Disbandment (2)
Nobody said it out loud, but everyone knew.
Elsa felt like an outsider in the Decrescendo crew.
In a way, that was only natural. The crew itself had been formed less than two months ago. Everyone except Elsa, however, already had deep friendships going back much further.
Park Na-na and Baiyo had met in a Naver voice-actor café back in middle school—a bond that had lasted more than ten years. They were in a league of their own.
Park Na-na, Seol Pyo-woo, and Muyo had been placed in the same group from the second round of the Wooga-dol audition. Whenever they weren't streaming, they gathered on Discord to laugh and talk, steadily building a tight-knit friendship.
In other words, long before Elsa joined as the final member, the other four already shared a solid bond.
Everyone understands how hard it is for a new person to break into an already-formed circle. Making it work takes considerable time, plus an outgoing personality and real effort from the newcomer.
Unfortunately, Elsa never had that kind of breathing room.
Before she challenged the Wooga-dol audition, Elsa had been working as a corporate VTuber in her "previous life." Even after joining Decrescendo, her corporate contract still had time left on it. She had asked for understanding, but winding down those activities still drained a huge amount of time and energy.
And, astonishingly, that wasn't even half of it.
Whether money was tight or not, Elsa took on so much work outside of streaming—side gigs, really—that fans nicknamed her "Four Hearts." Naturally she was busy from morning till night. With no free time, her Decrescendo activities and her efforts to grow closer to the other members inevitably fell short.
On top of that, Elsa was in a desperate hurry.
Her corporate VTuber career in the previous life had ended in failure, and then she had been eliminated from the Wooga-dol audition as well. Continuous failure breeds an obsession with success. So Elsa may simply have been unable to let go of the chance for success that had finally appeared right in front of her.
She even said as much on her own stream: a really good opportunity had come along, so for the time being it felt right to focus on her solo broadcasts.
In the end it was a clash of values, and the root cause was forming a crew far too hastily. Even blood relatives fight constantly. How much worse would it be among people who had known each other for less than two months?
"Decrescendo ultimately revolved around Nana. We all held meetings and worked hard, but so many people felt that Decrescendo without Nana had no meaning that we finally took a vote and decided to disband. I'm sure everyone's hearts are hurting. Mine is too. When Nana said she wanted to quit, I really tried hard to stop her. And I wanted to protect the crew to the very end, so when things turned out this way I was truly…"
Elsa was deep into her stream when the chat suddenly erupted. Messages started flooding in that Seol Pyo-woo had gone live—and that her stream title and screen looked ominous.
Viewers poured out of Elsa's broadcast and into Seol Pyo-woo's.
In that moment I knew.
History was repeating itself.
A pitch-black stream screen. Nothing visible. The viewer count smashed past five thousand in an instant and kept climbing.
People have instincts. A feeling that something serious is about to happen on this stream tonight.
And that feeling was not wrong.
"There was a member who caused friction from the very beginning of the crew. We genuinely wanted to be together, and we tried to mediate, to work things out, to meet her halfway… but that friend never changed. Looking back, we formed the crew too hastily without really knowing each other, and I regret that a lot."
In a trembling voice, Seol Pyo-woo explained why she had turned on her stream.
Even after stress had landed her in the emergency room, Park Na-na had still joined the meeting by phone out of a sense of responsibility as leader. The fact that someone who had tried that hard was now being blamed by fans as the cause of the crew's collapse… it hurt her so much she could barely stand it.
"What I truly want to say is… if you're a crew, once you've decided to stick together to the end, shouldn't the collabs and content come first? Saying solo streams are more important and pushing collabs back is really…"
On Pangea TV, streams that sniped other streamers were, in principle, forbidden. Panpol29, who had been quietly monitoring, realized the broadcast violated the rules and stepped in.
Seol Pyo-woo's stream was cut short on the spot.
The floating viewers swarmed back into Elsa's broadcast and began rioting in the chat. Seol Pyo-woo's sniping had painted Elsa as the cause of the crew's collapse.
But here Elsa delivered a response that would go down as all-time GOAT.
She calmly switched to fan-only chat and asked what exactly was going on. Then she quickly pieced the situation together: Seol Pyo-woo had sniped someone, the stream had been force-ended by Panpol29's appearance, and that "someone" was currently being assumed to be Elsa.
Elsa showed not a single aggressive reaction. Instead she said there seemed to be some kind of "misunderstanding," that she would talk things over with the members again and report back—a soft, measured response.
On Pangea TV, sniping without clear evidence was a terrifying act that almost always blew back in the sniper's face. Seol Pyo-woo, still a streaming novice, hadn't known that.
Before long Elsa ended her stream as well, and time marched on without mercy.
Even so, the fans couldn't sleep. In the communities they argued over who was at fault, opened figurative arenas, and kept the discourse burning until dawn.
Then, around one in the morning, Park Na-na posted a notice addressing the current situation.
Yes, there had been disagreements and clashes among the crew members, and those problems should have been resolved behind the scenes. Publicly sniping someone like this was truly the wrong thing to do. She would call both of them in, mediate carefully, and make sure Seol Pyo-woo properly apologized to Elsa. That was the core of the post.
Only then could people finally confirm that the person Seol Pyo-woo had sniped was Elsa. And they learned a little more of the private circumstances behind Decrescendo's collapse.
About twenty minutes later, Seol Pyo-woo's apology notice went up.
She had tasted the full backlash of a sniping act. From the comments under the notice to the VODs and the fan café, posts condemning and denouncing Seol Pyo-woo flooded every corner.
This wasn't something that would end in a single day. The moment morning came and she turned on an apology stream that afternoon, she would be publicly roasted. And every time she got involved with Elsa afterward, this incident would be dredged up and mentioned again.
Worst of all, a large number of floating viewers now carried the bad image of her as someone who "sniped" a fellow streamer.
In contrast, Elsa's notice went up around four in the morning. Even after being sniped, she wrote a long, detailed post saying she felt she was the one at fault. At the time, the communities heaped enormous praise on it—"This is how you write an apology," "The gold standard of apology posts," and so on.
Seol Pyo-woo just did something stupid. If she'd just gritted her teeth and let it go… she couldn't hold back her emotions for even a moment…
If you evaluated this kind of response ability as political skill, Elsa was an A and Seol Pyo-woo was an F.
It was already 4:30 a.m. The communities were still blazing. That fire would probably last about two days unless some new piece of drama appeared.
Huh? A giant of the virtual scene like Decrescendo collapses and it only lasts two days?
I've said it again and again: Decrescendo only looks big among the virtual fans. In Pangea TV's mainstream, they're just slightly larger small-timers. The only reason it's trending is that a lot of virtual fans hang out in the communities, and "sniping" is a sensitive issue.
Yeah. That's all it is. The virtuals on Pangea TV right now…
Watching Decrescendo's bitter exit, I blinked my sleepy eyes. I was exhausted. Still, enduring to the end had been worth it. Decrescendo's finale was more than enough to serve as a cautionary tale for our own crew.
We can never end up like that.
Just as I made that resolution, a chill ran down my spine. Had I been working the crew members a little too hard lately?
Suddenly the image of Mayo sniping me flashed through my mind.
Ahem. Maybe I should give everyone the day off today?
V-Live is safe, everyone!