62. The Final 11
62. The Final 11
***
Beep-beep-beep!
Beep-beep-beep!
Rustle.
Rustle.
I groped around the blankets for my obnoxiously ringing smartphone, but for some reason I couldn't get ahold of it.
Beep-beep-beep!
Tap!
Found it.
Click.
I fumbled with the phone, pressed my fingerprint to the screen, and finally managed to silence the racket.
"..."
My eyes were so heavy they wouldn't open.
4 a.m.
No, was it 5?
I couldn't even remember when I'd fallen asleep.
"From now on... let's keep the schedule a little looser."
I muttered that to myself as I swept back the strands of hair clinging messily to my face.
Fixing my hair every morning was a chore in itself. But tying it up before bed meant waking up to that awful pulling sensation, which I hated. Letting it loose was better, sure. But annoying was still annoying.
I forced my body upright, heavy as waterlogged cotton.
Squish.
I kneaded my cheeks, trying to shake off the fog.
1 p.m.
That was when I'd set my alarm, so I knew what time it was.
Three hours until I went live.
The temptation kept sinking its hooks into me—maybe I could sleep a little more, another hour or two wouldn't hurt, I'd still make the stream—but I fought it off.
Once you give in to laziness, there's no end to it. I knew damn well I wouldn't get anything done as planned.
"Hah... ugh..."
Serin frowned at the groans that escaped her every time she moved her exhausted body. Feeling like her body was absolute garbage, she headed to the bathroom.
Touch water cold enough to chill your bones, and any human wakes up whether they like it or not.
......
After washing up, changing clothes, drying her hair, and doing some light stretching, time had flown by.
2 p.m.
Time to boot up the PC, check the community, and go through the business emails once more.
She'd said she'd accept editor applications until the stream started.
So technically, she still had until 4 p.m., when the stream was scheduled to begin.
"...People actually sent some."
She'd checked her email half-expecting nothing, but about ten editor applications had arrived while she slept.
Click.
By now, she clicked through them with practiced indifference.
Text after text touting personal circumstances or strengths filled her screen, but she ignored all of it and played the attached videos first.
—RinTube! Clang!
An intro that clearly took effort from the very first second.
'This person even made an intro.'
The "RinTube" voiceover—recorded by the applicant herself, judging by the pleasant female voice—was followed by that signature crisp sound effect of a Parry ringing out.
What came next was actually kind of interesting.
—Clang! Clang!
It was a compilation of clips of me landing Parries, and watching it almost felt like... a mad movie? Something like that.
After that initial impact, they'd edited together my duel footage and snippets of things I'd said. Watching it, I couldn't help thinking it wasn't bad.
They had a sense for highlights, I guess? The video didn't feel super polished, but it had a pull that kept you watching.
'Kim Hayoon.'
And just like that, another editor candidate was added to the list for the stream.
......
Aside from that first applicant, Kim Hayoon, nothing else stood out.
Well, to be fair, some of the videos weren't bad. But Kim Hayoon's video had left such a strong impression that everything else suffered by comparison.
Click.
Before I knew it, I was on the last email.
—Applying for editor position.
The plain title didn't feel appealing at all.
From what I'd seen overnight, editors with flair made their mark starting from the subject line.
Something like a highlight reel, or a clean, polished look. Even the formatting when you opened the email was on another level.
*
————
—I'm sending this video late after having a drink in the early morning. I don't know whether Rin will even watch it, so I won't say much. But I hope you'll understand just one thing: I put everything I have into this single video.
If you happen to show this on stream and the reaction is good, I'll send a follow-up email with additional details.
————
*
"What is this?"
It reeked of emotional appeal, like someone clinging desperately.
On one hand, I wondered how much effort someone must have put in to send just a single video with no resume, no personal information, nothing. But I'd seen dozens of these pity-play messages overnight, so honestly, this kind of writing didn't move me at all.
If anything, it lowered my expectations. People usually resorted to this kind of appeal precisely because they lacked the skills.
'Asking me to show the video on stream... something feels off.'
I opened the attached video.
—Feels good...! Not there! No, don't...!
Startled by the screen full of bare skin and loud moaning, Serin immediately shut the video off.
The message said they'd had a drink. Had they seriously lost their mind?
She'd never imagined someone would send porn.
"...Are they actually insane?"
I mean, they said they put everything into this one video.
***
When the time came, I hit the ON button and gave my usual opening line.
"...It's Tuesday, August 3rd, and the stream is starting."
After watching hundreds of videos, even my own stream greeting felt painfully bland. I made a mental note to change it eventually.
As the stream went live, the chat window lit up green and messages started pouring in.
[Hi, Rin!!!!!]
[Rin, you're killing me!!!]
[why are you dying the second the stream starts lololololol]
[I really enjoyed yesterday's collab!]
[was that even a collab? all I remember is Plea babying Rin and teaching her stuff]
[with Rin's voice, just answering chat counts as a collab tbh]
[fr lol]
[you lunatics lolololol]
They were always so full of energy, and I actually liked that about them.
Other streamers worked hard to force exaggerated reactions—the so-called "fake hype"—to draw responses from viewers, but I didn't need to.
Just the act of typing in chat felt like a form of support, like they were helping the stream along.
"I'm always grateful to everyone who shows up right as the stream starts."
I added that extra line to get things rolling.
—Ding!
『Crato donated 50,000 won!』
《I'm a Plea viewer, and I really enjoyed yesterday's collab!!》
A donation suddenly exploded onto the screen.
"Crato, thank you for the 50,000 won donation. As for the collab, I'm not sure I really did anything. Plea honestly did all the work."
Maybe I'd gotten used to donations, because now when I saw one come in, I just thought, "Guess they felt like giving." Honestly, I still didn't really understand the psychology of people who donate.
'50,000 won.'
Wasn't 50,000 won enough to order delivery twice, with a pretty fancy spread each time?
—Please don’t donate. No reactions.
So, just in case, I immediately put a message up on screen.
"If you're a Plea viewer, you might not know this, but I don't do donation reactions. So please don't donate unless you can really afford it."
Serin said it with complete confidence.
Serin’s voice declared with complete confidence, “I don’t want to make money.”
At her words, the chat—which had only just reached about a thousand viewers since the stream had barely started—began scrolling at an almost unbelievable speed.
[isn't it wild every time you hear Rin's voice?]
[I think it's wilder that she says she has no reaction every single time lol]
[that white text saying "no reaction" is becoming familiar at this point fr]
[is there any other streamer who tells people not to donate the second the stream starts?]
[lolololololololololol]
[wait but who drops 50k won the second the stream starts??]
[Rin's room has a surprising number of big spenders]
[fr someone just threw 2 million won and left yesterday too]
"Oh, and today's stream has three parts."
—Part 1: Just Chatting while checking the community (short, about 30-40 minutes)
—Part 2: Editor selection content, time TBD.
—Part 3: Another World Arena. If Part 2 runs long, this will be short.
At first I'd planned to put the schedule on the stream screen, but that felt too cluttered, so now I just had it set up as a macro in chat.
The schedule text would post once every ten minutes. Or viewers could type "stream schedule!" in chat to bring it up.
"For Part 1, I'll do Just Chatting and community check-in for a short 30-40 minutes, then move right into Part 2. You all know today's content is picking the RinTube editor, right?"
[yeah I know]
[yesterday's collab with Plea was for the RinTube editor too]
[how many applications did you get?]
[fr wouldn't people line up to edit for someone like Rin?]
[I bet about 100 emails came in, though the application window was pretty short]
"Including the ones that came in before I started the stream, I got about 200 emails."
Applications had kept coming until around 3:30, so I'd checked all of those too.
The people who sent emails close to the deadline all had this desperate energy you could feel through their videos, and none of them met my standards.
Excluding troll emails and spam, the pure editor applications alone had a competition rate of 200 to 1.
"Out of those, there are 11 videos I'll be reviewing together with you all. Based on the advice I got from Plea during yesterday's collab, exactly 11 people made the first cut by my standards."
The final eleven who survived a 200-to-1 competition.
Calling it a "first cut" felt a little odd, but that really was the reality.
The reality that becoming a RinTube editor meant beating 200-to-1 odds.
And considering the application window had only been two days, that meant even more people might have applied otherwise.
[wait you checked 200 emails in that time?]
[what is she, superhuman lolololol]
[Rin's kind of like Plea, isn't she? seems like she'd be good at getting things done]
[Please refrain from mentioning other streamers]
[why would Plea count as another streamer lolololol]
[hearing "first cut" is giving me ptsd for no reason ;]
[fr lol]
[if you count the exact time, wasn't it less than two days? 200 people applied in that window, that's insane]
[really feeling that Rin is a big-name streamer now lololololol]
Seeing the chat call me a big-name streamer, I couldn't help but think about it.
A competition rate on par with famous major corporations.
And even the selection favored experienced candidates.
Looking at the 11 applicants' backgrounds and other details, 10 had prior experience, and only 1 had no real track record to speak of.
So I vaguely figured that even after picking an editor, it would probably be one of the 10 experienced candidates.
You can't expect to be satisfied on the first bite, and people's minds just work that way.
It might sound cold, but that was reality.
'...Sure, where are newbies supposed to build experience, but that's not my problem to solve.'
And yet Serin, thinking that, was herself just—
A newbie streamer only four days into her streaming career.