The End of 2022 (2)
"Hmm. Okay, I get the general idea, but…"
Mayo's video hit me harder than I'd expected.
For days she'd been hyping it up unprompted, insisting something big was coming and forcing me to build anticipation. Honestly, I'd felt her streaming form climbing lately. Off-stream, too, she'd been firing off questions left and right, showing off a studious streak that was genuinely endearing. So I'd actually let myself hope that this time, something real was on the way.
Then she dropped the video, and… wait, what?
"No, this is just a League of Legends mad movie!"
Miho couldn't hide her disbelief as she shouted it out.
This damn LoL-obsessed girl. The ancestors were right about everything. Never share a table with a top-lane addict, they said — and look what happens when you do. Build up all that hype just to pull the rug out from under us like this?!
To be fair, the production quality left almost nothing to criticize. It looked like a Worlds promotional reel. Every solo kill exploded with flashy effects that, to my eyes, might as well have been pure cash, and I couldn't keep the wry smile off my face.
Once the video finished, Mayo's real intent came through loud and clear.
So she wants to throw everything at Myeolmangjeon after all.
I understood how she felt. As a hardcore LoL girl, she had to be exhausted and frustrated after so many Minecraft-heavy streams. Even so, she'd been following my lead without complaint lately, and that alone was more than enough to satisfy me.
But in the end, she just can't hold out on Myeolmangjeon.
It was a perfectly understandable choice. Any streamer active on Pangea TV's LoL scene treated Myeolmangjeon as the endgame content. The prestige was that high — a tournament that had minted countless superstar streamers over the years.
There wasn't really a problem. I was planning to enter Myeolmangjeon myself. The only thing that made me smile was how Mayo couldn't sit still and was already telegraphing her intentions this early. She was probably fretting that she'd still be stuck mining quartz and farming Endermen when the time came. Her transparent ulterior motives were just too cute.
The chat's reaction was better than I'd expected. League really was top-tier when it came to public goodwill. And after so much time buried in Minecraft, there had to be fans tired of the blocky world — maybe they were just missing LoL that much.
"League of Legends is the greatest game recognized by the entire world, it is so. Mayo hereby boldly declares her participation in this Myeolmangjeon, it is so."
"Hey, they haven't even announced the schedule yet."
Look at her, jumping the gun already. Mayo still had a lot to learn about streaming.
And that wrapped up the first presentation. We sat there eyeing each other for a moment until Mayo volunteered to play judge and pick the next order herself.
"Miho unnie was the first to betray me earlier, it is so. Therefore Miho unnie goes second, it is so."
"That's not— tch. Fine."
Faced with the silent consensus in our eyes, Miho had no choice but to nod.
Finally, the second round. Miho's prepared video began to play.
Hey everyone… want some ramen at Miho's stream?
Opening on that provocative line, the video rode a classic rather than radical structure. Miho was showing off the kind of polish that came with age. You could tell she'd done her market research thoroughly — weaving in the latest memes and catchphrases while still highlighting what made her own streams unique. Things like her drinking-mukbang foundation with the Miho's Pocha content, the sexy-type appeal the other crew members rarely leaned into, and above all, the full-tracking dance numbers and VRChat content she'd folded into the video, which pulled real cheers from the V-fans.
It was genuinely ironic. By age, Mayo was the youngest and should have been the most comfortable with the latest tech — yet she was the biggest novice, while Miho, the oldest of us, held the number-one VRChat playtime in the entire crew.
Maybe there was some strategic calculation behind it?
Surviving meant being strong. Having realized her own game skill wasn't enough, Miho might have deliberately chosen a different path first. Overlapping viewer bases within a crew was never a good thing, after all.
I could probably hand Miho unnie the YouTube-related work.
Watching the video through to the end, I felt her broadcast appeal come through clearly, with a stable, reliable flavor underneath. The big plays would still fall to me, but for ordinary operations, Miho would be fine. Even counting my pre-regression life, she was a year older than me — she had the experience points to match.
Besides, I can't keep handling everything forever. I'm not some ninja with shadow clones.
The larger a crew grew, the more limits there were to what one person could do alone. Just managing my own streams was already a full load — and the extra work wasn't one or two small tasks.
First up: the crew's YouTube channel. So far the only upload was the Christmas carol video, but going forward I planned to edit and post highlight reels every time we did a collab stream. Negotiating pay with video editors, coordinating schedules, giving feedback on cuts — it was going to be a fairly demanding job.
And fan café management matters too. Honestly, you could say a virtual crew's fan devotion lives or dies by how well they run their café.
There were café manager staff, sure, but the final calls always had to come from the streamers themselves. Work like that needed a meticulous, careful administrator. I'd already put Lucy on the shortlist for the role. Once the new year came, I'd start the handoff gradually.
Next is external work with the creators. Honestly, this one's the highest difficulty.
Virtual Booth's hairstyles and outfits updated constantly. Sometimes a brilliant item would drop and pull fantastic reactions from viewers — like the Santa girl outfits our whole crew had debuted this Christmas. Those items didn't just snap into place overnight. You had to pick them in advance, commission the artists, coordinate schedules, and depending on the state of things, send them back for revision rounds. In the end, it was a job that demanded both connections and the ability to deal with people.
Getting commissions through to a popular artist like BebeTtang is a real rare opportunity. Luckily I built a rapport with her even before debut, so I've got her direct number and can get through relatively easily.
BebeTtang's name value had climbed so high that her commission queue was permanently full. I still got rush-fee priority updates for my own and the crew's avatars thanks to our close friendship — but could other virtuals expect the same treatment?
In the end, external work has to stay with me… There are just too many big projects beyond the avatars alone.
Things like meeting with outside vendors for virtual concerts, for example. I couldn't dump that on the members. The pressure would be too much. In my previous life, a famous virtual crew had even gotten scammed while handling concert-related work — paid the full amount up front only to find the finished concert quality was a complete disaster.
So external work stays on my plate. That leaves Mayo…
What kind of duties should I assign her? I thought it over for a moment, then remembered the video she'd shown today and had my answer.
Right. Our Mayo just needs to stay healthy. She's still a minor — she needs to grow a little more first.
"Just the two of us left now."
"What? Lucy unnie, are you flirting with me right now?"
"Seo-a. Stop talking nonsense?"
The sudden ice in her gaze stung. Come on — that was one of my better bits.
Leave it to the chat to be world-class at shipping. Slandering my long-held fan devotion with three inches of tongue!
"Then let's decide with rock-paper-scissors."
"Okay!"
Rock-paper-scissors put Lucy's video first. Perfect. The protagonist always appears last — that's the golden rule of cliché.
And then Lucy's video began.
Strangely enough, all three videos seemed to mirror their makers' personalities exactly. Where Mayo's had been all over the place, Miho's had carefully followed every proven formula for virality. Lucy's, by contrast, was a hundred-percent frontal assault from the first frame.
Using a song she'd sung herself as the background track, she simply laid out every broadcast she'd done so far. From her first day after the transfer, through the Wooga-dol audition and the stage she'd performed at the concert I'd planned. The morning news streams that showcased her diligence and hard work. The fun crew collabs and her exploits in Minecraft. She covered every step of the journey in a rough, unadorned way.
There was no eye-catching flash, no standout editing flourishes — but the quiet voice and the unvarnished sincerity of it all settled deep in the chest.
"Alright. My turn."
Before that lingering feeling could fully fade, I hit play on the video I'd prepared. The screen I'd drawn layered itself over Lucy's footage.