At the Crossroads of Choice
When it came to streaming, the most important thing was always knowing where the line was.
No matter how entertaining a bit might look, the second you crossed that line it could come off as rude — and sometimes you'd get branded a brain-rot traitor for it. On top of that, there was a massive nine-year age gap sitting between me and Oh Yeong-jun. Just because he played along well didn't mean I could keep pushing forever. The backlash could come for me any time.
Take a hypothetical. Say Apple-mong — whom I always treated with the utmost respect — was hanging out with me and Oh Yeong-jun. Apple-mong and Oh Yeong-jun went way back; they traded formal speech and casual banter with an easy, mutual courtesy. Meanwhile I'd be barking "Loyalty!" at Apple-mong and then turning around to hit Oh Yeong-jun with a greasy "Come here, boy~."
What do you think would happen if I pulled that in front of a ten-out-of-ten kkondae like Apple-mong? Whether the stream atmosphere went to hell or not, Apple-mong would blow a gasket, channel the spirit of a Cheonghakdong schoolmaster, and put me through a full moral re-education. And then the communities would fill up with devil's-edit clips of how this VTuber named Seo-a had the gall to talk down to someone nine years her senior. The casuals would swarm in, hyped out of their minds, and throw a comment party.
There was no shortage of dopamine-pickled humans in the communities. The moment they found a convenient target, they'd swarm in and turn someone into the worst piece of garbage the world had ever seen — standard operating procedure. So streamers always had to be careful and walk that line just right.
And that's the real joke of it. Play it safe and they call you boring. Get fired up and go hard and they say you're full of yourself.
Hard. So hard.
Still, the timing was about right to start shifting how I treated Oh Yeong-jun. Just look at his viewer count — he'd quietly broken past two thousand. That was why the peak numbers always went to the guys. From a casual viewer's perspective, a same-gender streamer was just easier to self-insert into.
Adjusting your attitude based on the other person's weight class was Streaming 101.
Huh? Too spineless a way of doing things?
Oh, you sweet summer child. The world is a place where you swallow your pride and live a little cowardly. Even a junior who suddenly enlists as an active-duty NCO and outranks you still gets a salute. Streaming weight class worked the exact same way.
That was exactly how Park Na-na got burned once, back before the regression.
Before the regression, every time streamer Oh-ha gave a speech at some important event, she always mentioned Park Na-na first — called her the greatest benefactor of her entire streaming career. That was how close they'd been. But when Oh-ha's weight class ballooned during Rena World and Park Na-na's attitude stayed exactly the same, you know what happened? Every kind of scumbag latched on and hit Park Na-na with private-message terrorism. Does Oh-ha still look like a nobody streamer to you? Nothing between the two of them had changed — one person's weight class had simply grown — and suddenly every single one of Park Na-na's actions was under the microscope. It felt absurd, made no sense, but it had actually happened before the regression. Both of them ended up addressing the DM harassment on stream just to put out the fire.
Having seen that example, I needed to be careful on my own. There was no reason to go picking a fight with the Akatsuki fandom for free.
"Uh… I'm here. Ahaha, so our Seo-a was number one on the server. I had no idea."
Oh Yeong-jun, laying the pitiful act on thick. Keep bullying and scolding him like this and all I'd get was a villain image painted on me.
Tsk. Time for some image rehabilitation.
I casually pulled a shulker box from my inventory and held it out to him.
"Uncle Yeong-jun, I called you over to give you this. You're still a beginner, so it should help a lot."
"Huk! N-no, I don't have any money. For real. Mom told me never to stamp a contract without thinking."
"…"
Just what kind of image did this guy have of me? Listening only to the words, with our faces hidden, I sounded like a gangster and Oh Yeong-jun like some exploited civilian.
Tsk. I wasn't actually like this… maybe these vicious viewers were the ones corrupting me?
Ahem. My conscience twinged a little, but I mind-controlled myself into believing that and started deploying my specialty on Oh Yeong-jun.
"I think there might've been a bit of a misunderstanding from what happened on day two. That was actually an initiation ceremony. It wasn't just you, Uncle Yeong-jun — every visitor to our company building went through it. Teacher Oh-ha too. And look, complimentary gifts come with it."
"Complimentary gifts?"
"Yep. This right here."
I held the shulker box out again.
Well? You want it, don't you? You're still a beginner — the Ender World is a pipe dream for you. Muyo supposedly had Minecraft experience, but from the look of things she'd never set foot in the Ender World either. No wings, no End-related gear of any kind.
"Oh! Should I give one to Muyo-nim too?"
"Wait, for real?"
"Yep. On one condition — call me unnie and it's yours. Seol Pyo-woo is your unnie, right? She and I already agreed to be friends."
"Unnie Seo-a!"
Muyo really was an honest, good kid. Reaching out without a second of hesitation like that. Meanwhile, Oh Yeong-jun — the living specimen of a corrupted adult — still couldn't scrub the seed of suspicion from his face.
Hmph. I've gone this far. Don't want it? Fine by me.
The moment I moved to take the shulker box back, Oh Yeong-jun finally read the room and lunged for it in a panic.
"Open the shulker box and check inside."
"Huh? What's in he— wait, Seo-a!"
Even while accepting the shulker box, Oh Yeong-jun had clung to that last thread of wariness toward me — and the second he checked inside, raw emotion surged up and he threw his arms around my character.
Aigoo. They really do get more teary with age.
"How many gold Rena are in here?! Ten, twenty, thirty… sixty-four — a full stack!"
A full six hundred and forty thousand Rena! Converted to diamonds, that was a hundred and twenty-eight — the kind of sum you'd need nearly two straight hours of nonstop labor to earn even with an endgame pickaxe.
"I knew from the start Seo-a was a good kid!"
"There, there. As long as Uncle Yeong-jun gets it, that's all that matters."
Sincerity — which is to say, money — always finds a way through.
Kim Hak-do — Noonim Seo-a, help me please!
I'd patched things up with Oh Yeong-jun and finished the daily mission. As more residents moved into Rena World, the number of people I had to keep an eye on kept growing — and among them, the "big-agency streamers" were top-priority management targets.
Kim Hak-do had somehow managed to remember the "magic line" I'd taught him at our first meeting, and now he was shouting it into world chat. Ahem. When a big-agency streamer goes that far to save face for you, you don't exactly get to sit still.
I pulled up the map wide, locked onto Kim Hak-do's position, and immediately spread my wings.
"Oh! So this is…"
Roughly a thousand meters southeast of the Pokémon Center, the skeleton of a massive structure known as Do-zney Castle was going up. The ground around the castle had all been replaced with ice blocks hauled in from far to the north, and the thick pillars and towering walls were being built with precious materials like quartz blocks, used without the slightest restraint. A construction project so enormous it made your tongue go dry.
Rena World would later earn its reputation as a "building server," but this early on, people comfortable with construction were scarce — so even a project of this scale was enough to leave jaws hanging open in awe.
"Hey, you're here? Over here, over here!"
I'd been looking around near the castle gate when Kim Hak-do's voice called from inside. Ah — so he'd been in the interior. Though calling it an "interior" was generous. They'd only just started work on the front walls, so stepping through the gate put you in what was basically an empty lot.
Wooden chests were piled high in the center of the clearing — packed full of building materials, no doubt. Several streamers stood around them. Kim Hak-do, wearing the skin I'd gifted him, plus Ran-chu, Elsa, and even Oh-ha.
Huh? What was Oh-ha doing here? I'd seen her swaggering around in world chat calling herself Hades, King of the Underworld — wasn't she supposed to be quartz-farming in hell around the clock?
Kim Hak-do answered that question for me.
"Seo-a, you're the top dog on this server. Say something to her. This person is a complete scammer."
"Huh?"
"Hak-do-ssi, this isn't a scam — it's the principle of economics. Okay? Building material prices are going crazy because of My House right now. Supply at that price just isn't possible anymore."
"Aaaah, I don't care! We're over budget, so go ahead and gut me!"
"Seo-a, you sell building materials too, so you know. Quartz prices have gone up lately, right? And Hak-do-ssi keeps throwing tantrums like this — what am I supposed to do?"
"Uh… well…"
Kim Hak-do and Oh-ha both fixed me with pointed stares from either side, each clearly expecting me to take their corner. What was I supposed to do? Both of them were people I needed to look after.
Just like that, I found myself standing at a crossroads of choice.