?"
"No, your elbow should stick out a little past the edge of the desk."
I pulled my arm back slightly to match that. Then I moved my mouse left and right. It felt awkwardly comfortable, or comfortably awkward, which was somehow even worse.
"And from there, don’t use your wrist at all. Move the mouse with your arm."
"...Huh? What do you mean?"
"Hmm. With your hand on the mouse, try rotating around your elbow instead of your wrist as the center point?"
Wow, that felt really uncomfortable. My aim sensitivity still wasn’t right, and more than anything, the whole thing felt deeply unnatural.
"Is this right?"
"If it feels uncomfortable and weird, then yes, that’s right."
I swung my aim around, tried compensating for recoil this way and that, but the whole thing still felt off. More than anything else, my old aim settings no longer matched my new posture, so I had to readjust from scratch.
"All right, from now on, you’re going to play Battle Sky like that."
"Will I get used to it?"
"If you keep turning the screen with your wrist, you’re more likely to hurt it. It’d be a pain if you got injured and had to stop playing, right?"
"When you put it like that, I guess I don’t have a choice. Better prevent injuries at all costs."
"Good. Then let’s get your aim set up again. You remember how to adjust it?"
"I’ll try it first."
I dragged up the memory of the video I’d watched and set my aim again. Maybe because I’d done it once before, I was able to fine-tune it much faster than I had the first time.
It was much better than before, but my aim still overshot the target a little, so my first bullet kept whiffing.
"All right, lower it by just 0.002 more from there. Then try firing once."
"...Oh! This actually feels better."
After adjusting my aim and shooting at some of the nearby NPCs, it did feel better.
Back when I turned the camera, there were plenty of times I’d die because the aim would overshoot or undershoot the target. But with the newly adjusted settings, even when I tracked a moving enemy from far away, the aim didn’t jolt all over the place.
"Red-nim, my aim is seriously insane."
"Ahem. Not yet. Let’s go into a real match."
*
#1 / 10 Kills
Yoon Red couldn’t make sense of the situation. And that was understandable; usually, when someone played with a posture that felt unnatural, they got too distracted by the discomfort to perform at their real level and ended up dying.
Red himself wasn’t any different. When he first started playing FPS games, he used only his wrist to swing the screen around, and when he finally changed his posture because he thought he was going to wreck his wrist, it had taken forever to adjust.
But the person broadcasting right now was different. He’d only looked a little clumsy while looting at first, and the second he ran into an enemy, he whipped the screen around and fired off his shots in an instant.
'Hazy-nim, did you just use your wrist?'
'No, I moved with my arm.'
That answer, given exactly in the posture he’d been told to use, was no small thing. The viewers who saw and heard it were just as stunned.
After that, Hazy finished looting in a flash and headed straight into the center of the danger zone.
Instead of sneaking around like before, he threw himself into fights, meeting people as often as possible.
The reason was simple. He needed to get used to the posture.
'Wow, that was close.'
'Deleted.'
And in the final fight, with enemies pinching him from front and back, he charged the one in front first, took him out, then snapped his aim a full 180 degrees to pick off the other opponent who’d just started peeking from behind cover in the rear.
"Your aim is insane today. I hope you’re like this at the tournament."
"...Hazy-nim, should we try one more match?"
"Huh? Sure, why not."
#1 / 6 Kills
Same result in the second match. This time, even though there was a rock below me, there were enemies in three directions, and I wiped all of them out.
"Huh? What do you mean? The three people just now?"
"Yes. Could you explain it to me while replaying it?"
The screen share froze on the moment where I’d been pinned against the wall earlier. I explained the situation from that point onward.
"On this ridge, from my perspective, there was one guy below in front of me, one on the right, and the last one up to the left, right?"
"Yeah. They were all behind trees."
"Here, if I throw a potato up to the upper-left, that guy’s going to move out from behind the tree, right? But then I figured the guy below would be able to see him."
When Yoon Red still didn’t have an answer, I kept explaining.
"Then the guy below would shoot left, and while that’s happening, I can erase the guy on the right, so it becomes a one-on-one, right?"
"But you took out the guy on the right, and the guy below didn’t manage to get the one up left, did he?"
"Right, the kill log didn’t pop. So I didn’t heal, just kept the screen turned and aimed with the sniper rifle at the left side. If I healed first and tried to react after that, it’d be too late, and they knew I’d already taken damage."
"So you were aiming with the SR, then shot the guy who stepped out to the side, healed up, and then killed the guy coming out from below once the arena got smaller?"
"Yep."
Yoon Red was left speechless. Fine, sure, that could happen. People with talent in games sometimes pulled things like that. But hadn’t this guy literally just learned the posture today?
And yet, after learning it, he got first place in both matches. Was that even... possible?
"Hazy-nim. Your aim is already top-notch, so there’s nothing much to fix. I think you just need to pay attention to your posture."
"You mean I need to keep myself aware of not using my wrist?"
"Yes. And you need to get used to that posture now. But don’t turn that into an obsession, either."
Yoon Red knew better than anyone. He knew how much trouble he’d gone through, carrying a ruler and tape to every arena just to set things up exactly the way he wanted.
He didn’t want anyone else falling into that kind of trap.
"Don’t get fussy about things like, ‘My arm has to be this many centimeters’ or ‘The monitor has to be this many centimeters from the desk.’ Just remember the feeling, like, ‘Right, this was how it felt.’"
"Got it."
"Also, I was thinking maybe we could all get together at my place once before the tournament. Would that be okay?"
"At your place?"
"Yeah. We’ll each play a match there, and I’m planning to introduce you to the other members too."
"I’d be happy to. I’m basically a layabout, so I’m free anytime. No, actually, I’ll take the day off and come."
At my words, the chat started flooding with crying emojis and angry emojis, asking if I was abandoning them, but I didn’t even look at it.
"Haha, good. Oh, if it’s okay with you, should I just reveal my face then?"
"Um... I’ll think about that a little."
"Oh, I was just asking, so don’t stress too much over it."
"No, it’s fine. I’ll think about it positively."
"Thanks. Then I’ll contact you separately later!"
We exchanged goodbyes and left the voice chat room.
"I know it’s too early to say, but I’m going to go ahead and get ahead of myself anyway."
"Our team is going to win."
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