The Sniper Suffers Defeat
The moment I entered the raid, the chat lit up with a flood of messages.
Every single reaction was skeptical. Most of them assumed I'd wandered in by mistake and wanted me out as fast as possible.
I couldn't blame them. The raid I'd just entered was built around the boss Volcanon, King of the Celestial Palace — a fight that normally demanded a minimum of ten High-Level players, sometimes more than thirty, and well over an hour of coordinated work.
Their reaction made perfect sense.
I didn't even have time to watch the chat. I moved into position at once.
Far off in the haze, Volcanon's massive form descended through the clouds. A moment later, a roar that seemed ready to shake heaven and earth rolled toward me from the distance.
Tracking its movement, I summoned a cannon from my subspace inventory. I predicted the flight path of the randomly spawning Volcanon, adjusted the angle, shifted the cannon into place, packed the charge, and lit the fuse.
KRA-KOOM—
The loaded barrel thundered, and the cannonball tore free. It sliced through the air so fast it almost felt like kicking a light ball across a field, gliding through the sky in a clean arc.
BOOM—
The shell struck true — dead center on the head of the colossal ray-shaped monster clad in heavy armor.
The chat had completely lost its mind.
I let myself feel a flicker of pride at the shock — then I was already moving, racing to Volcanon's next predicted position and summoning another cannon.
THOOM—
······.
BOOM—
Another direct hit on Volcanon's head.
Of course it was. I had practiced this countless times. I had cleared it countless times.
To me it was routine. To the chat, every single hit was another wall of question marks and disbelief.
I kept going — summon cannon, fire at the predicted point, hit — for roughly forty minutes straight. Not a single miss. Perfect timing, every shell landing squarely on Volcanon's head.
It was a clear strategy I had twisted my entire body around finding as a Fallen Warrior, a class that wasn't supposed to be capable of ultra-long-range attacks at all.
GRRAAAAAAAAHH!!—
With an ear-splitting cry, Volcanon's health finally bottomed out. Its corpse plummeted, lifeless.
BOOM—
The impact of that enormous body hitting the ground sent a tremor rolling through the earth.
I hurried to reclaim the seventy-plus cannons I'd scattered, then claimed the boss rewards.
···I had no idea why sexually harassing comments still showed up even in a moment like this, but beneath it all a quiet pride swelled in my chest at the crowd's reaction.
It had been an ordinary gaming session by my standards, and yet I was completely drained.
—Thud.
After checking several times that the stream had actually ended, I collapsed onto the bed and let out a long breath. As my locked-up body finally loosened, I felt the tension that had been coating every inch of me slip away with the exhale.
I brought the phone in my hand up in front of my face.
Donation Total
$250
"···Whoa."
That was enormous.
Stream time: just four hours. Pulling in that kind of money in four hours with barely any effort made all the grinding I'd done to earn money before feel a little hollow.
···Then a message arrived from Seol Eun.
······.
I started another message, then deleted it.
···No. Better to send it after all.
Seol Eun hit me with that out of nowhere.
Flustered, I set the phone on the pillow and nudged it away with my fingertips. We'd already done everything there was to do together, and still — every time she said something like that, my heart raced.
···She really did like me, didn't she.
My romantic instincts had never once activated in my entire life, but I wasn't so oblivious that I couldn't see this. And I liked her too. She had reminded me of a warmth that had felt erased from my life.
But the moment I rediscovered that warmth, I also felt the buried cold rising with it.
The uneasy thought: if Seol Eun ever left my side, would I be able to forget her warmth all over again and keep living?
Maybe it hurt less to stay frostbitten — feeling nothing at all.
Once before, a single freeze in my past had made me turn my back on the real world and sink into the internet. I was certain of this much: after her warmth melted my heart all the way through, if she left and that heart went cold again...
It wouldn't even manage to freeze. It would shatter past any hope of repair.
I couldn't promise what would become of me then.
···I'd finally found the reason behind that strange feeling I'd had for a while — liking her and, at the same time, holding her at a distance.
No. I'd suspected it from the start. I'd just worked hard not to look at it.
······I never wanted to lose someone precious again.
If that was the alternative, it was better never to make anyone precious in the first place.
Even as the affection grew, I couldn't let myself like her freely — and the ache of that settled sharp in my chest.
I picked up the phone again.
I opened Seol Eun's profile and scrolled through her pictures. Those jewel-like blue eyes. That cool, cynical beauty I could look at forever without getting tired of it. Most of the photos showed the same haughty blank expression — but in my head, what rose instead was the contrast of her wide-open smile.
······.
I liked her, and I was afraid.
Afraid of the fact that she was slowly thawing my heart.
To settle my restless mood, I headed for the convenience store.
I stopped at the crosswalk and checked my phone. A title in the Recommended Videos tab caught my eye.
Seventy-three thousand views. It must have gone up a little while after I'd ended the stream. I tapped the fifty-minute video.
There was the game screen from when I'd been live.
···I opened the comments.
People had timestamped their favorite moments and written out exactly where they'd lost their minds.
I read a few of the top comments as I walked, and before I knew it I'd reached the convenience store in front of my building.
Ding-a-ling—
The moment I stepped inside, my eyes met those of a woman who carried a strangely distinctive air.
Violet eyes, and blue hair that deepened toward indigo at the roots. Something unwanted and magnetic tugged at me from her gaze.
She had her hands completely buried in the sleeves of a black long padding coat, a hood pulled up, and those purple eyes locked steadily on mine. At a glance it almost felt like a glare — but looking closer, she seemed to be studying me carefully.
Uncomfortable, I looked away and turned down the aisle to grab snacks in a hurry.
Rustle—
The sound of padding fabric kept following my movements from behind. I glanced at the security mirror in the corner and saw her trailing after me.
I had no idea why she kept following me, but I decided to ignore it. I didn't want trouble.
I did my best to ignore her while picking out chips — and somehow, despite that decision, my eyes kept getting pulled back to her. I snuck look after look. She watched me back without the slightest reaction.
How to put it... She had the same quality as a stray cat you run into on the street — the kind that snatches your attention whole. That blank yet curiosity-bright expression. Features that managed to be both cute and sharp at once. The more I looked, the more she resembled a cat.
···It was a little — no, more than a little — overwhelming.
I desperately shook off her blatant stare and grabbed random bags of snacks as fast as I could. She followed me all the way to the register.
I paid in a rush, said a quick thanks to the clerk, hugged the snacks to my chest, and hurried out of the store.
"Mm, do you not have the grape flavor?"
Fortunately she seemed to have stopped at the display in front of the counter to buy some kind of jelly, and wasn't coming after me. Feeling her strangely familiar voice fade behind me, I walked quickly back to the crosswalk I'd just crossed.
"Haa..."
I glanced over my shoulder for no good reason. Of course she wasn't following me.
I really am... ridiculously jumpy for no reason...
I caught my breath and opened the streaming app on my phone again.
You ranked #1 in morning viewership!
The second the app opened, a huge message dominated the main screen.
"Oh······."
···So they do that. Kind of cool.
"Mm. I was right. Dark Warrior."
Out of nowhere, a woman's voice — cute and seductive all at once — spoke from right behind me.
I turned toward the sound, and the owner of the voice casually linked her arm through mine like we were old friends. A move designed to keep me from running.
Arm locked with mine, she popped a jelly thick with grape scent into her mouth and beamed up at me. It was the same woman from the convenience store — deep indigo hair, violet eyes — the one who'd stared at me so uncomfortably.
"······??"
I stared at her.
"Huh? You still don't recognize me from the voice?"
She tilted her head at me like a cat.
Strange. The voice had been eerily familiar from the start, and yet I couldn't place it at all···.
······.
I love grapes. If it smells like grapes, I love it.
I'll do a crying sound for a reaction~ Myaau~
In an instant, memory unfolded like lightning splitting my skull.
My voice shook as I forced the words out.
"······Myo... MyoMyau···?"
She stopped laughing and looked straight at me, only a faint smile left on her lips.
"You finally remember? That's a little hurtful, you know...?"
I had left a large, loud trail of footprints across the internet. And standing in front of me now was one of the people who'd been there for it — a witness to that entire path.
The beastkin-cat-concept VTuber, MyoMyau, had come to find me.