Season 5: Chapter 70. The Weight of Showing Up (2)
The day of the loss, in a dark room, Sang-Hyeon lay in bed with his blanket pulled up around him. The small light of his phone lit his face.
Sigh.
He looked at Streamer Garden on his screen. Everyone celebrated their liberation from the Almond Era.
"Everyone is having a great time."
He felt unsettled by all these people celebrating the end of the Almond Era. It wasn’t a great feeling. He checked the LIL Pro Survival board and saw the same reactions there.
[Free publicity was a gift tbh~]
[Almond, we had a great time, heading out~]
[Lmao wow they actually got beaten. We're apparently one of the first. Looks like survival mode is really gonna blow up this year]
He tucked his phone under his pillow and closed his eyes.
"Is it too much to ask for a little Almond sensitivity..." he muttered some nonsense and drifted off into a dream.
In the dream, he was on a fairly ordinary boat. The sea it sailed on wasn’t. Instead of water, the ocean was made of popcorn.
"Die! Die!"
Almond drew his bow and fired furiously, hitting popcorn after popcorn.
Pop! Pop!
In this ocean, popcorn kept sizzling up and bursting endlessly. With no end in sight, even a master archer couldn't hit all of it.
One of the sailors on deck mockingly said, "Now, now, Captain. No need to work so hard~."
Almond turned to see who this impudent one was. There, he found Zelo shaking his behind at him.
"Let's just daaance~. Come on~!" Zelo's butt moved up and down wildly.
It moved faster and faster until even Almond's reaction speed couldn't track it anymore.
Bzzzt...
This was no longer movement, but vibration. That was how fast it was.
Zzzzzt!
Zzt!
It even made an actual buzzing sound.
What the...
Flash!
Sang-Hyeon jolted awake, eyes open. It was somehow already daytime. His phone was vibrating under his pillow as his alarm went off. It was his morning alarm.
Phew.
He turned it off and scratched his head.
‘That was a strange dream.’
Without getting up yet, he checked his YouTube channel out of habit and saw that a strange video had been uploaded.
[Trash Slam Dunk]
'Huh?'
From the title and thumbnail, it was from yesterday's stream.
‘Already?’
In the past, yesterday's stream would go up today. Sometimes, a YouTube Shorts version would follow within hours. Lately, with the office move and editor situation, Ji-Ah had been too swamped for anything like that to be possible.
That aside, something else had caught Sang-Hyeon's eye.
‘The rankings...!’
Obviously, the numbers looked good. That didn’t matter, though.
"Smart..."
— I've been converted...
— Smart Young Man! Smart Young Man!
— Smart Smart Smart Smart
‘The resurrection of Almond.’
Those comments caught his eye. He quickly pulled up Community Garden. “
Pfft. ”
The corner of Sang-Hyeon's mouth rose slightly.
Certain posts began trending on Streamer Garden.
[1. We're cooked, this video just hit number one lmao]
The number one post was about a video taking the number one spot.
(video)
This damn Smart Young Man... Smart Smart Smart Smart Smart Smart Smart...
The linked video was “Trash Slam Dunk.”
— Ugh...
— I'm so annoyed
— Even this post is cooked
— It's starting again?? lmaooo
— This is why Popcorn couldn't free us himself
— the Almond remnants are still running wild
— Sidenote: the video was actually fun to watch lol
— If you watch that video and still won't acknowledge the Smart Young Man, you genuinely might not be human? Where's your conscience?
└ Fr I think the same
└ We're actually done...
— Smart Young Man! Smart Young Man! Smart Young Man! Smart Young Man!
— What can you do if he's just good at the game lmao
— if he were dumb, he'd be bad~
Even in the comments of that very post, the signs were already there. The Almond Era had ended on the surface, but uprooting it entirely looked close to impossible.
[3. We need to redefine what "smart" even means.]
The Almond loyalists tried to change the meaning of the word.
Not even bringing up the Smart Young Man thing, genuinely. Aren’t game intelligence and academic intelligence separate things?
Combat sense is its own form of intelligence too
They had stopped operating openly now without any direct Smart Young Man endorsements, but they controlled the community more thoroughly than ever.
— Yeah that's right
— You can't be dumb and be good at games, honestly
— You can't sit in the highest tier for five years if you're dumb
— You'd drop immediately
└ That's not what Ah-Sung is lmao
└ Dropped immediately lmao
— Ugh... Almond loyalists are so gross...
└ ? What? We're just talking about games?
└ lmaooo
— This is beyond saving now... I concede.
It was no longer open warfare with swords drawn. This had become a culture war, and Macaron's video had decided the outcome.
Hah.
Look how far this went."
The office was finally coming together with most things in their place.
Ju-Hyeok sat at his desk, grinning. "Macaron pulled it off."
Then, he shook his head a moment later.
"No, wait."
Sure, the video had been Macaron's work.
"How did Ji-Ah turn him around?"
Macaron had gone dark for weeks, hadn't he? Ju-Hyeok had tried everything to bring him back and gotten nowhere. Ji-Ah had turned him around.
‘I wonder, is he still going to say he won't come in for the commute?’
Zzzt.
[Macaron]
Macaron was calling him right now.
Ji-Ah had one thing on her mind today.
‘What should I wear?’
She'd be going to the office to work soon. The question of what to wear every day genuinely stumped her. Summer was coming. Since she'd been working from home, she barely had any summer clothes. It was a fairly relaxed kind of problem, all things considered, like the lazy drift of an electric fan on a slow afternoon.
Hmm...
She sat in front of the fan and scrolled through an online shop on her phone.
Zzt.
Zzt.
A call came from Ju-Hyeok.
"Yeah. Oppa."
"Ji-Ah, you saw Macaron's video?"
"Of course, I'm the one who approved and uploaded it."
"No, not that..." Ju-Hyeok seemed like he was about to say something about the rankings.
Ji-Ah responded first. "By the way, did you really send Macaron dozens of messages? Macaron must have been exaggerating, right?"
"Oh, come on. What kind of person can't count? Dozens is an overstatement."
"Right?"
"I sent hundreds." "..."
"Kidding. I sent exactly three messages."
What he didn't bother mentioning was the eighteen missed calls.
"Anyway, the video hit number one."
"Yeah... wait. What? Say that again?"
It had barely been up. Number one?
"For real?"
"It's been getting such a strong reaction. And then, suddenly this."
After working in editing for a while, one developed a sense for which videos would take off.
"But this much?"
Even so, Ji-Ah hadn't expected it to reach first place this fast with no special event behind it. It was called “Trash Slam Dunk” as if it were some grand epic. At the end of the day, it was just the last five placement matches. A video with no particular narrative arc hitting first place this quickly was a first, even for Ji-Ah.
‘I've seen it happen on other channels.’
Not on Almond's, but she'd seen videos climb to first in ways that seemed almost accidental. Macaron seemed like one of those cases. Ji-Ah couldn't always explain the logic, but the views came. Wasn't that its own kind of talent?
‘Has Macaron hit first before?’
Thinking back on it, she didn't think Macaron had ever taken first before.
"Macaron didn't thank you yet, did he?"
"Huh? Thank me? Why?"
"Because you're the one who brought him back."
Hmm...
Me?"
"He said it himself," Ju-Hyeok casually said out of nowhere.
What was Ju-Hyeok saying?
"What do you mean? Macaron doesn’t leave the house. Did you hear this directly from him?"
"He said he'd commute in."
"Wow!" Ji-Ah sat up out of bed without realizing it. "For real?!"
"Good work, Team Lead Seo Ji-Ah. What did you even do to turn Macaron around?"
Ju-Hyeok's question left Ji-Ah sitting with her mouth open, unable to say a word for a long moment.
"Hello? Why are you quiet?"
"No, it's just... this is my first time."
"First time for what?"
"Being a manager. I don't know what I'm doing."
"What are you talking about? You worked at PD Jang's company just fine."
"That was like being a temp contractor! I was basically an outside person!"
"Same difference."
Ju-Hyeok had no idea. People born naturally social wouldn’t understand why Macaron suddenly went dark, why showing up at their door would have been wrong, or why Ji-Ah was trembling right now. They would have no clue.
"What do I wear? I... don't have anything appropriate for a manager."
"Is there a specific kind of outfit for that?"
Hah...
Ju-Hyeok could be infuriating sometimes.
Ji-Ah wore a big smile on her face despite spouting all her worries. "Dressing like you is what managers wear."
"Huh? Th-there's no way." “
Pfft.
” She could picture his expression. It made her laugh.
"Why? Don't you like that? A director is the most senior manager there is."
"That's true, but it sounds like an insult somehow."
It was an insult, so Ji-Ah changed course. "Oh, by the way, oppa. You said we needed more streamers."
"Ah. Right. Time to do proper recruiting."
Mixed Nuts was building toward real growth with the new office. Ju-Hyeok had spent enough time in the industry now to develop a real eye for it, and so had Sang-Hyeon.
They had reached out to more editors beyond Macaron. For streamers, the only ones they'd signed so far were those Sang-Hyeon had met through the Fake National Team. Streamers were the real core of what a management company actually earned.
"I think I know someone good."
Ji-Ah floated a name.
‘I... actually feel confident about something.’
She'd never once voiced an opinion about actual company business before. Her track record in both company and professional life hadn't exactly been a string of successes. Maybe Macaron's return had something to do with it. Ji-Ah felt like she understood something. The part Ju-Hyeok couldn't see, she was supposed to fill.
"Yeah? Who?"
Ji-Ah quickly went back to her computer and typed something in. It was someone's YouTube page. She scrolled through it once more and checked the videos' style.
"LetMeTank."
"Huh? Oh! That... that Master-tier tank player?"
As she'd suspected, Ju-Hyeok hadn't registered her presence all that strongly. The surprise in his voice was clear.
Ji-Ah swallowed quietly.
‘Is... it that unexpected?’
She felt confident a moment ago. Ju-Hyeok's reaction made her immediately second-guess herself.
‘Still...’
She thought it over again. It was still a good pick.
"I, I think... this person has something. They're just unpolished yet."
"In what way?"
Knowing Ju-Hyeok, he wouldn't just take a recommendation from someone close at face value. If anything, he'd interrogate them harder.
Ji-Ah took a breath and kept going. "This person... like... There were two sides to them. They were holding back when they were with us. If you look at what they said on their mic channel alone..."
Her thoughts weren’t entirely coherent, but she pushed through and explained at length what she'd felt and seen as best she could.
"And I think the videos would get better with our editing team too..."
"Sounds good. I'll try sending an email." Ju-Hyeok gave the go-ahead.
"Re... really?" Ji-Ah was surprised.
She'd been rambling and wasn't even sure she made any sense.
"You’re not just agreeing because I said it... right?"
"Team Lead Seo, is Mixed Nuts going anywhere?"
"I mean, no."
"It just sounded good to me. I'll reach out. See you soon."
"Okay!"
Click.
The call ended.
Ji-Ah hugged her phone to her chest for no reason. "
Haah... hah...
It had been nothing, objectively, yet she felt this nervous.
"We're actually building a company."
The reality suddenly hit her that she was one of Mixed Nuts' founders.

Comments

Loading...