The Fans' True Value
The event Lee Shin orchestrated spread like wildfire across social media.
No separate promotion was even necessary.
With just a few photos of the maxed-out Charm genius wearing it, the Mir Guild varsity jacket had instantly become a must-have hot item for the winter season among celebrities.
But while the regular public was going wild over the varsity jacket Lee Shin wore, the Yongbung-i were trembling for an entirely different reason.
Thanking you all for your support, the Mir Guild presents~♡
The timing was far too suspicious to simply brush off.
While the guild next door, the one in front, and the one across the street… while the Mir Guild was in the middle of an all-out war against those reckless rival guilds, they were deliberately running an event to send their thanks.
Even the Yongbung-i felt a bit uncertain.
But the moment those Yongbung-i clicked the event page to participate, every single one of them was stunned into silence.
The drawing will be held in the ‘Guild Korea Mir Gallery.’ Don’t forget to leave your name, gender, size, and shipping address, dear Yongbung-i~♥
Gallery. Gallery. Gallery.
The heart that struck the Yongbung-i’s chests with zero hesitation was a bonus.
Recognition of their existence.
If calling someone’s name made them come to you and become a flower, then when Lee Shin called the Yongbung-i by name, they would gladly become hunting dogs and protect the Mir Guild.
That dawn, the front gates of thirty different guilds were repainted with the Mir Guild’s symbol, the blue dragon.
·
·
Park Seong-cheol (32), an office worker, was flawless in both work performance and character.
If only you ignored the fact that he was a hardcore Yongbung-i.
At the start of the season, Park Seong-cheol had declared he was quitting the gallery after Lee Shin’s disastrous management. But after the recruitment of the Mountain King, he had made a spectacular comeback.
Perhaps it was guilt for briefly abandoning his soul’s true home. Whatever the reason, the returned Park Seong-cheol had become the vanguard of the front lines with combat power upgraded to an even higher level than before.
That was why the Yongbung-i had given him the nickname Toegail-jwa.
Just as he finished typing “office” and was about to hit post, he felt a presence behind him.
When Park Seong-cheol turned his head, there stood a hesitant junior employee.
Tap tap!
“Senior.”
“Soyoung, did you need me?”
“The assistant manager asked me to get the documents he requested this morning.”
“The documents… Ah, those. Just a moment.”
Even though he had been caught openly fiddling with his laptop during work hours, Park Seong-cheol remained completely calm.
What was interesting was that the employee named Soyoung didn’t seem particularly bothered by his behavior either.
He was her senior, after all. The perfect, nice-guy image he had built up over time made her accept it no matter if he was chatting on community boards during work or doing 540-degree kicks.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you!”
“No problem. Keep up the good work.”
Park Seong-cheol casually placed his hands back on the laptop.
Unlike the polite greeting he had just given his junior, his fingers were once again spewing sulfurous flames of pure spice.
Yeah. This was it. This was what it meant to be a Yongbung-i.
Praising and hyping them up, cheering happily during winning streaks with squeals of “who’s the best~ kyaa~ kyaa~” was fun in its own way. But the Yongbung-i, who had memes loaded in their left brain and pure chaos in their right, shone brightest when they rolled up their sleeves and fought.
Just as someone had said, Park Seong-cheol was showing off his insane form today, single-handedly destroying the rival guild’s bulletin board with unstoppable momentum.
To the other side, it was pure torture.
Whether it was Yongbung-i who charged in screaming “you die, I die” the moment their guild got insulted, or a leader who not only refused to restrain such fans but even threw in prizes while screaming “keep fighting☆,” the entire tribe was abnormal.
Still.
A leader who actively communicated with fans was certainly attractive.
Normally, lower-league guilds didn’t communicate much with the public.
Why? Money.
Communication required time, money, and manpower. How could a lower-league guild that barely scraped by on raids afford that?
So while they were the ones who needed to be closest to everyday life, the reality was the ironic situation where they were even more disconnected than the distant major-league guilds.
This was exactly why they cursed Lee Shin while secretly envying him.
First of all, he had money. An insane amount of money. He could buy time and buy labor.
If he put his mind to it, he could do anything. Lee Shin was a tactical weapon capable of changing the entire paradigm of lower-league guilds.
The people on the other side had lost the will to fight.
On the other hand, the Yongbung-i on this side had their combat power boosted by two thousand percent thanks to their leader’s encouragement.
The result was obvious. By the time quitting time rolled around, even their guild’s front gate had been painted with the Mir Guild’s symbol. It was essentially a white flag of surrender.
Achieving this result through nothing but pure, fair(?) chaos without hacking or bribery, Park Seong-cheol smiled brightly for the first time in a while.
But then it happened.
As if they had been monitoring the situation, the moment their guild was conquered, a private message flew in.
Was it an insult? The moment Park Seong-cheol opened the message, he froze solid.
There it was.
— This is Lee Shin, representative of the Mir Guild. Congratulations on winning the event. The varsity jacket will be sent to the address you provided. Please continue to show us lots of love in the future, Toegail-jwa-nim haha
“Oh!! No way!!”
It was a message from Lee Shin! No, from LeeGod himself!!
Lee Shin-nim had called him Toegail-jwa!! He had been watching him!!
His heart pounded wildly. Lightning bolts of adrenaline crashed through his head. His legs went weak, and a pleasant shiver ran down his spine.
He finally understood why the saying existed that a man would give his life for someone who recognized him.
This emotion! This overwhelming feeling!! From now on, Toegail-jwa would devote his life to Lee Shin.
It was around this time that yet another follower was born.
A group of people was gathering at the main entrance of the Mir Guild.
“Where is Representative Lee?”
* * *
Chae Dong-ha had believed he had accumulated quite a lot of experience by now.
Although the time had been short, living under the human nuclear bomb known as Lee Shin meant he had experienced spectacular incidents that most people wouldn’t see once in their lifetime almost every single week. He had reached the point where he was confident that nothing could surprise him anymore.
To put it bluntly…
He was wrong.
Looking at the group approaching from up ahead, everything went dark before his eyes. He realized he still had a very long way to go.
“Representatives, please wait. Just talk with me for a moment.”
“Move aside. We have nothing to say to you.”
“Just call Representative Lee out. We’re here to talk to him.”
Chae Dong-ha desperately tried to block their path, but the middle-aged men in suits—who looked old enough to be his parents—pushed forward aggressively.
They were the representatives of the League 4 guilds based in Busan: , , , and .
They had come to the Mir Guild on behalf of Busan’s 4th Division guilds to protest the current chaos being caused by the Mir Guild’s fanbase on community boards, as well as the guild’s behavior of not only condoning it but actively encouraging it.
They were adults. They were guild representatives. And they were furious for multiple reasons.
Even Chae Dong-ha, the future SS-rank genius general manager, found this situation overwhelming.
In the end…
Bang—!
The door to the representative office burst open, and Go Dong-pal stepped forward. If he lost the momentum here, it would all be over. Tightening his core, Go Dong-pal shouted.
“Representative Lee, let’s have a wo……”
…he tried to shout.
If only he hadn’t seen Lee Shin sitting there in the dark room, resting his chin on both hands like some shadowy mastermind.
“Heh heh, I’ve been waiting for you.”
“……”
“……”
The delegation looked at Chae Dong-ha as if demanding an explanation. Why is he like this?
Chae Dong-ha lowered his head deeply. He’s always like this.
Grinding his teeth, Chae Dong-ha kept his head down and first pulled back those embarrassing blackout curtains.
Soon the room was tidied up, and the representatives sat across from Lee Shin with coffee placed before them.
“Do you know why we’ve come?”
“I have a rough idea, but I’d like to hear it from you. Would you mind explaining?”
“Hah, I suppose there’s no reason not to. You’ve crossed the line.”
“Are you talking about the fandom?”
“So you do know. Just what were you thinking, getting involved in a fight between fans?”
In a fiercely competitive league, it was only natural that guilds weren’t on good terms. Naturally, the fans supporting them ended up opposing each other as well, and it was all too easy for things to escalate into emotional clashes.
When a guild sympathized with and got swept up in their fans’ anger, it truly became catastrophic. That was why it had become an unwritten rule for guilds not to get involved in fandom wars.
“Look here, Representative Lee. Up until now, no matter what you said to the press, we kept quiet. Do you think there wasn’t a single statement of yours that made us uncomfortable? Just the recent supply gate incident was something we found deeply regrettable from our position. Yet we endured it because you hadn’t crossed the line.”
“But unfortunately, you have now crossed that line, and we had no choice but to come see you in this unsightly manner.”
Although they had come in strong, they still showed respect for Lee Shin. There was no need to break trust. It wasn’t too late. They could still clean this up.
They were trying to persuade him with good words.
Lee Shin nodded along, listening carefully until the end. Once he confirmed they had finished, he delivered his conclusion.
“Is your position in danger?”
“?!”
It wasn’t a natural progression from A to B or C. The conversation had shot straight to Z.
Caught off guard by the sudden leap, the representatives could only open and close their mouths. Lee Shin smiled softly and continued.
“I can more or less picture the situation. Why representatives who have stayed quiet until now would take time out of their busy schedules to come all the way here. No, in this case, I suppose it would be more accurate to say you had to come. Your owners or parent companies must have pressured you.”
Right?
At Lee Shin’s bright, innocent smile as he asked, every one of them became mute as if they had swallowed honey.
Because he was right. Because it was exactly on the mark.
When the combat power of the Yongbung-i—on a completely different level from normal fans—caused a meaningful number of supporters to leave and even began to damage the guild’s image, the people behind them… or more precisely, the ones holding the money, had finally begun to move.
Lee Shin smiled gently at the speechless representatives.
“In my view, you’ve completely missed the point. This matter isn’t something that can be handled with unwritten rules or lines or gentlemanly solutions. On the contrary, you need to get dirty and wild for the picture to come together properly.”
“And that way, you all get to survive too.”
Survive?
The startled representative asked what he meant and to explain in more detail.
Lee Shin smiled even wider.
“Looks like you’re finally ready to listen.”
He clapped his hands. Clap clap!
The moment the applause ended, Chae Dong-ha wheeled in a massive whiteboard, and Lee Shin stood in front of it.
Wearing those antique taped glasses that no one knew where he had picked up from.
“Let’s begin the lecture.”