Vehicle Auction
Saturday, January 21st.
The Lunar New Year holiday had already begun.
At last, the day of Rena World's vehicle auction — the event that had been stoking so much anticipation — finally arrived.
In truth, this level of attention had been all but inevitable.
Wang-ko, Kim Hak-do, NS Namsin, Oh Yeong-jun, Smap, Kkaenam-i, Blackfoot, Dananyang, Rim-ani, Supi, and more. From major-agency streamers all the way down to mid-tier names pulling two or three thousand concurrent viewers, Rena World had a solid backbone of talent working the server.
Add up their usual viewer counts alone and how many people was that? On top of that, Rena World was the hottest server of the first half of 2023 — the floating audience numbers were staggering.
And what did this massively popular Rena World claim to be? A healing Minecraft server.
At first, that slogan had landed spectacularly well. StarCraft Remastered, League of Legends, PUBG… viewers who spent all day watching people fight, kill, and bicker had, without quite realizing it, started craving a little healing energy of their own.
That was why floating viewers had flocked to the virtual streamers in Rena World's early days. The virtual streamers offered a healing sensibility that human streamers grinding through cutthroat battlefields simply couldn't provide.
But once December gave way to January, the audience's palate flipped as easily as turning over a hand.
What was the real reason people watched internet broadcasts in the first place? To savor, live, the kind of raw, stimulating dopamine content that terrestrial TV's endless regulations would never allow.
Healing vibes were nice — but they got old fast.
So Rena World's floating viewers began hunting for dopamine, drifting away from individual streamers and into company fandoms, hungry for fierce competition.
The first thing that scratched that itch was Purge Day — the only day on a self-proclaimed healing server where you could actually watch physical collisions. But Purge Day had rules designed to prevent real-stakes meltdowns: looted items had to be returned, building destruction was restricted, and so on. You couldn't really cut loose and enjoy the dopamine. On top of that, Rena-ttang's official Pangea TV broadcast schedule and increasingly frequent updates piled work onto the staff, and sometimes Purge Day simply got skipped.
So where were viewers supposed to get their dopamine fix?
In the end, people who had invested their identities in the various companies started charging up through comparison and competition.
Our company is number one on the server.
Our company is superior to those other companies.
They posted brag threads on the community boards, or sly digs that took subtle shots at rival companies, and basked in the superiority. As the vehicle auction drew closer, the mask-wearing trolls flooded the boards with gold-cup ranking posts.
With fan opinion running that hot, the streamers themselves couldn't help but catch fire. The pride of every company was riding on the results of this auction!
So of course the buzz and attention ran higher than usual — and the fans were showing real passion. They had to claim a sports car and save face. Failing that, at least a two-seater classic car!
That feverish atmosphere held all the way to the thirty-minute mark before the auction.
Murmur, murmur—!
Even though start time hadn't arrived yet, people were already gathering in twos and threes at today's auction venue: the concert hall.
Partner & Tofu Company had dragged in a full thirteen people and claimed the best center seats in advance. Off to their right, Oh-ha had come early on her own and staked out a spot — maybe a scouting run to read the room.
"Where should we sit?"
"Let's wait a bit. The main cast isn't all here yet."
Our V-Live Company had arrived relatively early too. But we didn't sit down right away. If we wanted to maximize the bid prices by playing on everyone's pride, the leads needed to be sitting near each other. We could hang back a little, watch the show, and eat popcorn.
A short while later, Seoni Moon arrived and filled the seats to Partner & Tofu Company's left.
Good. That put all of today's main players in place.
"These seats free, Oh-ha-ssaem?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. We're taking ten seats through here, so from there on, do whatever."
After a moment's thought, I took seats on O-Wang Company's right. Wang-ko was the hot-blooded type — once the real bidding started, he'd be the easiest one to egg on.
After that, the remaining members of Lethal Company and O-Wang Company filed in one after another and took their seats. Bad Potato Company had no leader and no motivation, so they'd effectively forfeited. The only ones left were Akatsuki — who still insisted they weren't a company at all, just a club.
"Aaah, is everyone here? One-two-three, one-two-three, mic check."
And just like that, it was 7 p.m. — auction start time. Seeing everyone gathered in one place, the crowd really was packed. Roughly sixty people? Probably more than that, but the empty seats scattered here and there suggested some people had asked for the day off, given that the Lunar New Year holiday was just starting.
Even in our company, Lucy and Han A-yeon had requested tomorrow off. Lucy was visiting her family home; Han A-yeon lived with her family, and her grandmother's house was out in the countryside, so she was heading down first thing in the morning. Those were reasons you had to respect. So tomorrow we'd all get free time. Having some people rest while others came in to work wouldn't be fair.
I'd already been planning a stream for tomorrow anyway — something for the virtual streamer fans worn out on Minecraft. My birthday was coming up soon, so it was time to start cultivating some goodwill.
Ahem. Am I being too transparent?
"Welcome, everyone! It is my sincere pleasure to greet you at the scene of Rena World's first vehicle auction. I am Rena-ttang, server admin and host of today's event."
Waaaaah—!
At this point in time, public sentiment toward Rena-ttang was at its absolute peak. The halo of being server admin, plus the fanbases of major-agency streamers quietly manufacturing pro-Rena-ttang opinion under the banner of "protecting the server," made it almost harder for her reputation to be bad than good.
But maybe that smooth sailing was itself the poison. One of Rena-ttang's nicknames was Icarus-ttang — and true to a title about flying too high and burning up in the sun, she would crash soon enough. Not today, though. That was a story for later.
Today, at least, the atmosphere was pure festival.
"From the mini tractor, to the two-seater classic car, all the way to the sports car — truly captivating vehicles are waiting in this very hall for their rightful owners. Personally, I am extremely curious which company will become the star of today's vehicle auction."
"Hold it! The star always makes their entrance last."
At the precise moment Rena-ttang's sentence broke, a dark silhouette appeared. Akatsuki's members folded their wings and touched down at one side of the concert hall.
"Hey! Star, my ass. You can't even keep a damn appointment on time!"
"Ugh! Suddenly catching middle-school syndrome at that age. Yeong-jun oppa, if you're gonna keep doing this, it's embarrassing — don't act like you know me."
"Yeong-jun oppa, grow up already."
"…"
Oh Yeong-jun wore a blank look under the barrage of scolding — clearly not the reaction he'd imagined. I'd pushed Wang-ko around last time, but this guy was no small-time drama queen either.
"Heh heh! You people who just talked back to me better brace yourselves. We showed up today to crash this whole party."
"What? Crash the party?"
Oh Yeong-jun strode up to the scowling Wang-ko and declared with full confidence:
"What? We're the villains anyway. So today we're going to wreck this auction. Everyone's going to have to spend at least a hundred million Rena."
"…!"
At the figure Oh Yeong-jun tossed out so boldly, everyone flinched and started eyeing each other. Was it real? Did Akatsuki actually have a hundred million Rena?
Akatsuki — a group no one had even considered a competitor — had suddenly crashed the board, and the leadership of every company that had come in with a strategy scrambled to exchange looks.
A hundred million Rena, my foot. They're barely scraping by on thirty million. Even allowing for regression variables, fifty million tops.
I'd said it before and I'd say it again: in Rena World, headcount was king. No matter what tricks Akatsuki pulled, three people was a hard ceiling they couldn't break.
Even three Na-ro-sis wouldn't make the impossible possible. Maybe this is exactly why Muyo ended up using X-ray?
Before the regression, Akatsuki had also been scrambling to write themselves a story at the vehicle auction. But to even enter an auction, you needed a bare minimum of capital. Oh Yeong-jun, who'd been too busy running around writing storylines to actually labor for money, could scrape together everything he had and still struggle to clear ten million Rena.
That was when Muyo casually produced fifteen million Rena. Put it toward making a splash at the auction, she said.
"Muyo! You're the only one. You're the best."
Oh Yeong-jun shed tears of gratitude, and the rest of them cheerfully declared that Muyo was the real core of Akatsuki, all warm and fuzzy. The problem was that the Akatsuki crew had no idea how the real world worked. A mere twenty or thirty million Rena wouldn't even get you a name card at this auction.
Oh Yeong-jun was bluffing with his nose in the air, but to my eyes, the anxiety underneath was crystal clear.
"Quiet! If you're late, sit down already."
Rena-ttang, her progress interrupted, scowled and pointed them toward a corner. Akatsuki shrugged, put on a show of nonchalance, and headed for their seats.
Now every company competing in today's vehicle auction was finally assembled. Side-eyes flickered back and forth — a fierce war of glances.
"Well then, let's begin in earnest. Introducing the first vehicle of the day — the mini tractor! Who will become the owner of this adorable little blue vehicle? Let us open the floor!"
Waaaaah—!
With a roaring cheer, the auction began.