Who Am I?
Lac's team's practice went smoothly enough. Or rather, the practice itself did. The results were another matter entirely.
Three games. Three losses. A truly miserable showing.
They opened against Ikueku's team, dropped the next set to Team Blame-the-Support, and saved the last defeat for Team Alt+F4, the roster thrown together at the very end.
Against Ikueku and Blame-the-Support, there were real holes in their strength, no question. Alt+F4 was different. Grandmaster support, Master mid, Platinum marksman, Gold jungler, Gold top—on paper, we were the ones ahead.
And we still lost, two to one. You could only call it a human matchup.
Alt+F4 and Lac hovered around the same rank every season and ran into each other constantly in ranked, and for reasons no one could explain, Lac turned into a walking disaster the moment that name showed up.
"I don't even know why. The second I meet him in lane, nothing goes right."
Skillshots he was sure would land missed by a hair. He read a kill angle, burned every summoner spell he had, and the enemy lived on a single autoattack. He knew it wasn't scientific. Lac's ranked record against Alt+F4 proved it anyway.
Some viewer with nothing better to do had dug those numbers up. Who, nobody knew. The record didn't care.
And this time, too, Lac lost.
On an ordinary day he was the pillar of the team, the one who lifted everyone else's spirits. Not today. The hit had landed on his mental, and he had gone quiet.
"Feels like the perfect chance just landed in our laps."
"Right? This is gonna be so fun!"
Mia and I kept the thread between the two of us. A plan we had been sitting on for a long time. It was time to run it.
Content.
In a world that lives and dies on a single idea, good content is a weapon you cannot trade for anything else. So from the moment I started broadcasting, I had been turning the same question over. Was there something that belonged to me alone—something that could set me completely apart from every other streamer?
The Miracle joint broadcast had answered it, if only a little. The viewers went wild, and I found a road. Now I wanted to pave that road until it was a piece of work anyone would have to stop, admire, and envy.
Back then I wasn't ready. I didn't have the room, either.
The practice had been thin, the details thinner, and I hadn't been close enough to Mia to ask without hesitating. Not anymore. For this single day I had worked without a break for a month, and about ten days ago I had laid the whole scheme out for her and won her permission.
"You actually cooked up a bit this fun? Unnie, you are seriously the best."
Mia had her doubts until I showed her the results of the practice. Then she couldn't hide how impressed she was, and she threw herself behind the plan. More than that—true to the little-devil nickname—she put her head together with mine and started handing me ideas of her own.
What followed was a stretch of patience and waiting. At last, the opening came.
Tomorrow was Mia and Lac's joint broadcast. Once a month the two of them ran a segment, and its name was Debate to the Death: settle on a single topic, argue from opposite sides, and let the viewers' votes crown a winner.
And tomorrow, I'm the one taking her place.
The collab was scheduled on Mia's channel, so I already had the Shindaeryuk TV ID and password. Discord, too. Against every contingency I could imagine, I had sunk another 250 points and upgraded Vocal Timbre Variation to level 3. A vicious synergy with Voice Mimicry 3. Stack a month of work on top of that, and the sync rate came out high enough to startle even me.
Tomorrow is going to be a riot.
I would fool Lac without a seam showing. The viewers, too. I was going to stun the whole room.
We swapped accounts.
Mia logged in as BJ Hani, was granted manager, and took her place at the very top of the viewer list. BJ Hani. Watching my own double from another account felt strange—like I was sneaking off to commit some small, delicious bit of delinquency.
And I was somebody else. I was Mia. Twenty-two. Three years a streamer. Youngest of Miracle Crew, and Shindaeryuk TV's little devil. That was the face I was about to wear.
"All right! We're back again today, for a clash of logic and intellect..."
"Lac and Mia's Debate to the Death! Starting now!"
"Ahem. Our viewers are feeling mischievous right from the jump. First, today's debate topic."
Truth be told, I had been startled when I heard it last week. How were you even supposed to debate this? The answer was already blindingly obvious.
"Today's topic is the correct way to eat sweet-and-sour pork. Do you dip, or do you pour?"
"Opinions in chat are already split. All right, let's get started for real."
The screen divided left and right. Lac's photo hung on one side, Mia's on the other, and beneath each picture the words came up bright and unmistakable.
Chat split down the middle, sharp as a knife. Lac let it boil for a while, and then he finally opened his mouth.
"I don't know if you all realize this, but sweet-and-sour pork is meant to be poured. Why? You know how much the original matters, right?"
"Everyone, please focus on what I'm saying. Ahem! There are several theories about where sweet-and-sour pork comes from, but most of them say people who crossed over from China took the food they used to make back home and localized it. So what about the original form!"
"The dishes you can call the original of sweet-and-sour pork are pour by default. From the cooking stage itself, they stir-fry everything with the sauce so the flavor soaks in deep. It comes out with the sauce already on it. Which means the original—the founding version—has no reason whatsoever to be dipped on the side."
"Well? Care to offer a rebuttal, in the face of historical truth?"
Lac's voice, armored in confidence, tickled at my ear. I leaned back from the mic and drew a long, deep breath. What started now was a tightrope I absolutely could not fall from.
"Historical truth, my foot! You said it yourself. It was lo. cal. ized."
"Yes. And what's the problem with that?"
I gave a lightly puzzled Lac a neat little jab.
"You know this better than anyone. Duo with me in Legend of League and your skill got very localized! If you've climbed to Platinum, you follow Platinum's laws. Sweet-and-sour pork is the same. Why should we care how they eat it in China? What matters is how we eat it here!"
Fortunately, not a single person seemed to have caught on. I couldn't afford to relax. Tone, diction, cadence, the little habits that were hers alone—there was more than one thing I had to watch, and more than two.
"That's only a culture that exists because our delivery system is so developed. Dip actually has a lot of problems. Do you know what the biggest issue in the world is right now?"
"A global issue? Hmm... could I get a light-novel rec with the same title as the case of Mr. Lac failing to enlist before he turns twenty-four?"
"......"
"...... The environment! Starting with global warming, the problems are piled to the ceiling. And in the middle of all that, the dip faction... the dip faction!"
"They have been committing the shameless crime of demanding a separate plastic tub for the sauce. In a word, dippers are the chief culprits of environmental destruction!"
"Then just order from a place that serves the sauce in a dish."
"I am shocked. To think Mia could be this ignorant about the environment. And the detergent used to wash that dish?"
"......"
"For the sake of the planet, let's all pour, not dip."
Lac, riding high, fished for the room's agreement. Chat filled with the cheers of Team Pour. I stared at the absurdity of it and put a needle through them.
"Okay, but you pour people are also dumping sauce that showed up in its own tub. You're not stir-frying it in like the original sweet-and-sour pork."
"Huh?"
"So what's all this talk about the environment. You're standing in the exact same place."
"Heh. As expected, you're no ordinary opponent. To brush my attack off that lightly. But don't get comfortable. That was nothing more than a light hello."
"Oppa, that bit is kinda gross?"
"......"
The broadcast had fully hit its stride.