****
Lee Dong-soo finished running for thirty minutes and went over to where the director was.
“Dong-soo-ya.”
“Yes.”
“I'll tell you what to be careful about while sparring. Sparring is strictly to check your skills and improve your abilities; it is not meant to knock down the opponent.”
Dong-soo looked up at the director and thought.
He would have definitely been destined to be a bandit leader if he had been born in the old days.
“...So make sure to show manners, don't get excited, and you must not go all out either. Hmm? Are you listening?”
“Ah? Yes. Of course.”
In truth, he had not heard a single thing.
‘Well, I guessed I could just think of it as a practice match.’
Although Lee Dong-soo was still young, he possessed sportsmanship like a professional player.
Though he occasionally had childish thoughts.
“Now then, let's do it when those guys over there are finished. In the meantime, it would be good for you to think in advance about the techniques you want to practice during sparring. Though you haven't learned much.”
“Yes, I understand!”
“Right, good!”
The director said, ruffling Dong-soo's hair.
“By the way, have you decided who to do it with?”
The martial arts fighters who came to this gym also liked games.
This was because although the field predicted to go extinct first after the release of virtual reality games was combat sports, a phenomenon appeared where the popularity of combat sports rose along with the rising popularity of virtual reality.
The in-game fights that used flashy skills and the primitive, blood-spattering real-life fights were complementary goods rather than substitutes.
And above all, virtual reality games were just fun even for martial arts fighters.
Therefore, Lee Dong-soo could not help but be popular inside the gym.
Among men, a guy who was just good at games was a god.
But an eighteen-year-old professional gamer with good sociability who sat in the second place in the world in the most popular game?
It was harder not to become close with him.
So the director did not particularly worry.
“Choose without pressure. Everyone will go easy on you.”
For sparring, the partner was more important than anything else.
If the partner did not match the rhythm properly, there could be nothing gained from sparring, and the risk of injury was also high.
And what if the partner possessed even higher skills and had a nasty personality?
*Bam! Bam!*
Sparring was in full swing where they were looking.
The director watched with satisfaction and let out a resigned laugh.
Jin Seo-jun.
That crazy bastard came after a long time and was thoroughly trampling on a green sprout.
‘He came to relieve stress again. I told them to just avoid him.’
The director recalled the past as he watched the newcomer, who had been full of confidence about debuting as a professional soon, being toyed with by Seo-jun.
He should have realized it when a handsome high school student who looked exactly like his father had taggingly approached him and spouted nonsense that did not suit his face, saying, "Please teach me modern martial arts."
That he was a crazy bastard.
If Lee Dong-soo was a cute younger brother whom the fighters wanted to play around with, then that guy was, indeed.
A stinging nettle.
Thinking that he had found an extremely appropriate analogy, the director nodded his head on his own.
If touched, one got stung. By a natural talent of unknown origin.
No, even if one just stayed still, he would approach and sting on his own.
Even today, did he not come after a long time, skip the exercise he was supposed to do, loiter around the fighters to give pointers, and eventually end up in a fight with the clueless newcomer?
‘The guys who knew better should have stopped him. That bastard Seo-jun didn't know moderation.’
The director glared at the other fighters who had not stopped the newcomer.
They were looking at the ring with exciting eyes, as if watching a fire across the river.
‘I should comfort him a bit today.’
The director let out a sigh and looked to his side.
And seeing that Lee Dong-soo's gaze was fixed on Seo-jun, he began to feel a sense of unease.
That’s not what I meant.”
‘Even if you got beaten by him, you had nothing to gain.’
There was only one reason why he had not kicked Seo-jun out of the gym, no matter how many pointers he gave and how much he toyed with others with his outstanding skills.
This was because, strangely, the performance of the fighters who accepted his pointers rose.
‘It wasn't because that bastard Seo-jun's father was a sucker who registered his entire family at the gym, nor was it to bring him into this world someday.’
Indeed. That was so.
Come to think of it, didn't stinging nettle also have poison thorns growing on its stems and leaves, but if the poison thorns were removed, didn't it become a highly nutritious plant with various uses?
To the fighters, Seo-jun was a useful existence.
But to the current Lee Dong-soo, Seo-jun was simply the stinging nettle itself. A raw state with the thorns unremoved, that was.
Although that bastard Seo-jun still knew the line and had never initiated trouble with other ordinary people besides fighters, that was strictly when he had not been provoked first.
“Couldn't I do it with that hyung?”
Ultimately, what should have never come out of Lee Dong-soo's mouth came out.
The director forced his eyes away and pointed at someone else.
“Ah, that hyung?”
The director spoke in a voice like a crawling ant.
“No. Where were you pointing? They were completely different.”
Lee Dong-soo scratched his head as if embarrassed.
“Just that hyung sparring over there. It's my first time seeing him, so was it impolite to ask?”
“Uh! Right. That was a truly impolite and tactless request. Let's ask a hyung you know. Or, I could just do it for you.”
It had been a long time since he last held the mitts, and now he was in a position to even spar.
The director let out a sigh of relief inwardly, thinking it was a relief.
Meanwhile, Lee Dong-soo felt a deep sense of disappointment.
This was because Shin Ha-yeon had also marvelled after watching the videos of that streamer named Jin Seo-jun.
‘To the point that Min-hyun-hyung made such a fuss and Ha-yeon-noona marvelled?’
Lee Dong-soo could not accept this.
Even without this, he had planned to install Assassin's Dawn this afternoon and recreate Seo-jun's play exactly as it was.
Park Min-hyun was a teammate he acknowledged, and Shin Ha-yeon was an object of admiration for him.
The very fact that they acknowledged someone else was displeasing.
Yet, to miss such an opportunity to directly suppress the opponent in reality like this, without even needing to play the game.
“Well, it couldn't be helped.”
Since he said it wasn't polite.
“Then please do it, Director.”
Lee Dong-soo quickly shook off his thoughts and prepared for sparring, extending the movements he had learned for two weeks.
The director smiled warmly, brought the protective gear, and corrected his posture.
The heartwarming atmosphere continued.
That was, until that guy arrived.
Someone approached them.
The director identified his identity, let out a sigh, and looked at the ring.
The newcomer, who stared into empty space with a blank gaze as if in shock.
And the scary guy, who took off his headgear with a calm and indifferent face as if he had not even sweated.
“Hi. I heard the talk earlier, did you want to spar with me?”
The director heard the sound of his plan to secure a professional gamer customer base through Lee Dong-soo collapsing.
“Oh? I'd love to. You were Seo-jun-hyung, right?”
“How did you know my name?”
“I watched your broadcast, Hyung. Ah, I could call you Hyung, right?”
Seo-jun did not know that the influence of the collaborative broadcast would be this much.
To think someone would recognize him immediately.
“Well, do so.”
“What about resting?”
“Do it right away.”
The two went up onto the ring.
“But Hyung, you played games well? Though not as well as me.”
“Sure. But... who were you?”
Lee Dong-soo provoked Seo-jun.
However, it did not have much of an effect on Seo-jun.
This was because he did not even know who Lee Dong-soo was in the first place.
Even if he had known, he would not have thought much of it.
Lee Dong-soo was shocked for a moment, wondering if Seo-jun had provoked him in reverse, but recalling the fact that it was only the third day since he started the game, he burned with fighting spirit.
“I would tell you that after I won. You would probably consider it an honor later, you know?”
“Alright. Then, here I come?”
Simultaneously with finishing his sentence, Seo-jun threw a jab, and Lee Dong-soo thought as a fist landed on his face.
‘He said sparring required showing manners...’
*Thud!*
That day.
Assassin's Dawn was added to the game library of Lee Dong-soo, who realized that it was impossible in reality.
<><><>
Seo-jun and his father, Jin Ha-jun, were returning home from the gym together.
The two lived together next door, precisely in Ha-jun's building.
The reason was because of his wife, who wanted to hold onto her son who had tried to become independent as soon as he became an adult.
The two found a compromise, and it eventually concluded with Ha-jun providing the next-door house at half price.
Naturally, the opinion of Ha-jun, the landlord, was not reflected.
“Seo-jun-ah, you should have gone easy on him earlier. Looking at his body, he seemed like an ordinary person.”
Just how many fighters had his son made quit so far?
At any rate, he was cold-hearted.
“It was fine. Seeing how he stepped, he was as talented as most martial arts fighters, so he had to be in the middle of building up his body.”
Lee Dong-soo ultimately failed to reveal the fact that he was a professional gamer to Seo-jun.
“Was that so? And was the broadcasting going well?”
“Yes.”
“This dad, well, since they said it was safe now, I didn't oppose it blindly like your mom, but still. That broadcasting, didn't it not go well?”
Ha-jun had heard from Tae-woo.
That it was hard for a starting streamer to secure even a single viewer.
“If this dad could give you a tip, try playing Stellar Craft once. Lately, PC games were becoming popular again, so you could just seize that blue ocean. How about it?”
For reference, Ha-jun was a die-hard PC gamer.
It was not that he was recommending it out of worry that it would be dangerous if his son used the capsule.
And it was even less true that PC games were becoming popular.
“Was it really popular?”
“Ah, whatever. So how many people were watching?”
“Hmm, the number I saw last time was 440. If I turned on the broadcast today, probably...”
Ha-jun was surprised by the fact that there were 440 viewers.
“Since I had 3,000 followers, I thought at least 1,500 people would come in.”
*Cough.*
At a number much higher than expected, Ha-jun spat out the coffee he was drinking.
“Why was it so high?”
“Well, I was lucky.”
Seo-jun's number of followers had increased to 1,000 immediately after finishing the collaborative broadcast.
Considering that it was originally in the 400s, it had doubled.
However, Lee Su-han extracted only the core parts and uploaded the video as an EyeTube Shorts.
As that Shorts video rose to 15th place in the trending videos of the game category, Seo-jun's number of followers rose by another 2,000.
It was an event that clearly demonstrated the influence of EyeTube.
“Just how lucky were you... Surely you didn't attract people's attention by doing something bizarre, right? If so, your capsule would be taken away by your mom immediately.”
Ha-jun shivered.
“Did you think I would do that?”
“That wasn't it, but...”
Still, wasn't 3,000 too much of a number since it hadn't been long since he started?
<><><>
In fact, 1,000 was the minimum that Seo-jun and Tae-woo had thought of.
Seo-jun opened the community for a moment before starting the broadcast.
The community was occupied all day by posts related to him and Alpaca in the aftermath of yesterday's collaborative broadcast.
Seo-jun set the time frame to the part where the collaborative broadcast first started and began to examine.
[About Seo-jun who was appearing now]
[About the lines of weakness that appeared on Alpaca's broadcast right now.]
[The greatest sucker of all time who bet 250,000 points on a real-time 1% chance hahaha]
- Blowing away several years' worth of memories like this, what an idiot hahaha
- Seriously, the heart of a beast
- It's Jo-Am hahaha
- (best) If that hit, I would grill and eat meat in the middle of Myeong-dong on Christmas Eve
Wasn't this an old best comment pledge? The person who said they would sing next to him and the person who said they would play the tambourine, come out quickly.
I would sing the song
I would take charge of the tambourine
Seo-jun scrolled down to check the replies that came up after some time had passed.
??????????????? Why did it actually hit? Why????
Don't delete your comment
Guys, I thought we were f*cked.
Someone earned 25 million points, but someone was in a position to do a humiliation play in Myeong-dong hahaha
[Richard Neville Musou Strategy Guide]
- (best) Oh? hahaha If we analyzed the video and bashed our heads against it a few times, we would probably destroy the armor and catch Richard quickly?
+ I just tried it, and I barely succeeded on my 10th attempt at armor destruction, but immediately after that, my head was split open by Richard. Give up on that
So you're saying Seo-jun attempted that on his first try and destroyed all of it in one shot?
That's what I was saying, it seriously made no sense, wait a sec, but why was I the best comment.
You got preserved
[What on earth were the lines of weakness that there was even a dedicated skill?]
[Anyone to catch the Ruler instead and check it for us?]
[How did Seo-jun find the lines of weakness? Seriously made no sense]
[Humblebrag Warning) The owner of the real-time 25 million points (was me hahaha)]
[Weakness Detection Condition Predictions]
[Ah fucking, Seo-jun was fucking handsome. Unfollowing immediately.]
Each and every one of them were posts that received thirty or more recommendations.
Posts criticizing Seo-jun regarding his recognition no longer appeared.
At least within this community, it meant that people who knew Seo-jun became the majority.
However,
- hahaha Seo-jun, look at this
When he entered through the link sent by Tae-woo, a post that had received downvotes and had been blinded (hidden) came into view.
When Seo-jun clicked to view the content.
[The reason why streamer Seo-jun was a hack user]
Although it was written seriously and at length, to summarize, because the reason for seeing the lines of weakness during the broadcast was inaccurate, and no other person who could see them appeared.
It was an assertion that Seo-jun was at least a game development associate or a hacker.
Naturally, it was bomb-downvoted as nonsense and the content of the post was hidden, but upon checking the links sent by Tae-woo, he could confirm that several more posts with a similar tone had been uploaded.
Seo-jun burst out laughing.
‘Yeah, once you got famous, you would get criticized for other things~.’
This was because he remembered Tae-woo's words that said so.
And thinking about it carefully, the claim about being a game associate seemed somewhat credible.
Seo-jun went into the Assassin's Dawn homepage with a smile, sent a self-report post, and entered the capsule.
And after writing the broadcast title, he started streaming.
[I. Confessed.]
‘Did this mean I ended up doing an explanation broadcast on only my third day of broadcasting?’
It was a silly thought.
It was not even a real explanation broadcast.
‘How many people would come in?’
The corners of Seo-jun's mouth subtly rose with anticipation.
[Viewers: 400]
Not even a few seconds had passed since starting, but 400 people came in.
[Viewers: 700]
[Viewers: 1,300]
[Viewers: 1,500]
Had about a minute passed?
Watching the number that easily surpassed the minimum expected with Tae-woo in an instant and the rapidly rising chat window, Seo-jun greeted.
“Tra-hi. Hello.”