The First Expellee
Before the regression, Lucy had transferred to Pangea TV in February of 2023.
And the official decision to disband the Decrescendo crew had come on January 2nd.
There was a full month between those two events, but I already knew a considerable amount about what had gone down. Even after the disbandment, the former Decrescendo members continued to dominate Pangea TV’s virtual scene—and the more they thrived, the more their past inevitably drew attention.
In particular, Elsa and Seol Pyo-woo, who had clashed head-on, were still living under the same roof in Lethal Company, so the communities never stopped talking about them. Naturally, once I followed Lucy over to Pangea TV, I learned the whole story myself.
Back then the galleries ran nonstop fandom wars over the former Decrescendo members all day long, and the enraged hardcore fans from both camps were so desperate to seize the narrative that they spilled even the most private details.
Ahem. Full confession: the dopamine hit from those fandom wars was so strong that I briefly neglected Lucy for a while.
Come on—how is a terminally online forum addict supposed to sit out a mega-event like that?
Thanks to it, I got a solid month of pure entertainment. It also helped me adapt to the community relatively quickly.
In the end, the core of Decrescendo was always Park Na-na.
Any virtual streamer fan of that era knew that much. From the start, the crew had coalesced around Park Na-na, Seol Pyo-woo, and Muyo, and then Baiyo had been brought in through their old connection from the Seolleim Club—so those four were already linked in a single unbroken ring.
Maybe the seeds of tragedy had been growing inside Decrescendo from the very beginning…
The founding story they later revealed on stream went like this. The final member Park Na-na had originally considered for the crew was Yun Seo-a—a popular pick from the Wooga-dol audition and the streamer she had bonded with through the “I’ll Wait for You” Group A project.
Park Na-na offered Yun Seo-a the last seat in Decrescendo, but she turned it down, citing her return to Rabbit TV and other reasons. With four members locked in, the whole plan stalled for a moment.
Then the next morning, Elsa messaged her on Discord. Officially it was just a farewell to everyone who had made it to the final round of the Wooga-dol audition together. Naturally the conversation drifted into what everyone was up to now, and Elsa began actively signaling that she was interested in joining a crew.
She hadn’t been part of the original plan, but Elsa had been a popular pick in the audition in her own right, and Park Na-na figured it wouldn’t be a bad fit, so she polled the others. Majority vote: accepted.
Just like that, Elsa became the final member, and the Decrescendo crew was born.
And that, of course, was where the problems started. They took someone they had zero personal history with—someone whose personality and situation they didn’t even know—and made her a crewmate in a matter of hours.
In reality, Decrescendo’s founding had been absurdly rushed. In the entire history of Pangea TV’s virtual scene, no crew had ever been slapped together that fast. They accepted Elsa as the last member within a few hours and announced the crew’s formation on stream the very next day.
I get the general feeling of what they were going for. Even so, it was far too hasty.
Park Na-na must have been in a hurry. The Wooga-dol audition had just ended. Freeca had already formed, and the virtual streamer fans who had been cheering for the free agents and eliminated contestants still hadn’t decided where to settle. Park Na-na clearly wanted to lock a crew down before those viewers scattered.
And it did work, in a way. A huge wave of viewers who hadn’t committed to Freeca poured straight into Decrescendo. But that hasty decision eventually became long-term poison.
In the end, it always comes down to human relationships.
This isn’t about pinning all the blame on Elsa or declaring anyone a one-sided villain. It’s just that, as you live, you run into people whose values and personalities simply don’t mesh. In Decrescendo, that pair was Seol Pyo-woo and Elsa.
So the great currents of history don’t change after all?
The Bosingak bell rang out with a deep, resonant peal. The New Year of 2023 had finally arrived. I looked around at the V-Live members laughing loudly and congratulating one another.
Were things actually okay between us?
It was… fine, right?
New Year’s Day, and already my head was full of thoughts.
January 1st was a Sunday. Unfortunately, the stock market wouldn’t open until tomorrow. Still, 57 million won—already thoroughly converted—was sleeping quietly in my account. Just thinking about the massive returns I was about to rack up after so long had me buzzing with excitement that refused to settle.
But even this wasn’t enough. For the grand plans I had for this year, I was going to need a lot more money.
So even on New Year’s Day, Money-Grubber Mode: ON.
Despite staying up late for the crew collab the night before, I fired up the stream early in the morning. Heh. There was a reason for that.
“Big brothers, the year 2023 has dawned! I hope all of you stay healthy in 2023, that everything you do goes well, and that 2023 becomes an even better year than 2022. Happy 2023, everyone!”
“Hey, Manager—why did you mute the Vice-Chairman? Ah, your hand slipped. Okay. Mistakes happen. Then once more, to commemorate the arrival of the year 2023…”
Ahem. It looked painfully money-grubbing, but it was simply Pangea TV culture: when the year changed, people donated Candies matching that number. It wasn’t mandatory, of course—just something the ones who could afford it did for the fun of it.
Either way, that was why I had gone live so early. Viewers’ Candy budgets had limits, so the first streamer to snatch those donations was the winner. Honestly, even among my hardcore fans, plenty of them were hardcore fans of other streams too. In the end, whoever cracked open the hardcore fans’ wallets first took the prize.
There was another reason I had started early. A special-grade bomb was scheduled to go off that afternoon. As a former terminally online forum addict, there was no way I was missing out on that dopamine hit. I’d end the stream around three and camp the communities.
“…….”
The mining addicts were making their presence known as usual. I desperately wanted to flip them a stiff middle finger, but after getting warned by Panpol29, I had no choice but to settle for the index finger instead. As long as the meaning got across, that was enough.
A low, restless murmur filled the air.
Ever since Park Bong-sik’s brief dip into the server, Rena World had been even more lively than before. The one real issue of the day, though, was that Rena-ttang was finally carrying out the My House inspections she had announced in advance.
Come to think of it, it had nothing to do with our crew, so I hadn’t been paying attention—but it was happening today. After picking up the daily quests in Taecho Village, I started moving while secretly peeking at Rena-ttang’s stream on my phone. I’d only been thinking about Park Na-na’s bomb drop that afternoon, but maybe I was about to get an extra hit of dopamine after all.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes.”
Led by Rena-ttang, the streamers belonging to the Rena government moved out in a noisy cluster. The inspection started with the houses near the Pokémon Center. Rena-ttang held the resident registry and began checking everything meticulously. On the surface it just looked like ordinary stream content—good camera angles, clean pacing.
But I knew better. I knew the cruelty of Rena-ttang’s real intentions.
Some people might call it a misunderstanding, but in the end people are judged by the path they’ve already walked. Rena-ttang already had a track record from her Rabbit TV days, didn’t she? The infamous power-abuse incidents. The fact that a huge number of passers from the Rena Universe audition had quit was proof enough that she was no ordinary person. After that she kept stirring up controversy until Rabbit TV itself pushed her out.
And after the transfer? Nothing really changed on Pangea TV either. She picked a fight with Yume—the biggest name in the crew at the time—spawned endless drama, then clashed with the company as well. And her trail of chaos didn’t stop there. When the former Rena Universe members were fighting the company over contract issues, she quietly stuck her hands in and made her bad reputation even worse.
With a record like that, could anyone honestly believe Rena-ttang was a decent person?
Of course, the choice was yours to make.
“This house’s walls are a little disappointing. Please put a bit more care into them.”
“Yes. I’ll fix them right away. Thank you!”
The My House inspections continued in a generally gentle atmosphere. Rena-ttang occasionally delivered a sharp remark, but contrary to the warnings she had issued beforehand, it felt like there wouldn’t be any expulsions.
Then the next house came up.
“The owner of this house is… Seo Ra-young?”
“Hello, Rena-ttang! I’m Seo Ra-young.”
Rena World’s first expellee had just appeared.