Genius Archer's Streaming

Sang-Hyeon had been reading about Galileo's life story when he pressed a hand to his forehead. "Ugh..."

His head was spinning. Was it because he'd suddenly tried to take on strange studying?

'Hm... no.'

It wasn't that. This resembled a sensation he'd felt before. He raised his arm.

Tremble...

"Ah."

Sang-Hyeon caught himself. He'd been playing casually for a while and had forgotten. The memory resurfaced.

'Was that why I stopped?'

He had forgotten why he stopped playing the Spirit Sorcerer. Partly because it wasn't a bow-using champion, but mostly because his doctor had told him so.

'What should I do?'

Sang-Hyeon worried. The capsule's condition report went straight to his doctor every time. He quickly moved to sit beside the capsule and looked at the hologram display’s external readings.

Beep! Beep!

As he approached, a body condition check message appeared.

[Mild Risk Factors]

[Approximately 3]

"Hmm..." Sang-Hyeon sat beside the capsule and reviewed the condition message. "Right."

His own situation freshly came back to him. He'd been forgetting this for a while.

Sang-Hyeon's gaze moved to the picture frames arranged on the display shelf. The center ones were photos from the world championship.

The biggest event, with the most people, was in the center. Back then, Sang-Hyeon had run toward nothing but victory. He was always conscious of the pain in his arm during that time. Knowing his precise limit was how he could control himself. He had to face that pain every day, but the sense of achievement was equally high.

After winning that world championship, Sang-Hyeon had resolved the grief of never having stood on stage as a national representative. Perhaps that period most resembled the Yu Sang-Hyeon he'd known himself to be. If someone asked whether the Sang-Hyeon of that time was streamer-like, he wasn’t.

His gaze shifted to a photo of chibi-style characters gathered together. In the background was a village they'd built with their own hands. It was a commemorative photo from Survival Craft’s Cheese Village, taken at the after-party following the finale performance.

'I could play for a long time back then.'

Survival Craft hadn't put much strain on his body with its light graphics, simple combat, and playhouse-style content. It had little chance of overworking his arm. That period was probably his most streamer-like era.

Almond hadn’t felt any pressure to win. The time spent in Cheese Village now felt like a dream. He almost felt nostalgic that the server had shut down.

'I see.'

Sang-Hyeon's gaze moved to the group photo of streamers next to it. This photo was taken in almost the same composition as Cheese Village, except everyone was dressed up in real life at Treevy's farewell event.

'Streamers...'

There was clearly a difference from the world championship photo. Something like an edge of intensity was absent, if he had to name it. The world championship photo had an undercurrent of grim resolve. The other photo had none of that. Everyone was laughing and talking. Some weren't even looking at the camera. Bubblegum was practically falling forward.

They featured two completely different lives. In both photos, a person named Yu Sang-Hyeon stood in exactly the same place.

'Who am I...?'

Sang-Hyeon sat there thinking, staring blankly at the condition check alert in front of the capsule. This question was hitting him belatedly for a reason.

'The Platform War... how should I handle it?'

He didn't know what mindset to bring to the Platform War. Was it for entertainment or only victory? At the world championship, he'd been such a new streamer that he'd just gone with the flow without thinking. Now, he was at a scale where he was effectively responsible for the Knight Order members' streaming presence.

Streamers weren't professional athletes. Winning the Platform War didn't automatically make a stream thrive. That was clear from looking at past streamer tournament data.

'Maybe winning isn't everything anymore.'

Sang-Hyeon's sense of values was bound to change. If winning wasn't everything, what was this tournament even for?

[Mild Risk Factors]

[Approximately 3]

Facing a message like this, how was he supposed to respond? Should he burn his body down like at the world championship and win? Or play happily and step back at the right moment like in Cheese Village? Could a tournament be a tournament that way?

'Hm...?'

Suddenly, someone's words surfaced.

'Anyway, bring me the homework done. It'll help you. You.'

He suddenly recalled this scene. Now he understood what she'd meant because of her gesture then. Sang-Hyeon re-enacted the scene in his head.

'It was like this.'

Tap... tap...

Sa-Rang had touched her own right arm.

'That's what she meant?'

***

"Alright~. Good work today!"

Clap, clap!

Ju-Hyeok gave a round of applause and announced the end of the workday.

Macaron rose to his feet, his eyes hollow and his legs shaking. "Ah... th-thank you."

The fact that he said thank you as he left work said everything.

“Pfft.” Ji-Ah stifled a laugh beside him. "It was a lot for the first day, wasn't it?"

"Ah... no."

It wasn't a lot. Hell had just arrived, but Macaron still felt puzzled.

'Why is that person still standing fine?'

Seo Ji-Ah looked delicate, and her stamina seemed extremely low. Why was he even weaker than her?

"Oh, but..." Ji-Ah lowered her voice. "What was that? The office promotion video idea earlier..."

"Oh." Macaron wanted to say something during the meeting.

An urgent situation had broken out, and he hadn't even gotten to bring it up.

"A fake office documentary."

"The office...? A fake documentary?"

"Yes, documentary-style but fake. Made in an absurd way to make people laugh. For example... getting drunk at the first-day company dinner and then working overnight the next day with no chance to go home, carrying on the legacy of Ah-Sung that was..."

"That's not fake."

"..."

It was just a documentary.

'Damn. I slipped up.'

Macaron's head wasn't functioning. His honest thoughts had just spilled out.

"A-anyway... fake it but exaggerate even more... Something like that... My brain is frozen right now... haha..."

Bang!

Ju-Hyeok came bursting out of the director's office. He'd already grabbed his briefcase and was ready to go. "Isn't anyone leaving? Oh! Macaron, if you're going to sleep here again tonight, I can show you how to turn off the capsule bed..."

"Oh, no, thank you!"

Maybe fake wasn't even necessary.

Crash!

Macaron instantly packed his things and walked out of the office. Eventually, only Ju-Hyeok and Ji-Ah remained in the darkening office.

"Oh? One person leaves, and it's back to just the two of us. Director, we need to hire more people."

Ju-Hyeok naturally sat down beside Ji-Ah again. "Come now. Editor Seo, we have to take it slow. Does the company have money to spare?"

“Pfft.” Ji-Ah laughed while making old middle-manager sounds. "How is it, oppa? Being in the director's office? Do you like it?"

"Eh. It’s a little stuffy, surprisingly."

"You don't mean that."

Ju-Hyeok laughed. “Pfft.”

He genuinely didn't mean it and had been looking forward to working in the director's office for so long. What did a little stuffiness matter?

Ju-Hyeok brought up something else. "I do have a slight concern, though."

"What?"

"Just... this Platform War."

"Yeah."

"It's definitely different from the world championship."

"Hmm. Right. The positioning within the industry is different."

"Yeah. The difference between going to a project as an intern versus going as a senior manager... Almond, as a streamer, has grown too much. Internally, something feels a little lacking."

When a streamer grew, changes came with it. As Ju-Hyeok said, an intern and a senior manager couldn't operate the same way. Viewers didn't quite notice it, but almost every streamer went through that kind of internal growth. Compare before and after, and even the tone of their voice was noticeably different.

"In the Platform War, Almond can no longer just go along with things passively."

"Ah..." Ji-Ah rested her chin in her hand and nodded. "That's why he kept going, 'The calls? The calls?'"

"He's quietly sharp. He feels like he needs to step up and do something... I think he does it instinctively."

"Thanks to that, he became Dummy."

"... Yeah."

They could churn out YouTube Shorts like crazy, but it couldn't end there.

"The issue with this combined streamer tournament is that the main appeal is everyone hashing out opinions in the process. If it keeps flowing the way it is now, with only Sweet Radish and the coach having opinions, it'll be completely boring."

Sweet Potato, Lemon, and Black Tea had surprisingly little to contribute.

Ji-Ah acknowledged it too. "Everyone's deferring to Almond a bit."

Almond's stature had grown so much that the other streamers were quietly intimidated by him.

"For Almond to hold up his end, he needs to have decent opinions of his own..."

The ideal scenario would be Almond and Sweet Radish both being at a comparable level, but that would never happen.

"But oppa."

"Yeah?"

"You really do think hard about every little thing."

Ju-Hyeok looked a little embarrassed.

Ji-Ah smiled at him. "Almond will figure it out on his own. He always does."

"That's true... You're right... On his own...?"

Could Sang-Hyeon figure things out on his own? That was honestly unclear, but things had always worked out.

***

After work, Sang-Hyeon sat alone drinking beer at home. "Oh~ you're back?"

"What. Drinking alone? That's cowardly."

"Sit down. Let's drink together." Sang-Hyeon handed over a bag of spicy almonds.

"Come on. Give me... some dried squid."

Seeing him refuse almonds, Sang-Hyeon looked briefly disappointed. "Sure. Help yourself~."

He clearly had no intention of getting squid for Ju-Hyeok and continued surfing the main screen of a streaming service with the remote. Unable to decide what to watch, he'd just been reading titles and synopses for an hour.

Ju-Hyeok put the squid in the microwave and cracked open his beer can. "Something on your mind?"

Thwack.

"Ju-Hyeok, that special guest content we talked about."

"Huh? Oh... the one we said we'd do once we moved to the office studio?"

"Yeah."

The office move's biggest unexpected expense had been the broadcast studio. They wouldn’t just be a company, but a space for Almond and Mixed Nuts' affiliated streamers to play together. They'd been planning things like interview content with special guests, though this was just a broader plan. Nothing had been implemented yet.

"I thought of who to have on just now."

Ju-Hyeok was surprised. "Oh? You have someone you want to collab with?"

Sang-Hyeon had never been the one to bring up a collab first.

"Yeah. I thought of a content idea too."

Even the content?

"What is it?"

***

Two days passed.

Dun! Dun!

[First Studio Broadcast!]

"Hello. As announced, this is our first studio broadcast."

— Oh!

— Hey hey

— Since when do you dress up for streams?

— The studio looks great!

— Saw it during the tour but it looks great

— Money really does things~

— But who's behind you?

"Behind me? What's behind me?"

Almond played dumb, but someone standing was obviously veiled behind him.

— What's the concept? lmaooo

— Guest?

— There's nothing behind you???

— A shadow

— The shadow person's head is way too big

— Is that a figure?

— It's a Lord Almond figure!

— That head size is definitely a Lord Almond figure lmaooo

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