An Intense Memory
Oh Yeong-jun had made up his mind.
This time, on this Minecraft server, he was going to show them something.
He'd been streaming so long he could barely remember when he'd even started. He couldn't stay a mid-tier named small-time streamer forever.
That ruined image from the StarCraft scene… I'm recovering it for sure.
People say life has its ups and downs. Sometimes you ride a rising wave; sometimes you plummet endlessly toward the bottom. Oh Yeong-jun's streaming career was exactly like that.
A flashy debut on the Warcraft 3 custom map Chaos. Starting early, he'd made a name for himself with decent looks and flashy game skill. Then he picked up the popular game League of Legends and hit Challenger, the highest tier. Just when it seemed his streaming career was hitting its peak, frequent controversies and conflicts with other streamers sent his viewership crashing.
Even so, he never quit streaming, and his LoL skills were recognized enough that he even worked as a coach for the Chinese pro team RNG. When he returned to broadcasting and his physical skill seemed to decline with age, he started branching into all kinds of non-game content. The most representative of these was his greasy-simp concept — touring female streamers' broadcasts — and surprisingly, it pulled serious numbers.
Parodying dramas, locking onto bizarre concepts, delivering every outrageous broadcast imaginable to make people laugh. With the long hiatus of Lee Seong-ho, then called the "LoL President," refugees flooded in, and he held an average of two to three thousand viewers, ushering in another golden age. He even hit Partner streamer status during that stretch.
But hardship and trials came knocking once more on that bright future. Fellow streamers accused him of suspicious circumstances in his gameplay, and the ensuing legal battle shut down his YouTube channel and dealt his live streams a massive blow. Because the streamers who sniped him were core figures in the LoL scene, truth aside, he had to endure an extremely difficult stretch.
Yet he never gave up, grinding on through his streaming career. He sought out the StarCraft scene for another leap forward, only to taste an even greater failure — which brought him to where he was now. Oh Yeong-jun's broadcast, barely scraping by with an average of two hundred viewers. That was why his resolve had to be all the more extraordinary.
Yeah. Streaming is all about the concept. Lock one in properly from the start.
Oh Yeong-jun cast back across his entire streaming life to the period when his talk-focused "visible radio" content had been most successful. The greasy-simp concept that made him lose his mind the second a woman put on a skirt — the one that had viewers clutching their stomachs laughing. With that memory of success, he decided to lock a solid concept in from day one on this Minecraft server as well.
That concept: a butter-slick, greasy pervert uncle.
But the concept hit a wall right out of the gate.
"Waaah! Kids, I'm Baby Yeong-jun. Wanna be friends?"
"Eek! What is that? Totally gross."
"Uh… we're kind of busy right now."
"Huh? Don't go. Come play with me."
As if it weren't bad enough that big-corp streamer Kim Hak-do had entered on the same day and vacuumed up nearly all the attention — approaching with that greasy voice and those lines? On top of that, virtual streamers fundamentally often aimed for gachi-koi — pseudo-romance — broadcasts, so keeping male streamers who approached like this at arm's length was only natural. Accidentally making their romance-oriented fans get the wrong idea would hit streaming income hard.
"N-no, I just wanted to hang out together…"
Lacking any real understanding of virtual streamers, Oh Yeong-jun was crushed. He'd planned the whole strategy thinking of female game streamers — complete failure. Meanwhile Kim Hak-do was living large, surrounded by a flower garden of girls, while Oh Yeong-jun wandered around as a lonely loner.
And yet, surprisingly, that humiliating spectacle was a hit with the viewers. They'd seen plenty of scenes where virtuals welcomed Mist or Kim Hak-do with open arms — but watching someone get manhandled the way Oh Yeong-jun was felt fresh. Something about the raw, mask-off charm of it.
"Alright. Since you said you're a total beginner, I'll at least teach you how to mine."
"Aww, thank you so much, Teacher!"
The endless effort it took him to finally find a virtual willing to hang out only deepened the viewers' immersion. What you struggle to earn always feels more precious. And Oh Yeong-jun had a story. Mist and Kim Hak-do had virtual streamers swarming them, handing over every piece of gear and propping them up. Oh Yeong-jun was climbing from the absolute bottom bare-handed, with zero support. An underdog success myth anyone could sink into. On top of that, he had a natural gift for games built on pure game sense.
"So I just do it like this, right? And when the lava starts flowing, I place the block I'm holding and zip out of there — shuk!"
"Whoa! How are you learning this so fast?"
Hitting Challenger on four accounts in his prime wasn't just for show. He graduated from diamond mining in no time, and a few hours later he was borrowing a pickaxe and pushing into the Nether. No matter how powerful a bottom-up growth story is, modern readers and viewers have zero patience for anything that feels slow — they drop it instantly. But with Oh Yeong-jun, there was none of that frustration. If there was such a thing as a natural talent for Minecraft, he had been born with it, growing at a ridiculous pace.
On day one of entering the server, Oh Yeong-jun cleanly finished diamonds and even quartz farming in the Nether. Hitting four-digit viewers for the first time in a long while, confirming the good vibes in chat, he ended stream feeling proud.
Man, things are actually going well? Let's dig in properly again tomorrow.
This time, the feeling really was good. Maybe he just clicked with Minecraft. Thinking that, he woke up the next day, washed up immediately, turned on stream, and logged into Rena World.
Someone was waving at him from a distance.
"Welcome, Yeong-jun. No — from now on, your name is Chunsik."
"…"
Yesterday's good feeling was screaming at him at full volume.
Run. Get out of here right now.
I had no intention of coveting Akatsuki. Even if the V-Live members tried to copy their trajectory, there was no guarantee they'd get the same results, and there was no need to average down on a stock I'd already bought at the low. Just wait for them to grow well, then pick a few sweet fruits from the sidelines. That was enough.
Of course, even that doesn't just happen on its own.
Not just anyone gets the runoff. You have to earn enough goodwill for it to flow your way naturally. With that in mind, I'd made a big decision. Before Oh Yeong-jun's first meeting with Muyo today, I was going to leave him with an intense impression.
"Welcome, Yeong-jun. No — from now on, your name is Chunsik."
"…"
Ah. Was that too strong right out of the gate?
Oh Yeong-jun's character flinched, clearly remembering what I'd done to him in a past collab. But he wasn't the kind of streamer to lose on experience points. He quickly recovered his composure and opened his mouth.
"Chunsik means I'm a slave, right? I already knew. Yeah, I'm a slave. A slave to your love."
"…"
So he'd locked in the greasy pervert uncle concept — and he was committing fully. But I wasn't about to lose either. Gritting my teeth against the rising greasiness in my gut, I made my pitch.
"No, Uncle Yeong-jun! I was going to introduce you to our V-Live members, but if you don't want to, forget it."
"Huh? Wh— who said I don't want to! Lead the way already. And for the record, I am not an uncle. We're only nine years apart — we don't even need to check compatibility."
"Ugh, what are you even saying! That nine-year compatibility line is genuinely disgusting!"
From the last collab, the two of us had already settled into a bickering older-brother-and-younger-sister kind of dynamic. There was a decent age gap, but somehow it had ended up that way without either of us intending it.
"Alright, alright — this is our company house! Not just anyone can come in, so shake the dirt off your shoes and submit to inspection on the way in!"
"Huh? What are you talking about? You're not seriously telling me to hand over my diamond boots for inspection? Do I look crazy?"
"…Close one."
I brought Oh Yeong-jun inside. Mayo, Lucy, and Subnitti were out on external activities for work, so only Han A-yeon and Miho were there.
"First, this is our part-timer A-yeon, and this is our crew's Miho unnie."
"Ohho! Hello. You two are both so beautiful. I'm…"
"…the old pervert ajusshi Oh Yeong-jun."
"Hey! Don't steal my self-introduction. And the content is wrong too!"
"Tch. Extras should just get glossed over."
"Who's an extra!"
Our rapid-fire banter wiped out any first-meeting tension in seconds. Miho smiled smoothly as she spoke.
"Seo-a brought someone interesting."
"Ahaha, right? I'm pretty humorous. And if it's not too rude to ask — how old are you?"
"Ah, me? It's private, but roughly late twenties…"
Miho had so many viewers who dug into her age and nitpicked that she decided to just go with late twenties and move on. By international age she was twenty-nine, so twenties was technically correct. Right?
"Wow! Perfect age. I don't think we even need to check compatibility."
"You insane compatibility parrot!"
Thwack—!
"Argh!"
Nine years and he's talking compatibility; two or three years and he's still talking compatibility — what exactly is the defensive range on this guy's age filter? Honestly, this man needed a mandatory re-education session.
I casually signaled Miho, and this clueless greasy simp, completely failing to notice, was already sidling up to Han A-yeon with more compatibility talk.
"Yeong-jun-nim, meeting like this is fate, and I heard you only just joined the server — want me to help enchant your pickaxe? I happen to have some levels left over."
"Oh! Really? Wow, you're so kindhearted. Seo-a, you should watch and learn."
"Hmph!"
I snorted and looked away from Oh Yeong-jun as he handed his pickaxe over to Miho. Let's see if he could still say that in a minute.
"Ah! And for first-time visitors to our company building, we take a commemorative photo. Could you come this way for a second?"
"Commemorative photo, sure. Oh! I just got a great idea. I should build an exhibition hall later. Display all the photos I take while playing Rena World so we can look back on them like memories on the last day of the server."
Miho guided Oh Yeong-jun onto that block with practiced ease. Still failing to grasp the situation, Oh Yeong-jun was chattering away excitedly. Without another word, I pulled a pickaxe from my inventory and destroyed the block under him.
"Wh— wha? Waaaaah!"
Oh Yeong-jun's character plunged straight into the trap. Having already handed his pickaxe to Miho, he was stuck in an unbreakable deepslate prison, staring up.
"W-what is this! Stop messing around and get me out!"
Looking down at the panicking Oh Yeong-jun from above. Hmm. I'd been in a situation like this recently, hadn't I? I could almost hear Oh-ha's phantom screams echoing from somewhere. I deliberately ignored them and spoke to Oh Yeong-jun.
"Uncle Yeong-jun. There's a movie I really, really love. If you guess the title, I'll let you out."
"What? No, seriously, stop joking around! I have claustrophobia!"
"Tch. Fine, whatever. I'm just leaving."
"Ah, okay! Don't go! I'll guess. I'll really guess."
After a moment of serious thought, Oh Yeong-jun's face lit up with certainty, and he shouted confidently.
"Got it! The Roundup! That's why you've got such excellent criminal talent, right?"
He called out the title of the highest-grossing film of the year. Ugh. Zero instinct.
I twitched one corner of my mouth and told him the name of my favorite movie.
"Oldboy. Uncle, do you like dumplings?"
Swoosh—!
I placed the destroyed block back, sealing off his view. From the pitch-dark trap came Oh Yeong-jun's desperate screams.
I was going to plant an intense memory he would never, ever forget.