226. Their Gaze
226. Their Gaze
***
Six in the evening—time that should have been spent on practice and feedback.
The Knights of Charlemagne team dorm was mostly empty now that the league schedule had ended, with most of the players away on an early vacation.
Players who had all left for the same kinds of reasons: meeting family they hadn't been able to see because practice always ate up their personal time, hanging out with close friends, or just taking some personal rest.
But amid all those players who had gone, one man remained in the empty dorm.
The captain of the Knights of Charlemagne.
Player nickname: Roland. Lee Sihyeon.
On the screen he was watching now, a silver-haired woman walked through the dark interior of a temple.
The stream he was watching belonged to a streamer who had been the talk of the community for days now—and who had a scrim scheduled with them in just two days.
"Real talent, huh..."
Sihyeon watched Serin's stream with interest, a self-deprecating smile unconsciously forming on his lips.
How many days had it been since he'd last played Another World?
Just watching Rin's Another World streams kept filling the emptiness inside him.
With the ACK Pro League schedule over, the team had finished in seventh place and had long since been eliminated from the playoffs for failing to meet the cutoff.
All that remained now was the first international stage, Another Worlds, still over a month away—
and only the qualifier for it.
"Pathetic..."
Muttering the self-deprecating words as if spitting them at himself in the empty space, Sihyeon was fully aware of what he was feeling.
Watching a user who wasn't even a pro, someone closer to an ordinary player, and feeling the gap in talent—and envying it.
—Awe, and envy.
He had been watching every one of Rin's streams for days now.
At first it had been simple curiosity. He'd started watching out of a sense of responsibility, since a scrim was scheduled and he needed to prepare.
But the more he watched, the more Rin proved to be anything but ordinary.
Her actions and way of speaking were gentle, yet carried a distinctive presence—and above all, the composure and attitude of someone utterly certain of herself drew the eye even more than her striking appearance.
Yesterday, when the Grim Reaper had appeared in the Cave of Trials as an unreasonable option, she hadn't complained—and even when faced with the Great Hero Daji as the final trial, she had burned with fighting spirit.
And watching it all, Sihyeon had felt pure admiration for Rin's skill during the showdown with the Grim Reaper, and a profound sense of unfairness during her confrontation with Daji.
By any measure, Rin had been at a disadvantage.
As an active pro player, he couldn't help but see the unfairness of that situation at a glance.
Same Dancer class, same techniques being deployed—yet her techniques were being overwhelmed, and it was unmistakably clear.
Because even when the streamer Rin had displayed flashy technique and unleashed skill after skill, Daji had blocked them all with a casual flick of her hand.
And those scenes had made it impossible for Sihyeon to take his eyes off her.
Daji and Rin.
In the two of them, he saw himself and Jeanne d'Arc overlapping over their figures.
The same Knight class.
But in the simple clash of techniques, he couldn't help but feel the difference in caliber.
The gap in raw power shouldn't have been that large—yet Jeanne d'Arc's split-second judgment, her irregular techniques that seemed to transcend human limits, her reaction speed, made her all but impossible to oppose.
And just as he'd been seeing himself in them, that image began to crack.
Unlike him—who had felt the gap between himself and Jeanne d'Arc and, at some point, had resigned himself and accepted it—she kept burning with fighting spirit.
How could she not give up?
How could she accept that situation so calmly?
The difference in strength had been overwhelming. And yet Rin's endless fighting spirit was astonishing.
As the league schedule wound down, the team's results had sunk lower and lower.
Compared to himself, who had gone into matches pretending to burn with fighting spirit just to keep up morale on the surface...
Rin was so different.
She could have complained. As a streamer, it wouldn't have affected her that much.
Watching the showdown with Daji, Sihyeon hadn't hoped for Rin to win.
He had simply been watching her attitude.
So when the stream cut out in the middle and he couldn't learn the result, he hadn't felt much regret.
In reality, there are walls that no amount of effort can reach.
The gap in talent undeniably existed, and no matter how much you kept pretending to be bright and pushing forward, you eventually realized it couldn't be crossed.
Since Rin losing to Daji had seemed like the obvious outcome even with her fighting spirit, he hadn't questioned it.
But.
The unbelievable result he'd seen on Rin's stream today.
The gap in power and skill between her and Daji had looked utterly insurmountable to Sihyeon—yet seeing Rin on screen, brightly saying she'd won, he could only stare blankly at the stream.
Hearing Rin say she'd somehow beaten Daji afterward, he'd wondered if that was even possible—but with the reward sitting right there as proof, he couldn't not believe it.
And in Rin's appearance, Sihyeon felt one thing.
An ideal. She was like the ideal of talent itself.
Enjoying the moment of battle while burning with will.
That she could feel that way because she wasn't a pro and had no pressure—none of that really mattered.
What mattered most was that she had done it in a situation that seemed impossible.
Compared to his own miserable reality, where he'd resigned himself to the wall and accepted it, she hadn't given up and had ultimately cleared it.
Then, seeing Rin obtain Durandal—the very weapon he was using now—as a Mythic reward, Sihyeon let out a hollow laugh, as if fate were playing a joke on him.
Afterward, her reveal of her Hidden Class and the battle against the Death Knight had left a deep impression.
At the same time, as if to mock him for ever having seen himself in her, she was displaying truly insane talent.
The way Rin deployed Hidden Class techniques—techniques she should have had no proficiency in—with such natural ease could only be explained by one word: talent.
Maybe that was why he was staring blankly at the stream.
The proficiency he had earned by grinding thousands, tens of thousands of hours—someone else was displaying that same naturalness in a single moment.
"...Sihyeon, what are you watching so intently?"
Clink.
Yena set a coffee cup down on the table and looked at Sihyeon, who had been staring blankly at the screen, with slightly narrowed eyes.
At that, Sihyeon's long reverie came to a halt, and he smiled faintly as he looked at the coffee cup on the table. It was strange that he wasn't the only one staying in the dorm during vacation.
"Watching intently... it's not like that."
"What do you mean it's not? You watched all of Rin's stream yesterday too. And from the look of it, today's going to be the same... Sihyeon, I know you say it's for scrim prep, but do you really need to watch that much?"
"It's not really... about the scrim. I'm just watching because this Rin person is fascinating."
"Fascinating?"
Yena sat down beside him and asked back.
In the corner of her vision, the screen showed a woman walking through the dark temple, apparently having dealt with the Death Knight.
'It's only been a few minutes since I went to get coffee...'
Feeling anew just how skilled Rin was, Yena's eyes landed on the character on screen. The character possessed an unreal beauty that made her think, yes, this is a character—yet the movements and gestures were as natural as reality.
The naturalness of movement rivaling a pro player's. Rin's naturalness was like watching Jeanne d'Arc.
Even as a woman, I found my gaze drawn involuntarily—so I understood why a man like Sihyeon would be drawn too, but I still didn't like it.
Despite Yena's thoughts, Sihyeon was staring intently at Rin as she slaughtered monsters with movements like a dazzling dance.
"Seriously... it's amazing that someone with this much skill is just an ordinary person."
Then Sihyeon turned his head toward Yena and spoke as if disappointed.
"And the way she took down the Death Knight at the end was really beautiful too. Yena, why didn't you stay and watch it all?"
Yena looked at him as he spoke in a calm voice.
'Was Sihyeon always like this?'
She even felt an inexplicable sense of crisis.
Watching Rin's hours-long stream in its entirety yesterday, and then watching Rin's stream again today with such precision—Sihyeon's behavior didn't look normal.
And considering today was the last day of vacation, she almost wondered if it was okay to spend time like this.
"Hey, Sihyeon."
Lost in thought, Yena quietly called to him, and Sihyeon answered while still looking at the stream.
"Yeah?"
"Are you... one of those people who likes virtual reality characters?"
Yena had heard that there were people who got obsessed with Another World characters—people who fell for 3D characters.
So she wondered if Sihyeon might be one of them.
"No. Not really."
At his nonchalant answer, Yena added one more thing.
"Then why are you watching this Rin person's stream so much?"
Sihyeon, who had been looking at the screen, thought Yena was acting strange today.
'Why do I watch her stream?'
Her overwhelming skill and talent were dazzling just to watch.
No particular reason was needed.
Rin's character was pretty, sure, but at the end of the day it was just a character.
After briefly considering how to answer, Sihyeon simply told her what he honestly felt.
"Because Rin—this person is just too good."
Even as he said it, Sihyeon's eyes remained on the screen.
The sight of her weaving dazzlingly through space, thrusting out the white Crescent-Moon Weight as if butchering the monsters that swarmed her.
Unlike Sihyeon, who kept drinking in Rin's every move, Yena—who had been watching Sihyeon—could see his eyes all too clearly.
Eyes that were serious, yet held a deep emptiness.
After the other players had left the dorm, Sihyeon's increasingly hollow gaze had kept weighing on Yena's mind.
In a way, his words could have sounded meaningless, but "because she's too good" struck her in the chest.
The team's disastrous results. The weight of carrying that burden seemed visible in his eyes.
"Seriously... I'll do better at the Worlds qualifier, Sihyeon."
When she suddenly brought up Worlds, Sihyeon let out a hollow laugh and turned his gaze from the screen.
"No, I should be the one to do better. Yena, why are you suddenly saying that?"
Now that his eyes were finally on her, Yena smiled faintly and shook her head.
"No, it's just... I thought I should work harder."
The person who had agonized most over the team's results and suffered the most wasn't one of the people who had left the dorm.
It was the person right in front of her.
Even during vacation, he prepared for scrims and watched streams, taking in someone else's skill.
That was why it hurt even more.
To Yena, it felt like he was already trying so hard, and yet never seeing the light.
Crunch!
Rin stopped her slaughter by bursting a gargoyle's head.
—Is the Arch Lich the boss monster of this temple? Why won't it show up?
Her voice rang out softly through the screen.