The Professional Streamer

So Rihwa carefully stepped into the virtual reality capsule, the Another V12, and lay down. Installed inside was the Royal Commando game chip gifted to her by Jo Meohyeop.

The interior was plush with high-grade memory foam. Reaching to the side, she pressed the button to close the capsule hatch. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she was standing in virtual reality.

It was her very first VR experience. Her initial surroundings consisted of an endless void of pitch-black darkness, with So Rihwa standing completely alone in the center. It seemed this was the lobby where players selected and launched their games.

Right before her eyes, an icon for Royal Commando hovered like a shimmering hologram. Touching it would undoubtedly log her into the game.

“Oh, ooh…!”

So Rihwa turned her hands over, marveling at the sight. She moved her arms and legs, stunned by how natural it felt. There was not the slightest trace of lag or dissonance. Just to test the waters, she executed a rapid sequence of the Crushing Ice Extreme Strike followed by the Profound Wind Shadow-Flash Kick.

Though the limbs she swung were slender and fair, the whipping gusts and sharp cracks tearing through the air carried lethal momentum. After cycling through each martial stance, So Rihwa nodded in deep satisfaction.

“Now this is what I’m talking about.”

To be frank, she had been itching for action ever since mastering her martial arts, frustrated by the lack of anywhere in the modern world to actually unleash them. Using them inside virtual reality felt like the absolute perfect outlet. Who could have guessed that merely standing in the lobby without even launching a game would be this exhilarating?

Her body thoroughly warmed up, So Rihwa stepped toward the Royal Commando icon and reached out. The moment her fingertips brushed its surface, concentric ripples cascaded across the hologram, followed by a sudden sensation of being pulled into a vortex.

Bang! Bang!

Having squeezed her eyes shut against the fierce rush, So Rihwa blinked them open at the booming sound of firecrackers. Looking up, she saw bursts of dazzling fireworks lighting up the sky.

A grand crimson carpet unrolled beneath her feet with a flourish alongside the welcome banner. It seemed first-time players were automatically greeted with this celebratory fanfare. The pitch-black void had vanished, replaced in every direction by the sprawling, gritty universe of Royal Commando.

Towering industrial smokestacks belched plumes thick with raw mana, the crackle of burning timber echoed in the distance, and abandoned rifles, blades, and heavy munitions lay scattered across the ground. She could even feel the crisp brush of the wind against her cheeks.

“…Whoa.”

So Rihwa let out a soft breath of awe as she took in the vista.

Judging by the name alone, one might expect Royal Commando to be a grounded military FPS overrun by assault rifles and frag grenades, but it was actually a hyper-FPS where every character wielded unique abilities and internal mana. The setting itself was not contemporary, but a near-future sci-fi dystopia. Even though this was her very first time logging in, it was impossible for her not to be familiar with it, considering virtually every streamer on Ogogok had played it at least once.

Yellow holographic lettering pulsed invitingly above a military barracks just ahead. So Rihwa refrained from walking in, glancing instead toward the floating interface menu beside her. Tabs for Social, Skins, Achievements, and Settings hung in the air, with a glowing red indicator shining beside 'Social'.

Tapping the Social tab brought up an alert window. Once she confirmed it, the username and BattleTag of the sender appeared on screen.

She recalled the text message Jo Meohyeop had sent her earlier. Both the handle and tag matched perfectly. After all, who else would send a friend request to an account created mere minutes ago?

After pressing accept and closing the social window, she shut her eyes and murmured, “Log off.”

With those words, a steady clicking sound resonated around her like ticking clockwork. Exactly after the fifth click, So Rihwa opened her eyes back in the physical world.

With a soft hiss of released air, the memory foam seat relaxed back into its resting state, and the capsule hatch slid open automatically.

She had only logged in for a moment because Jo Meohyeop had asked her to verify that Royal Commando booted properly. In truth, she had wanted to run through the tutorial and tinker with the keybinds and settings, but Jo Meohyeop had explicitly instructed her not to touch a single thing beforehand.

Stepping out of the capsule and unlocking her smartphone, she saw a message waiting from him.

So Rihwa glanced at the wall clock. It was 6:30 PM. According to Jo Meohyeop’s advance community notice, his broadcast would kick off at 7:00 PM sharp. He planned to spend about thirty minutes shooting the breeze and watching viewer video donations before diving into the main segment. That meant her appearance was scheduled for 7:30 PM—leaving her with exactly one hour.

So Rihwa rested a trembling hand over her petite chest and drew a long, deep breath. Though it was her own flesh and blood now, the soft, supple sensation still caught her off guard whenever she touched it.

She opened the fan cafe app once more to recheck the post. He hadn't written a single word about collaborating with Wadeulwadeul. Was this the seasoned entertainer's secret technique for whipping the audience's anticipation into a frenzy?

As expected, the comments couldn't even begin to deduce who the guest was. Jo Meohyeop was famously dubbed the 'isolated island' of Ogogok due to how rarely he invited other creators onto his channel. When he did participate in collaborative content, it was almost exclusively at agency events or platform-wide tournaments. For someone like him to host a private guest appearance, immense curiosity was only natural.

Browsing the fan cafe with nervous butterflies fluttering in her gut made the time fly by. In the blink of an eye, seven o'clock arrived.

Right on the dot at 7:00 PM, Jo Meohyeop went live. The moment the feed flickered on, viewers surged into the channel like an incoming tidal wave.

The chat fired past at a speed far too blinding to read. Such was the raw stature of Jo Meohyeop.

Nearly three thousand viewers piled into the room the second the stream opened. For his main evening content, his concurrent viewership regularly hovered between five and seven thousand. Only now did it truly dawn on So Rihwa that she was about to step out before this gargantuan crowd.

“…Should I tell him I can’t do it, even now?”

Her cowardly, beta-male instincts from her past life had rear their ugly head at last. Regardless of how peerless her internal cultivation had become, her innate personality was not something that transformed overnight.

To tell the truth, even her romantic yearning to transmigrate into the martial realm and become a righteous hero of the Jianghu ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was little more than a wide-eyed fantasy born of admiring those greater than herself. Her true self was light-years removed from the dashing protagonists of wuxia epics. She possessed neither a burning appetite for danger nor grand, sweeping bravado—after all, even after mastering supreme martial arts, hadn't she spent her days gluing doll eyes together before losing her entire life savings on stocks?

“Fuuuuck…”

So Rihwa threw herself face-down onto her mattress. Even this bed was something scavenged off the curbside; someone in the neighborhood had stickered it for bulky municipal waste disposal, and she had stealthily peeled off the paid disposal sticker before dragging the mattress up to her apartment.

“Who’s the guest today? You’ll see when the time comes, guys. Just hang tight for thirty minutes.”

Jo Meohyeop’s vibrant, excited voice drifted from her smartphone speakers. He had repeatedly insisted this collaboration was guaranteed to be pure gold. Was that why he sounded so genuinely pumped? The more his palpable hype radiated across the stream, the heavier the suffocating pressure weighed on So Rihwa’s shoulders.

“We’re playing Royal Commando tonight. Honestly, nothing else even comes close to this game lately.”

So Rihwa gradually began getting herself ready. 'Getting ready' amounted to nothing more than sitting at her battered desk with her computer headset pulled over her ears. Once his Discord call rang through, all she had to do was click answer.

“Whew, finished my iced coffee. Time to close down the video donations.”

A chorus of mock outrage immediately flooded the chat at the announcement, but it was just their routine, scripted WWE-style banter. Deep down, not a single viewer wasn't dying to find out who was waiting in the wings for Part 1.

“Moving right along to our Part 1 guest segment! Ba-dum-tss! First, let me slip into the VR capsule.”

Jo Meohyeop took a brief moment to adjust his broadcasting scene. Seconds later, his stream display synchronized directly with the virtual reality capsule. The greatest draw of broadcasting via VR capsules was that the audience could share the exact perspective experienced by the streamer in pristine real-time.

The chat descended into a free-for-all as viewers shouted out their favorite character picks. Naturally, their burning curiosity regarding the mystery guest never cooled for an instant.

“Shall we slooowly invite our guest in, then?”

Jo Meohyeop grinned with a mischievous smirk. Viewers reacted on cue to his blatant stalling tactics.

“Alright, alright! I’m calling them in, stop yelling!”

Jo Meohyeop chuckled, pacifying his rowdy audience. It was time for So Rihwa ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to shut down her phone and step back into the capsule.

She took another slow, centering breath before climbing inside. The moment she reclined against the padding, the plush cushions contoured smoothly to her frame, and the hatch sealed itself shut.

Even within the virtual reality capsule, text chat was fully operational. While voice comms were the standard method of communication in-game, there were always players who preferred not to use their microphones.

“Alright, I'm really messaging them now.”

Jo Meohyeop spoke aloud to his stream as he brought up the in-game messenger.

Only seconds after he sent the text, a reply popped up on his display.

The identity of the guest was finally unmasked right before the eyes of thousands. With hundreds of question marks cascading down his stream chat like a torrential downpour, Jo Meohyeop announced with absolute casualness:

“Now then! Today’s guest of honor is none other than the lucky soul who recently won our Another V12 grand raffle: Wadeulwadeul-nim!”

The stream chat fractured instantly down the middle. One side reacted with open hostility toward Wadeulwadeul. Given that Wadeulwadeul had acted like an obsessive roleplayer with bizarre donation messages, it was only natural some viewed the guest with disgust.

The opposing camp pushed back with equal ferocity. This faction sympathized deeply with Wadeulwadeul, having seen the photo and story posted on the fan cafe.

Naturally, not all viewers were enrolled in the community cafe. In truth, the vast majority simply watched the live streams without ever touching forum boards.

When an audience splits so sharply, an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all-out civil war is inevitable. Within seconds, the chat feed devolved into total mayhem.

“Guys, chill out for a second. Stop tearing each other apart.”

Yet Jo Meohyeop spoke with absolute calm. In reality, he didn't care in the slightest that the chat was on fire.

A whisper popped up from Wadeulwadeul. She was clearly monitoring the stream chat as well. The VR capsule was top-tier hardware; projecting an internet window to watch the live stream was effortless.

“Quiet down, everyone. Let’s all look at one thing together.”

A web browser popped onto Jo Meohyeop’s display—a holographic screen projected inside the capsule that was simultaneously mirrored to the broadcast viewers.

What Jo Meohyeop pulled up was Wadeulwadeul’s proof-of-delivery verification post for the V12. For viewers who never visited the cafe, this was their first glimpse of it.

Jo Meohyeop went a step further, zooming directly into the background of the photo Wadeulwadeul had uploaded. The moment the dilapidated, squalid room resembling a crumbling ruin filled the screen, the turbulent chat began to waver.

“Look at this, guys. You see that background?”

Jo Meohyeop began speaking, his voice laced with heavy, earnest sorrow.

“I looked into it, and our friend Wadeulwadeul here has been enduring a seriously tough life. Yet even in that situation, they scraped together what little money they had to send me donations here and there. Honestly, isn't it a creator's duty to look after a true, dedicated fan like this? We're doing this collab so we can review the V12 together.”

Jo Meohyeop was a consummate professional entertainer. Watching him silently from inside her capsule, So Rihwa was genuinely awestruck.

Miraculously, that single post flipped the court of public opinion on its head, swinging the entire tide of the chat into Wadeulwadeul’s corner.

“Yeah, you guys are the bad guys. Getting all jealous because a friend having such a rough time won a raffle prize, throwing hate just because of a collab... Where is your humanity, seriously?”

Jo Meohyeop cackled gleefully, mercilessly roasting his audience. In truth, it had been an entirely natural reaction for viewers who knew nothing of Wadeulwadeul’s circumstances, but Jo Meohyeop couldn't care less. It made for infinitely spicier entertainment. Withholding the truth from the start was all part of brewing high-stakes drama.

Watching the two of them chat via text, viewers voiced their natural skepticism. It was a fair question; if voice chat was available, jumping straight into voice would have been far simpler.

Yet even this had been meticulously orchestrated by Jo Meohyeop—the final, devastating hammer blow designed to shatter the chat's expectations and seal the narrative.

“…Ah, testing. Can you hear me?”

A slender, delicate feminine voice drifted over the stream audio—a sound practically unheard of on Jo Meohyeop’s broadcast. The entire audience suffered instantaneous cognitive dissonance.

Checking the chat in real time as it ground to a disbelieving halt, Jo Meohyeop smoothly carried the beat forward.

“Yes, I hear you loud and clear. Wadeulwadeul-nim? Would you like to say hello to the stream?”

“Ah, yes. Hello, everyone. I’m Wadeulwadeul.”

With those words, the chat room erupted into pure, unadulterated madness.