This Isn't Episode 80?
Kim Ina clicked the page a viewer had linked, and her eyes flew wide whether she wanted them to or not.
It wasn't the size of the broadcast. A stream with fewer than fifteen viewers was nothing rare—there were thousands of those. The problem was the voice coming through it.
She said it, then moved in a dazzling blur and shut the enemy champion down. The combo speed was one thing; the Flash landed on a timing so clean it was almost unfair. It was the kind of kill angle you only ever saw in a YouTube montage.
The flashy champion caught the eye first. Then the voice pulled the ear in after it.
An elementary schooler's voice spilling out of a broadcast left Kim Ina with no choice but to panic. The only time she'd been shocked like this was when some unhinged viewer spliced a YouTube clip and raided her stream with an NSFW jumpscare. She'd reacted too slowly that day and eaten a three-day suspension for it.
And the voice was genuinely pleasant to listen to. What was coming through the stream was nothing less than a little girl's—an elementary school girl, not a boy. Hearing a grade-school girl's voice in a tier ordinary people almost never reached was close to impossible.
"This... I'm not hearing things, right?"
Kim Ina had no choice but to fire back at once. Listen to that voice and it wasn't even a middle schooler. It was an elementary schooler.
She had pinned the disgraceful label of scripter on a little girl nearly fifteen years younger than she was. Being a woman herself had only made her react harder. Couldn't a kid like that still turn into a prospect who'd blow up in the future of the game?
"Looks like that VOD review I did earlier was me getting it wrong. Watching the stream, her mechanics are seriously good. Play it right, and she might be Challenger before long?"
"No! Be honest—when I was reviewing that VOD on stream earlier, you all agreed with me!"
"Honestly, voice changers exist. She's not using one of those?"
Kim Ina pushed back within what she considered reasonable. These days AI was good enough that disguising a voice was easy. Once upon a time, unless you were a master impressionist, a man producing a woman's voice was flat-out impossible—but now you could install a file and change your voice with a single simple tweak.
And there wasn't even a hint of something being off. Kim Ina decided this streamer had to be using a voice changer. A middle-school girl in Grandmaster was already insane talent—an elementary-school girl in Grandmaster? That was the kind of prospect a pro organization would drool over. In soccer terms, a youth player whose potential had already exploded.
"No... I'm not saying we should VOD-review her. I'm just floating a what-if. Being careful never hurt anyone, right?"
But then the streamer on the screen did something that left Kim Ina staring into the void.
Starlight Cherry Tomatoes hit the market. The price was set at four dollars a piece.
When a kilo of ordinary cherry tomatoes went for about three dollars, people inside the company had flagged the launch price as outrageous. Four dollars was what you'd pay for a respectable convenience-store lunch.
Starlight Foods' executives were firm. Growing space was limited, so a thin-margin, high-volume approach simply wasn't possible.
When they disclosed the nutrition and the calories packed into a Starlight Cherry Tomato, the public reaction was pure disbelief.
"A thousand calories in one cherry tomato? How does that even make sense?"
"And that's not even the half of it—the nutrients put most supplements to shame. All of that, in one tiny cherry tomato!"
"I mean, looking at the tech behind the hunter weapons the Starlight Guild sells, a product like this isn't that far-fetched..."
"Even so, this feels way too expensive. I'd rather just buy a kilo of regular cherry tomatoes and eat those."
They launched it alongside an ad campaign, but the public stayed lukewarm—mostly because each pack held a single lonely tomato. There was also a fancier set, three tomatoes wrapped as elegantly as high-end chocolate.
For Yang Jaewan, a junior analyst in Yeouido's securities district, meeting a single cherry tomato was something like fate.
Work that street, and time to sit down and eat was a luxury. Since landing the job he hadn't had a proper meal once. He'd started out well above average weight; he'd dropped so much that his friends could barely recognize the gaunt man he'd become.
Today, too, he ducked into a convenience store on his lunch break to get food down fast. Only after the market closed at three could he eat with anything like ease. Until then he had to hold a combat stance that felt like a war zone.
So, as usual, he lingered at the shelf meaning to buy a convenience-store lunch box. Cup ramen or a triangle kimbap would have done, but he was sick to death of both, so today he'd specially decided on a lunch box. Then a particular ad on the display caught his eye.
Meet the Starlight Cherry Tomato!
"Huh...?"
He leaned in to read the little card with the detailed explanation.
"One piece gives you a thousand calories, and the nutrients are supposedly pretty generous too? Where in the world does food like that exist?"
It was nonsense. A cherry tomato no bigger than a quarter, a thousand calories, and it filled you up? The kind of claim that would make a passing dog laugh.
But Starlight Foods was a major corporation. They wouldn't run a false ad, would they? And while he stood there watching, plenty of people were already walking off with Starlight Cherry Tomatoes.
He bought a three-pack on the logic of letting himself get fooled once. It was a launch discount—three tomatoes for about seven dollars. A shocking markdown.
He figured he'd handle lunch and dinner with these. If they didn't fill him up, he could report them for false advertising. If they did, he'd save time, and that was a win either way.
So Yang Jaewan bought the tomatoes and returned to his desk. Even on days when he wolfed something down and rushed back, there were usually people already sitting in the office—but today he was the first one in.
"Awfully quiet..."
In a few dozen minutes the place would turn into something like a battlefield, but right now the lights were on and the floor was oddly sparse, and the feeling sat wrong.
Seated in his cubicle, Yang Jaewan tore open the wrapper and took out a single cherry tomato.
"Oh...? Nice color. Smells pretty good, too?"
As someone who regularly enjoyed cherry tomatoes, he could tell this was a high-quality one. He turned it over in his fingers for a while, then popped it into his mouth.
One chew, maybe two, and he closed his eyes at the way it melted across his tongue. It wasn't the sort of food you were meant to savor, but this tomato felt like eating something expensive.
And then—a fullness that made no sense at all.
Still in his chair, Yang Jaewan snapped his eyes wide. A cherry tomato this small had actually filled him up? The fullness was pleasant, even. He didn't feel the slightest urge to eat a second one.
Still... once I actually get back to work, won't my stomach cave right back in? Like filling up on water.
But when lunch ended and he went back to his screens, the fullness held. Even through overtime, right up until he clocked out late, he never once had a moment to feel hungry.
From that day on, Yang Jaewan became a fervent devotee of the Starlight Cherry Tomato—devout enough to press them on other people. Once you got used to that kind of convenience, other instant foods simply stopped catching your eye.