Busy
January 9th, Monday.
Without warning, Rena-ttang dropped an announcement.
She had only spoken with me the day before, and already she was putting it into action. That was Rena-ttang for you—a pure woman of action.
All stuff I already knew. Still, managing public sentiment really is important.
The notice was exactly what I had expected.
She was proposing to hand out one recommendation ticket each to every company head in Rena World.
Naturally, the community exploded.
A chance had arrived to join “Rena World,” currently the biggest content phenomenon on Pangea TV. Everyone was going to covet that kind of luck.
There were six companies currently operating in Rena World:
—Wang-ko’s O-Wang Company
—Kim Hak-do’s Lethal Company
—Rim-ani & Dananyang’s Partner Tofu Company
—Mi○t’s Bad Potato Company
—NS Namshin’s Sini Moon
—Seo-a’s V-Live Company
Unfortunately, Bad Potato Company was already out of the running due to its leader’s absence, so they wouldn’t receive a ticket. That left five recommendation tickets in total.
No streamer, however, was bold enough to openly eye the shares belonging to Wang-ko, Kim Hak-do, or NS Namshin. Looking arrogant enough to get marked by them would only invite disaster.
Even with Rim-ani and Dananyang, their glittering network of partner streamers made it hard for outsiders to casually put themselves forward—unless they already had a personal connection.
Which left exactly one ticket remaining… Wait. Wasn’t Akatsuki a company too?
For the moment I had no choice but to say no. Even in this situation Oh Yeong-jun was stubbornly insisting that Akatsuki was just a social club, not a company. He was clearly dodging the weight of responsibility that would come with being named head.
So in the end, only one ticket was truly up for grabs—and it belonged to the streamer who looked the softest target of all.
Me. Head of V-Live Company.
A flood of attention was inevitably going to pour my way.
Do you have any idea how many private messages I received from streamers in the two hours after Rena-ttang’s announcement went up?
No exaggeration—more than ten. Every single one was long-winded and dripping with desperation. They begged for a chance, insisted they wanted to succeed through streaming, pleaded for me to help them just once. If I had been standing in front of them they would have dropped to their knees and bowed.
Unfortunately for them, there was one piece of very bad news.
I’m a total fucking asshole.
People have always said you shouldn’t waste worry on celebrities or streamers. If their situation were truly so desperate that they had nothing left to fall back on, they would already be working part-time jobs. And if you looked around, the world was full of people who were genuinely pitiful.
Sorry, but emotional sob stories and melodrama didn’t work on me.
If they had instead appealed with how capable they were and how useful they could be to me, they might have had a shot.
On that front, Na-ro-si was rock solid.
Before the regression, how many major Minecraft servers had she torn through? She had conquered every large-scale server that ever appeared on Pangea TV. And on every single one of them she had performed at least one-and-a-half people’s worth of work. She was a talent optimized for Minecraft like no one else.
Our company was already starting to feel short-handed. Perfect timing.
O-Wang Company in particular was visibly swelling in size. We needed to expand our own roster as well. But among the people still left on the server, no one had caught my eye. That was why I had been waiting for this recommendation ticket.
I had been cautious about Na-ro-si because Freeca’s fandom might take it badly, but public sentiment isn’t as hostile as I expected.
Na-ro-si had definitely caused Freeca considerable damage in the group’s early days. Her departure after the incident had scrambled schedules and rendered a lot of already-produced work unusable. For similar reasons, Qqurings had also eaten a mountain of hate before the regression.
But the two cases are quite different.
Qqurings had a boyfriend and hid it, even though Freeca’s eligibility rules explicitly banned dating. On top of that, the boyfriend had worked as her stream manager and typed chat messages that felt like he was mocking the fans, which only poured fuel on the fire.
Na-ro-si, on the other hand? There had been no malice. She had more or less been caught up in a calculated, malicious frame-up, so a quiet undercurrent of sympathy still existed. Freeca’s fandom might still feel residual dislike for the damage she caused, but it never reached the level of pure hatred. The more accurate description was that both sides were simply pretending the other didn’t exist.
But what’s visible on the surface isn’t everything. If Na-ro-si suddenly starts doing well, some Freeca fans might feel relatively deprived.
There’s a saying about tapping the stone bridge before you cross it. So I decided to create an opportunity to “vet” Na-ro-si. I wasn’t about to casually throw away a golden chance like a recommendation ticket.
At times like this, the classic Pangea TV comfort-food content always made its entrance.
That was it—interview content to decide the owner of the recommendation ticket!
By choosing this method I could get a clearer read on public opinion toward Na-ro-si while also eliminating whatever residual risk remained. And if, however unlikely, someone even more outstanding than Na-ro-si appeared, I could simply pick them instead. From my perspective it was a no-loss idea.
Yeah. Let’s run with this.
I guess people’s thoughts really do run along similar tracks.
A few hours after I posted my notice, the heads of the rival companies uploaded nearly identical announcements of their own. Wang-ko in particular had zero business ethics—he even set his interview date and time almost the same as mine.
Was this guy seriously trying to check me just because he got humiliated on the third Purge Day? This was exactly why PUBG streamers got a bad reputation. Look at him filming a solo documentary in the middle of a variety show just so he could win.
With that, most of the high-caliber applicants would prioritize O-Wang Company’s interviews to catch the big-name streamer’s coattails. Meanwhile, applicants for our V-Live Company interviews would be people with their own convictions or those hunting for a niche. The competitive quality of our applicant pool was inevitably going to drop, and that left a bitter taste in my mouth.
The silver lining is that Na-ro-si, who’s basically already decided, will only apply to my interviews.
Having been burned once by the Freeca incident, Na-ro-si actually preferred not to get entangled with higher-tier streamers. She had learned that receiving too much attention could be a double-edged sword. Originally she hadn’t even been interested in the Rena World interviews; I had actively persuaded her and only barely managed to change her mind.
More than anything, the argument that she should use the interview stage to explain what happened back then one more time really landed.
People had long since stopped caring about the incident she went through, but for her it remained stuck in her throat like a fishbone she couldn’t cough up. A kind of trauma. She herself was probably praying harder than anyone that she could finally shake it all off through this opportunity.
Someone might ask why I’m deliberately trying to pick Na-ro-si when she carries risk. But it’s actually the opposite.
Aside from that one incident, Na-ro-si would go on to thrive without creating any further noise all the way through 2025. In other words, she was now a safe asset whose risk had already been resolved. If I picked someone else—someone who hadn’t existed in Rena World before the regression—I wouldn’t even be able to guess what issues might arise. That person would become a variable.
I wanted to keep the future under my control based on information I already knew. That was why I preferred the verified resource that was Na-ro-si.
Better to reduce variables even a little. You never know what butterfly effect might kick off.
Even while I was thinking that, application comments were pouring in by the dozen. This was an era when dozens of streamers debuted every single day. Naturally there were just as many people running themselves ragged chasing any opportunity they could find. Even as they left comments, they were still sending me private messages pleading their personal circumstances.
Three months ago I wasn’t all that different from them.
That was the terrifying part of the streaming industry. You could become a superstar overnight—or plummet into the abyss like Mi○t.
Because I understood that reality so clearly, I couldn’t treat any of the messages lightly. I read every single one to the end and sent polite replies declining them. I had suddenly been placed in a position to evaluate others, but I could never afford to forget humility.
We’ll handle the interviews that way. Now I need to start clearing the pile of homework that’s been stacking up.
Candy donations were truly sweet, but the responsibility that came with them was just as heavy. Still, promises made to viewers could never be postponed. I planned to set aside a full day to finish the Bang-sel and voice recordings, and I would negotiate schedules soon with the viewers who had drawn the 24-hour stream prizes.
Still, I made a ton of money, so cheers~
Every last bit of the roulette profits had been steadily converted into Pangea TV stock. And by the end of this month, that stock was going to moon.
I spun the happy circuit in my head for all it was worth.