Do I Look That Small, Nya? (Just Chatting)

If you asked Kwitch's viewers these days to name the streamer rising fastest on the platform, six out of ten would say Eunha.

Internet broadcasting was a red ocean. A new streamer almost never broke the surface. She had claimed a place in it anyway, head high.

Eunha was a woman whose main game was Project A, the most popular game in the world—and set against that fame, her career on air was absurdly short.

Three months. That was all of it.

She had started in the middle of January. A steady audience had only gathered near the end of the month, after the incident with Yangjeon. By any honest count, the public had known she existed for less than three months.

So how had she grown that fast?

Overwhelming skill at the game?

Eunha was certainly good at Project A. Not merely good. Too good.

Yangjeon, a former Master on the Korea server, had been no match for her. Neither had Cries, a trainee on a pro team, nor GOandMO, a former pro. GOandMO had won their bet, yes—but everyone who watched that stream knew the truth. Eunha was the better player. Even GOandMO himself, the one who had taken the wager, admitted she was better than he was. There was nothing left to argue.

Nebula was called the greatest prospect in the history of Project A, the first name anyone in the heavenly tier wanted for a duo and, at the same time, a player other pros said was too lofty to ask. Even he had been the one to send the request. In the exhibition he had limited the praise to the entry role, but he had said it plainly: she was better than he was. After that, no one dared doubt her skill.

That skill had surely helped her succeed. The more fundamental reason lay somewhere else.

Luck, then?

Eunha had certainly been born lucky. A large part of her rise really was the controversies she kept catching on the way up.

Project A was the most popular game not only at home but in the world, and a Project A scandal was nothing less than the fattest bait a community could hope for.

The smurfing controversy—high-rank players weeding out the newcomers pouring in—the duel with Yangjeon at the center of it, and the win.

By chance she had met the streamer who was crushing new players and turning it into a trend, and she had flattened him. Literally. Like a hero, she cut out the tumor that had been growing inside Project A.

Next came the controversy with the trainee Cries.

She had run into KZ's trainee Cries in a game by accident, beaten him overwhelmingly, and then sued him for the abuse he dumped into chat. A public lesson, properly delivered.

A minor—and a girl—had been subjected, in front of a crowd, to abuse too foul to put in a mouth. Of course the thing blew up. Cries was cut from the team, sued from Eunha's side, and his road into the pros was ruined completely.

That wasn't all. The incident opened the floodgates. Users began exposing what they had suffered from pro-team trainees, and the character of trainee after trainee came up into the light. Before those players could debut, the ones likely to cause trouble were weeded out in advance. It was as good as purifying the water of the pro scene.

Last of all, she had joined the exhibition as a starter.

The exhibition gathered viewers from all four major platforms. There was no better chance to make a name.

Its conditions were two: skill at the very top, and recognition. Eunha had the first. The second was shaky. You couldn't say those other streamers were better than she was, but plenty of them were far more famous.

Then, by chance, all five of Kwitch's starters from last year's exhibition announced they would not play, and Eunha was able to go in as a starter for the representative team.

All of it had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠simply happened by chance.

Skill was not the only thing behind the growth of her channel. Luck had taken no small share of the weight.

But the decisive reason the channel had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠grown this far was something else. Her gender.

Eunha was a woman streamer who was good at games.

And not just a woman streamer. A minor. A high school girl.

For a long time the main consumers of online games had been men, and in PVP—player versus player, people meeting to fight—women were harder still to find. In an intuitive FPS, the sort of game even someone who had never played anything in their life could pick up, you did see a woman here and there. That was as far as it went.

In the end most players were men. A woman had only to say one word in voice chat for someone to go, "Whoa, a girl." That was how rare women were on the online scene.

A woman who played games was a scarce species. A woman who played them well was scarcer still. Eunha was rarer than that.

She carried a uniqueness all her own—a high school girl who was actually good at games—and that was why her stream could become a topic.

Unfortunately, she hated having her private life exposed. She had made only her age and her gender public, and hidden all the rest.

Anyone charmed by the streamer called Eunha was bound to wonder what she really looked like. A woman's voice that attractive, heard as the opposite sex—of course they wondered about the face.

For a woman streaming as a Durahan, it was a kind of fate. Most of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the people watching wanted to know that faceless streamer's face.

Showing it to them was a gamble. The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment. That was the rule.

So Durahan streamers often settled on a compromise: the half-cam. No face—only the whole body from the neck down, sent out on camera.

Durahan, the headless knight: the nickname had stuck because that was the broadcast they ran. And the board over her own channel read like this.

Eunha was no exception.

One thing, though, was certain. If she ever showed her face, the uproar would be big enough to paralyze every broadcast community on the internet.

My fan cafe was still relatively new. I hadn't opened the reviews with any great expectations.

"Whoa..."

The fan-art board was more than enough to surprise me.

"You all really can draw, nya..."

There were quite a few genius hands in there, drawing me.

And then—

"Right? That's what I'm saying, nya."

Just as the donation said, I had never made a 2D character to stand in for myself the way other Durahan streamers did.

So all these people could actually know was my voice, and the hands the hand cam showed them.

"They almost all look the same, nya."

The "me" they had drawn mostly shared one face. A lively girl with straight black hair and black eyes—the streamer Eunha they pictured, no doubt.

The real Choi Eunha and the Eunha in those drawings were quite far apart. For one thing my eyes were brown, and my face did not look that lively, or that cute. Father's genes, maybe. Man or woman, my resting face had always looked rather cold. I didn't mind. It meant nobody at school came up to talk to me for no reason.

And if there was another difference... my figure, maybe.

Whether it was the high-school age or the voice, every version of me in those pictures was, well... lacking. I let my eyes drift down to the lumps of original sin that earned me plenty of jealousy inside school. Not quite big enough to call huge, but two peaks that made their presence unmistakable—nothing like the character up on the screen.

Because of them I caught unpleasant talk and looks from men, and jealous talk and looks from women. I didn't especially mind. There was a kind of superiority in it, and that felt good. If I was going to be a woman anyway, better a beauty than some ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ugly thing, right? I had already decided to accept myself as a woman, and my looks, as a woman, were one of the parts I liked quite a lot.

Oh—right. A good idea had just occurred to me. A chance to land a proper hit on the viewers teasing me for this wretched way of talking.

"Hey..."

I dragged the mouse cursor, blatantly, onto that part of the character. And then I said it.

The chat, which had been pouring in like a flood, thinned until you could see it. They were trying to work out what I had just said.

Unless they were idiots, they would catch the meaning soon enough. It was a part that already stood out quite a bit on cam. I hadn't meant for it to. Even in loose clothes, my chest ran a little large for my frame, so it showed.

I moved the cursor, turned the character in a full circle, and went on.

"No, I wasn't going to bring it up if I could help it. This is drawn way too small, isn't it, nya?"

They had no choice but to panic. I was a minor, after all.

In this country, that sort of remark aimed at a minor was a legal problem. It was not a problem when a minor did the reverse. Which meant that right now, I was the only one allowed to swing.

"Assassinate? What are you talking about, nya?"

Viewers in full confusion. From their side, I had probably eaten something that didn't agree with me.

They had mostly fallen for it by now. Time to bring out the line I had ready.

"What are you all even saying, nya. My height, nya. I'm not that short, nya."

Got you. Idiots.

My height was on the small side next to the average for my age, sure. Not that these people had any way of knowing that.

I really was my mother's daughter, whether I liked it or not. I hadn't known teasing people could be this much fun.

Question marks plastered the chat again as they realized they had been had. I watched the window and laughed without a sound.

Ah. This is fun.