Come On In, You Bastard. I'll Wreck You
“Hoo… easy…”
Determined not to repeat last time’s mistake, I carefully rose from the gaming chair and struck a victory pose right there on the bed.
Snap!
A full-body shudder of triumph raced through me. Basking in it, I glared across the room at the distant monitor.
There it was, plain as day—the scoreboard proudly declaring my victory…
Ah, right. Time for the teabagging.
I immediately returned to the lobby. It wasn’t like I had time to burn, and there was zero reason to sit around listening to a loser’s excuses.
“Hmm… I might actually have a talent for baseball games?”
Truth be told, I’d originally planned to try a soccer game. The videos of big streamers dumping money into soccer titles looked insanely fun, so I’d been ready to go all-in and build a club of my own. But a soccer game where the whole situation flips in real time did not play nice with Woo Yeonha’s brain. My thoughts tangled, my inputs glitched, and I kept gifting the ball even to the computer. So I stopped the cash shop I’d been about to open and went hunting for a different game that was still good for spending money on.
What caught my eye was Magumoyeo.
In other words, Mamo.
“Who needs soccer… Koreans are baseball people!!”
You set the zone ahead of time and just click the keyboard when the ball arrives—perfect timing game. Sure, my trash-tier brain meant my pitching patterns were so monotone that I still gave up a ton of runs…
“…As long as this exists, I’m invincible.”
Once I started using the random pattern site that assigned the keyboard’s four directions at random, my runs allowed dropped hard. Even better, if you entered a pitcher it randomized the pitch types and gauges too, so there was literally no need to use my head.
“At this point, should I make Mamo trend on streaming? Have the Star Live kids run a Mamo tournament?”
There were exactly ten Korean baseball teams, after all. Grab ten of the Star Live girls, have each pick a team, and throw a total newbie tournament—couldn’t that turn Mamo into a hot game? Then my status as a Mamo expert would rise all by itself…! Or wait—maybe the actual baseball clubs would reach out for collabs?
“…What are you doing?”
“Ah, you’re here?”
Apparently done talking with Nene, the boss was suddenly standing right behind me.
“Looking at your face, the mood reset seems to have worked.”
“Yup! Thanks to you I had a great time!”
“…And what game is this supposed to be?”
The boss peered at my monitor with the expression of someone examining a rare specimen. I puffed out my non-existent chest and answered.
“It’s called Magumoyeo. Peak game.”
“That fun?”
“Eh, it’s pretty decent? Controls are easier than I expected, so I was thinking of dragging the kids into a tournament.”
Watching opponents, it looked like there were some advanced defensive techniques, but that had nothing to do with our girls. If we stuck to pure newbies, we could probably run a clean Mamo tournament—the kind full of real-life-level errors and completely hopeless whiffs…
“A tournament? With this…?”
The boss eyed the screen with open suspicion.
“We’ve got exactly ten kids, and there are ten Korean baseball teams, so if everyone just picks one and we run a tournament, it could be pretty fun, right?”
“Hmm…”
“With a baseball game, a newbie match is probably more luck than skill anyway. And if we’re lucky, maybe the actual teams send collab or partnership inquiries…”
“…”
“…Boss?”
…What was with that terrifying stare?
Why was I suddenly being interrogated?
At this rate I deserved Employee of the Month!
“…I told you to rest and you’re already planning content again?”
“Eh…?”
Ah, no, this is—!
“You. Vacation extended one more day.”
“Ah!!”
That means my vacation never ends!!
“Keep planning streams like that. I’ll show you what infinite vacation looks like.”
What kind of boss threatens an employee with vacation?!
“Isn’t this illegal?!”
“It’s not. As far as I know.”
“No way?!”
Even the law wasn’t on my side?!
“And if it is, so what? You’re a person the law doesn’t even protect anyway…”
“…Ah?”
Right. I was currently in a position where I couldn’t even go to the labor office.
“S-so what happened with Nene?”
I hastily changed the subject to escape the disadvantageous battlefield.
“Nene? She had a mobile game ad stream today, so I sent her home.”
“Did the persuasion go well?”
“No.”
“?”
What? It didn’t work?
“She said she’ll just move into the second floor of our place so she can make your breakfast every morning.”
“Eh…?”
Move in?!
Why on earth?!
“She already doesn’t like her current place, so she said she’ll pay rent and wants an entire room.”
“Y-you approved that?”
“What choice did I have? She threatened to blab to all the other girls.”
“Uh…”
Well, when you put it that way…
“Until the extra key card is issued she’ll borrow Eo’s. Karen’s is shared with Rina already. That was the compromise the kids worked out among themselves.”
Which meant…
“…So from now on my breakfast becomes Nene’s home cooking?”
“High probability, yeah.”
“Uwaaaaaaah!!”
I clutched my head and wailed. Tears sprang up at the future that stretched before me.
“What’s wrong? Nene’s a good cook.”
“She is! She’s too good!!”
Just as the boss said, Nene was an excellent cook. I’d tasted her food before—slight exaggeration, but second-tier chef level. If she hadn’t become a VTuber and opened a restaurant instead, she absolutely would’ve succeeded. When it came to plating alone, you could mistake her for a first-rate chef and it wouldn’t be weird.
“? Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is she’s too good!”
“??”
In the past, Nene had done a content series learning cooking from a famous active chef. The part where that famous chef ended up learning plating from Nene instead was a famous anecdote not just at Star Live but across streaming and the cooking industry.
Like, SNS-optimized cooking.
Whenever she posted something she’d made herself…
Comments like that would flood in and spark full-blown “that’s my wife” competitions.
“Don’t tell me you’re scared of getting jealousy-bombed by the fans?”
“…You know how after that content ended, Nene secretly filmed me eating the leftovers, right?”
“Ah. Right.”
Only then did understanding dawn, and the boss gave me a look of pure pity.
After one of Nene’s cooking streams, there had been leftover food. Following the traditional caption “The remaining food was deliciously finished by the staff!”, that food had been left entirely to me—the one who’d planned the content. Nene had sneakily filmed it on her phone and posted it to SNS. Of course, face and body were cropped; only the hand holding the food was uploaded, but…
Hundreds of comments like those had piled up, and for a while my commute had become extremely hardcore.
“…Ever since then, Nene’s cooking has been trauma for me.”
“But it’s still delicious.”
“Hiiing…”
That’s exactly the problem…
She knows she’s good, so she keeps gifting me food at the drop of a hat…
“You’re the type who just reheats last night’s leftovers because almost nothing’s open for breakfast around here. Why are you being so picky?”
“E-even so…”
Whenever I only ate Nene’s cooking it felt like a hole was opening in my stomach…
“If it’s that bad, just tell Nene yourself. Say you prefer the delivery food around here so she doesn’t need to cook so often.”
“…”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Th-that is…”
I briefly imagined saying exactly what the boss had just said to Nene.
“…I somehow feel like if I do that, Nene will pour her soul into cooking and become a first-rate chef.”
“…”
After hearing my answer the boss thought for a moment, then muttered in a troubled voice.
“…Why can’t I deny that?”
Why do you think…
Because our Nene is the kind of woman who actually does what she sets her mind to.
“I’m heading into stream to soothe the kids’ public opinion.”
Apparently not many members had gone live today, so the boss was being deployed for a home stream to manage the mood a little.
“Fighting!”
“Don’t smile, you bastard. When your vacation ends, you’re next, Yeonha.”
“Y-yes?!”
…Should I just enjoy infinite vacation like this forever?
I seriously considered it as I returned to my room.
“Whew…”
Thankfully I got permission and hopped into the boss’s stream. Surely she wouldn’t shamelessly extend my vacation after greenlighting it over text like this.
[Ah, I’m getting sick of LoL. Anything else to play?]
[Iseo’s a bit much.]
[Tournament my ass… Iseo dogs these days are actually insane.]
“Yikes…”
Even after getting a tournament offer from Jinwoo, the boss just plastered on an iron mask and changed the subject.
[Ah, right. Got a game recommendation from an employee today.]
[This one.]
“Pfft…!”
The game the boss launched was Magumoyeo.
[I heard the controls are easier than expected.]
[I’ll try it once, and if it’s trash I’ll just yell at that employee.]
“Hawawa?!”
And so the boss’s first Mamo run began.
[Which team’s good?]
[Hmm… wait a sec.]
The boss’s virtual character looked off to the side. That was usually the posture for phone use.
…Of course she was calling me.
The boss’s messages cut off.
[The bastard who recommended it to me is running 22 National Team. I’ll go with that too.]
At that point the boss’s character headed into the corner again.
And then the boss’s character returned.
[Okay. I’ll do the tutorial and then copy it exactly.]
Thus began the boss’s tutorial.
[For batting you just press A, S, or D when the ball comes. W is power swing. F is bunt.]
As expected of a streamer who actually knew games, the boss breezed through tutorial batting.
[Defense is… I have to mash W? Defense is hard. This.]
[Ah, this is gonna produce a lot of mistakes.]
After roughly learning defense, she played the first match against the computer.
Difficulty was easy, so the boss ended it in a 6th-inning mercy rule.
[Pretty doable?]
Confidence fully inflated by the game company’s hospitality tutorial, the boss’s character headed for the corner again.
A smile curved at the edge of that character’s mouth.
“Ha…?”