The Hard Secret to Talk About
Typos started flooding the chat.
The first “what is he doing?” and the later “what is he doing?” meant completely different things.
He’d turned around and fired on the back line before he’d even counted all the way to ten, just as promised, so the reaction was only natural.
The chat room’s temperature dropped so fast it felt as if winter had come in an instant, then erupted like a volcano belching lava.
The number of people getting auto-censored for profanity rose at a frightening pace.
Then, when Yeongho handled both shots and, in return, blew NextK’s head clean off, the viewers who’d been tossed from one extreme to the other in the span of a heartbeat experienced a catharsis that was almost too big to put into chat.
The broadcast had run for a little over two hours, including the brief breaks between matches.
For viewers who’d sunk roughly the same amount of time they might spend watching a movie, the adrenaline in their heads was overflowing, and they couldn’t hide their excitement.
Tens of thousands of viewers had engraved the names SJ DAD and God-father into their minds with a pure, high-grade rush of pleasure.
From the perspective of a rookie streamer like Yeongho, it was the kind of promotional success that couldn’t have gone better.
“Now then! Please say a few words!”
“Hello. I’m SJ DAD, Park Yeongho.”
With the tournament over, it was time for the prize ceremony and a brief interview.
Dokgo Jun, Choi Pinam, and Kumonyong, the members of the winning team, each gave a quick word about how they felt.
Then the interview moved to the obvious MVP, Yeongho, and began in earnest.
A staff member from the organizers, standing in the waiting-room area dressed up like a reporter, held a microphone out toward Yeongho.
It was only a prop, but Yeongho leaned toward it all the same, as if his body thought that was how it should be done, and greeted the viewers.
“You put on an unbelievable performance today!”
“I did my best to show you a good match.”
“There was already a bit of talk before the tournament started about the tier rules, wasn’t there? Some teams were unhappy about that. But even we never expected it to snowball into this kind of large-scale alliance and teaming behavior.”
“Well, I can understand how the other players felt, so I didn’t really have any complaints.”
Seeing Yeongho answer calmly, the staff member let out a laugh and continued.
“Haha! Yes, that’s the dignity of a winner who claimed an absolute victory. You recorded 41 kills in the first match and an astonishing 50 in the second, right?”
“Did I? I didn’t count them, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Ah, um, I see.”
Because Yeongho replied as if it was nothing at all, the viewers cackled and kept typing.
If he’d set a record by taking out half the lobby alone, he should’ve been a little excited, at least.
But he’d kept such a deadpan attitude throughout the game, as if he were just handling something trivial, and that was becoming one of the details that made his character so distinctive.
“It was more that my teammates put a lot of pressure on my behalf, so I don’t think the kills were something I made happen by myself alone.”
“I see! Even giving credit to your teammates like that is wonderful. Ah! This time, your teammate Choi Pinam has also been a pretty big topic, hasn’t he?”
“Choi Pinam, yes. It’s just that all the attention is on me, but Pinam is definitely skilled enough.”
“Of course he had the skill, but I understand he also took charge of the team’s orders and showed a different side of himself. I remember hearing that he treated his teammates, Dokgo Jun and Kumonyong, rather harshly.”
“Ah, well...”
For a moment, Yeongho was left speechless. He ran through his thoughts and finally managed an answer.
“The team members... trusted and relied on one another...? Um, we divided our roles well? I think that led to good results.”
“Aha! Yes, role division. Thanks to that, Kumonyong also set a record of a different kind—she apparently didn’t fire a single bullet in all three matches.”
“Oh, really?”
Even Yeongho was genuinely surprised by that one.
She’d been hard to notice, but was it really that bad?
Maybe because he’d put on such a dazzling performance and won so much favor with the audience, the viewers burst into delighted laughter every time Yeongho said anything.
“I heard that in this tournament as well as before, you’ve shown a strong preference for the Winchester. It’s considered the least useful weapon among sniper rifles. Is there some special reason for that?”
“Least useful? Not at all. I don’t think most people realize this, but this weapon called the Winchester—”
But when the topic turned to the Winchester and the lecture dragged on for a while, even the viewers seemed to wrinkle their noses and want to run away.
“Ah, yes. So contrary to what’s generally known, the Winchester seems to be a very good weapon. Maybe after this, Battle Island’s next patch will include a Winchester nerf! Even if they don’t touch the performance, maybe they’ll lower the drop rate?”
At the staff member’s joking remark, Yeongho froze with a shocked look on his face before slowly speaking.
“Ah... come to think of it, maybe it isn’t that great a gun after all. In fact, I’ve been thinking I should start practicing with other weapons.”
“Yes...?”
And so, leaving behind a whole string of memorable lines, he gave the viewers one last round of laughter.
“Ah, yes. We’ve heard everything we needed to. Thank you!”
“Thank you for your hard work. And my sincere thanks as well to the viewers who showed their support.”
The interview ended, the broadcast wrapped up shortly after, and this round of the streamer tournament came to a close.
That day, Yeongho didn’t do any personal streaming either. He went out for drinks with Choi Pinam and the manager, then came home after the company dinner.
Still, as the scenes from the relay spread through every kind of community site and stayed hot for a while, it became the catalyst for his reputation to spread far beyond what he himself even knew.
“The progress looks very good. If you remove the cast next week, you should be able to go back to normal life.”
“Huh? Is that so?”
It was time for a hospital visit, so he had his injured leg examined and heard that it was already nearly healed.
It had only been a little over two weeks, so the recovery was faster than expected, and he was somewhat surprised.
I didn’t think I’d be out before a full month had even passed.
It was good news, but he couldn’t enjoy it with an untroubled smile.
Once his leg returned to normal, he needed to find the right timing and sit down with his wife for a serious talk about streaming.
What he lacked was confidence that he could really persuade her.
The channel has been growing faster than I expected...
The revenue had already hit the ten-million range, so it wasn’t something he’d be embarrassed to mention anywhere.
By the time this month was over, it was impossible to predict how much higher that number might climb. His standing as a streamer was growing fast.
And once he showed her the results, he didn’t think she’d necessarily object, even if she did find it absurd.
The problem was that the money wouldn’t actually land in his bank account any time soon.
It seems that if you request settlement from coins to cash, it only comes out around the end of the following month.
In other words, “next month” really meant nearly two months of waiting.
The plan to show his wife a bank statement had gone sideways.
Even if the amount was the same, the weight of the conversation would be different between a deposit figure sitting in a bank account and a number listed as coins on a platform site.
That was especially true for his wife, who knew almost nothing about internet broadcasting—less, perhaps, than Yeongho himself had known before he became a streamer.
If she didn’t suspect it was some weird scam or a ridiculous prank, he’d count himself lucky.
Thinking that way, he came home.
“Where were you?”
“Huh! What are you doing home at this hour?”
His wife, who usually came home late at night, was in the house before evening had even fully settled in.
She seemed to have been folding laundry in the living room, and when she saw him, she lifted her eyes to meet his.
“I had to cover an urgent shift tomorrow, so they let me off early today.”
“Tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Sunday, isn’t it? You’re going in to work? Did your schedule change completely?”
“We’ve got a set weekend worker, of course. But something came up, so I said I’d take over just for one day.”
“There are other people there too, aren’t there? Why make things harder for yourself?”
“You’re home too, so what’s the point of me just sitting around as well? Once in a while, it’s fine to go in even without a day off.”
Only one day a week.
At the mention of going to work even on the single day she was supposed to rest, Yeongho fell silent, feeling a bitter ache.
Not so long ago, he had been much the same as his wife.
Unless he quietly worked more than everyone else, even in the worst conditions, it wasn’t easy to keep life going at all.
“So?”
“Hm?”
“Where did you go?”
“Ah! To the hospital. They said I might be able to take off the cast next week.”
“Mm. That’s a relief.”
His wife turned away and started folding laundry again, then after a short pause tossed out another question.
“You’ve been going out a lot lately, haven’t you? Are you looking for work or something?”
So this was the real question.
Yeongho instantly knew this was the important moment, and he carefully weighed his words before speaking.