The Stream Bet
Looking back on it now, no streamer had ever been as satisfying to snipe as Curry.
How he managed to hold that sky-high tension for so long was a mystery in itself. That relentlessly positive mindset of his was something I, from where I stood, simply could not understand.
That was probably why I started sniping him in the first place.
At first, I sniped him because I wanted to see Curry get genuinely angry. I never deliberately trolled — when I landed on his team, I picked off-meta and played for fun. When I landed against him, I flipped into full tryhard mode and crushed him without mercy.
Alright. Let's see that pretty face of yours twist up just once.
...That was definitely the mindset I started with.
But Curry never once showed that side of himself on stream.
That was probably why I never sniped any streamer other than him. Or, more precisely, why the only streamer I was still sniping was Curry.
Everyone else was just too easy. Three days was all it took to make them genuinely furious, to wipe the smile off their faces. So past-me doubled down and focused even harder on Curry.
But it wasn't long before Curry's reactions to my sniping went completely flat, and my interest died on the spot — my interest in the act of sniping itself.
So I ground Leori like a machine, queue after queue after queue. But interest that catches fire once can't burn forever. A few losses along the way might have kept the fun going longer, but endless, unbroken winning stripped every last scrap of interest in Leori right out of my head.
That was how the Mysterious Yone One-Trick was born. And that was how the Mysterious Yone One-Trick vanished without a trace.
And now — watching Nangin Geomgaek's stream — I was feeling that old interest surge back with a vengeance.
A streamer losing over and over to the Mysterious Yone One-Trick. Viewers comforting that streamer. It was a warm, wholesome scene — the kind past-me had hated with a passion. But that was the past of a man named Son Minwoo. The person I was now was a woman named Choi Nayeon.
So the urge to tear it all down never came. Still — I wanted to see Nangin Geomgaek despair.
"How far can you hold out...?"
Curry had suffered through more than three hundred games against me and never once broke. So how far could Nangin Geomgaek hold out? No — how long could he hold out?
The third game ended in Nangin Geomgaek's defeat as well. But he didn't hesitate for a second before queuing up again. I matched him beat for beat and hit the queue button myself.
We were sitting somewhere around mid-Challenger right now. Even after three straight losses to me, matching into the same lobby was still perfectly possible. Even if it stretched to ten losses, Nangin Geomgaek and I would keep getting matched together.
Sure enough, we landed against each other once more — and the fourth game, just like the ones before it, ended in my victory without a single upset.
But Nangin Geomgaek was changing, distinctly, from the game before. Tiny shifts no one but me would ever notice. I wanted to see how far those tiny shifts would grow, so I kept sniping.
Fifth game.
For the first time, no early skirmish broke out in the laning phase. Nangin Geomgaek no longer trusted the matchup advantage and threw himself into reckless trades. Instead he threatened me with small pokes and subtle movement, suppressing my growth. Just as I had done to him, he slowly pressed the wave and made me respect the invisible jungler — made me conscious of a dive.
It was the first change that actually stood out. This was no longer the Nangin Geomgaek I used to know. Everything he was showing me now were the exact methods I had used against him before.
Interesting.
People despair hardest when they've tasted hope. Would Nangin Geomgaek, having glimpsed even a sliver of possibility, still refuse to break under a string of losses?
But his play was far too obvious. Of course it was — I'd been the one running that play the game before. Using the jungler's absence to pressure was fine, but—
—trying to do too many things at once was how you failed to track the enemy jungler's position and ate a gank like that.
I filed away a coaching tip no one would ever hear, cleared the wave, and rotated to join my jungler, who had started the dragon the moment the gank ended. The enemy jungler had already shown top, and their mid laner was dead. There was no reason not to take the dragon, and no reason we couldn't.
I secured the dragon, recalled home, and bought that item. I hit Tab, checked the enemy Yasuo's components, and let out a small laugh.
Yasuo was holding Rageknife — the component for Guinsoo's Rageblade.
Well. It'd be weirder if he didn't buy it.
After getting wrecked by the same Guinsoo Yone this many times, not knowing would have been the strange part. Yasuo's passive, just like Yone's, doubled his critical strike chance and came with a ten-percent crit damage penalty. A Guinsoo Yasuo would be broken in its own right — maybe not quite Guinsoo-Yone levels, but close.
But I already had that broken item finished. The gap between a completed Guinsoo's and an unfinished one was wider than heaven and earth. As the game went on, Yasuo finally finished his Guinsoo's too — but by then I was already sitting on items that were practically three-core. There was no stopping a fed Guinsoo Yone. To anyone watching, it would have looked like a Challenger smurfing in Bronze-Silver-Gold lobbies. That was how little existed in this game that could shut down a fed Guinsoo Yone.
And so the fifth game ended on Yone's carry. I opened the stream again and went right back to sniping Nangin Geomgaek.
A screen he was used to by now. The seventh matchup against the Mysterious Yone One-Trick — another loss. But Nangin Geomgaek did not despair.
...At this point, with the losses piling up, the viewers seemed to be the ones in despair.
Nangin Geomgaek thought of the Mysterious Yone One-Trick who was almost certainly watching this stream. Honestly, he never imagined anyone would snipe him this long.
Was he the only one coming out ahead here? That was how much Nangin Geomgaek felt he was gaining from these matches against the Mysterious Yone One-Trick. His first-ever stream. Viewers whose presence eased the loneliness. And more than anything — the sharp, undeniable sense that his long-stagnant Leori skills were climbing again.
Nangin Geomgaek shifted his gaze and checked the current viewer count.
Concurrent viewers: 3,300.
For a first stream — and a mic-less one at that — far too many people had shown up. He still didn't fully understand why 3,300 people would watch a stream like this. And then, suddenly, a thought struck him.
If someone like him could pull 3,300 viewers on a first broadcast... if the Mysterious Yone One-Trick ever hit go live, just how many people would show up?
Originally he'd planned to stream just this once and never again. But streaming was turning out to be more fun than he'd expected. Maybe he'd put together a proper setup and go live again someday. That was how much Nangin Geomgaek was enjoying it.
So Nangin Geomgaek sent a whisper to the Mysterious Yone One-Trick's Teu-ichi ID. Of course, he adjusted things so the whisper wouldn't show up on the stream overlay.
The Mysterious Yone One-Trick replied immediately.
What kind of bet should he propose? Nangin Geomgaek thought for a brief moment, then typed quickly.
Nangin Geomgaek sent over the terms he'd come up with. For a while, no reply came back from the Mysterious Yone One-Trick.
A rejection after all?
Just as that thought crossed his mind—
At the whispers that arrived from the Mysterious Yone One-Trick, Nangin Geomgaek swallowed hard. He hadn't actually expected the proposal to be accepted — and yet it had been.
And so the wager between the Mysterious Yone One-Trick and Nangin Geomgaek was sealed.
For his own sake. For the Mysterious Yone One-Trick who had helped him. And more than anything — for the chance to beat him even once — Nangin Geomgaek forced his wildly pounding heart to settle.
A match locked in. When the enemy locked Yone, Nangin Geomgaek let out a small laugh.
Without hesitation, Nangin Geomgaek locked in Yasuo and steeled himself.
Within this wager — I will surpass him.
And so a new game, different from all the ones before, began.