Event Match (Reality)
After I wrapped that first, monumental face-cam broadcast, my stream changed in no small way.
"How about this one? Ugh, I have no idea what I'm supposed to wear..."
More precisely, I was the one who had changed—the person actually running the broadcast—so it was fairer to say the stream had changed because I had. I'd realized people would still like me even if I stopped showing them nothing but a perfect version of myself. After that, I quit forcing a good face in front of everyone. I didn't even bother fixing myself up before I turned the camera on. Asking them, the way I was now, what I ought to wear out tomorrow came from the same place. The viewers seemed pleased that talking with me felt better than it used to, and I liked that too.
So if anyone was wondering why a room-bound shut-in like me was suddenly taking outfit advice...
It was because Rioat had handed me homework again.
My second assignment from them since the Newbie Guide. They wanted me in the event match at the PCK finals, and I accepted on the spot. I hadn't been planning to go... but they said I could play the new agent.
I love Project A, and I actually play it. I wasn't about to pass up the chance to be first in line the moment a brand-new agent went public. And it wasn't only that. Part of me wanted to see the KZ roster I'd once belonged to, with my own eyes. I'd run into Kim Seungtaek recently, but after I retired I barely saw the rest of them. For three years those were faces I met almost every day, and once nearly half a year had gone by without them, I found I missed them a little. Back then I would have sworn I was sick to death of those faces.
A rare trip outside was locked in, which meant I had to pick an outfit again. I figured I might as well make a bit of content out of it and let the viewers decide.
I really hadn't expected them to be this useless.
"So please stop just repeating that I look pretty. Tell me, 'this part of the outfit works, this part doesn't,' or that it doesn't match my image. That kind of take."
Whatever I brought out, they never got past oh, it suits you, pretty, cute. None of it helped.
The praise was sweet, sure. But that wasn't the point. How was I supposed to explain this? Oh. Right.
"You all have girlfriends, don't you? Just... the vibe of something you'd want your girlfriend to wear?"
Most of my viewers were men. Everyone picks some ideal woman as their type, so if I used that...
Why was it this time?!
"Okay, okay, I take that back!"
I had no idea why, but the viewers had flown into a rage, so I scrapped that approach.
"Then... what if you picture an outfit you'd want me to wear to a fan meeting?"
"A modest style?"
My face gives off a cold impression that has nothing to do with my actual personality. That's why Mom and the housekeeper keep steering me toward black. But the viewers know my real personality. More precisely, they know streamer Eunha's.
"Hmm... something like this?"
The outfit I pulled off the rack was a plain white short-sleeve tee, and the Adidas three-stripe leggings that had gotten famous off one actor's fit.
The viewers seemed fine with it, so maybe this was the one. I preferred comfortable clothes anyway. The dress-like pajamas had already finished breaking me in on skirts and anything that swished around my legs, but given the choice, I still wanted more of the casual clothes I'd lived in in my past life.
One viewer looked at what I'd picked and worried. Needlessly.
"Oh, come on, of course I know that. You have any idea how many times I've been there?"
How many matches had I played in the PCK? As if I wouldn't know.
It was the kind of line that could have drawn suspicion, but my love for the game was so far gone that nobody really doubted me. A streamer who'd already come out as a KZ fan had probably been to a live match or two. Especially a streamer who, for half a year straight, had played nothing but Project A, and not a single other game.
"All right, I'll wrap up soon! I've got a lot to get ready for, starting tomorrow morning."
Tomorrow was the event match itself. Better to end the stream and get to bed early. If my condition fell apart, that would be a real problem.
The viewers must have caught the signs of a sign-off, because they let me go without clinging.
"Tomorrow's a rest stream, and the day after I'll at least do a recap. Bye-bye, everyone~"
The day of the PCK finals, and of the event match.
Officially the match started at 3 p.m., and the streamers had to be at PCK Park, where it was being held, by 1. I lived a regular life—up at nine every morning, then breakfast—so the schedule wasn't tight at all. I ate a leisurely breakfast the way I always did and let the time pass. I put on exactly the outfit the viewers had picked the day before, tossed a keyboard and a mouse into the backpack I used to take to school, and that was my packing done.
"I'm heading out!"
"Be careful. If anything happens to you, the chairman will never let you leave the house again," the housekeeper said.
"Ahaha..."
I was resting easy in the car bound for PCK Park, just waiting to arrive, when Driver Kwon spoke up from the driver's seat.
"You've been going out more often lately than I would have thought."
"I know... After I dropped out, I really didn't think I'd be leaving the house this much."
When I turned in the withdrawal, I'd been sure I would spend nearly half my life indoors. First the Newbie Guide, now an event match—it felt like I was going out more and more.
Oh, and for the record, today it was just Driver Kwon and me. Mom had been busy lately, looking into something. The other day she'd asked me, You don't want to be an idol? Maybe that world had caught her interest. I had none in the entertainment industry, so I'd turned her down flat.
Still, it had already been about a month since the Newbie Guide... Did this even count as often?
Given the way I usually lived, it wasn't strange that Driver Kwon thought so.
"Ah. We're here."
I'd just about talked myself into it when we were already at the destination.
"It's really just you today, right, Driver Kwon?"
I had no interest in a repeat of last time—stepping out of the car and immediately being ringed in by dozens of men—so I asked him before I got out.
"Yes."
Driver Kwon isn't the type to lie. If he really had brought other bodyguards along, he would have gone quiet, or changed the subject.
"All right. I'll head in, then. This'll take a while, so please go on ahead and rest."
"Yes. I'll go in with you."
"Well. That didn't work."
And so Driver Kwon and I entered PCK Park together. The first floor was already packed with people who had come for the finals.
"Good thing I wore a mask..."
"If anyone approaches, I'll handle it. You don't need to worry."
"Ooh."
He sounded thoroughly reliable.
"Whoa..."
"Who is that guy? Those muscles..."
"Let's go around..."
"Eek...!"
Not that anyone was likely to come this way even if he didn't try. Not really.
Under his guard we crossed the first-floor hall and went in deeper, and then—
"I-I'm sorry, but the public isn't allowed past here..."
We'd found a staffer thoroughly terrified by Driver Kwon's frame. Probably someone working the event. The place written in the mail was right here, so they had to be with it. Thinking that, I took off the mask covering my face.
"Hello, I'm streamer Eunha. I came about the event match."
"Ah—ah! Eunha! Oh, you had a mask on, I didn't recognize you! Please, this way!"
Whether it really was the mask, or whether Driver Kwon's presence had kept them from so much as looking this way, I couldn't tell. Whatever. It didn't matter.
"Yes. Oh, can he come in too? He's my bodyguard..."
The staffer looked back and forth between Driver Kwon and me, then turned a pleading gaze on me.
Sorry. He isn't going to listen no matter what I say. Hehe.
"Y-you can go in."
"Thank you."
With that ready permission, Driver Kwon and I stepped into the room where the broadcasters for the event match were waiting.
The green room was fairly spacious. A few of them already seemed to know each other; I could see them talking. And then... huh?
"E-excuse me..."
"Yes?"
A man had suddenly spoken to me. More than that, I was sure I'd heard this voice somewhere.
"A-are you... streamer Eunha...?"
"Yes. That's me?"
"Eeek!"
He bolted out of the room.
"...What?"
"Wh-why is he like that?"
"I... don't really..."
Driver Kwon seemed just as thrown. Trailing off like that wasn't like him at all. No staff uniform, so the man was probably a broadcaster, and the voice really had sounded familiar. Thinking about it any harder wasn't going to jog my memory, so I decided to forget it.
Standing around in the middle of the room felt awkward, and I'd just started looking for somewhere to sit when a man's voice called to me from inside.
"Oh, Eunha!"
"Huh?"
This voice...
"Zzangdol? You were invited to the event match too?"
"Yes. A lot of people have looked kindly on me since the exhibition. That's how I even ended up somewhere this nice."
Since the exhibition, most of the Kwitch team's streams had grown a great deal. Not Nebula or Pola, who had debuted as pros—Oldboy and Zzangdol.
"Oldboy-hyung was invited too. Wow, so Youngest and Oldest is getting together again for the first time in a while..."
"Oldboy too?"
Oldboy, who had been on the same team for the exhibition, had been invited as well. Just as Zzangdol said, it really was the Kwitch team coming back. Rioat had probably invited them with exactly that in mind.
"Anyway, have you seen Byeongsik-hyung? He said he was going to ask a staffer something real quick, and now I don't know where he went..."
"Byeongsik... you mean BS? Oh—!"
That voice...!
"So that was BS."
I'd thought it sounded familiar. I never would have guessed that man was BS. Of all the identities I might have imagined, that wasn't one of them.
But why was BS avoiding me? Had I done something to him?
Hmm. I really can't tell.