99. Why on Earth Do You Want to Meet Me?
99. Why on Earth Do You Want to Meet Me?
***
There's a word: "relative."
What each person feels, sees, and thinks—the observer, the subject, the person performing an action—can all differ entirely depending on perspective.
Broadly speaking, even when people see the same thing, spend the same time, and take the same action, everything they feel or think can differ depending on whether they are the one acting, the one watching from the side, or the one on the receiving end of the act.
Even when different subjects perform the same act, what they feel or think can all be different.
The deeper you dig, the harder and more abstruse even the definition becomes, and often each individual's understanding of it differs entirely.
To put it simply, it meant that perspective differs from person to person.
......
A pro gamer with an overwhelming fanbase.
The fact that the modifier "overwhelming" was attached meant that her popularity was that exceptional.
Moreover, when an individual player rose beyond the stature of her team and reached a kind of "brand" status on her own, that in itself carried influence.
If you had to name one pro gamer with overwhelming recognition after Another World became the dominant game,
nine out of ten people would pick the same player.
Another World's representative pro gamer.
Jeanne d'Arc, Yoo Eunha.
There had been countless historical precedents of a player becoming famous or gaining overwhelming popularity.
Even outside esports, looking at other sports like soccer, basketball, or tennis, there had always been players who achieved overwhelming fame, and new ones emerged every year.
So it was perhaps inevitable that the joke had spread widely that TSJ didn't stand for its original meaning, "Team SJ Entertainment," but rather "Team Solo Jeanne d'Arc."
A team for Jeanne d'Arc alone—so much so that the team itself was said to exist only because Jeanne d'Arc was there.
So when Jeanne d'Arc abruptly declared a sudden hiatus and vanished mid-season, TSJ's match viewership, which had casually surpassed 200,000 per match, visibly plummeted, and a host of secondary incidents and accidents followed.
Both on and off the stage, TSJ's coaches and players each took a severe hit.
To be sure, even now, two weeks after Jeanne d'Arc's departure, TSJ's results themselves hadn't dropped all that much.
The team's roster was solid to begin with, and even without Jeanne d'Arc—the team's symbol and core force—the name value of TSJ's other players hadn't diminished.
In fact, if they had joined a team other than TSJ, some of those players would have drawn attention and been locked in as aces or starters for every match.
But even so, on match days without Jeanne d'Arc, TSJ's viewership dropped sharply, and across various SNS [Social Networking Service] platforms, Jeanne d'Arc's personal fans subjected TSJ's coaches and players to endless slander, threats, curses, and—in serious cases—malicious comments amounting to personal attacks.
What Jeanne d'Arc had said in her final interview before vanishing had played a major role.
With a single remark—"I've been tired lately"—countless Jeanne d'Arc fans had each begun speculating and tearing down TSJ's players.
That the players or coaches had done something to Jeanne d'Arc. Or that they had placed excessive pressure on her. And so on...
They had begun seizing on every questionable in-match action and every meaningless little behavior shown to the outside world, twisting them together into a narrative.
And the longer Jeanne d'Arc stayed away from the team, the worse the slander became.
It meant that many people longed for her and cheered for her, and that Jeanne d'Arc was someone who couldn't easily be met even in ordinary times—she rarely showed herself outside the team dormitory, so outside of matches it was hard to even catch a glimpse of her.
......
Click.
—[ACK's living legend, Jeanne d'Arc. A simple rest sends massive shockwaves]
When I reached the end of the long article I'd been reading, I made an odd expression.
"A player this incredible... why the hell does she want to meet me?"
The conversation had begun with Sua's sudden message before the stream.
The player Jeanne d'Arc actually wants to meet you—Sua's message saying that was still making me agonize even now, after the stream had ended.
'The rich saintess.'
Even today, after I ended my stream early, Jeanne d'Arc had once again donated 1,000,000 won during the broadcast.
—Rin, please shout "Jeanne d'Arc, fighting!" once for me.
...She surely already knew that I couldn't possibly be unaware she was Jeanne d'Arc, so I wondered what the intent behind the donation was, but since I'd received it, I'd thanked her.
Even as I quietly thanked her for the "Jeanne d'Arc, fighting" donation, my feelings were strange.
She said she wanted to meet me, yet kept making huge donations during my streams.
She even used her real name, Yoo Eunha, as her donation nickname, but none of the viewers thought she was Jeanne d'Arc.
They just assumed she was a big spender who liked Jeanne d'Arc, and the chat merely marveled at the wealth and ease with which she casually made such large donations.
"Hmm..."
Honestly, no matter how incredible the player was, I'd been thinking the right move was to decline the request to meet in person.
Before the stream, while talking with Sua about Jeanne d'Arc, I'd replied, "Let me think about it," but I had been leaning toward refusing.
But after today's stream ended, as I idly searched for information about Jeanne d'Arc and learned more, she seemed even more remarkable than I'd thought, and that resolve wavered a little.
I also found myself recalling, consciously or not, the donations I'd received from her over time.
Currently rank 1 in Another World, a monstrous player who had never once lost the top spot in the three years since Another World launched.
And an overwhelming career of winning every ACK League title since the Another World tournament was founded.
The more I learned, the more interested I became in Jeanne d'Arc as an individual player.
Even in the pro match I'd watched just yesterday, the players' moment-to-moment decisions and individual skills had been fully visible to me.
BS's tactics of adjusting their strategy based on the opposing team's picks had been fascinating, and G1, which stubbornly stuck to its picks as if trusting its players, had its own charm. At the end, the way the Gauntlet Match swung between joy and despair depending on matchups had been pretty entertaining too.
In the final situation everyone had predicted would fail, Kang Hyeok's reverse all-kill had even made me let out a small cheer at the end.
But a player with even more overwhelming skill and performance than those players.
A person most fans could never meet no matter how much they wanted to.
"Yeah, in person... she's clearly not someone who'd do anything weird."
Judging a person before meeting them was laughable, but someone whose social standing and stature were this well known had almost no chance of doing anything strange.
In the first place, this world wasn't like Black Ark, a world overflowing with danger.
There were no monsters, and no vicious beings like outlaws who killed people as a hobby.
She was just asking to meet once, and I felt like I might be overly wary for no reason.
Maybe Jeanne d'Arc had said she wanted to meet out of curiosity about me, or maybe it was nothing more than a passing interest.
In the first place, what could someone like me matter enough for Jeanne d'Arc to do something strange to me if we actually met?
Even though I'd become noticeably more famous recently, I was still just getting started, while Jeanne d'Arc was a famous player whose name even ordinary people—not just Another World users—had likely heard.
At the very least, I didn't feel like meeting her would be a loss.
I could even give my editors something to talk about, and I was curious about what a person who had achieved that much social success would be like in person.
"But then, why did she act so deferential when we ran into each other in Another World?"
When we'd met in Another World without knowing anything, I hadn't paid much attention because I hadn't known about her skill or social standing.
But I wondered why Jeanne d'Arc had treated me so deferentially.
If I were a pro player of that stature, I'd have spoken confidently and asked whatever I was curious about right away.
My mind tilted toward meeting her once.
Just as I settled my thoughts about Jeanne d'Arc—
—For some reason... a lot of people seem to be coming to my stream today because Rin's stream ended early.
Sua's flustered voice came from her stream, which I'd left on like a radio.
"...?"
—I heard Rin streamed especially long yesterday, so she must have been tired.
I closed the article tab and clicked on Sua's stream, where I saw Sua speaking with a calm expression.
[No, she collected the money and ran lololol]
[Rin's seriously full of herself]
[But why are you saying that here?]
[Why are you talking about Rin on Plea's stream lol]
[Can't Plea talk about it since she's close with Rin?]
[No but today was seriously legendary]
[Streaming for 1 hour 40 minutes, collecting the money, and running is so insane, seriously lolol]
[Just ban all of them, go go. Stop mentioning other streamers, seriously]
"...Why are they acting like this in Sua's stream, these bastards."
I wasn't streaming, so a sharp voice slipped out before I knew it.
Today's stream had ended with a short chat with viewers because of yesterday's long broadcast, then with me cleanly landing in Diamond Tier by winning every match in my Another World Diamond Promotion Series.
The stream time that resulted was literally less than two hours.
With such a short stream, the chat had been blazing right before it ended, but lately I honestly felt like I was getting too invested in streaming, so I'd ended it without hesitation.
Living as a streamer and focusing on broadcasts wasn't bad, but with this trash body, streaming long hours every day was practically impossible, so I'd been trying to pace myself.
I just hadn't expected my viewers to go to another streamer's chat and act out like this.
—Viewers, if this gets any more heated, I'll ban you right away!? And honestly, when it comes to Rin, I can't exactly control everything just because she's another streamer... so how about exactly 10 minutes! We talk about Rin intensively for just 10 minutes, and then you focus on my stream, okay? Anyone who suddenly brings up Rin after those 10 minutes will be banned without mercy.
Sua smiled as she continued her stream, and watching her made me feel sorry for no reason.
— Donation account balance: 1,900,000 won.
Then the balance of the donation account I'd topped up last time caught my eye.