Collab Stream
After one round of purges.
"So, they want to collab?"
I restarted the raid in a hurry, wiping the board clean as I asked.
"I'm not blasting anyone now, so go ahead."
Come on. If I'm the one asking, of course they can say it. Unsolicited cuckooing without my say-so was grounds for a ban, sure—but with permission, that was just a messenger doing their job.
"And you guys came in making this much of a fuss over that?"
I'd thought old man Gangseok had personally called me out or something. Turns out they'd just gotten worked up over a throwaway remark and come running.
"Well, there wasn't really a reason to."
Ratatatat!
As I said it, I sprinted into another player and shredded his legs.
"Ugh, this guy's a scav rat too."
There wasn't a single useful scrap on him, so I slipped just the headset into my bag and took off running again.
"Anyway, your tiers don't even match, right?"
I got wanting to play League together. He surely wasn't talking about normals or solo queue, though—and if it was duo queue, the ranks didn't line up. Wayo was a certified Bronze-to-Plat slaughterer, both main and smurf settled comfortably in Emerald.
"...Excuse me?"
Wasn't that old man Silver? He was already Plat?
"Did he hire some miracle coach or what."
A two-tier jump didn't make sense any other way—unless a newbie had a sudden enlightenment.
Seemed old man Gangseok was the latter case. Then again, from what I'd seen on the big server, his mechanics were solid for his age.
"Don't cross that line."
Still, he wasn't better than me. I drew a hard line, reached the camp spot, and went prone.
"Is there a reason not to love it?"
All you had to do was wait, and players rolled right into your mouth. Players who'd geared up properly for the raid, no less. After sitting through a long queue on an unstable server just to load in, how did it feel to get your legs shredded by a camper?
"Hahh—"
"And camping isn't free, either."
How grueling was waiting, really? Since ancient times, waiting had been a form of ascetic practice.
"Cheaters?"
Ah—come to think of it. I'd heard Raek was a game crawling with cheaters. Supposedly there were scumbags who treated hacks like DLC. I'd just never run into any myself.
"Why would a cheater even target me."
As I said it, I pointed at my loadout. A green infantry pot-lid for camouflage. The cheapest headset in the shop. Armor that was the budget "school uniform," and a gun I'd grabbed off the vendor as a scav special. Every round of ammo was trash, too.
Anyway....
"Ah, so he doesn't play Raek?"
I got that he wanted to duo League. Right now, though, Raek was calling louder. Who cared about League when Raek had just fully released? Honestly, these days Raek was more fun.
"No? What cuckooing."
If a cuckoo flew out of a tiny stream, that room's chat would be absolutely thrilled.
"No need to rush, right?"
I'd take it easy, play Raek today, and if we somehow got in touch later, we could talk then.
"Shh. Incoming."
Attaching the word "opportunity" to a little collab like that? This was the real opportunity.
At the sound of footsteps, I tightened my scope. Any second now….
Thud-thud-thud!!
There. A chonky player waddled into view, so round I almost doubted we were the same species of player.
Ratatatatat!!
The second those soft, squishy legs filled my scope, I squeezed the trigger.
[Bang!... Ughk!]
He reacted, swung his muzzle my way, and fired—but he only clipped my arm by a hair before crumpling.
"Ah, yes-yes-yes!!"
Chonky boy, cut! That whole kit was mine now.
Ahhh, dammit, it was too sweet. This was why I played Raek.
In the end, the first message didn't come from old man Gangseok—it came out of nowhere from Haeganom.
Gangseok had probably asked for my contact through Haeganom. So the cuckoos' fuss in chat hadn't been that much of an exaggeration after all.
Honestly, this kind of request wasn't a first. After the big server event, a few streamers I didn't know had reached out through Haeganom or Yeongukno wanting to collab or get friendly.
I'd turned them all down. But well—didn't I have some history with old man Gangseok?
So I said yes, and before long a message from Gangseok himself came through.
Treating it as business, apparently, he'd sent a long, fairly formal wall of text.
"Hmm."
Boiled down to one line, it was just let's duo League on stream, so I mulled it over for a moment, then….
…sent that back.
A few days after the messages.
"Teacherrr~ how long has it been!"
"Long time no see."
We'd ended up collabing after all. I fired up the stream and traded greetings with old man Gangseok.
"How come you never showed your face even once~?"
"I've been busy lately after a deployment."
"Deployment?"
"Went to Russia."
Deployed into isolated Russia—how fierce had those firefights been.
"Ah, Raek? That one's tough."
For the record, the game we were actually playing was League. I'd tried to bait him into Raek, but he said he was more confident in League. With his rank up recently, his shoulders were riding high.
"If we get the chance later, I'll teach you."
"Oh? You good?"
"I'm a specialist."
"Shall we queue first? Don't want to burn queue time."
Anyway. We'd logged into the game, so the first order of business was queuing up.
IfYouPingIDiveTop
IronHeartStonePalm
"What's wrong with our nicknames?"
They were perfect. Steadfast. Full of steel resolve.
"You really dive if someone pings?"
"Come on, of course not."
"What hell?"
When had I ever thrown a game. I'd always stood firm for the win.
"What's your chat saying over there?"
"Yeah, they're a little mean."
"Oh, really?"
"More importantly. Teacher, you need a lot of ganks?"
Gangseok asked like a proper jungler—though personally I didn't think it was a question that needed asking. Obviously he should abandon his own jungle and come.
"Ganks? Hmm, more is better, right?"
"Haha, I'll come when I see an angle."
I didn't push it further, though. It was less coyness and more of an entrance exam. I needed to figure out his style first. Top and jungle were one organically linked team. To lock that bond in, you needed a few sacrificial games for the fine-tuning.
Yeah. Like that.
"Hmm, we lost?"
"...Ahem. Yeah?"
For the record, this game had put Wayo's specialty on full display. Namely: solo stomping the enemy top so hard he was also 2v1-dribbling their jungler. The problem, if there was one, had come from Gangseok's side.
Every time the enemy top came to my lane, he hadn't secured a real advantage. Hmm. I understood. There was a bit of a tier gap between me and Gangseok. From the old man's perspective, he was facing opponents a full step above him—adaptation wouldn't come easy.
"Ahem. More importantly, Teacher."
The loss stung, but I still thought of it as the tuning phase, so I was about to requeue when—
"I've been watching your streams a bit while resting, you know?"
"Huh?"
Gangseok said it with the awkward tone of someone embarrassed about trolling the last game.
"When you stream alone, there's more of a raw flavor to it."
Apparently it bothered him that my solo streams and collabs were different.
"Still, it's a collab, so…."
"Come on, we're not strangers! Just be comfortable!"
Was this consideration—telling me to collab as streamer Wayo instead of SleepingDragon Teacher from the big server?
"Hmm… really be comfortable?"
"Yeah!"
"For real? Really?"
More than that—if he said be comfortable, was that okay? I felt like I was going to get too comfortable.
"I said it's fine."
"So, like same-age friends?"
"Yeah, like twenty-year ride-or-die buddies!"
He was even telling me to treat him like a friend, past just being comfortable. Oh boy. As a proper young man of the Eastern land of courtesy, I was supposed to show due respect to my elders.
"No taking it back later, okay?"
"No problem~"
When the elder himself was putting it that way, refusing any further would be the real rudeness.
"Ahem… alright then."
So I cleared my throat a little, and spoke exactly as comfortably as if I were talking to a friend.
"You bastard, you play farm-heavy jungle one more time and you're dead."
"...?"
"What counterjungle. Every time you put a point in a skill, you sprint top."
Honestly, last game I'd nearly died of frustration. Dude—if you're duoing, the first gank should be top. Huh? Don't go counterjungling, come top first. I'll handle it.