Genius Archer’s Streaming - Chapter 192

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Genius Archer’s Streaming Season 1 Episode 192
65. Old Connections (2)
‘It’s Dongsu.’
The sender of the message was Dong-su Lee.
A friend I once practiced archery with.
I unconsciously pulled up his Runstar feed.
‘…What?’
It was the face of Dong-su Lee as I remembered him. His face had simply become a bit fuller, that was all. But what surprised me wasn’t the consistency of his features.
‘You couldn’t do it either.’
Dong-su Lee wasn’t an archer either.
After the accident, once I quit archery following the end of my training, I never looked at archery again.
Even when the Olympics were held, I didn’t watch archery, and I had withdrawn my attention from sports altogether.
If I had been interested, I would have known.
That Dong-su Lee never became a professional athlete.
‘Is this reality….’
I had vaguely assumed that ‘those guys’ were all competing in the Olympics, winning medals, and having careers as athletes.
‘What is this feeling….’
Looking at my old friend, I felt a strange emotion.
As if I were walking that school path to Cheonggyesan High for a moment….
It felt as though memories were seeping into my body.
Not simply reminiscence or recollection, but the smell of tteokbokki wafting from the street vendor as I walked past, the rough texture of the school uniform that was uncomfortable yet comfortable to wear—all five senses seemed to return to those days.
“Why do you look so out of it?”
Juhyeok asks casually while finishing the last of his bibim noodles.
I had been staring blankly at my phone often lately, but this expression was rare.
An expression as if my soul had left my body.
“…An old colleague contacted me.”
“Ah. Is that so? I thought….”
Juhyeok tried to refocus on eating, saying that such cases happen often when playing Runstar.
“Wait.”
Then he suddenly realizes something.
“An old colleague? From when you did archery?”
“…Yeah.”
“!”
Juhyeok’s eyes widened.
“No.”
He hurriedly adjusts his glasses and leans over to look at my phone.
“Who is this person? You said you didn’t like being exposed, right? You didn’t link your phone number here, did you?”
“No. It’s not like that.”
Phew. Thank goodness. Your secret’s still safe.”
Juhyeok relaxed for the moment.
If I sync the contacts in my phone, everyone from my past connections would link up, and it’d be a mess.
“Besides, syncing my contacts wouldn’t make much difference anyway.”
Sanghyeon grins wryly and shows me his contact list. For someone living an ordinary school life and ordinary social life, it should total at least a hundred or more combined, but…
‘They’re all just company people?’
Sanghyeon’s contacts numbered around forty.
And over ninety percent of those overlapped with Juhyeok’s.
There was no trace of his past. No high school friends, no friends from before that.
Even if he’d been ostracized at the company for being a parachute hire, why didn’t he have phone numbers for people from his childhood?
‘Something must have happened.’
He seemed to have completely severed ties with the people he’d done archery with—there was no trace of them at all.
The only one remaining was just one.
[Soyeon Han]
Soyeon’s phone number.
*Tap.*
Juhyeok moved Sanghyeon’s phone out of sight and asked again.
“So this person who contacted you… what kind of person are they?”
The question was whether they were trustworthy.
“Hmm… I don’t really know.”
“You don’t know?”
“We had a connection ten years ago. I don’t know what kind of person they are now.”
“Ah…”
Juhyeok nodded in understanding.
People change over ten years. Especially ten years from high school—they’d be a completely different person.
There are hardly any people who maintain the same personality and values from their school days.
“Will they keep their mouth shut?”
“The Dongsu I knew… wasn’t really the type to enjoy spreading things around. Besides, archery athletes tend to be pretty reserved anyway…”
“Then that’s fortunate.”
I was about to say it wasn’t a secret that needed to be guarded so carefully, but I paused.
‘But Dongsu doesn’t do archery anymore now.’
Due to the nature of archery as a sport, even active people tend to become composed and reserved.
Was Dong-su Lee reserved from the start? Or did archery’s three-color target hypnotize him into silence?
‘He might be far from reserved now.’
I checked Dong-su Lee’s Runstar feed once more.
Photos with his girlfriend smiling happily, travel logs, delicious food… the typical appearance of an ordinary Runstar account.
[1,000 Followers]
What stood out was that he had a whopping thousand followers.
Though it’d be just a speck of dust compared to mine, having a thousand followers as an ordinary person was exceptional.
If I hadn’t become a streamer, I’d have fewer than fifty followers.
Juhyeok, who supposedly lived the life of a so-called “insider,” had around 450 followers.
‘The old Dongsu definitely doesn’t seem to be the same.’
If this were the Dong-su Lee I remembered, there’s no way he could have accumulated this many followers. He wasn’t the type who enjoyed meeting people.
But who knows.
Perhaps his Runstar content was simply entertaining, or maybe Dongsu himself possessed a certain charm that naturally drew people in.
I gazed at the message contents once more, lost in thought.
[I thought you’d quit archery and disappeared to do something else. So you’re a streamer? That’s crazy lolol Still shooting well?]
“Still shooting well….”
Juhyeok, who’d returned to eating his bibim noodles, lifted his head. What was I suddenly talking about?
“What?”
“It’s delicious. The bibim noodles.”
Juhyeok’s expression brightened.
Then he corrected me with a serious face.
“Big-bim noodles.”
“…What?”
“Big Master’s bibim noodles, so it’s big-bim noodles.”
“…Okay.”
“Say it wrong and Big Master will grab you by the back of the neck and throw you.”
“?”
“You haven’t seen Big Master’s Nape Restaurant?”
“Uh…”
“He grabs the back of the necks of anyone running the place poorly and throws them out. That’s why he’s no joke. The guy’s gotta be over two meters tall.”
The Nape Restaurant had a name that made it sound like the owner himself would collapse from anger while grabbing his own neck.
‘So he literally grabs them by the nape and throws them….’
Big-bim noodles.
I decided I’d have to pronounce it correctly from now on and stood up from my seat.
“I’ll do the dishes tomorrow morning.”
Click.
I closed the door and collapsed onto my bed.
Unlike usual, my mind was cluttered.
‘How should I respond.’
When the message first came in, honestly, I felt more joy than worry.
Was it because I’d reached an age where those who shared old memories had become precious?
I continued fiddling with the message screen.
‘Eventually anyway….’
In truth, I’d already prepared myself mentally.
I’d competed in tournaments, appeared on broadcasts, and shown myself shooting arrows.
The Reckless Warrior advertisement had aired on Tribee channels nationwide.
It would be revealed eventually.
That I was an archer.
I even wondered if I’d been putting it off too long.
‘Juhyeok said revealing it would definitely be a huge advantage.’
My manager, whose mind was always on money, said that revealing this past would actually cause my image to skyrocket.
That was something I could have predicted myself.
A young archer with a tragic story rediscovers her dreams as a streamer.
With a headline like that attached, anyone could easily imagine it would make the news.
I could already picture the flood of comments that would follow.
“Sigh….”
I exhaled deeply.
Why couldn’t I reveal this until now… Everyone must be thinking the same thing.
Even if I explained my reasons, they probably wouldn’t understand.
It was an entirely personal matter.
I gazed into empty space and muttered.
“Don’t show yourself anymore.”
Swish.
Long, flowing black hair suddenly flickered before my eyes.
Her eyes—always clear and honest, as if aiming at a target.
The reflection of me in those eyes was still that young boy from that old video.
I open my mouth.
Always the same words.
「I quit because it wasn’t fun.」
A childish lie I had told back then.
My Coach had asked me to say I quit due to injury—that telling my teammates otherwise wouldn’t be good for them, that they’d become hesitant before their bows.
My Coach properly rewarded me for maintaining that lie until the end. He got me hired at Asung.
I don’t resent my Coach for it.
Truth be told, I wanted to lie as well. No matter how much my Coach asked me to lie and keep it hidden, I could have told her the truth. I could have been honest with her alone.
Soyeon pressed me again and asked.
「Are you really quitting?」
「You’re really giving this up because you don’t find it fun?」
「Who are you trying to fool!? Tell me the truth!」
She knew me better than anyone back then, so of course she would have known I wouldn’t suddenly quit like this.
Yet I continued to give her false answers. I didn’t want to tell her I was injured. I couldn’t bring myself to tell someone who had always seen me as the best and the strongest that I was no longer that person.
I preferred to disappear somewhere while still being the strongest. That foolish child made such a foolish choice.
I thought I could explain it properly someday later… I took it lightly.
Time that had passed never returned, and the price for that was heavier than I expected.
After deliberating for a long time, I moved my fingers.
[It’s been a while. Dongsu. When do you have time? Want to meet up?]
I decided to treat memories as just memories now.

* * *
“Hey, Sang-hyun Yu!”
At a cafe during the company lunch hour. Even amid the bustling crowd, my old friend’s face stood out distinctly.
“Dongsu.”
“Wow! Great to see you!”
Dong-su Lee greeted me with his entire body, shaking his noticeably fuller frame.
“Man, you’re super famous. Is it okay for you to come to a place like this?”
“Ah… I’m not that famous. Office workers don’t really know me.”
Even as I said this, I quickly pulled my hat back down.
I’d only taken it off until Dongsu spotted me.
“You’re still handsome. I’m jealous.”
“You’ve changed a bit.”
“Ah, yeah. I’ve gained a ton of weight. Maybe I should’ve kept doing archery.”
“Why did you quit?”
“Well… I didn’t have special talent like you do. I just enjoyed working with my body, so I did it.”
“I see…”
“But I’m not doing something completely different now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I run an archery cafe. It’s pretty popular.”
I was surprised.
Even after browsing Runstar, I hadn’t noticed.
“I see. I didn’t catch it when I looked at Runstar.”
“Oh, that’s my personal account. My cafe’s promotional account is this one.”
“Ah…”
Namyangju branch, Yangpyeong branch, Gangneung branch… I had a chain across the country.
It was the type of cafe set up widely in suburban areas.
“Wow.”
“What do you think? Does this place look worth shooting at?”
Dongsu giggled and showed me the targets.
“Yeah. Looks nice.”
“We have traditional Korean archery too. For the older folks.”
“Traditional Korean archery?”
Traditional Korean archery, huh. Now that I think about it, I’d promised to go shoot with Director Lee before, but it’s still been postponed until now.
That’s how promises with busy people tend to go.
“Look here. This Yangpyeong branch has traditional Korean archery.”
“Oh…”
“Capsule games are fun these days too, but on the flip side, more and more people are finding entertainment offline.”
“Ah, right. No matter how immersive virtual reality is, it has its limits.”
“Yeah. When you come, feel nature, get some healing, and shoot one arrow after another, your head becomes crystal clear.”
Dongsu had loved nature since childhood. That part was unchanged. Aside from becoming more skilled at talking from running a business, I realized there wasn’t much different about him now.
“Do you remember that?”
The two of us communicated surprisingly well.
We had more than one memory we could share.
“Haha. The Coach was really something back then, wasn’t he? Honestly.”
“Puhaha!”
It was a pleasant time for me as well, after so long.
Meeting a colleague from my archery days and being able to talk about archery—it was truly precious.
Once the conversation had warmed up enough, I confessed that I’d been keeping my archery a secret.
“Ah… Y-you’ve been keeping it a secret?”
Dongsu blinked his eyes in surprise.
The way he glanced around nervously was exactly the same as it had been in high school.
It was the same expression he’d made when the Coach caught him sneaking out during practice.
“W-well? H-how do I explain this….”
“?”
“You know I’m running an archery cafe, so you’d understand, but… I still see our kids pretty often?”
“?!”
I immediately grasped what he was trying to say.
“Our juniors come visit too. That… Jonghyeon and Taewoo come by… and H-Hyeonju as well….”
“…So?”
Dong-su Lee bowed his head down to the table in apology.
“I’m… I’m sorry! I told them!”
“Ah….”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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