Chapter 158
Gulp-
As soon as the capsule door closed, the girl swallowed, folded both hands neatly over her navel, and slowly closed her eyes.
Her chest rose and fell repeatedly as air flowed in and out through deep abdominal breaths.
Kariri made all the necessary preparations.
She had built her popularity through collabs with countless streamers, influencers, and celebrities.
It should have been nothing more than adding one more person to that list, yet after entering the waiting room, Kariri kept shaking one leg, betraying her anxiety.
“Let’s do our best.”
She slapped both cheeks with her hands to clear her head.
The moment the stream went live, the emotions she had felt until then vanished as if washed away by a wave.
[‘RiriMankeumKaMankeum’ donated 10,000 won!]
-Welcome, badger! Why are you so early today, Kariri?
“Welcome, badger! Thank you for the 10,000 won, RiriMankeumKaMankeum! Thank you! Right? Why did I come so early? What made me come early? Because I wanted to see my Honeybee subjects?”
The viewers’ reactions varied.
Kariri personally hoped a lot of people would call her cute, but unfortunately, her relationship with her viewers was closer to that of lovers who had been together for n years.
-Don’t get clingy~
-Please move aside, Kariri! We can’t see the teddy bear behind you!
-Who are you scrimming with on Win-It-Back today?
-What’s this surprise event? What’s going on? You’re not playing WoA now?
“What, is nobody interested in me? Just for today, I made a major change to my style so I could feel something new. You really can’t tell what’s different about me? Huh? Can’t you?”
She gave them a little time to react, waiting for the viewers’ responses to build up the reveal.
Most of them threw out hooks, meaning they had no idea.
[‘skyblue’ donated 100,000 won!]
-(‘?’ shape)
A yellow question-mark-shaped hook cushion popped into existence in midair and dropped onto Kariri’s head.
“Eek! Wait, 3D-emoticon donations are banned on today’s stream! Hold on, I’ll go change the settings.”
Thank goodness a donation like that had gone off beforehand; she had nearly hurt the guest.
After finishing the settings and returning to the camera’s view, Kariri finally took off her hood.
“Ta-da! I came with twin tails today, chirp!”
-How were we supposed to know with your hood on, Kariri!
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Whew, I almost lost my four-year fan credentials.
-Twin tails are cute on you! It’s been a while!
“You still don’t get it? You guys have completely lost your touch, huh? You can’t even figure out the main content of Kariri’s channel! Two letters, two letters.”
-????
-End stream?
└ ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-What was the main content of this channel again?
-WoA
-Just chatting?
“Who said ‘end stream’?! Not even close! It’s not WoA either—in the first place, even the abbreviation is WoA! Collab, collab! Why does nobody get it!”
-Collab?
-There wasn’t even an announcement.
-It’s been months since you last collabed! How were we supposed to know?
-?????? Is it really a collab? With who?
-The scrim’s in two hours, though?
-Win-It-Back’s already catching fire...!
-Are the twin tails a hint?
“Oh, sharp catch—twin tails. That’s right. I’m collabing today with someone who’s wearing twin tails.”
Kariri already had a scrim scheduled with another team at 6 p.m., two hours later.
There was no way she could invite a guest and hold a collab in that short window, so the possibilities could be narrowed down, with a high probability, to people participating in Win-It-Back.
And almost none of them wore twin tails; considering that Kariri had recently been persistently courting a certain person, if you narrowed the list down further...
-Whoa, NoName?
-Seriously?
-Kyaa!
-She pulled it off! She pulled it off! She pulled it off!
-Twitch minor duo crossover!
Kariri shrugged and gave a light nod.
Then she brought the camera close again, filling the screen with her face.
“So, everyone! Today, seriously! Please! I’m begging you! NoName is only fourteen years old. It’ll be a disaster if you treat her like usual. You all know exactly what I mean, right?”
-What does ‘like usual’ mean? ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-????
-I’m not sure I understand eitherㅎㅎㅎ
-The definition of ‘normal’ was already offㅋㅋㅋㅋ
[‘Yui0284’ donated 10,000 won!]
-You just have to treat her like an ordinary second-year middle schooler, right, Kariri?
“Right, just treat her like an ordinary middle schooler—”
[Video Share - ‘Ratelfan’ shared this for 15,000 won!]
(Second-Year Middle School Kariri Trash-Talk Mad Movie (16~20).mp4)
“Right, don’t say this kind of ridiculous stuff! In front of a kid! Got it? And please, please delete this video. This is so embarrassing... sob, sob... I’m begging you...”
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-You said all of that! ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-The karma never endsㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-In the end, everyone finds out.
-The truth can’t be hidden.
-You can’t cover the sky with the palm of your hand.
[‘Osorine’ donated 2,000 won!]
-But Kariri, whose head came up with the team name The Blurry?
“Ah, well, you know! We did that drama review together with the viewers last time, right? I thought the little kid in it looked a lot like NoName.”
[NoName has entered.]
“When I first saw NoName’s avatar, I thought, ‘Gasp...! A loli...! A totally domestic S-rank super-kawaii real JS!’ That was the only thing I could think of, so I came up with the name on the spot! Isn’t Kariri a total genius?”
“Loli?”
“Hieeeeeek! Uh... When did you get here...!”
* * *
“What’s a loli?”
Wasn’t our team name The Blurry?
Blurry—literally, ‘hazy.’
Kariri is a tank, but she plays the assassin class.
The more I played WoA, the more I realized something: a tank is always the center of a team.
So whether the team liked it or not, we had to tailor our team’s style to Kariri’s, and I thought we had chosen a suitably fitting name.
Kariri was frantically trying to block the chat with her entire body.
“No, NoName, don’t look over here! Turn around, quickly!”
-Apparently it’s The Blurry (Double Loli).
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Whoa, did she trick NoName?
-Are you people even human?
-Kariri’s a total demon!
-Right, as if she’d ever get permission for that!
But even with her whole body, she clearly had a hard time blocking the huge screen with her small frame.
“So what’s a loli? It doesn’t sound like it means a truck.”
I’d heard that people who were extraordinarily skilled at a game were called ‘trucks,’ but that didn’t seem to be it.
“That’s...!”
At my words, Kariri flinched and began avoiding my gaze.
I folded my arms and alternated several times between looking at her comedy show and the chat window; in the end, Kariri confessed honestly.
“A cute little girl...?”
“Oh? Then why are you hiding it?”
“With a slightly sexual connotation...”
-NoName’s looking at her with contemptㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-The collab looks doomed. Let’s blow it up.
-Not the collab—the team looks like it’s about to blow up!
-Honestly, isn’t Kariri past the age where she can be called a loli...
-The glory daysㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
“Aaaanyway, ta-da! Today’s collab is with NoName! Everyone, give her a round of applause, wooooo!”
Kariri clapped exaggeratedly to draw everyone’s attention.
Well, I more or less understood. I let out a deep sigh and decided to casually ask what we were doing today.
“So what are we doing today?”
“Um... Actually, today’s collab was decided so suddenly that I didn’t have much time to think. Oh, right, everyone—we decided to collab with NoName for two hours every day for five days!”
“What? You didn’t even tell me that?”
“Unnie’s sorry, chirp... sob...”
-NoName’s personality is so cynicalㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-100% the cool type
-Kariri can take a few more hits!
-This is exactly how our Kariri should be.
“Then tell me what you usually do when you collab with other people.”
“Eee... Usually, we spend a lot of time on Q&A, right?”
-Protect NoName!
-There’s actually someone who hurls rude remarks at her guests?
-???: Why do you look so old for your face? (Something she said upon meeting them for the first time)
└ Did she say that to LK? ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ She meant ‘You look young for your age,’ but said it backwardsㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-???: You seem like the type gangsters would like. (To an active idol)
-She suggested playing the Pepero gameㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ Huhㅋㅋㅋㅋ But isn’t this legal?
└ Wait?
└ Oh, it is?
└ There’s someone immune to a Pepero-game invitation?
“How is this real?”
Kariri suddenly shot to her feet and rummaged through the chest of drawers in the corner of the room.
Tap-tap-
Rustle-
As she unwrapped something, she put a thin stick between her lips and pointed at her mouth.
“Wrrna p-play P-pepero game wiff me?” (Want to play the Pepero game with me?)
[‘Altteopkeosin’ donated 10,000 won!]
-You crazy bitch!
[‘BangapJebiJoahae’ donated 3,000 won!]
-I can’t believe she’s actually doing it. I’m going insaneㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
Tap-tap-
Under the barrage of consecutive donations, the white teeth visible between Kariri’s tiny lips snapped the snack in two.
“Ahhh, Name, I really wasn’t going to do it...! I was just showing you what it was.”
She chewed the pieces in her mouth and let out a loud shriek.
“I think you’re the first unnie I’ve seen exploit her status as a minor this aggressively.”
“Gasp...!”
So this was how she had been tormenting her guests all this time.
Since she had said she was a high school student too, she couldn’t help being flustered when someone said something like that to her face.
I survived that one because I’m a minor too.
-Kyaa
-Wow, she really knows how to put things clearlyㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-She really is a genius after allㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-She sure was enjoying being a Celestial Dragon all this time, huh, Kariri!
I had to cut things off before the small talk dragged on even longer.
For some reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I kept sitting there in a daze, I’d get swept up in it.
“Let’s queue ranked right away.”
“Huh? Ranked?”
“Yeah. This week’s goal is Diamond.”
“Diamond? I’m Platinum 3! That’s absolutely impossible! Absolutely!”
“Then I’ll give you one Q&A question ticket for every match you win from now on. Deal?”
“And if I don’t answer? Can I make you do a punishment?”
“Do whatever you want...”
“All right, let’s go!”