A Woman's Tears
Oh-ha was running out of time.
It had already been a year since he quit his day job and threw himself into streaming. He had made a real decision — a heavy one. Born in 1995, he was no spring chicken, and he had a girlfriend he loved enough to start thinking about marriage. That only made the stakes higher.
There was no room to back down.
But for all that resolve, the streaming world was merciless. A former pro-gamer résumé looked good on paper, but Pangea TV was crawling with washed-up pros scraping the bottom. Unless you had a career flashy enough that everyone already knew your name, that title alone bought you nothing.
Still, someday the chance will come.
Oh-ha refused to quit. Whenever a big content event opened applications, he applied to every single one. When collabs came up, he volunteered for the grunt work nobody else wanted. And still the results were dismal. Average concurrent viewers: ten to twenty. No name recognition, a tiny audience, and every major content opportunity that required a boost rejected him on the spot.
Was this really the end? Was he just not cut out for this?
What pulled him back up from that despair was the girlfriend who believed he could do it — the woman who kept cheering on a pathetic twenty-eight-year-old boyfriend barely scraping together 1.5 million won a month.
Right. He couldn't give up here.
From that point on, every hour outside his own broadcast time went into studying the popular streams. Battlegrounds alone wasn't going to cut it. The game had stagnated so thoroughly it had gone rancid. What viewers wanted was a new picture.
How do you blow fresh air into a dead PUBG scene?
That was when the Wooga-dol audition caught his eye — the vanguard of the fresh wave shaking Pangea TV to its foundations. Massive buzz, floating viewers pouring in by the thousands. Looking at it, Oh-ha understood.
Battlegrounds with virtual streamers. How fresh was that picture?
And most virtual streamers were complete beginners at games, which made it even better. In a PUBG scene drowning in veterans, how adorable were these newbies? The stagnant, murky waters of Battlegrounds needed healing.
That day, Oh-ha started carefully planning a content series. Working title: PUBG Kindergarten. Perfect. Done right, this would get a real reaction. A chance to appeal to both existing Battlegrounds fans and the virtual streamer crowd at once.
Fired up, he sent collab inquiry messages to a whole list of virtual streamers. The results were not good.
"Ah… haha. Yeah. This is the streaming world for you."
No virtual streamer was going to jump at a content pitch from a nobody like Oh-ha. The virtual scene was a honey pot right now — why would anyone look elsewhere?
Once again, he tasted bitter failure.
Am I really just not good enough? For real?
They say even when the sky falls, there's a hole to crawl through. An unexpected hand reached out to the crushed Oh-ha. A hardcore fan of his stream promised Candy donations and brought Dalda — a streamer under Rena Universe — into the content. Dalda had always been curious about Battlegrounds, got company approval, and did a single PUBG Kindergarten episode with Oh-ha. It got decent reviews among the virtual crowd.
Oh-ha felt like he'd clawed his way back from the dead. And the opportunity didn't stop there. Dalda floated the idea of running more Kindergarten episodes with other Rena Universe members in the lineup.
Buoyed by the confidence, Oh-ha decided to go bolder. He started sending PUBG Kindergarten promo messages to the leaders of top-tier virtual crews — including Decrescendo — people whose weight class had previously put them completely out of reach. If it worked, jackpot. If not, oh well.
Then the jackpot hit.
Park Na-na, leader of Decrescendo — the hottest virtual crew on Pangea TV outside of Freeca — replied that she was interested in a collab if the schedule worked. Then Seo-a, the lead streamer of V-Live, sent back a positive answer too.
Oh-ha felt like he was on a hidden-camera prank show. Things were suddenly falling into place this easily?
He couldn't hide his joy, but he refused to get careless. An opportunity this hard-won — how could he treat it lightly? He studied everything: the Wooga-dol audition storyline, both streamers' entire careers since debuting on Pangea TV. He needed conversation material that wouldn't run dry mid-content.
I will make this succeed.
And so, with iron resolve, he prepared PUBG Kindergarten Episode 2. Before it even started, his mind was spinning.
What are their personalities like? What vibe will create the best chemistry?
Dalda, the star of Episode 1, had been fine. Conversation worked well enough, tension was decent. But something had been missing. For the existing Battlegrounds audience, it had been too bland. Viewers conditioned on constant swearing and every kind of stimulus always wanted dopamine.
So Oh-ha fretted. How do you maximize viewer satisfaction without stepping on the guests' nerves? It was hard. Virtual streamers tended to chase healing content, which meant the restrictions stacked high. Last time, just speaking a little harshly to Dalda had earned him several hate messages.
He'd gently flagged the difficulty while discussing the content with the two of them, but he hadn't expected much. This was ultimately the host's problem to solve. Who was going to go out of their way for some nobody streamer they barely knew?
"Teacher. I'm really sorry, but I have a question — if it's not too rude, may I ask just one thing?"
"Ask away. Anything you like."
"How many cigarettes do you smoke a day? Your voice is kind of sh— never mind."
"Excuse me? A student talking to her teacher like that? You insolent little—! Front lean!"
"Front lean! B-but seriously, it really is sh— never mind."
On screen, Park Na-na's character — wearing nothing but a Level 1 backpack — dropped into a push-up position like she was taking punishment. Keeping a dead-serious face, Oh-ha worked his character over and started drumming his fists against Park Na-na's character's thighs.
"Not once, but twice?! I will not tolerate any further erosion of teacher authority. From this moment, Student Park Na-na will recite 'The Grace of the Teacher.' Understood?"
"Kyaaaah! Teacher, you pervert! Did you just touch my thighs?"
"Huh? N-no, I didn't touch them — I hit them for disciplinary purposes. This is a false accusation. Lawyer! Somebody get me a lawyer!"
Oh-ha was buzzing from an unexpected windfall. He'd assumed that since they were both virtual streamers, Park Na-na would be similar to Dalda. She was nothing like her. Diving in this aggressively, holding nothing back — since the other side had opened the door first, Oh-ha threw himself into the roleplay without fretting about hate from the virtual fans.
The amazing part was that everything was improvised, and yet they locked into each other's rhythm like they had a script. Viewer response was excellent too. Concurrent viewers blew past last episode's record with Dalda and cracked eight hundred. Oh-ha was overwhelmed. It was the first time this many people had watched his stream.
"No lawyer here, but you've got me, Teacher."
"Huh? Oh right — Student Seo-a saw the whole thing from the start. Student Seo-a, you decide. You know I'm being framed."
Oh-ha raised his voice, laying on the injustice thick. But Park Na-na wasn't about to sit still. She got her character up off the ground, pressed right up against him, and wailed.
"Seo-a! You believe Unnie, right? Sob sob! That teacher over there, smoking cartons until his voice went sh— no, until it got weird — he made me get down and then he started groping me!"
"Stop fabricating! I have never smoked by the carton! Student Seo-a, you have to believe your teacher."
Oh-ha waited for Seo-a's response with his heart hammering. Today's content was a three-person stage. No matter how brilliantly he and Park Na-na performed, if Seo-a just stood there like a scarecrow, the whole picture would fall apart. Could Seo-a jump into the bit as smoothly as Park Na-na had?
"Then I'll deliver a cold, impartial verdict. Both of you, turn around."
Park Na-na and Oh-ha spun their characters around on command. In that moment, Seo-a's character pulled out a frying pan.
"Huh? Uh—"
"Teacher, you know the saying, right?"
"What sayi—"
Before Oh-ha could finish, the frying pan cracked him clean across the back of the skull.
"Ack!"
Oh-ha's screen went gray.
Watching the chat fully locked into the broadcast, Oh-ha was certain.
Today's content was a hit.