“Hm, yeah. You’re right.”

[🗡️Omniscient Cthulhu: People like that…] [🗡️Omniscient Cthulhu: They’re just like that.] [Honestly, I want to strangle those guys, but if you engage with them, it just feels wrong haha.] [Hwanhee: Let’s not curse and get ourselves banned, okay?] [Let’s just say something sharp, those guys need to hear some harsh words.]

Even though the chat encouraged me to give Lee Sin a sharp response, I wasn’t good at that sort of thing.
Was it fear of getting reported?
Either way, I didn’t curse, instead I just sarcastically replied.

[Allied][LondonIsDangerous][Varus]: Such a pity… [Allied][LondonIsDangerous][Varus]: What a shame… 😞

I sarcastically replied.
If I kept it up, Lee Sin might stop playing altogether, so I kept it just at a mild level of sarcasm.
I couldn’t let it escalate too much.

[Allied][coocoo][Lee Sin]: Stop with the sarcasm. [Allied][coocoo][Lee Sin]: Just curse already, don’t act like a bleep.

“Oops, did he just curse?”

Since the opponent cursed, he would most likely get reported.
Using the word “bleep” in the game? That was a highly offensive term, full of derogatory connotations, especially against the LGBTQ+ community.
So I left a message in the chat.

[Allied][LondonIsDangerous][Varus]: It’s always a loss for me if I curse, but since Lee Sin already used foul language, I won’t curse. If I don’t, it’s clear that I won’t get banned while Lee Sin will, so I’m not going to curse… 😞

“I don’t have any reason to curse, do I?”

I just wanted to play the game without getting reported.
If I got banned, I’d have to create a new account, and that would be such a hassle.
So, I made sure to be careful with my behavior.

[🗡️Omniscient Cthulhu: True hahaha.] [That’s the right call.] [Why curse? Haha.] [Yeah, you can curse all you want, I’ll get you banned hahaha.] [Hwanhee: But can you really get banned for that?] [Honestly, I don’t think he’ll get banned, it wasn’t that bad.] [He said "bleep," but he didn’t mean to degrade anyone.] [But if you put "bleep" in front of it, how is that not degrading?] [Kang Hoo-min: How about some ‘personal justice’ going on here?]

“Stop with that nonsense about ‘personal justice.’”

If the opponent were a criminal, maybe, but starting personal revenge over a game argument wasn’t something I liked.
It could backfire later, and I didn’t want to deal with that.

“Well… personally, I can’t stop someone from saying something, but let’s all just avoid doing that.”

[🗡️Omniscient Cthulhu: Ah, okay okay.] [That’s the vibe?] [Haha, of course I won’t.] [Hwanhee: Trust us.] [We won’t do that, we swear hahaha.] [Trust us, you bastard.] [Kang Hoo-min: Mission received…]

I really hoped they wouldn’t do that.
I could end up getting blamed, after all.
I kept playing the game, thinking about that.
And then—

[Allied][coocoo][Lee Sin]: Seriously. [Allied][coocoo][Lee Sin]: Someone keeps whispering to me. [Allied][coocoo][Lee Sin]: It’s really annoying. [Allied][coocoo][Lee Sin]: Who is it?

In Reore, you can’t adjust whisper settings while in-game.
So, it meant I had no choice but to endure the whisper harassment until the game ended.

“What’s this, suddenly getting whispered at. What’s going on?”

I had just told my viewers not to do that, so I knew they wouldn’t.
I was really curious who was doing it, though.
There shouldn’t be anyone doing it on purpose, right?
What kind of jerks would do something like that?
Even though we had just argued, I felt bad for them and typed in the chat.

[Allied][LondonIsDangerous][Varus]: Why is Lee Sin getting attacked like this? [Allied][LondonIsDangerous][Varus]: What did he even do? 😞 [Allied][LondonIsDangerous][Varus]: Everyone, please stop.

I typed this and waited for a moment.
Then.

[Allied][coocoo][Lee Sin]: Who’s spreading my ID? [Allied][coocoo][Lee Sin]: This whisper harassment is making the game impossible to play. [Allied][coocoo][Lee Sin]: This is bleep ridiculous.

Lee Sin was starting to show extreme anxiety.
It was understandable.
If someone’s being harassed with whispers like that, it would make playing the game hard.

[Allied][LondonIsDangerous][Varus]: Phew.

That was the last chat I sent before blocking Lee Sin.
His life is his own, and there was no reason for me to worry about it.

“Ah, we won.”

Since I led the game from the laning phase to the end as a purple-skinned archer, the game felt really easy.
Of course, Lee Sin fed a bit in the middle, but we won, so whatever.

[🗡️Omniscient Cthulhu: It was winnable, this match.] [🗡️Omniscient Cthulhu: Lee Sin threw so many kills.] [So many guys who throw kills, but still managed to win, that’s impressive.] [This is it.] [Hwanhee: It’s a shame we couldn’t see Lee Sin’s reaction after we blocked him hahaha.] [If we hadn’t blocked Lee Sin, the viewers would have been attracted to him and we’d have been suffering from all the trolls.] [Kang Hoo-min: What are you talking about? The whisper harassment was done by other people.] [Ah, right hahaha.] [Got confused.]

Just when I was about to start the next game happily…

Ding-!

I heard the sound of someone adding me as a friend.
I didn’t even need to see the nickname, I could tell who it was.

“Should I accept this or not?”

I could pretty much guess what they would say.
They’d probably curse at me.
But…
‘It could be fun?’

It seemed like it would be fun.
It could give the broadcast some interesting material.
So, I accepted the friend request.
A moment later.

[coocoo: Hey.] [coocoo: I checked, and you’re a streamer.] [coocoo: Get ready, you’re about to have a bleep time.] [coocoo: You’re done for haha.]

“Eh?”

I was a little taken aback.
Suddenly, they added me as a friend and started saying “You’re done for.”
Was this really a serious threat or just some bad joke?
It was hard to tell if this was real or if they were just kidding.

[LondonIsDangerous: Ah, yep.]

I answered briefly and then immediately removed them from my friend list.
Even if it was a joke, it wasn’t even funny, and it would have been bad for the stream anyway.

[🗡️Omniscient Cthulhu: What kind of idiot does that?] [You’re done for haha.] [Get ready, you bastard haha.] [Hwanhee: What was that guy even thinking?] [Hmm…] [Don’t deal with people like that, it’ll only hurt you.]

Maybe it was because of Lee Sin’s unfunny joke.
But something about it felt unsettling, and I kept playing the game.
And then, as I was continuing…

“Ah, I wonder what Lee Sin’s tier is.”

I was curious about Lee Sin’s tier.
He had been talking down to me earlier, and I wondered how his tier had turned out.

[Yeah, I’m curious too.] [How did it go?] [What do you mean? It’s obviously going well haha.] [🗡️Omniscient Cthulhu: Please let him be demoted hahaha.] [Lee Sin’s tier doesn’t seem like it would drop that much though.]

I went to the tier lookup site and typed in Lee Sin’s nickname.

[coocoo]

It was a simple nickname, so I still remembered it.
I typed it in and the tier appeared.

[coocoo - Diamond 3, 75LP]

“Oh, he got demoted.”

[🗡️Omniscient Cthulhu: This is it hahaha.] [Demotion shot.] [This is the justice we’ve been waiting for, haha.] [From Diamond 2 to a dogshit fall hahaha.] [Lee Sin, good job~] [Hmm, this is the justice we needed.]

He got reported and demoted.
For a Reore player, that’s about as bad as it gets.
I felt a little bad for him, but what can you do?
It’s his karma, after all.
I kept playing the game, thinking that.

A few days later.
Broadcasting became a regular part of my routine.
After my part-time job, I would come home, turn on the stream, play games, and chat.
But then…

“I didn’t expect my YouTube to grow this much.”

The YouTube channel I had mentioned before, called ‘Haefu,’ now had 1,000 subscribers.
It wasn’t a lot compared to others, but for a channel like mine, it was a big number.
So I decided to give out a special reward.

L: You can start monetizing now. I’ll allow it, so feel free to make as many videos as you want.

“FanTube, huh… I guess monetizing is okay.”

I didn’t even run the YouTube channel myself.
I left a comment and checked my email.
It was the email I had put in my stream description, just in case I received any inquiries.

‘It’s not like anything’s going to come, though.’
Who would email a channel with only 200 viewers?
I thought about that, then opened the email, and—

“…Oh.”

An unexpected proposal was there.
A proposal that could change my streaming career.