The Arm-Wrestling Scandal
While I was sprawled out in a deep, coma-like sleep—as if finally releasing all the pent-up exhaustion from my hero days when proper rest had been a luxury—my phone started ringing. It was Park Naeun. She had come up to Seoul for the university orientation but headed back to her hometown that morning.
“Hey, Naeun. Did you get home okay?”
“Yep, yep! I’m surrounded by apples right now, so I’m super happy and arrived safely!”
A few days ago she had received an Apple phone as a prize from the arm-wrestling competition, and the laptop I gave her as a gift turned out to be an Apple laptop too. Without meaning to, I had apparently presented her with a complete Apple set.
“But Jin-nim. What does an Apple phone have to do with arriving home safely?”
I have no idea. I really don’t.
I couldn’t come up with a proper answer for Seria’s question. Just what was an “Apple phone” to a female college student, anyway? Even after taking multiple marketing courses, I still didn’t get it. Did owning one grant some kind of powerful buff?
“I’m using everything oppa gave me really well. But… is it seriously okay for me to accept all this?”
She had been thrilled when she took the gifts, but now that she had them in hand, it seemed the weight of them was starting to feel burdensome.
“It’s fine. I wasn’t going to use them anyway. Better that someone who actually needs them has them.”
“Then I’ll think of them as presents from my future brother-in-law and cherish them! Thank you, brother-in-law!”
“Uh… yeah. Sure. Use them well.”
The word “brother-in-law” felt a little unfamiliar, but it carried a surprisingly pleasant ring.
“I’m coming down to Seoul again next week, so I’ll buy you tons of delicious food then! Mom gave me a ton of allowance and told me to treat you because she’s so grateful to oppa.”
“You’re coming down again next week?”
“It’s Saeteo next week. Aren’t you going, oppa?”
Saeteo—the freshman orientation retreat. It was a department event where new students, current students, and professors spent one night and two days together to build friendships. Student council members and club upperclassmen usually attended to guide the freshmen, while some returning students who knew nothing about campus life showed up hoping to spark a romance with their juniors.
I had participated in Saeteo after returning from the military, but nothing interesting happened. I just ran errands like a dog and came back exhausted. Naturally, I had zero plans to attend this year.
“I’m not going.”
“Aww, that’s too bad. It would’ve been nice if oppa came too.”
“Have fun at Saeteo. Get close to whoever ends up in your group. You’ll be seeing a lot of them for a while.”
“I hope I’m in the same group as Soyeon.”
I didn’t know who Soyeon was, but it was surprising that she already had a friend she referred to by name. Is that the girl from the photo I saw last time?
Even though I had only seen her in a single picture, her face was unforgettable. If you ignored her expressionless aura, she was so beautiful you would believe it if someone said she was an idol or an actress. I actually felt a little envious of the freshmen who got to take classes with a girl that pretty.
We chatted about light, random things until Park Naeun suddenly spoke as if she had just remembered something important.
“Oh, right! Oppa, did you see? The internet is exploding over the arm-wrestling competition being rigged!”
“The arm-wrestling competition was rigged?”
“Yes! I’ll send you the link right now.”
“Hmm…”
I thought back to the arm-wrestling competition from a few days ago. My opponent had spoken as if my ten years of training had been completely pointless. My original plan had been to compete using only pure physical strength, without any Sex Power. But the moment he said that, it felt like my entire decade as a hero was being denied. Before I knew it, I had unconsciously poured in Sex Power and crushed him so overwhelmingly it looked like I was toying with him.
In the end the whole venue turned into a complete mess, and we grabbed our prizes and fled like we were escaping a crime scene.
Maybe I went a little too far?
It was like a group of ordinary humans holding a tournament to decide the strongest fighter in the world, only for a blond alien to suddenly crash the party.
After hanging up with Naeun, I clicked the link she sent. The page contained a post laying out evidence that the arm-wrestling competition had been rigged. Among the various points, the most damning piece of evidence was this:
The arm-wrestling ranker had been straining with all his might, yet I—the opponent—wore a relaxed expression and didn’t seem to be exerting any force at all. Even as the person in question, the post was written so meticulously that I could see why people would think it was staged.
Thanks to that, the YouTuber who had hosted the event appeared to be in serious trouble.
What am I supposed to do about this?
I wanted to help by saying it wasn’t rigged, but there was no way to do so. I had given them my number before the competition started, but the lack of contact meant they didn’t need my assistance.
“Um, Jin-nim. Could this be the number in question?”
“What? Why is it blocked?”
“Did you not instruct me to block all calls from unknown numbers?”
“………”
Now that she mentioned it, I had. There had been so many spam calls that I’d snapped and told her to block them all in a fit of irritation. The spirit living in my smartphone had carried out the order with perfect, unnecessary diligence.
“You really are good at doing pointless things.”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
I lifted the block and dialed Han Gaeul, the YouTuber with one hundred thousand subscribers.
“Everyone, you can see the footage here, right? The so-called ‘player’ is obviously putting his full strength into it, yet the opponent isn’t applying any force at all. This is definitely not because he’s tired or made a mistake.”
“Even if being an arm-wrestling athlete might not seem impressive, ordinary people couldn’t win against dozens of them no matter how many you brought. So why would he do something so obvious even an idiot would notice?”
“The most malicious part is that they packaged this event like some kind of donation drive. People participated with good intentions, not knowing it was rigged. How do you think those people feel after handing over their participation fees for nothing? If the entry fees were the goal, they should have rigged it near the end of the tournament, not at the beginning—but they didn’t say a single word about that.”
“Let me repeat: this is clearly a fraudulent manipulation. The Arm-Wrestling Association cannot stay silent. They must take active measures, such as permanently banning the player who used arm-wrestling to commit fraud.”
“This has been IssueReka.”
“Aaaaaagh! How the hell did it come to this!”
Han Gaeul, the YouTuber with one hundred thousand subscribers, screamed at the top of her lungs and thrashed around her room like a child throwing a tantrum.
Originally she had been a solo streamer on Toichi TV who mainly played variety games. But things hadn’t gone as well as she hoped, and after she turned down a popular streamer named Pressel—who had promised to promote her channel if she dated him—he began harassing her and sabotaging her streams in every possible way.
In the end she gave up on Toichi TV and started occasionally uploading the fitness videos she had always enjoyed on Neotube. Then, out of nowhere, the algorithm blessed her. A short clip of her doing squats in leggings exploded in views.
Thanks to that one video, her channel—which had barely reached ten thousand subscribers—shot straight up to one hundred thousand. The problems, however, were that viewers rarely watched long-form content and only consumed the low-revenue Shorts, and that the vast majority of those one hundred thousand subscribers were foreigners rather than Koreans.
As a result, her revenue was disproportionately low compared to her subscriber count, and with so few Korean viewers it was nearly impossible to land sponsorships. That was why she had organized the arm-wrestling competition to celebrate hitting one hundred thousand subscribers—to attract more Korean fans.
She had planned to add her own money to the participation fees and donate everything, along with an Apple phone, to an orphanage. Volunteering there would improve her image and let her claim a tax deduction. She had thought it was a pretty solid plan.
At least until the player she trusted lost in the most pathetic way possible.
I trusted him… I trusted him!!!
Nam Seok-jin, the arm-wrestling ranker who had boasted he could beat anyone except fellow professionals no matter how many showed up, had lost to a guy who looked completely ordinary. Even then she hadn’t been too worried. The event was ruined, sure, but she could always hold another one.
What she never expected was for the incident to spread across every forum and blow up into a full-blown donation scam controversy.
In truth, it shouldn’t have escalated this badly. Having few Korean subscribers ironically meant that trouble in Korea usually didn’t affect her much. Yet the reason it had ignited so fiercely was simple: IssueReka—a cyber wrecker YouTuber with hundreds of thousands of followers—had uploaded a video declaring the entire competition had been rigged.
The moment the video went live, every site on the internet was flooded with the story as if they had all been waiting for it.
Han Gaeul watched the video again—the same one she had already seen multiple times—completely dumbfounded.
She wanted to refute it, but the more she watched, the less confidence she had. The winner had vanished without a trace, and her calls to the number he had given her went straight to voicemail. He had apparently blocked her.
“Should I just go dark until this all dies down?”
Since most of her subscribers were foreigners, the subscriber count itself probably wouldn’t change much. In fact, even as the controversy spread like wildfire, her follower count remained steady at one hundred thousand. Strangely, the troublemakers who came to stir drama had actually subscribed, causing a slight increase rather than a drop.
Still, once a “donation scam” label stuck to her, it would follow her until the day she quit streaming. She had to clear her name somehow, but the only person who could explain what really happened was unreachable.
She was just considering borrowing someone else’s phone to beg him for help when her own phone suddenly rang.
“Ugh, my head is killing me. Who the hell is it now?”
Han Gaeul glanced at the screen and the moment she saw the number, she snatched up the phone and answered without hesitation.