A Strange Misunderstanding
Mayo thought.
Lately, she'd been incredibly lucky.
Was this compensation for her miserable past?
No—better not go there.
Looking back on those wretched days would only sour her mood for no good reason.
Right. Think only of the good things… only the good things.
For example, what was there?
Let's savor them one by one, slowly.
First off, today's lunch had been absolutely delicious.
She'd warmed up a pack of instant rice, tapped the bottom with her palm to loosen it, and tipped it into a bowl. Then—splash!—she'd dumped the contents of a tuna can over the steaming white rice.
Ah, and the key point here: only half the can. Dump the whole thing and it's just too much. Waste not, want not.
Then two spoonfuls of soy sauce, and out came the secret weapon! Mayonnaise, squeezed out in a long ribbon, mixed right in with the tuna.
Nom nom! The mayo was pure honey.
Whenever she tried to explain this particular taste preference, so many people just didn't get it. Sometimes they went beyond mere surprise and looked at her like she was weird. Her aunt's family had probably been like that. The memory was hazy now. She tended to forget unimportant people quickly, after all.
Hmm, and besides lunch, what else had been good?
Ah! Today they'd all had fun playing on a VRChat map.
Seo-a unnie kept nagging that this wasn't playtime, it was work, so they needed to take it seriously. But then the moment Lucy unnie started filming, Seo-a just stared at her with this completely weird expression, so Mayo called her a pervert—and Seo-a got mad instead.
Moments with your bias never come twice?
Seo-a unnie was great in every way, except she sometimes spouted nonsense Mayo couldn't understand. Mayo just had to accept it. Geniuses were all eccentrics, right?
Maybe it's not just talk—Seo-a unnie might actually be a genius of streaming.
Come to think of it, all her recent good fortune had started after meeting Seo-a.
A gaming friend she'd met through League of Legends recommended streaming, and that was how it began. She'd started on Rabbit TV, caught a brief wave of early popularity, kept the momentum going—then got banned for excessive swearing mid-game.
Just thinking about it still made her blood boil. That butcher of a guy had been doing draft politics and intentional trolling—what normal League player could just sit there and take it? So she'd raised her voice a bit, and some random viewer must have reported her, because the ban came down without mercy.
At first she'd thought about quitting streaming altogether. But then came this sudden sense of loss. Without quite meaning to, she found herself looking for other platforms where she could stream. She never said it out loud—it was too embarrassing—but maybe it was loneliness. She'd been alone for so long.
And then, even if it was only online, she started getting attention from lots of people and communicating with them. Honestly, it had been really fun. She didn't want to lose streaming.
Ahem. At this point she deserved credit for being pretty self-aware, right?
So she started fresh on Pangea TV. And that, she believed, was where her luck truly began.
The meeting with Seo-a unnie.
After transferring, she'd spent about ten days frantically adapting to the new platform when she happened to see chat talking about a particular content piece. Crew member recruitment content. As if possessed, she applied—and amazingly, she got accepted under the title of "intern."
Her first crew: V-Live.
From that day on, so many things changed.
I learned so much. Got so much feedback, too.
She'd been a complete streaming newbie. The crew members hadn't shunned her for it—they'd looked after her with real care. The luck of gaining connections she'd never expected.
And that wasn't all. When she applied the feedback and started considering more angles in her streams, her viewers grew and so did her income. And more than anything, it was fun. Streaming… and everything she did with the crew.
Today was really fun too. Still don't have a full-body tracker so I had to use a stand-in, but still.
Every day sparkled with new first-time experiences. Could anyone believe that all of this had happened after meeting just one person? It was amazing, but every bit of it was true.
So she wanted to get closer, become better friends, know the other person better. That sudden surge of feeling made her pick up the phone again, just like she had that morning. It was a rest day, so a call like this should be fine.
"Yeah. Mayo, what's up?"
"Unnie, I'll mix mayo into rice for you real tasty."
"…Is this you picking a fight?"
A strange misunderstanding had arisen.
Aside from Mayo suddenly calling to pick a fight, it was a peaceful rest day.
Whew. It really had been brutal. Nearly two weeks of diamond-mining streams averaging over eight hours, then a short break before logging into Rena World off-stream to farm the Ender World with Mayo. If she hadn't kept her mouth shut during the off-streams and carefully managed her voice, something would definitely have gone wrong.
That harsh a schedule. Which was why today would be devoted entirely to rest.
Poko Server starts all-nighters today, right? Everyone's gonna have a rough time.
With no way of knowing when enemies might raid and snatch the flag, they'd have to run tight twenty-four-hour rotations. Honestly, this kind of gritty work was more the specialty of battle royale streamers than virtual ones.
She briefly sent mental condolences to the Decrescendo members, Blueby, and the rest, then picked up her phone. Maybe it was Mayo's weird comment, but she was getting hungry. Since she'd decided to rest properly for once, why not order delivery?
Hmm, the menu had to be chicken, of course. Going with her trusted bone-in fried chicken.
Once the order was placed, boredom set in, so she opened Pangea TV's homepage main screen. After the Wooga-dol audition ended, the virtual category had shriveled pitifully. Even with a separate Minecraft category, it was barely two thousand viewers. And even that was mostly thanks to Freeca members' individual performances. If Freeca dropped out too, they'd have to start worrying about breaking four digits for real.
Pangea TV's virtual scene is still pretty shaky.
The virtual streamers who'd transferred from Rabbit TV had been small-timers to begin with, so there was no one with enough presence to solidly hold down the virtual category. It was more like dozens of people huddled together, each with twenty or thirty viewers.
That's why they used to say a hundred fixed fans was a mountain. Compared to Rabbit TV's virtual scene, this is genuinely pitiful.
The present reality was this bleak, but Pangea TV's virtual scene wouldn't stay this way forever. Going through Rena World would grow their scale, create fixed fans, and boost income significantly. Beyond the existing virtual streamers, human streamers' viewers would start flowing into virtual too.
Come to think of it, a new resident moves in this Monday.
Rena-ttang had even named it the "Mountain Track"—partner streamers of a certain scale could enter the server without writing an application comment or going through an entrance interview.
The one coming in is Dananyang, right? Direct line under Park Bong-sik, does a lot of different content…
She was also the streamer who would later fall under Park Bong-sik's company when he entered Rena World himself.
"Hmm? Already?"
Delivery these days was seriously instant. She dashed to the front door, cracked it open, and right there beside it was a box of chicken in a delivery bag. With a fluttering heart she brought it in and set everything up in front of the computer. Salt and pickled radish ready, hands washed clean, she sat down.
"First bite's gotta be a drumstick."
Still too hot, so she used a fork to bring it to her mouth.
Crunch—!
The sound of the batter cracking. And from within, the condensed juices came flooding out. Yeah, this was the taste. She dabbed on some salt and took another bite.
"Ahh! Perfect."
This was rest. This was healing. But sitting still left her eyes bored, so she checked for something decent to watch. Looking at the rankings, League of Legends and StarCraft streams were trading places at the top. Checking the Minecraft category, the highest rank was Mist, as expected.
Curious what he's doing. Let's take a quick look.
She quietly joined the stream without logging in. So what was Mist up to?
"Oh! The Ender World."
Indeed—Mist, sharpening his blade of revenge, was exploring the Ender World with Dorai and the others. Just like she and Mayo had done off-stream, he seemed to want to farm Mending gear.
Sorry, but you're one step… no, more than two steps late.
The area around the Ender World portal had already been stripped bare of equipment. You'd have to travel at least an hour to find a spot she and Mayo hadn't touched.
"Aaaagh! What the hell? Why is everything looted here? Who did this?!"
She watched Mist's anguished screams while happily tearing into her chicken. The chicken tasted even better than usual today.