The Heavenly Demon Plays a Shitty Game (2)
She regained her senses around the time she was preparing for the promotion match to Platinum. No matter how out of it she was, Enri was still a streamer. She knew exactly how much chaos would erupt if she ranked up alone and then started streaming. So she suppressed her desire to keep playing and shut off Apis.
“What time was that?”
[Seven in the morning.]
Wasn’t that when she should have been waking up? She had been gaming until then?
Enri wasn’t an idiot. She knew that if she closed her eyes, she wouldn’t wake up until the time I had promised to arrive. So she decided to pull an all-nighter. She brewed her coffee strong and planned to stay awake until nightfall.
“But the coffee beans smelled unusually good this morning.”
“Huh?”
“The scent was so nice that I fell asleep.”
She explained that she had collapsed at the table and only came to when I called. Haha. No wonder she sounded so frantic.
“Honestly, I still feel like half my soul is missing.”
“Should we push today’s schedule back?”
“No. I’ll be fine once I have some coffee.”
By the time we finished chatting, the coffee was ready. Without thinking much of it, I took a sip of the cup Enri had poured. A hint of acidity wrapped around a nutty flavor, followed by a subtle bitterness that gave way to a faint sweetness. It was delicious. The coffee I usually drank always felt overwhelmingly bitter, but this was different.
“Tasty, right?”
“It is.”
I was seriously considering drinking this every day.
“It’s nothing like regular coffee. What’s the difference?”
“The beans. I didn’t care about cost-effectiveness and only used the good stuff.”
I would have to ask about these beans on the way back. Pairing them with something sweet later would definitely lift my mood.
“Ara, are you mentally prepared?”
“Do I really need to be?”
“Of course! Do you think what you’re doing today is going to be easy?”
From the way Enri spoke, today didn’t sound like it would go smoothly. Well, it was just a game. No matter how bizarre or difficult it was, it had been designed to be solvable in the end. I didn’t think I would suffer while playing it.
After finishing the coffee, Enri led me to the room she used for streaming. Inside were two computers, several lights, a microphone, a camera, and a capsule.
“Is that your VR device?”
“Yeah. I bought a pretty expensive one for streaming.”
“Does it perform differently?”
“Try it later. I didn’t feel much difference, but it might be different for you, Ara.”
I would have to try the device once the stream was over.
“More importantly, sit down! We need to start streaming!”
“Are you really going to stream looking like that?”
When streaming in VR, it didn’t matter how disheveled you looked in reality since viewers only saw your avatar. But this was a real-life stream. If fans saw her like this, they would definitely run away.
“I’m not turning on the cam, so it’s fine.”
“You can do that?”
“If they don’t like it, they can just not watch.”
Every time I met Enri, I was reminded of how stark the difference was between when she was in her element and when she wasn’t. She was bold when talking about things she knew well, yet often acted like an idiot when dealing with things she was bad at. If only she could be like this when playing Apis too.
After Enri explained the basic streaming settings, she started the broadcast. Viewers flooded in at a terrifying speed. The counter went from zero to over a hundred in an instant, then broke a thousand, and reached several thousand in less than a minute.
“Enha! As you all guessed, Hwaryeong is right next to me. Hwaryeong, say hello!”
“Hello. I’m Hwaryeong.”
They had only ever heard my speech from when I was in the VR world, so my normal Korean must have felt off to them. The tone I used as the Heavenly Demon and the tone I used when speaking Korean were quite different, so it made sense.
“Sorry, but it really is Hwaryeong. You can tell from the voice, right?”
“Yes. I’m still learning.”
“What do you mean it’s fine, you idiots! If you don’t tone it down, I’m banning people, so behave!”
What on earth were they talking about? I shot Enri a questioning look, but she just avoided my gaze and dodged the question.
“That’s right. It was fun back then. The dolls were cute, so I liked it.”
“Were you serious when you said they were cute?”
“? Of course.”
If those children weren’t cute, then how many cute things could possibly exist in this world? There were more than one or two I wanted to take home with me.
“Don’t make it sound like I’m the weird one. This time, Hwaryeong is the strange one.”
If she phrased it that way, wouldn’t I look like some kind of freak? Their sensibilities were the odd ones—why were they nitpicking mine? I couldn’t understand it at all.
“Alright, enough chatting. The reason we’re streaming in real life instead of VR is to make Hwaryeong play the bathtub game.”
The bathtub game? What was that, and why were they getting so worked up?
*
When people were asked what a shitty game was, the answers varied. A game so full of bugs you couldn’t progress. A game so difficult you couldn’t move forward. A game with a weird story, bad graphics, or awkward controls. Among these, the game Enri was about to make Ara play was called a shitty game because it was deliberately designed to piss players off.
When Enri was given the chance to mess with Ara yesterday, she had hesitated. Ara’s teachings had definitely helped, but the process had been exhausting. While she felt grateful, the desire for revenge was just as strong. It was only natural as a human to want Ara to suffer at least as much as she had.
She wondered what kind of game to make her play, but the answer didn’t come easily. First, anything that involved just the two of them in real life had to be ruled out. Their promise had been made on stream, so she needed something the viewers would accept. Therefore, it had to be content that could be finished within the broadcast, and the best option was obviously a game.
That part was fine, but the problem was which game. No matter what game she chose, she couldn’t picture Ara struggling. If she made her play a scary game, Ara would probably clear it while laughing. If she made her play a difficult game, Ara would probably enjoy it and clear it anyway. Going for something completely bizarre would probably kill the entertainment value of the stream.
Cornered, Enri decided to borrow the power of collective intelligence. Most of the thousands of suggestions would be weird, but at least one might be usable. Her prediction was correct.
“Yeah?”
If it was a game she had to play with a mouse and keyboard instead of moving her own hands and feet, maybe even Ara would struggle. It was an interesting idea. And it was something she had wanted to try at least once. Ara getting annoyed at a character that moved however it wanted. She wanted to see that.
Once she decided on that, choosing the game wasn’t hard. With years of streaming experience and several instances of creating “hot plates” (punishment games), she had enough shitty games to fill an entire platform. Picking one that would give Ara trouble was easy.
“Why is this person trapped in a bathtub?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“Even the developer doesn’t know, so how would I?”
The developer of this game had answered “just because” when asked why a bald man with a dead stare was trapped in a bathtub, so how was Enri supposed to know? If anyone could explain why a naked bald man in a bathtub was climbing a mountain with a hammer, they deserved a literary award for anything they wrote.
“When you move the mouse, the hammer moves like this, right?”
“Yes.”
“You just have to reach the finish line with it.”
The game Enri chose was commonly called the bathtub game. Terrible controls. A hammer that moved on its own. A bald man who pissed you off every time you looked at him. On top of that, one mistake could reset all your progress. This game, which the developer had openly made to infuriate people, had caused many streamers to lose their voices and break their equipment.
“I just have to go up, right? What’s so hard about this?”
Like every player who tried this game, Ara started by asking if this was really a punishment. But after about ten minutes—
“Did they put oil on the hammer or something?”
Her words had changed. Ara’s fingers, tapping the left mouse button, radiated pure irritation. She had fallen from the top back to the bottom because of one mistake, so it was understandable. No matter how exceptional Ara’s physical abilities were, they only applied to moving her own body. Overcoming the dogshit controls by moving a mouse required something beyond physical prowess.
Enri sipped her coffee while watching Ara flounder, treating it like a snack. Seeing her struggle like that, it didn’t look like she would finish anytime soon. Thank goodness. So Ara was human after all. She had worried that Ara might say something like “Is this what it feels like to hold a mouse?” and clear it in a few minutes, but the viewers were even more excited than Enri to see Ara getting worked up.
The moment she heard the high-pitched, grating voice, Ara stopped tapping the mouse.
“Would I get mad over something like this? It’s just a game.”
Enri secretly recorded that statement. She had a feeling Ara would love hearing it later.