Toxic
Mid-stream, Nangin Geomgaek felt a sudden chill run through him.
He had the heat on — he was certain of it — yet the air around him seemed to freeze solid.
After locking in Yasuo, he checked the heater.
It was running just fine.
So why is it this cold?
When he looked back at his screen, he caught the enemy locking in Yone.
At this rank, at this hour — there was only one person who played Yone.
At the appearance of a Yone who might be Barcode, the chat ignited.
But the warmth Nangin Geomgaek felt around him only grew colder.
Why am I getting chills like this?
And of all things, while looking at a Yone I think is Barcode.
Wondering if he'd caught a cold, Nangin Geomgaek seriously fretted over his health and decided he'd better see a doctor once the stream was over.
I'd flipped the stream on in a fit of temper — and the second it went live:
Watching the chat get plastered the instant I went live, a wave of vertigo hit me.
Probably because the collab with Curry had funneled in a massive influx of toxic viewers.
Messages were flying up so fast I couldn't even make out what the letters said.
I did my best to ignore it and fitted Leori's game screen to the broadcast layout.
I'd planned to crush the riot through pure neglect — but like a candle guttering on its last wick, the heat in chat refused to die down. It just kept climbing.
The firepower was so concentrated that the stream itself started lagging — not the game, the broadcast. Buffering kicked in, and more and more viewers dropped connection to the chat server.
"Alright, stop spamming. Keep it up and the stream's going to crash."
One word from me, and the spam-choked chat went clean.
Well — under normal circumstances, toxic viewers would never have listened to me. But they did.
Once chat had settled down somewhat, I pulled up the in-game screen.
Alongside Nangin Geomgaek, several other big names from the celestial ranks caught my eye.
To avoid repeating yesterday's mistake, I had the cam locked pointing downward at the keyboard.
I loosened up my fingers with a loud, clattering warm-up on the keys.
Once again the chat was shaping up into an arena, a full-blown colosseum — and I swallowed a quiet regret.
If I'd known it would be like this, I should've at least hired a manager to keep chat under control.
Well, the stream's already on. Guess I'll have to manage it myself today as best I can.
Right as that thought crossed my mind, I watched a message appear in chat — and then get deleted.
Aside from me, the streamer, the only people who could delete someone else's messages were managers.
I still didn't have an official manager for my channel, but there were the two managers from Curry's stream who'd worked for free all day yesterday.
"Manager, you there?"
I asked just to confirm, addressing whoever was currently moderating the chat — and before long, a message popped up under one of Curry's managers' usernames.
Confirming the manager's presence, I threw a thumbs-up at the cam and locked in on the game.
Normally I'd have had to play and manage chat at the same time, but with a manager here, that wasn't a problem.
These were the same people who ran a gulag — they'd cut anything that crossed the line without me asking.
Trusting that, I focused on the game instead of the stream.
The old Nangin Geomgaek was someone I could beat without really trying. But now his Yasuo had grown to the point where I actually had to concentrate to win.
The way his rank had shot up at breakneck speed after that bet made it obvious.
More importantly, Nangin Geomgaek had already received an offer from Curry.
The odds of the two of them ending up on the same team were high.
And since I'd already decided to stream-snipe Curry at the tournament — that meant I was fated to face Nangin Geomgaek again on the big stage too.
So from this moment on, I had to approach every game with the mindset of a player preparing for competition.
Sure, some people would complain if I ran an open sniping stream. But Nangin Geomgaek had given me permission to snipe him a while back, so there was nothing to worry about.
I was turning all of that over in my head when the minions hit the lane, and I locked in.
Working as a cleaner, Kim Ji-hye had picked up any number of facts about the lady of the house.
That aside from her private room on the second floor and the living room packed with exercise equipment, the mistress of this house never used any other space. That the towering piles of leftover delivery food made it clear she found cooking a chore. That every pair of shoes in the shoe rack was the same size — meaning this vast place was home to her alone.
They were things she'd simply absorbed while doing her job, and though Kim Ji-hye tried not to dwell on it, she couldn't help wondering what on earth her employer actually did for a living.
Maybe something with stocks or real estate?
The way she stays in her room all day — she could be in one of those hot crypto jobs!
Or maybe a hidden illegitimate child of a chaebol family... no, that's way too much of a stretch, right?
Having finished cleaning as usual, Kim Ji-hye found her gaze drawn to the apples she'd bought herself.
It might have been a pointless gesture, but she was worried about the health of a woman who ate nothing but fast food. Granted, the lady of the house seemed to work out regularly — but living on delivery alone was still a surefire way to wreck your body.
Back in her school days they'd called her the Fairy of Nosiness, and true to form, Kim Ji-hye let that trademark meddling take over as she peeled the apples.
She left a strip of skin on each piece for a pretty presentation, arranged them neatly in a bowl, and carried it upstairs. At the firmly shut door, she knocked.
Knock knock knock—
Three knocks, as tradition demanded. Then waiting.
Bowl of apples in hand, she stood there for who knew how long — until the door opened, and the lady of the house stepped out, so beautiful that no matter how many times Ji-hye saw her, it still didn't feel real.
The first thing that hit her eyes was a pair of perfect legs, laid bare by hot pants with almost shameless clarity.
Drawn in by that flawless figure, Kim Ji-hye was forced to take a moment of pure appreciation.
All the woman had on was a white sleeveless top and a navy cardigan thrown over it — and somehow even that felt like a complete outfit.
They say fashion is finished by the face, and damn if that isn't true...!
Is there a more unfair world than this one?
"What is it?"
"Ah — I, um, that is... I peeled some apples really nicely, so would you like to try some?"
Flustered, Kim Ji-hye blurted out whatever came to mind — and immediately cursed the version of herself from two seconds ago.
Even so — 'I peeled some apples really nicely, so would you like to try some'?!
Anyone could see how suspicious that sounded. How weird.
A paranoid person might even think she'd coated the apples with some kind of sedative.
Watching the lady of the house stand there in silence, Kim Ji-hye felt anxiety claw up her throat.
What do I do, what do I do, what do I do...
Is she going to get suspicious and drag me off somewhere?
Kim Ji-hye tried to assess her current situation as objectively as possible.
A woman living alone in a sprawling country house, who ordered a suspiciously high volume of delivery food. And herself — the busybody who'd poked at this mysterious employer's goodwill for no good reason.
The only two people in this house: her, and me.
Just as Kim Ji-hye's imagination was ballooning to catastrophic proportions—
"Thank you."
As if nothing were wrong at all, the lady of the house took the bowl of apples and closed the door.
"Haa... haa..."
Kim Ji-hye let out the breath she'd been holding in a frantic rush.
Steadying her breathing, she thought quietly to herself:
She's a nicer person than I expected.
She wasn't entirely sure how she'd arrived at that conclusion — but Kim Ji-hye decided that next time, too, she would peel apples for her kind employer, and left the house.
Back in my room with the bowl of apples, I let out a small laugh.
The cleaner standing in front of me, wound tight as a spring and stumbling over her words — it had been pretty adorable. And the fact that she'd actually peeled the apples even prettier than expected was the killing blow.
"Pff... cute."
Crunch, crunch.
I ate the neatly sliced apples and waited out the clock.
Curry would be going live soon, and in the meantime I browsed through streaming-related info.
I needed fifty hours to qualify for the Platform War — catching a ban before that would be a disaster.
I really do need to hire a manager, though.
One of Curry's managers had been handling chat solo, but after roughly five hours of streaming today, it was clear that a single manager couldn't keep a chat this size fully under control.
Well — one manager versus a viewer count in the tens of thousands. Of course.
I killed time poking around various streaming tips and tricks, and before I knew it, Curry's stream went live.
Yesterday he'd run a collab with me under the content banner of "Meeting the Master Craftsman," and he looked thoroughly exhausted. The dark circles under his eyes, especially — like he hadn't slept a wink — were almost pitiful.
"Hey everyone..."
Curry greeted his viewers at a noticeably lower energy than usual.
Concerned messages kept flooding in at the sight of him — but notably, not a single one told him to just end the stream.
"Ah, why do I look like this? It's nothing major. Just had a fourteen-hour meeting with the editors... yaaawn~"
Curry stretched and let out a yawn.
The ridiculous look of it plastered the chat in laughter.
The talent to make people laugh even at this low energy, huh.
"Hey, why am I a lying bastard? I'm a victim here. A victim."
The second the word "liar" hit chat, Curry launched into a full grievance dump.
Had yesterday's collab left him with that much baggage?
Once his mouth opened, it didn't close for a while.
"For real, I was dizzy the entire stream yesterday, and I was still dizzy in part two. In my whole life, that was the first time I ever took headache meds just to stream, okay?"
"The reason my energy was scraping the floor yesterday was all because of that person making it so hard — is what I almost said."
"The editing meeting was rough too, sure, but honestly the collab was a little harder. Genuinely."
"Did you hate me that much...? I'm sorry... sob... hic..."
"Aigoo, zxcv12... wait a second. That ID looks familiar..."
Curry stared blankly at the chat as it was instantly plastered with calls for his downfall.
Then, as if the sudden spike in blood pressure had hit him all at once, he clutched the back of his neck and collapsed.