To Live Again, For the First Time!

"Fuck."

Why is this game so damn hard?

This was one of the only thoughts going through Grace's mind this past week.

It had been a week since Noah had invited/ challenged Grace into playing this game, and it seemed like it was indeed true, Grace too was unable to break free from Noah's path.

This game was too sadistic!

Grace had lost what remained of her composure as she too kept losing at this trashy game.

[Noah: You had composure before? How come I couldn't tell?]

Following Noah, she too had been playing Mobba all day, every day.

The only thing keeping her going was her unwillingness to lose to Noah, though to be fair, even if she were to lose another 100 rounds, she wouldn't be "losing" against him.

"What's keeping you going?" Grace suddenly asked.

Noah, who sat next to Grace on the same long couch, didn't even flinch anymore at Grace's deliberate use of misleading and frustrating words that would lead one down the route of hair loss.

Still, why did she have to make it sound like he was terminally ill?

Seeing as Noah wasn't going to react, Grace wasn't flustered, simply and naturally elaborating as if that was what she was going to do all along.

"How did you get so addicted to this game? It's making me seriously question whether you are a masochist."

Noah almost wanted to shout out loud.

Can't you just finish your sentences all at once?

He was thankful that Grace wasn't an author of any kind as she would surely be the type to leave cliffhangers at every chance she had.

Actually, even if she was indeed an author, he would never read her writings for this very same reason.

"Look."

Noah just about finished his own round before going to another screen to show Grace, and Emilin, who sat behind her on a stool, a clip.

It was easy since it was one of the latest ones in his liked videos.

In the clip, it was the hands of someone playing a very high-quality electric piano.

Question marks instantly floated on Grace's head and Emilin too was confused as to why Noah was showing this clip right now.

This clip... she had watched it before too.

The tune was a really catchy one, a remix of the current number 1 song, but a piano version whose melody was a little more complex, elegant, and enjoyable from a subjective point of view.

Not long after, the video ended, and without explaining, Noah directly displayed another clip, this one was the one following the piano clip on the liked list.

This time, Grace sighed as this clip was finally about Mobba.

These hands look familiar. That was Grace's first thought.

She would have to be a dumbass if she couldn't understand that these two were the same person.

But that was nothing.

So what if someone played both Mobba and piano?

Then, 10 minutes in, the girl was thoroughly convinced.

Grace was enlightened.

It was clear that the reason that Noah had shown the first clip to her was for comparison!

Now, now.

Okay, one may be questioning, what is there even to compare?

But damn.

Generally, wouldn't playing the piano makes one seem more refined?

Then tell me, tell me why this guy playing video games looked so elegant? Even more so than when playing the piano!

And I can only see a hand cam for god sake!

When playing the game, it was as if he were using his intricate advanced piano skills.

Grace questioned internally.

Grace felt like just having Doorii's hands play this game, the whole value of the phone, the video, the game, and even the platform increased.

Another 8 minutes later she was even more convinced as the streamer had won the game flawlessly along with his other teammates.

After the game displayed on the screen ended, Grace was completely stunned.

Have we even been playing the same game?

Why do our controls look the same when they clearly have different functions?

Why does this support kill more people and hunt more than me as a jungler?

This is unscientific!

"Who is this person?!"

Grace could clearly feel the difference in their leagues as she questioned whether the guy in the video was still playing a video game.

His maneuvering was clearly faster than when he was playing the piano earlier.

"Ah, this guy goes by the name of Doorii online, that being his username both in-game as well as in various social media platforms."

Noah thought about this matter for a bit before continuing.

"He hasn't started streaming and uploading videos for long, but he does it very frequently. His account was only started around a month ago, but with his kind of... unique and memorable skill set, I think you can see why he has come to fame so quickly, having already around 2 million subscribers."

[AN: This has been a total of 3 weeks since the hacking incident.]

"I can see how that can sound strangely explosive, but actually, it's not really if you look at his home page."

Noah did as he said to show Doorri's homepage.

He scrolled, and then he scrolled, and then he scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled.

Grace's eyes widened with every passing second.

Was this even an account that was started just a few weeks ago?

Though some of the videos were only a few minutes long, mostly the ones on musical instruments, there were still dozens of them.

Not to mention the much longer gaming videos!

All kinds of games including standalone and other major games were being played.

"I'm telling you, this guy is no joke. I was looking for adaptations of BTS's songs when I stumbled upon one of his guitar videos."

"Then, it was just a spiral from there," Noah calmly reiterated the experiences of the majority of teenagers on entertainment platforms.

"I spent hours tracing back all his videos. They started from musical instruments to cooking and then to gaming. It was as if the guy was just trying things out to see what worked out better, which finally ended in gaming. I think he still occasionally uploads some new instrumental covers, but no more cooking. You can tell pretty easily since he uploads around 3-5 videos a day, even more at times, but never really less than those 3."

"Crazy," was the only thing Grace could muster.

It was no wonder this content created was being recommended. Just based on the number of uploads a day, one would reckon they should be recommended at some point.

What kind of dedication was this?

It still made sense to have this much dedication if this was something that you had always wanted to do, but just from how random these videos were, it was clearly not planned out.

The time and effort put into such a project could by no means be small.

Not to mention, it wasn't as if the editing of these videos were bad, in fact, they were quite good.

The music, transitions, cuts.

They were all added and implemented very cleanly.

It clearly wasn't half-assed.

"So..."

Grace's word dragged on.

"I got hooked on Mobba because out of all the other games Doorii plays, this one is the one he plays most of all. I mean, if you just watch enough of it, surely you can tell that this game is just something else. The only issue is that the other players are too good at it," Noah's face got sour at this point.

He wouldn't admit that he was no good.

It was clearly just because everyone else was better… eh, that doesn't sound right either.

Even so, he didn't show any signs of wanting to stop playing.

Now, this was the point that Emilin didn't understand.

Not the playing part.

But logically, there was an algorithm that would let lousy players play with other lousy players.

And just from hearing Noah and Grace's frustrated grunts, Emilin could tell that they weren't particularly good at the game, if you were to put it nicely.

Now if you keep getting put together with even lousier players every time you lose... shouldn't you start winning at some point???

This was what Emilin didn't understand.

It felt like there was something wrong here.

While Emilin thought of that, Noah was already showing Grace some of the videos he liked better while Grace watched and observed attentively.

Even the gaming part only showed a hand cam and the resulting effects on the screen, but Grace felt like that was more than enough to catch everyone's full attention.

In this video, Doorii was playing on the online computer version of Mobba, and this scene only made Grace even more convinced.

Convinced that even if she were considered trash at this game, the other party could only be considered a god.

The guy was clearly at a level when he didn't need people of a worse caliber to show off his own strength.

And just like that, Noah had dragged Grace into one more of his "bad" hobbies as Grace too fell into the stream spiral.

She was so immersed and as was Noah that they both hadn't realized how little of a presence Emilin currently had.

She was trying to make herself scarce so that she wouldn't have to express her opinion on the matters they were speaking about today, and it was working.

This was because they were all somewhat related to her!

Even if no one else knew it, she did!

Just hearing about these matters made her want to lower her head to calm herself down, much less talking about it.

Emilin didn't even know why.