58. I Like Her This Much
58. I Like Her This Much
***
—She was impressed by her skill.
—How long had she been playing Another World?
—Asking her not to feel burdened by the donation.
A short conversation of about twenty minutes.
The exchange between Eunha and Serin during that time held no great significance.
It was just small talk to break the ice.
That was all it amounted to, as far as Serin could tell.
It was plainly visible to Serin that this woman, Jeanne d'Arc, was treating her with an almost strange degree of caution, and that there was clearly some other intent behind it—but the other party didn't seem inclined to reveal what it was.
She'd expected that after donating two million won, there would be some kind of demand, or a question that was awkward to answer.
But unexpectedly, she was extremely passive.
If this was how it was going to be, Serin couldn't understand why she'd made such a large donation in the first place.
She considered that maybe it was because this was their first meeting and she was being especially guarded.
But as that thought lingered, Serin began to doubt whether two million won was really an amount that could come from pure goodwill.
'Still... she doesn't seem like someone with bad intentions.'
When Serin slowly looked her over, as if scanning her, the woman flinched under her gaze and stayed meekly still.
The faint flush on the woman's face looked a little odd, but more than that, Serin's eyes kept being drawn to her equipment.
Even at a glance, none of the gear she was wearing looked ordinary. The darkly gleaming armor, and even the longsword at her waist—from the scabbard to its overall appearance, none of it was ordinary.
Each piece was probably Legendary at the very least, or higher.
'Maybe she's just rich.'
Watching her, Serin slowly rose to her feet.
"Then, if you have time another day, let's talk again."
About twenty minutes had already passed.
By now, she figured she'd shown enough courtesy for the donation. If the other party wanted anything more, Serin was prepared to cut ties cleanly.
The other woman hadn't directly demanded anything with money, but honestly, even having this one-on-one conversation was uncomfortable.
"Ah, ah... yes! Rin, thank you for making time today!"
But the other woman answered hastily and stood up as well, looking as though she truly didn't mind ending things here.
No, more precisely, she seemed regretful at the words that they would end it here, but she didn't show anything beyond that.
"Yes. Well then."
***
"..."
As she saw Rin off, dissolving into light, Eunha stared blankly at her own hands.
So this was how foolish she was.
Had dealing with people always been this hard?
The thoughts came to her before she knew it.
She'd called the person here, but couldn't even manage a proper conversation, and as if she'd forgotten why she'd called Rin in the first place, she'd acted neither one way nor the other.
In the end, her first meeting with Rin had ended anticlimactically, just like that.
Even Eunha herself couldn't understand her own behavior just now.
"Like an idiot..."
With Rin in front of her, she couldn't even get the words out properly.
Not her true feelings, not a real conversation—nothing had been accomplished.
It felt like she'd forced the conversation along with meaningless topics.
Eunha figured she had no excuse if Rin thought she was strange after seeing her today. Her own behavior just now had been strange enough that even she was starting to dislike herself.
But even for Eunha, just facing Rin had made her heart pound strangely and her body flush with heat, so she couldn't act like her usual self.
She knew from the streams that Rin was a woman, but even so, the in-game character wasn't Rin herself.
And yet she felt more difficulty dealing with her than with anyone she'd ever met. A strange shyness rose up, and she couldn't even speak properly.
Had she ever been like this?
No, even thinking back for a moment, she had no memory of it.
The first thought she'd had when she first set her goal, before meeting Rin.
'Getting close to her as one person to another.'
What she'd thought would be so easy was actually incredibly difficult.
And once that premise she'd laid down collapsed, everything after it crumbled like a sandcastle, leaving her mind blank.
So she'd rambled at Rin and clumsily kept the conversation going.
"..."
She wanted to get close, but how was she supposed to get close?
In all her life, Eunha had never seriously thought about that.
Other people had always spoken to her first, acted first, tried to approach her first.
And that had only gotten worse after she became a pro.
Day after day of unstoppable success, and the endlessly rising evaluations of her. It meant that even when she stayed still, everything flowed in a good direction.
Simple actions she attached no great meaning to were glorified and spread across communities.
When she said something anyone might say, the other person reacted with bizarre enthusiasm and expressed gratitude.
Right—just today, she'd merely logged into Another World, and hadn't all sorts of pros and users whispered her, worried about how she was doing?
Eunha had never held any particular ill feelings toward anyone. But she'd never held any great fondness either, so she hadn't given much emotion to any of it.
Born into an affluent household, she'd simply done everything given to her as if complying, without any real trouble in her life.
A life where she was practically put on a pedestal by someone almost every day.
Ironically, it was meeting Serin that made Eunha realize she'd been taking that for granted all this time.
The attitude of complete disinterest when facing her.
No matter what she said, Rin just answered indifferently with "Is that so," and so Eunha didn't know what to do.
Compared to herself, who now clearly recognized her own fondness for Rin, maybe she was struggling more because the other person showed such indifference.
She wanted so badly to get close to Rin.
But Rin was so utterly indifferent to her.
What Eunha felt through that short twenty-minute conversation wasn't simply that Rin didn't know her.
She was wary of me.
Thinking about it now, it seemed Rin had thought the two-million-won donation must have had some ulterior motive toward her.
'That's not it...'
I'd only donated out of pure goodwill, impressed by her skill.
But as if those donations had made Rin wary of her, Rin hadn't treated her warmly.
It was clearly far from the attitude she'd shown on stream.
On stream, she'd been happily chatting with viewers, but the moment she faced Eunha, unlike the way she smiled and spoke to countless viewers—
If anything, Eunha even got the strange feeling that Rin was placing her below the viewers.
"No matter how much I think about it... I just don't get it. How am I supposed to get close to her?"
She wanted to fight her.
She wanted to talk about the Arena World together—more than feelings like those.
Right now, the only thing filling her was the desire to get close to Rin.
Had her belief that she'd fallen for Rin's skill been wrong? The overwhelming skill she'd shown in the video, the presence she'd never felt from anyone else.
Rin was the first person who had ever drawn her interest this much.
The emptiness that had filled her chest for weeks had been erased in an instant by this person called Rin. She was definitely the same kind of person as Eunha.
That's what she'd felt—but the moment they actually faced each other, she'd sensed something like a wall.
As if Rin didn't feel what Eunha felt.
Eunha couldn't understand it, and at the same time felt a deep sense of regret.
"..."
Slowly placing a hand over her chest, Eunha stared blankly at the spot where Rin had disappeared.
This pounding she still felt even now.
Why couldn't Rin feel it?
Why was she the only one who felt that they were the same kind of person? Why was she the only one burning with impatience like this?
How could she approach Rin without making her uncomfortable? How could she talk with her more warmly?
Feeling that this was the most urgent matter, Eunha racked her brain for a way to close the distance with Rin.
Before long, she found something like an answer.
She remembered Plea's stream from just yesterday—the way Plea had talked to Rin without any hesitation. Rin, who seemed to keep her distance from top players, had treated Plea relatively warmly.
"Plea... if it's her, she'll know what to do."
***
As nine o'clock approached, Sua quietly closed out of Another World and spoke in a deliberately bright voice.
"Plea-lings~ At nine today, I'm doing the collab I posted about in the notice earlier. You all know, right?"
[What collab all of a sudden]
[???]
[Why'd you stop playing Another World in the middle of it??]
[lololol Plea posted the notice late so tons of people don't know]
[fr it says in the notice she's collabing with Rin]
[Says they're talking about NewTube editor stuff]
[No what kind of collab is that???]
[?When did you post the notice]
She'd posted a notice on her fan cafe, but sure enough, a lot of people didn't know about the collab.
Well, she'd only posted the notice in a rush today, so Sua understood why viewers didn't know.
"For the viewers who don't know, let me explain briefly. Rin said she needed help picking a NewTube editor, so we suddenly ended up doing a collab."
It was, literally, a sudden collab.
Rin had whispered her saying she was picking a NewTube editor tomorrow and asking for tips and various advice, and Sua had said she'd just explain it on stream.
There were far more than one or two things to tell her, too much to explain privately, and since Rin was picking someone tomorrow, there wasn't even enough time to talk it over.
So the background was that they'd agreed to make it a collab—to explain the criteria for picking an editor, and since Sua also had things to say about NewTube, they'd decided to just do a collab.
'Seriously... if it were any other streamer, I wouldn't even think about it and just refuse.'
Just because it was Serin, Sua found herself doing one thing after another for her, and she didn't even mind.
Should she say it felt strangely nice that Serin was relying on her for something?
In Another World, Serin seemed flawless, but in reality she showed a less put-together side. It gave Sua a sense of her humanity.
On top of that, Serin was still just a rookie streamer, and the way she said she didn't know and asked for help was kind of cute.
Ding!
A notification popped up in the voice chat program she'd told her about—Bardcord—showing that Serin had connected.
—Ah. How's my voice? Plea, can you hear me okay?
When Serin's voice came through, Sua smiled softly and answered.
"Yes, yes, I can hear you fine, Rin."
And so, at first, Sua carefully chose her words, wondering where to begin.