The Anonymous Arena
Human nature in this three-day world is a truly vicious species that takes pleasure in slandering and tearing others down. Whether to bask in relative superiority by belittling someone else, to simply vent some stale emotion, or to feel pleasure at the sight of another person’s pain, people grant themselves moral absolution with thoughts like “That person deserves the hate,” then unleash their sadism and discharge their feelings without any responsibility. They don’t care what suffering the victim endures in the process. “It’s not just me doing it,” “Someone else did worse,” “And that bitch (or bastard) deserves it anyway.”
Paradoxically, this ugly, inherent human sadism sometimes helps maintain social order. Because no one knows when the gun barrel might swing toward them, people avoid actions that could draw public condemnation. It boils down to a simple thought: “Anyone can get dragged, so don’t do anything that’ll get you dragged.” In today’s world, even good deeds can be twisted into excuses for past misdeeds, making the principle even stronger. Modern society has its own kind of order, but the small yet vast world inside the monitor—the internet—worked differently.
Here, people don’t know each other. Hiding behind nicknames and never seeing faces, the line between good and evil loses all meaning. If a user feels good, they do good things; if they feel bad, they do bad things. In this age of hatred, the latter happened far more often, so revisions to internet-related laws became inevitable. So, did the internet become cleaner? Not really. There are simply too many idiots in the world who can’t be controlled by law, so the online world remained an absolute mess. Considering how many criminals in real life break or exploit the law, it was only natural. Most of them crossed the line without even realizing what they were doing, though a few tried to be clever by using VPNs to strengthen their anonymity. Still, once the government started cracking down, the chaos began to settle. Even if people wanted to vent and enjoy themselves, most weren’t deranged enough to risk their entire lives over it.
Instead, a single trash can was born—the anonymous community, commonly called the gallery. A site that took the already-anonymous internet and cranked the anonymity up even further. What would happen there was obvious: a lawless zone, or perhaps an arena, where people hurled insults at one another and fights never stopped. Anyone who spoke politely or kindly was treated like an idiot. It was truly a one-eyed world.
Minji called it a battlefield, a dueling ground. She referred to herself as a warrior who lived there and thrived in that atmosphere. Once she started streaming, the frequency dropped, but she still made time to visit now and then, so it was fair to call it a kind of hometown.
Anyway, in this dueling ground that was practically paradise for Minji, a new source of entertainment appeared. A user named Seongbing had opened a fresh arena for the bored warriors. Tired of fighting each other whenever they got bored and running out of fresh bait, the warriors of the arena thanked Seongbing for providing a new playground—well, they didn’t actually thank him—and began fighting with great enthusiasm.
Whether the claim was true or false didn’t really matter. What these people needed was something fun to kill their boredom. Even though the exposé was nothing more than an unproven suspicion, people began tearing Yeoru apart. After all, it was more entertaining that way. If it turned out to be just aggro, the ending would be so hollow. Yeoru’s real fans and Yeoru herself must have been stunned, but that was simply how communities worked. The only ways to turn the tide were to wait until everyone got bored or to shift their attention elsewhere.
So that’s exactly what Minji did. She knew these people’s habits better than anyone. She understood that a long-winded, pretentious rebuttal or explanation wouldn’t work—turning the target into an even bigger piece of trash than the suspicion surrounding Yeoru would solve everything. And so she did. She turned Seongbing into a legendary piece of garbage and placed him on the same target board. Well, to be precise, Seongbing really was trash, so it was more like revealing the truth than fabricating it.
The result was relatively simple. What had been one-sided attacks on Yeoru suddenly became mutual, vicious biting between both Yeoru and Seongbing. Since no clear conclusion favored either side, everyone assumed the stalemate would continue until Seongna changed her mind and released the file or the file’s original owner appeared. But then—
Apparently Seongbing knew far too little about how communities actually worked. Foolishly, Kim Juwon chose to respond with facts instead of incitement and fabrication—the worst possible move in Korea’s shadowy communities. Especially since community idiots loved demanding proof of non-existence from the person at the center of the controversy.
Seongbing’s explanation post, which simply repeated that it wasn’t true without providing any clear evidence, only became fresh bait. From Seongbing’s perspective, it must have been infuriating. “I didn’t even know she was a girl! I never saw her turn on her mic, so how was I supposed to know she was a girl and confess?”
Of course, unproven facts meant nothing to these people. Most community users operated on the simple principle of “What? That person’s a bad guy? Trample them!”—creatures with ape-level brains soaked in sadism. In front of these beasts, the silent Yeoru was far less appetizing than the vividly reacting, real-time Seongbing.
In that sense, Seongbing had made a massive mistake. The old saying that staying still would at least get you halfway proved true; the more explanation posts Seongbing wrote, the more public opinion turned against him. He had mistaken the people who were all busy insulting Yeoru for being on his side. To them, both Seongbing and Yeoru were nothing more than entertainment, and Seongbing was paying a rather steep price for his misunderstanding. A normal person would have stopped at this point, but unfortunately Seongbing lacked the intelligence to do so.
“Hwalyeopsu, Yeopsu… I only need you. Please, just answer my messages…”
He was a former guildmate who had once raided with Seongbing and was now the owner of the [Idiot] file Seongbing desperately needed. Seongna that bitch definitely got the file from Yeopsu. There’s no one else… If I can just prove the file exists, I can turn everything around…!
It was a sight Minji would have found truly pathetic. How could that idiot so shamelessly reach out to the very people he had pushed away and expect help? And not even in a desperate plea, but with the attitude that receiving help was only natural. That nasty mindset—had it finally brought divine punishment?
“Fuck!!”
——
“Well… there was that unpleasant incident, and Seongna’s health isn’t great either. Let’s just wrap it up here for today.”
“Yeah, that’s probably best. I can’t focus anyway… Sigh, what kind of bolt from the blue was this?”
On the second day since Bolekia’s release, Naise Squad’s raid ended without making any real progress. In-game, the difficulty of the third gate Bolekia was still ridiculously high, and externally—
“I’m sorry…”
Because Seongna, the core member who formed a double-headed carriage with Baek Ryong-gak in the raid, had been unable to show her usual skill.
“No, why are you apologizing? It’s not your fault.”
“Mm… still, I feel like I should say something. Anyway, I’m sorry.”
Minji was the kind of person who rarely felt regret in life. It was partly her philosophy that she had to take responsibility for her own choices, and partly because she lived her life so recklessly. Still, if she had even a shred of conscience left, it was the principle of not causing trouble for the people around her just to satisfy her own fun. Of course, “people around her” here meant only those Minji considered friends—specifically, Naise Squad.
The damage Naise Squad suffered from this incident was the loss of one day’s progress, meaning they would have to tackle the raid one day behind everyone else. It still looked fine since their lead was overwhelming, but when she thought about how some other raids had already cleared the second gate today… well. Considering the difficulty of the third gate, they might not be able to hold the lead anymore. There could even be casual raids progressing faster than them.
When she thought about it that way, she realized she had caused quite a bit of trouble for the raid. She got pissed because that Seongbing bastard was acting up and ended up doing that without thinking, but… this was a huge nuisance to the raid. Then again, he was the one who picked a fight with her first, so she had no obligation to just sit there and take it, right?
A fierce internal debate raged inside Minji’s head. Various possibilities clashed, each insisting it was the right choice. Even after all the raid members had gone to bed and she had ended her stream, Minji’s restless thoughts refused to stop. Seongbing had achieved the great feat of not only uniting the community but also making Minji agonize for a full three hours.
Beep—
Well, as usual for this girl, Minji’s worries were shattered by an alarm that rang in the middle of the night.
“Huh?”
At the completely unexpected DM, Minji’s restless thoughts took a different turn. Hwalyeopsu… Hwalyeopsu… Who was that again? The name sounded familiar… Ah, right. Wasn’t that the owner of the file? The idiot? Anyway, the person who had sent it to her.
Why was this person contacting her now? Obviously because of the file, right? Because she deleted it on her own? Or because she lied and said she never received it? Maybe they were trying to blackmail her. Right now, both her and Yeoru’s lives were in this person’s hands. That sounded kind of weird. It was like suddenly becoming the girl in front of a hypnosis app or something.
If Hwalyeopsu himself had heard this, he would have been speechless. Accusing someone you’ve barely met—well, not exactly met—of being a blackmailer right off the bat.
Of course, the purpose of the contact really was the file. So Minji had assumed Hwalyeopsu was going to demand money in exchange for keeping it secret.
Huh, this was an unexpected development.
Hmm. Seongbing wasn’t exactly in a position to criticize anyone’s skill. In the first place, everyone there was at a similar level. Who had the right to insult whom? Still, she listened.
Wow, he was scarier than he looked. Though Seongbing had gone and self-destructed all on his own. His stream was also a complete snoozefest.
Well, she could roughly guess the reason. Exposing someone always carried risk. Even if you could socially destroy the other person, the one who exposed them would also face legal consequences. It was a kind of self-destruct technique. If your hatred for the other person was weaker than your care for yourself, you would hesitate. But then—
This was a reason she truly hadn’t expected.
Either way, it was a request she had no reason to refuse. The existence of the file was bothersome not only to Yeoru but to her as well, and since the original owner was asking her to keep it hidden forever, she had no reason to refuse.
What? You’re my viewer?
Knowing he was her viewer made her feel a bit more trusting.
It was a somewhat unsatisfying ending, but it wasn’t bad. Freed from the risk, Minji savored the sense of liberation as she flopped onto her bed. She had wasted energy on something completely pointless, so now it was time to focus entirely on Bolekia.
——
Three days after the exposé war between Seongbing and Yeoru began, a post appeared in the community.
Hello everyone, this is Seongbing.
The post, which began with a single sentence saying he would confess his sins, contained an admission that there had been no relationship between him and Yeoru, and that he had spread false information out of jealousy toward a successful junior. In reality, it was nothing more than a forced damage-control measure after receiving a lawsuit notice and agreeing to settle. Well, it wasn’t something other people needed to worry about.
Once the incident was concluded with one side’s unilateral fault, the community users who had been happily biting and tearing gradually lost interest as well. Thus, the Seongbing-Yeoru controversy came to an end in just three days. In truth, it wasn’t the kind of bait that should have ended so quickly, but some crazy girl had stepped in and put out all the flames. The actual crazy girl herself was probably thinking, “What? Why did it die down already?” with regret.