Preparation Period
Three days had passed since I'd started streaming in earnest.
For those three days, I'd thrown myself into broadcasting like a woman possessed. How possessed? Exhausted enough that I couldn't even spare the energy to snipe Curry.
But I was starting to hit a wall.
Hm? What kind of wall?
"Haa..."
At some point, that single line of chat had started flooding in without end. If it had been a tiny handful of people dropping it every now and then, I wouldn't have cared. But shockingly, nearly half of my ten-thousand-plus viewers seemed to be spamming it. The sheer firepower of the chat on screen alone was enough to bury every other message.
Naturally, I'd issued a stern warning that anyone who brought up the cam would get banned. Those damn viewers only banded together tighter, spamming on like it was a full-blown protest. Watching the chat room achieve greater and greater solidarity as time went on made the back of my neck throb.
I'd only turned the stream on to pad out my hours and meet the entry requirements. Couldn't I just ignore it? Sure, you could think that — but it still got under my skin. Even when I didn't want to pay attention, my eyes kept drifting to the chat on their own. I couldn't control it.
I wrapped up the game I was in as fast as I could, then pulled the chat window up onto the stream overlay. I figured if I made it blatantly obvious that they were putting me in a corner, the riot's momentum might die down a little.
Far from dying down, the riot only caught more fire. In that moment I felt a real urge to scrap the Platform War and the whole stream entirely — but every time I did, Curry's infuriating face swam up through my thoughts and set my hands trembling with rage.
Last night the official word had dropped that Nangin Geomgaek was locked in as mid laner for Curry's team, and I'd nearly lost it. On top of that, every single member of the roster under Curry's captaincy was no joke. Former pro gamers famous enough that you'd know them by name alone. Renowned amateurs whose skill wouldn't look out of place next to current pros.
What made it even more infuriating was that every person Curry had recruited was a relative newcomer who hadn't been streaming for long. I'd assumed Curry picked Nangin Geomgaek over me because of the fifty-hour stream-time requirement for eligibility. Turns out that wasn't the reason at all.
No matter how you sliced it, I was the better mid than Nangin Geomgaek. So why had Curry chosen him instead of me?
He'd done a collab with me, then gone and signed Nangin Geomgaek. No matter how many times I turned it over, there was only one answer. Curry was avoiding me because of what happened during that collab. His reaction when I donated a hundred thousand won three days ago made that crystal clear.
He'd been the one to ask for the collab, sucked every drop of value out of it, and now he was tossing me aside?
I wanted to make Curry regret choosing Nangin Geomgaek over me. And for that, I needed to raise the value of the person called Barcode. Enter the tournament, snipe Curry, then keep winning and climbing — and watch Curry look back on his past self with nothing but regret. That was the reason I kept streaming even with a chat room that had completely gone to hell. That was the ultimate goal.
Crush the Curry who abandoned me. From the very beginning, that was the only thought in my head.
And to do that, first...
I had to put out this damn riot. What the public wanted right now was my face. I could solve the whole problem with the simple fix of adjusting the cam angle — but if I just gave them what they were demanding, it was obvious I'd be dealing with a whole new set of headaches later. I also had no interest in being jerked around by viewers staging a protest on their own terms.
I got up from my chair, went to the wardrobe, and pulled out the "props" I'd stocked for exactly this kind of situation. After putting them on, I returned to my seat, leaned close to the mic, and spoke.
"I'll give you what you want."
The moment I declared face cam, the blazing heat in chat cooled off in an instant. Once the riot messages stopped flooding in, I slowly began tilting the cam upward.
As the cam angle climbed bit by bit, the viewers' reactions went nuclear. The chat was so frantic you could practically feel it burning. I wondered what those same reactions would look like once the cam was all the way up.
I snapped the slowly rising cam the rest of the way in one motion, bringing it to an angle that showed my face.
"I raised the cam, just like you all wanted."
I checked my appearance on the stream preview. On screen, I was wearing an oversized hoodie with the hood up. Sunglasses and a black mask covered my face completely. With my long straight hair hidden under the hood on top of everything else, the whole look was perfect for calling a criminal to mind.
Confirming that every trace of "me" was thoroughly concealed, I allowed myself a satisfied smile. A shame the viewers couldn't see it, of course. Still wearing that invisible, wicked little grin, I spoke in a low voice.
"I gave you what you wanted, so no more 'cam' talk. I will actually ban every single one of you."
After that declaration, chat became a living hell. Registering "cam" and "face" as banned words dialed the intensity down a notch, but—
"Haa..."
I'd guaranteed them cam freedom exactly as demanded, and they were still pulling this. My head was starting to hurt.
"Even when I give you what you ask for, you keep this up. Fine. No choice, then."
Muttering to myself, I cut the cam's power entirely.
The second I killed the cam completely, the viewers started tearing into each other. Honestly, them fighting among themselves was probably better than the spam. Still, leaving things like this didn't seem like a great option either.
"Don't fight. I'll do the face cam you all want on the last game."
The moment I promised face cam on the last game, the long riot finally came to an end. Truthfully, whether I did face cam or not barely mattered to me — the reason I hadn't just done it from the start was simple. Doing it this way was going to be more fun than just giving it to them. And sure enough, watching the chat's mood swing by the second had been entertaining. Satisfying, even.
Having soothed the enraged masses, I went back to streaming.
If someone asked who the most famous Leori streamers on Teu-ichi were, nine out of ten people would name Curry and Jerico.
Curry was a streamer defined by high energy, slick talk, and rock-solid character concepts like "Top Lane Addict" and "Ruffian." Jerico was a former pro who mainly streamed pure mechanical skill, with the occasional explosion of rough trash talk as his charm point. Because the two of them pursued completely different directions in streaming, the personalities of their respective fandoms were set in stone.
Want to enjoy Leori as a game? Watch Jerico. Want the entertainment a streamer provides? Watch Curry. The saying existed for a reason — their styles were night and day.
Of course, in pure Leori skill, Jerico crushed Curry. But in broadcasting ability, Curry crushed Jerico. The comparison only looked lopsided because Jerico was a former pro; Curry himself was a Master in the top 0.1%.
As time went on, Curry's stream — built on the streamer's personal charisma — kept climbing higher and higher. Jerico, meanwhile, plateaued for a long stretch with no real growth to speak of. In a way, it was inevitable. When you're watching the same Leori every day, a fun streamer beats a good player every time. It was the same reason that even when you order the same bowl of soup rice, you end up going back to the friendly shop more often than the rude one.
Maybe it was because they were constantly held up against each other. Jerico had always felt something like a rivalry toward Curry. He'd been walking in that streamer's shadow for so long that a rival complex was practically guaranteed.
For Jerico, this Platform War was an opportunity. A golden chance for him — not Curry — to finally step into the spotlight.
"Damn it... what the hell do I do?"
Jerico spat a curse the moment he got the news that the fellow streamer he'd already recruited as his team's mid laner had been injured. They were close enough to call each other hyung and dongsaeng, and the thought of that little-brother figure getting wrecked by a motorcycle tearing through an alley while he was out on his bike still set Jerico's teeth on edge.
"Fucking motorcycle bastards..."
His precious dongsaeng's injury was bad enough on its own — but the bigger crisis was the hole in mid lane. For Jerico, who'd been banking on a Platform War championship to blow up his career, a teammate's accident was a fatal blow.
He canceled every scrim scheduled for the next day and sank into thought. Streamer Ain's injury wasn't something that would heal within a month. That meant he needed a new streamer — and that was not an easy ask. Every streamer of any real name or reputation was already locked onto a team. The Platform War was so hot right now that some teams had already started scrimming.
What Jerico wanted wasn't some Diamond 1 or Master. He needed a streamer in the absolute top tier who played mid. Was there really still a streamer who met those conditions and wasn't already on a roster?
Ruffian. Dog Butcher. Spoon. Tool. Every other role had a demeaning nickname attached to it. Mid lane alone was simply called "Royalty" — the most important role in Leori. Slotting a Diamond 1 or Master into that lane? You might as well announce you were giving up on winning.
Jerico spent a long time hunting for a streamer who could fill Ain's absence, digging all the way down to channels with single-digit viewer counts. Nobody met his conditions.
"Ugh..."
He lowered the bar a little and looked for Grandmaster mid laners instead of Challenger. Even the Grandmaster-tier mid streamers all had teams already. Did he have to lower it further and pick up a Master mid? If he did that, a championship was basically off the table. But it still beat failing to even register, right?
Turning those thoughts over, Jerico sorted the Leori channel list by viewer count again for another scouting pass. He'd meant to sort from lowest to highest, but a misclick flipped it the other way. Streamers with big numbers were almost all already on teams, so he barely glanced at them — until one broadcast with an absurdly high viewer count and a completely baffling setup snagged his eye.
The title was just two words: Solo Queue. The nickname was the raw ID itself — "zxcv1234."
Jerico knew who this was. The mysterious Yone one-trick who'd started streaming after a bet with Nangin Geomgaek. The streamer called Barcode, who'd blown up overnight after collabing with Curry. He'd heard she'd skyrocketed even further recently after an accidental face reveal.
I didn't think the numbers would be this high.
Five-digit viewers on a daytime stream? A streamer like this had to already be on a team... right? Still, on the off chance, Jerico clicked into Barcode's broadcast.