My First Stream?
Click-clack, click-clack...
In the dark, a monitor burned bright, and a girl sat before it.
Outside, a pitch-black night was closing in. This was a room that ought to have been given over to sleep, quiet but for the sound of breathing — and yet the rattle of a keyboard filled it.
As if she would suffer no distraction of any kind, the girl leaned in until she seemed about to be swallowed by the screen, pouring every scrap of focus into the computer.
Click. Clack...
The keyboard's rhythm, ringing through the room, never once let up.
"Hana~"
The moment she arrived for work, Bora stepped into Hana's room, same as always. It was nearly nine, so Hana was surely already awake.
Against every expectation, Hana was still lying in bed, asleep. Odd — she was a child who almost never slept in.
Afraid something might be wrong, Bora went to her. If Hana was sick, they would need the clinic inside the building, and quickly. But a hand to the girl's forehead found nothing amiss; perhaps she was simply short on sleep. Between the heater and the air conditioner, the room held itself at a perfect temperature on its own, and Hana, who rarely set foot outside, had no reason to catch a cold in weather like this.
"Hana, aren't you getting up?"
Breakfast had to be eaten, and Hana would not rise. Bora's stomach knotted for no good reason. A child in her growing years had to be fed on time — and Bora had come in without eating, so the two of them could have breakfast together.
She stroked that hair, light as a breath, and Hana woke with a little groan.
"Bora... you're here?"
"Hana. Does something hurt? You look so worn out."
At Bora's words, Hana shot upright in bed. Then she flung both arms high overhead, as if to prove there was nothing wrong with her at all.
"Bora, I'm— I'm sturdy! Nothing's wrong, not one bit."
"Then let's go eat. Change out of your pajamas."
With that, Bora brought over the clothes Hana would wear: a hoodie printed with a simple little chick's face, and a cute pleated skirt.
It was a secret that Kim Bora spent longer fretting over what to put on Hana than over her own outfit. Her greatest worry on the way to work was Hana's coordination. Maybe because she was still so young, the girl's sense of fashion left something to be desired. She favored clothes stamped with bizarre characters and refused anything resembling a skirt with every fiber of her being. Of course, however much she resisted, she always ended up grumbling her way into one.
"Mm..."
Still not entirely awake, Hana climbed down from the bed, shaking her hair this way and that. Dark circles lay thick beneath her eyes.
Bora took her by the hand and led her into the bathroom. Hana was not yet tall enough to use the sink without a step stool.
Water roared from the faucet. Bora ran her hands beneath the stream, then began to wash Hana's face with what she had cupped in her palms.
"Blow!"
"Hnnff!"
Even Hana's runny nose was carried off in the running water. Once her face was clean, it was time for her hair. That hair mattered more than anything else in the world, and Bora washed it with a care that belonged to an entirely different dimension from a moment before.
When she was done, she fetched the hair dryer and began to dry Hana's hair a little at a time. Even then, the girl's head kept nodding, and she started to doze.
"Why are you so drained today, Hana?"
Bora said it to the girl drooping before her like a sick chicken. Just as she'd thought, Hana looked drunk on sleep.
Should I change the bed? But it had been a long while since they'd switched it, so it shouldn't have been bothering her...
Nodding off, Hana took Bora's hand, and only once they had gone down to the dining hall did she come somewhat back to herself. Bora sat her in a chair and went to fetch a tray.
Crispy breaded pork cutlet brought a measure of life back into Hana's eyes. Seeing it, Bora decided the girl must simply have slept poorly for once.
She went on thinking exactly that — right up until the bill for the debit card Hana had been using came flying in.
The moment I finished studying, I tore across the room and booted up the computer. The tower, built from nothing but expensive parts, roared to life with a racket.
I typed in my ID and password and logged into the game. A character dressed in a dazzling avatar was there to greet me.
"Whoa!"
I couldn't even remember how much money I'd burned trying to pull that avatar. Still, it had been worth the price. The moment I wandered through town, players who recognized it started calling out to me.
I strolled the village basking in my own superiority. As expected, in an online game the answer was the cash shop. But the moment I threw myself into hunting, I hit a wall.
In Icarus, an avatar that raised your stats mattered, yes — but your performance depended far more on the specs of your basic gear. Everything I had equipped was starter equipment handed out in events. Set beside what the rankers were wearing, my gear was probably garbage. Right now my character was an empty shell that only looked impressive: nothing on it but a hidden avatar.
Normally I would have let it slide. But so long as my character bore the name HanaHaruBora, it had to be the very best on the entire server.
There were three ways to raise a piece of gear's grade in Icarus. First, leave it at a forge and enhance it yourself. Second, the Cube sold in the cash shop, which randomly assigned bonus stats to equipment. And last, the Miracle Cube, which set yet another stat beneath those bonus stats...
It was a gate straight into hell, born of the developers' iron conviction that they would wring every last won out of their players. Newbies just picking up the game sometimes quit entirely after doing nothing but rolling Cubes. The ones who left couldn't tell whether they had come to hunt monsters or to play a gacha game.
But I had a debit card, and that made me invincible. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, I opened the cash shop and started buying Cubes without end. I meant to spend until the card's limit kicked in.
"Should I turn a stream on?"
I had always loved watching internet broadcasts. Being a streamer was something I longed for. I had tried it once, then quit in despair after my record peak came in at five viewers.
But if I streamed now, wouldn't it be all right? I had unlimited time, and nearly unlimited money. As conditions went, these weren't bad.
Thinking that, I dug up old memories, left the stream running, and started playing Icarus. Hunting monsters mattered, but matching my stats through Cubes came first. Dozens of pieces of gear to tune — I had to start fast.
Online games, by their nature, had a place where people gathered to talk about the game. If you wanted information, it was better to borrow the wisdom of the crowd.
And so Icarus, the most popular MMORPG in Korea, had a gallery of its own for exactly that.
Posts that actually suited the gallery's purpose, though, rarely went up. Unless it was the day an update landed, that was simply how things were.
In a game that told you to take it easy, the players had turned into frantic rabbits, practically living inside it and dropping into real life only long enough to sleep. Not long after an update, the content dried up, and there was nothing left to talk about.
Then, into a gallery stuffed with nonsense, a peculiar post appeared.
A thread with such ordinary bait drew little interest. But there are always people who click because they are bored, and what waited inside was anything but ordinary.
A single Cube roll in that game cost three thousand won. Big streamers with money to spare might set a day aside and roll from dawn till dusk, but an ordinary person struggled to manage even an hour, let alone a whole day. One tap of the spacebar, and three thousand won slid away without a sound.
If a desired option were guaranteed to appear, people would sink money into Cubes and keep rolling. But this game was vicious. Some players burned tens of thousands of won and landed the best option there was; plenty of others poured in tens of millions and never got anywhere near what they wanted.
This streamer was different. The VODs were still up. One hour of hunting — and every remaining hour spent doing nothing but rolling Cubes.
They even went so far as to reroll unless they hit 36% attack power, regarded as the god-tier line among every stat a Cube could produce in Icarus.
Most people settled not for the absolute peak, but for 30% or 33% on a main stat. If gamers ever saw this stream, their mouths would fall open at the extravagance.
Even 30% and 33% dropped at hellish odds, so the viewers who watched had no choice but to gape at the no-cam, no-mic streamer throwing money around like water — the first one they had seen in ages.