Season 5: Chapter 132. The Red Pill (2)

A popular show had this famous quote.

"When five people are together, one of them is always the reject."

This maxim wasn't always correct, but it operated like a categorical imperative on LIL battlefields. As if to prove this point, LIL made teams consist of five across every mode.

In battle royale games like Battle Large, teams of four were standard. Uniquely, LIL pushed for five even in Survival mode. The reasoning was probably that having one guaranteed piece of trash made the game more fun. Apparently, that bet paid off.

At least, Orange King thought so.

"Haah. Honestly... I told them all of that and yet..."

Scroll.

He ran out of words as he stared at LIL Pro.

[Sa-Rang is genuinely so arrogant]

[The two of them conspiring... this is too much]

[There are already verified strategies. What are you rebuilding for?? Hipster syndrome in front of a former pro]

[How will you reassemble in this short period?? The posturing is disgusting]

After Sa-Rang rubbed someone the wrong way, countless users criticized her. In a way, this criticism meant more investment in the game and tournament. These viewers enjoyed it like watching morning dramas every day while cursing the characters. However, these weren't actors. This was a real situation and real criticism.

"No, I already defended her. It's still like this?"

Orange King genuinely grew curious about what Sa-Rang had said to cause such a reaction and directly watched the footage.

"Hmm..."

Her tone was curt, but she maintained courtesy throughout. If thought of as an actual coach, she was neither mild nor spicy, just right in the middle. Compared to typical coaches, being a woman was fundamentally more favorable like how most counselors were women or maintained a higher voice.

Why was she getting criticized? One thing set an ordinary coach apart, which was probably the issue.

'She's very certain.'

Whether or not that was actually the case, a listener could feel enormous conviction in her words. LIL wasn't a game of correct answers. It was about getting closer to the correct answer. Unless the coach's ability was exceptionally high, this confident tone was generally restrained in a broadcast context.

Strangely, Orange King didn't find it awkward at all.

'Everything she's saying is right.'

Since she only made correct points with no problematic results, her tone and manner were a complete non-issue. Results proved everything in the professional world. Most viewers didn't even play LIL.

Even those who did had nowhere near Orange King's level of LIL knowledge and couldn’t tell whether Sa-Rang was right or wrong. They just poured criticism purely based on what it looked like. Ignorance made one brave applied exactly to situations like this.

"Honestly..." Orange King scratched his head.

Somehow, it felt like his defense had added fuel to the fire. More than anything, he grew curious about who this person actually was.

"Who on earth is she... to know all of this? And with such certainty."

Knowing and having conviction were separate matters. She was allegedly a player with no name or recognition. Unless she was at least in the top ten amateur rankings, her confident manner made no sense.

'Was there a woman in the top ten amateurs...?'

Among the amateur top ten, one user did hide their identity. If they were a woman, they'd have drawn enormous attention. There hadn't been a single rumor to that effect, so it was hard to say she was that person.

"If I defend her more, it feels like I'll make it worse." Orange King was troubled.

If he said that her words were all right and she was doing well, it would just make things explode further.

"Hm?"

A post was rapidly climbing.

[Almond & Sa-Rang’s Red Pill feat. Orange King]

Orange King felt startled. That title had his name right beside it.

"Wh-what is this again? Red pill?"

The red pill was a meme derived from The Matrix, where the protagonist had been offered blue and red pills. Taking the blue pill meant simply accepting the false surrounding world. Taking the red pill meant awakening to the truth and learning that the world had been fake all along.

The Almond Sa-Rang red pill could mean these two were actually fabricating something, and Orange King was being dragged into it.

"Ah... what is it now!?"

***

"Hehehe. It's going up."

BornToB smiled evilly, Ju-Hyeok too.

"Hehehe. Of course, it's going up. You know how many years I've been doing this."

"The red pill will really hurt them. Hehehe."

"When you get hurt, you put red medicine on. Those guys have injured brains, so they need red medicine."

Ju-Hyeok was interpreting the red pill meme in a completely different way, but that was just a joke. He knew exactly what title he'd created.

[Almond & Sa-Rang’s Red Pill feat. Orange King]

Just from the title, it looked like it was exposing some relationship between Almond and Sa-Rang. In reality, this red pill would shatter the Matrix world where people wanted to believe something existed between the two of them. It was indeed medicine for people with injured brains.

"Nobody would have imagined there'd be footage of Almond bombarding Orange King with questions about splits."

What seemed to have absolutely no evidence actually had solid evidence sitting right there. How on earth would these demons react?

Ju-Hyeok was too curious.

— ?

— What is this, is it a deepfake?

└ lmaooo go check it yourself

└ Run it through a detector. These days, it shows everything lmaooo

Those who still wanted to live in the Matrix said it was AI-manipulated footage. As much as AI had developed over the last decade, so did AI detectors. Claiming manipulated footage was similar to grasping at straws at the edge of a cliff. In the end, public opinion would shift in the face of perfect evidence.

— lmaooooooooo staged parrots get demolished~

└ lmaooo fr

— Wow...

— Insane

— Hm?

— What is this?? Almond already knew?? lmaooo

— LIL Pro season 1080 defeat

— LIL demons always losing lmaooo

Among these were surely people who had just been insisting that Almond and Sa-Rang were staging everything five minutes ago.

Ju-Hyeok had already transcended caring about that. He just smiled warmly while watching the public opinion shift. The more his lips rose, the more the trending board changed.

[Big: Almond Sa-Rang Red Pill feat. Orange King]

[Big: Staged parrots demolished lmaooo]

[Big: "Smart Young Man"]

[Big: Yeah right man he's an Ah-Sung graduate~]

[Big: LIL demons who find the red pill too painful... upvote lmaooo]

Ju-Hyeok spread both arms like a villain and laughed. "Muhahahaha!"

The evening glow began to set outside the office window. Ju-Hyeok's shadow stretched long, forming a shape like a devil with two horns.

With his camera, BornToB quickly captured the image of the man who had conquered LIL Pro.

***

Inside a dark studio, a man scrolled down and clicked his tongue. "Tsk..."

The man was looking at the LIL Pro trending board. He clicked back and forth between various posts and read through all the comments. His busy scrolling stopped at one comment.

— But staged-content verifier Fakejin was supposed to confront this, why hasn't he done anything?

└ He'll do something eventually lmaooo

└ He probably saw this come out and just ran away

└ When Fakejin shows up, everything will be flipped, just wait

└ Still can't let it go...

The man started to write a comment, stopped himself, and gave up. He looked at the videos on his other monitor. Screenshots of Almond's videos were open in several windows.

"Sigh, tsk... it would have been huge if it were staged."

He hadn’t finished the examination yet, but no doubts remained.

"It's completely not staged."

The other side had presented complete evidence. With the scales tipped this far, even he had no choice but to retreat.

"What a shame."

Click.

Fakejin deleted all the reference videos and sighed. He had read the comments asking why he wasn't uploading a staged content verification video.

"These people have no interest in the truth anyway."

Those people weren't angry because he hadn’t uploaded a verification video. They were angry because he wasn't claiming it was staged. He'd been through this a few times and understood it too well. They had already decided on an answer and just wanted a basis provided for their criticism.

Around only 15% of viewers genuinely watched the verification process. Even so, the fact was that nothing was staged. He started working on different materials instead.

[Why Almond is Genuinely a Smart Young Man]

He knew this was not at all the video people wanted from him.

"Hmm... This title doesn't look like it'll get views."

The base material he'd made was too good to waste, so he pushed through to finish it. With evidence already secured, the difficulty of making the video had dropped sharply.

His instincts as a fact-checker told him. The difficulty drop meant the video's popularity would drop equally, but he hadn't anticipated something. A completely different variable would intervene.

***

The next day, a video appeared on Fakejin's channel. With a moderate viewership, people who didn't even know Almond or Sa-Rang wandered in. The first comments were ordinary.

— lmaooooo something happened... LIL Pro being LIL Pro again

— Streamer fans making such a fuss honestly

— As if that would be staged lmaooooo

— Wow though, what would've happened without that footage?

Nothing was staged after all. Comments predictably appeared with this conclusion. The people who had been screaming disappeared somewhere, leaving only normal people. He always witnessed that peculiar phenomenon and had gone through it many times.

"Hmm... Views will probably reach about 100K reasonably."

Fakejin considered that view count the break-even point. The video didn’t reveal anything new, but Almond's fanbase was sizable. It could reach 100K without getting greedy. That was his rough expectation.

A comment appeared that made him genuinely doubt his eyes. Actually, it wasn't the comment itself so much as who was posting the comment.

[Police KR Official]

[Enjoyed the video, Fakejin. Would it be alright to use this video as a reference material for our video?]

└ Why is this happening??

└ It's real, upvote.

└ Wow

└ Is this actually Police???

└ Upvote if you thought the police department came to arrest Fakejin and got a shock lmaooo

└ Police department lmaooo

└ What what what what

└ The big one has arrived

└ Go UP to even higher!

Something far too enormous had come to his small channel.

"Wh-what is this situation?"