Chapter 175
QBS's report sent Korea into an uproar.
Over the short span of three days, the name NoName became firmly etched in people's minds.
[V-Tube]
[QBS News Talk Talk / 831,000 subscribers]
[Who Is 'NoName,' the 14-Year-Old Genius Streamer Who Solved a 300-Year-Old Problem?]
[Comments: 3.8k]
-A kid like this shouldn't be overlooked by the country. We need to support her so she can contribute to the development of the natural sciences in Korea. I wouldn't mind a single penny of my taxes going toward that. [Likes: 2.6k]
└ She should leave Hell Joseon, lol.
└ But is that even possible? She's fourteen.
└ Fact) She solved seven unsolved problems without receiving any support.
└ How is this real?
└ Not until it's confirmed that the proofs are valid. If you put it that way, there's even a fraudulent paper claiming to prove the Collatz conjecture that was written by a fifteen-year-old.
-I sometimes came across her in the algorithm and watched a few of her gaming videos, but I never dreamed she would be this young and smart. Her word choice, sentence structure, and conversational logic seem better than those of the new hires at our company, to the point that it's hard to imagine she's fourteen. [Likes: 1.7k]
└ Is she a genius in every field, with linguistic abilities as well as mathematical ones?
└ Don't take away my little NoName...
-NoName is a baby... But she's a big baby... [Likes: 1.2k]
└ What is this supposed to mean?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ This is freaking hilariousㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ This really is an all-time plot twist.
QBS's V-Tube was an overwhelming success.
The view count shot up to nearly a million in an instant.
Whenever people's attention converged on one place, admiration and jealousy were bound to become mixed together, turning the scene into something resembling a battlefield.
‘What's a streamer?’
People who were still more familiar with the term internet broadcaster often typed the six letters of the alphabet on old-fashioned smartphone keyboards.
And in the videos they found, a truly tiny child was writing out equations with her small, fernlike hands.
The videos explicitly stated that they were set in virtual reality, but people sometimes mistook them for reality, leading to unnecessary misunderstandings.
-A Korea University professor is listed as a co-author... Hmm... It reeks of some shady scheme to make a star by forcing a child to memorize a paper.
└ Isn't the fact that she memorized it freaking amazing too? One of the videos shows her filming a one-take for an hour without stopping.
└ I hate conspiracy nuts, but honestly, it is suspicious. She's on an entirely different level from the geniuses we've seen so far.
-That little kid solved that on her own?
└ Go watch the video. It says she's fourteen. That's a VR avatar.
└ Even if she's fourteen, it still makes no senseㅋㅋㅋ
└ The VR room looks nice, though. The interior design is exactly my taste.
└ It's gloomy as hell. How can you say that...?
A minor's astounding academic achievements could always command enormous public attention.
Even so, reporting on them was considered taboo because doing so could uproot a promising talent while they were still just a seedling.
A five-year-old doing calculus was truly amazing and admirable, but by the time they reached high-school age, it was no longer anything particularly special.
Besides, once a child's face became known, the public would keep them etched in its memory, leaving the child with a tremendous burden in terms of privacy as well.
This had always caused problems, both large and small, for the country and for society.
Still, starting anything was always the hardest part.
When a new semester began and the first couple was formed at a high school,
or when one chicken company was the first to raise its prices while the industry watched the consumers' reactions,
every broadcasting station began pouring out reports on NoName, like patient predators that had been waiting for this very moment.
[Even a Fields Medalist Was Astonished: What Are the Seven Mathematical Problems Solved by a 14-Year-Old Girl?]
[Minor Internet Broadcaster Solves 300-Year-Old World-Class Mathematical Problem]
[Who Is 'NoName,' the Girl Who Solved Number Theory's Final Boss, the Goldbach Conjecture?]
[Professor Cronheimer: We Can Look Forward to Korea's Second Fields Medal]
Reporter Jang Seongmun, who had even flown to Britain to conduct an interview with Professor Cronheimer in person, clicked his tongue, apparently never having expected this level of impact.
The editor-in-chief's proposal had been nothing short of a poisoned chalice.
If anything went wrong with NoName, all the blame would now be directed solely at QBS, which had broken the story first.
But Reporter Jang hadn't accepted it thoughtlessly.
First, NoName had filmed her videos in a VR space.
That alone meant there was no way her identity would be revealed.
Second, only NoName's ‘proof’ videos had been authorized for video sharing and commercial use.
‘Could it be that NoName herself wants the public to know about her?’
He didn't know why she had suddenly uploaded her proofs right in the middle of the tournament.
Judging from the proofs, they weren't something that could have been produced in just a day or two.
‘Could it really have been deliberate...?’
The thought had crossed the reporter's mind, but suspicion alone would change nothing.
At least, Reporter Jang Seongmun believed only in what he had personally seen and heard.
When he briefly turned his eyes away, Professor Cronheimer's interview was still being broadcast nonstop on the television.
In other words, QBS was making a fortune.
He couldn't help admiring the editor-in-chief's devilish decisiveness once again.
* * *
After a long, long two-day hiatus, Kariri announced her return to Twissy.
“Honeybees, come on in! It's been so long, everyone!”
The World of Arseria tournament was postponed by three days in consideration of Kariri's situation.
It was an incident in which a streamer had nearly suffered a terrible ordeal.
The tournament organizers were heavily criticized for posting an announcement as though they were doing everyone a favor by extending the schedule by a mere three days.
Even so, they held firm to their position that it could not overlap with the ACK SUMMER Pro Match period.
Kariri returned with her usual sunny expression, but the viewers here were worried sick.
That was because the female-streamer serial-stalking incident from earlier this year had eventually spread to Kariri as well, after a lull.
Some of the internet detectives, the self-styled Conans, had even theorized that the ‘Dogok-dong residential break-in incident’ mentioned in a remote corner of the internet news was actually about Kariri.
Once the viewer count instantly reached 10,000, Kariri looked at the camera with a resolute expression.
“Kariri, could I talk seriously for just a moment before starting today's stream?”
Her tone was completely devoid of laughter.
The serious side of the girl who was always smiling brightly felt unfamiliar.
“Something difficult happened a little while ago. Some of you may know about it, and some of you may not, but to give you the short version, someone broke through my front door and came inside... Oh, it wasn't the stalker who kept following me before. It was someone else.”
Kariri seemed to remember the stalker who had kept coming to her house before, and her expression briefly turned sour.
“I really thought I was going to die then... In the end, everything was resolved safely, but I spent a lot of time wondering whether I could keep streaming. I even thought, ‘So there really is someone in this world who hates Kariri that much.’”
Several viewers who knew the full story offered her words of comfort.
They told her that Kariri wasn't at fault; the intruder was the one in the wrong.
“Kariri knows all about it. She knows why you like Kariri and why you dislike Kariri. I wanted more people to like Kariri, so I worked really hard, too.”
Gathering fans was an idol's destiny.
Even after becoming a VTuber, Yoonseul had never been able to let go of her dream of becoming an idol, and she had always worked tirelessly to find content outside her streams as well.
“But whether you like Kariri or dislike her, coming all the way to my house like this is a crime. A crime. I'm not just talking about this incident; I mean all the other stalkers too... It might seem like nothing to you... but I was really... so scared every single day...”
Kariri bit her lip hard.
The sight of her forcing herself not to cry was even more heartbreaking.
“Kariri is strong. She is strong, but... did you know that Kariri dreams every day? She dreams that her eyes turn black, all her white hair disappears, and she returns to being an ordinary citizen instead of an emperor. You Honeybees probably have some idea who she is...”
The Kariri in that nightmare went by the name Seol Yoonseul.
“That person isn't strong like Kariri. She's too weak. She's the person Kariri wants to keep hidden. So I wish the Honeybees would only look at this strong Kariri. Couldn't you do that?”
‘The person inside’ was the downside of being a VTuber whose identity had been revealed.
Even so, Yoonseul decided to bear it all.
Her popularity as a VTuber and her sense of duty as an idol.
They were both things she didn't want to give up.
Seol Yoonseul was as fragile as glass right now, but she believed that someday Kariri's steadfastness would soothe her wounds.
Because it was Name, and no one else, who had made that confident promise.
[‘HoneybeeHoneybeeHoney’ donated 1,000,000 won!]
-It's not Kariri's fault! If anyone touches even a single hair on our Kariri's head, the one-million-strong Honeybee army will drive them all away!
Countless donations and Super Chats poured in one after another, keeping Kariri busy thanking everyone individually.
She hid her emotions as much as possible because laughing at a moment like this might make it seem as though she was happy because of the money, but sharp-eyed viewers quickly caught on anyway.
Most of the questions that followed concerned whether she was feeling all right and how she had been doing, and Kariri passed something on to the viewers as though she had just thought of it.
“Hey, I'm okay! I'm really somewhere safe! Hee hee hee! If I tell you where this is, you Honeybees will be shocked, right? Should I tell you or not? Hee hee.”
-??? Where are you?
-Did you return to the savanna, bro?
-?
-Your parents' house?
-Where could it be?
-???
“It's none other than NoName's house!”
Kariri's shocking slip instantly covered the comment section in hook-shaped symbols.
Who was NoName?
At this point, she was the most famous streamer in Korea.
While everyone was frantic to uncover her identity, Kariri declared that she was at NoName's house.
[‘Kapsa’ donated 20,000 won!]
-Why are you saying that now, you honey-badger brat!!!
“NoName told me! She said not to tell anyone anything they hadn't asked about!”
Kariri smiled innocently.
The World of Arseria tournament—the event where she would win it back and pay it back—was one day away.
Rumors, both large and small, about Name began spreading across the internet.
It was obvious that some of them were certainly true.
But according to Name's plan, information about her had to be revealed precisely in time for the MVP interview.
Kariri had willingly promised to become Name's spy.
Now she had been assigned the mission of preventing anyone from guessing that Name was seven years old until the day of the tournament final.
In short, sow confusion.
From now on, NoName had to be thoroughly fourteen, not a seven-year-old girl.
[Video Share - ‘Tenfold Devotion’ shared this for 10,000!]
(NoName VR Press Conference) - NoName's press conference has startedㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ It's live right now.
The chat began boiling over again.
‘She told me to hide her, so what am I supposed to do if she goes to a press conference herself...!’
Kariri tried whining to herself, but a promise was a promise, so all she could do was give it her best.
After all, Name was practically her benefactor for giving her the courage to start streaming again.
[‘Parrot Day’ donated 20,000 won!]
-What does NoName look like?
[‘rhinosaur’ donated 10,000 won!]
-Have you two slept together??? Is NoName really fourteen?
[‘No-Face’ donated 30,000 won!]
-Please be a beautiful girl beautiful girl beautiful girl beautiful girl beautiful girl beautiful girl
Kariri swallowed hard.
‘Yeah, don't panic. We practiced a lot for today.’
She had started the stream after anticipating every question that would come flying at her.
She was 160 centimeters tall, well above average for a fourteen-year-old, with a neat bob haircut and a good figure.
The information she had coordinated with NoName in advance swirled through Kariri's mind.
‘Wait, how good is “good figure” supposed to mean? What if they ask for my three sizes? Should I say a B cup? But kids these days develop well, don't they? A C cup? No, that's not enough... But a D cup...’
At that moment, a fanfare loud enough to split her eardrums rang out.
Ba-bara bam-bam bam—!
[‘Sparrow Hunter’ donated 300,000 won!]
-What was your first impression of NoName, Kariri?
“Uh... wha? D cup?”
-?
-?
-?
-?
-Did I just hear that wrongㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-???
-A D-cup, super-beautiful genius middle-school girlㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Protect NoName!!!!!!
-Kariri, what on earth are you talking about!
“Aah... Huh?”
The answer had come out automatically without passing through her mental filter. Even after saying it herself, Kariri's mind went completely blank.
She had gotten the very first button wrong.
‘I screwed up... I'm sorry, Name!’
It was obvious that if she retracted the statement now, nothing else she said would seem credible.
Kariri gritted her teeth and decided to become even more shameless.
And so, in a single day, NoName acquired the titles of 168 centimeters tall, 50 kilograms, a D-cup, an academy dropout, a hikikomori, and a tattooed woman.
The roots of this entire debacle stretched back to the day Yoonseul moved into Name's house—that is, two days ago.