Chapter 10
“I almost said that… but I shouldn’t, right?”
Stop! The chat’s going to explode.
The donations telling people to come in never arrived; all they did was spam emotes.
Damn. My big mouth. To think this money-printing event would end like this.
More importantly, what I just said… It was okay, right? They took it as a joke, right?
Things may be noisier because the coordinates were just posted, but the scary part is that Haeun still hasn’t said a word.
What if Haeun decides to have me executed? Oh my God.
Of course, having no viewers was how things had always been, so it didn’t really matter.
But if dozens of people stood guard and caused a scene every time I streamed, all my ordinary viewers would disappear.
This was a new hobby I’d worked so hard to find. I couldn’t let that happen.
At times like this, the best thing to do was slam my head into the floor right away, like a sliding dogeza.
“Haeun, what I said just now was a slip of the tongue. I often have useless thoughts, and one of them slipped out. Never again… Well, that’s a little difficult, so I promise not to do it four more times.”
[Haeunhaeun donated 100,000 won!]
Funny, aren’t you? Lol. It’s okay. I wasn’t offended or anything. But could you give me moderator privileges? Or should I keep donating?
“Ah, you only had to spend a thousand won, Haeun. I was the one who blocked you. Manager? Of course I should give it to you.”
I gave Haeun moderator privileges and waited a moment. Messages began appearing in chat.
Haeunhaeun: First, let me apologize once again. In any case, this did start because of my viewers.
“No, no. It’s fine. You’ve already given me plenty of money, and I banned that guy, so it’s all right. And even though I did it unknowingly, I did insult you using your name, too. I’m sorry.”
Haeunhaeun: Haha, then let’s call it even.
“Oh, thank you.”
Is this what being a big streamer is like? The money and grace you bestow are as vast as the sea. I worship you, Great Haeun. From this moment on, Great Haeun and I are one body….
Haeunhaeun: But did you really dislike the bread that much?
This won’t do. Hey, Teacher Haeun. Was “wrapping things up” your way of wrapping me up?
What was this? Was Haeun trying to pick a fight?
The standoff between Ji, who wanted to say it was obvious, and An, who insisted it wasn’t, was tense.
Haeunhaeun: LOL, I’m joking. It really was burnt. I scraped it off and ate it, too.
Fortunately, Haeun hadn’t been planning to kill me. The eyes that had been trembling like mad finally calmed down.
Haeunhaeun: LOL, then since things have been more or less resolved, could you open chat again? Isn’t it inconvenient for you too, Jian, to only see emote chat?
“It is, but as you can see, there are that many people. I’m afraid that if I open it, countless people will pounce on me.”
Save me, Haeunemon.
Haeunhaeun: Guys, when chat is unlocked, behave, okay? If you spam just because it’s not my room, and you get caught, you’ll be banned in my room too. Ban anyone who types weird stuff in Jian’s chat and send me their IDs.
I cautiously unlocked chat, and it was better than before.
Still, following the words of the wise Jirobo-sensei that one of every five people gathered is trash, curses popped up now and then.
The chat’s still way too fast. A cute newbie like me can’t keep up.
Haeunhaeun: Shall I help moderate?
“Uh… I’d appreciate that, but are you sure?”
Haeunhaeun: Since I’m here anyway, let’s cleanly wrap things up.
-Mmph mmph mmph
-Fuck, I can’t hold back …
(This viewer has been banned.)
-Shin Haeun restores chat to normal.
-Try losing.
-You again? You again? You again? You again?
As expected, experience showed. The chat returned to normal in no time.
The firepower had diminished compared with earlier, but messages were still coming in several times faster than usual.
Oh. At this rate, is this a tourist-hotspot-level popular restaurant? To blow up like this in less than a week… Maybe I really do have talent?
-Lower the donation minimum too, you bitch.
-You said you’d let us in cheap, you said you’d let us in cheap, you said you’d let us in cheap.
-Cheap? Oh…
-Oh, fuck you.
The chat had more or less returned to normal.
Contrary to my expectation that Haeun would leave now, Haeun stayed and helped moderate chat a little longer.
As time passed, only the corpses beaten cold by the iron club and our forest friends, who had changed masks in an instant, remained.
When is Haeun going to leave? This is starting to feel awkward.
Even if the cause was that room, I was at fault too, and it felt uncomfortable having the other side act so deferentially.
Were all big streamers usually like this? Was Haeun even perfect in character? As expected of Great Haeun.
Still, it felt wrong to leave things like this, so I should do something for Haeun. There probably wasn’t anything a small-timer like me could do through the stream, though.
What am I good at… There’s only one thing, right?
“Haeun? Do you happen to enjoy eating?”
Haeunhaeun: As much as anyone else?
“Then, let’s say the money you gave me earlier was the cost of a meal. Would you like to come to my restaurant sometime?”
-Trying to ride her coattails again.
-Look how fast Jian stuck in a straw the moment an opportunity came.
-Pig Jian’s the one sticking in a straw.
-Jiiii~~~~an
-Don’t do that, guy above.
-LOL, nooooo~ (in a narrator’s voice)
“Are you calling me a pig? You want to die? Where have you ever seen a pig this slim? And I’m not sticking in a straw.
I won’t turn on the stream that day, and I won’t ask Haeun to turn it on either. Honestly, it’s because the 300,000 won you gave me feels like too much of a burden.”
-I get three hunnerd thousan’, three hunnerd thousan’.
-A 300,000-won chef, daaaamn.
Even if Haeun had only apologized, I would have gratefully accepted it, but the money as well made me extremely uncomfortable.
Even so, I had to give back as much as I’d received.
“If it makes you uncomfortable, you can decline. For the record, I have a business license, and it’s a perfectly legitimate restaurant.”
Haeunhaeun: Hmm, I’ll think about it, haha.
Haeun said she’d think about it, but that was probably a roundabout refusal.
Honestly, I hadn’t expected much when I made the offer. It was kind of like making a Korean-style dinner promise?
Of course, if I gave a homeless person 10,000 won, and they, feeling bad, told me to come eat at their restaurant, I’d say, “Why would I?”
“Then I suppose it can’t be helped. I’ll email you the address, so if you’re ever passing nearby, come by for a meal.”
I emphasized once again that I was saying this as a chef, not as a streamer.
I wondered if it was okay to give Haeun my restaurant’s address, but Haeun didn’t seem like someone who’d do anything bad with it.
I felt like I’d done everything I could. If fate brought us together someday, we’d see each other again.
Haeunhaeun: Yes, haha. Then work hard on your stream.
Once Haeun left, the viewers who had finished their business streamed out after Haeun in a great mass.
It really hit me anew: big streamers were something else.
Most of them left, leaving fifty viewers. I was back to being a neighborhood hole-in-the-wall.
Some people might consider that a small number, but compared to yesterday, my viewer count had more than doubled.
They say a beautiful person leaves even the place they stood beautiful, and that was exactly true.
-?
-??
[ㅇㅇ donated 1,000 won!]
Why would you know that?
It’s a famous saying you can find online, but you’re unfairly ragging on me again.
-How the hell would you know to type that in the first place? lol
Of course, I’d seen it myself.
For the record, our archenemy, HaeunLoveDog, apparently told both chats and every streamer Haeun knew to blacklist me.
Medetashi, medetashi.
***
“A lot happened. Right?”
-For real, lol.
-A hell of a lot happened.
-Look at you groveling before a big streamer.
Naturally. It wasn’t as if I’d die if I quit streaming, but there was no need to make an enemy.
Especially not if that enemy was a Dynamaxed dinosaur compared to me.
-?? : If they’re not a big streamer, fuck ’em all.
-Ah, so that’s why we get beaten up all the time.
-T_T Poor battered wife.
“When do I ever beat you guys up? It just means I feel close enough to you all to do that.
Think about it. Do you go, ‘Hey, you fucking bastard,’ to your coworkers? But you do with your high school friends, right? That’s all it is. Got it?”
-Oh.
-No, we’re in a business relationship.
-LOL.
-This place is good.
“Ah. Sorry. I should’ve asked whether you had coworkers or friends first. My big mouth again, just like yesterday.”
Sorry, sorry.
-Knew it.
-Not me. I work at a big company where everyone knows me just by name, I make a salary in the hundreds of millions, and I have over a hundred unread KakaoTalk messages… (abridged)
-Triggered~~~~
-Fucking bitch, I told you not to do that.
They sure know how to have fun. Seeing the chat return to its usual state put me at ease.
“So what do we do now?”
-Why are you asking us that?
-Are you already trying to freeload off us?
-You only learn the bad things, lol.
I had prepared to do something today, but with all the commotion, my mind had gone blank.
-Shall we just eat?
-Come to think of it, isn’t this a cooking stream?
-LOL, a cooking-(not-cooking) stream.
“What do you mean, I’m not doing anything? Can’t you see the stock simmering over there even now?”
It still had to boil for another five hours. What was I really going to do?
-Food, let’s go.
-Let’s eat.
“Dinner? Maybe I’m just drained, but I can’t think of anything at all. Should we just call it here?”
-Even if you turn it off, it’s not like you have anything to do, right?
I have plenty to do. It’s just that it doesn’t fit the point of the stream, so I don’t do it. If I turn it off, I’ll play games and watch anime.
-Then just do that.
-There are lots of new viewers today. You should do something on a day like this.
-Yeah.
-Ditch the cooking and get gaming~
“Really? But I don’t know if this laptop can run it. Give me a moment.”
I finished installing the game while chatting with the viewers.
If I’d known this would happen, maybe I should’ve bought one with slightly better specs.
If it doesn’t work, I’ll just turn it off.
“You guys told me to do this, okay? Don’t complain that it’s boring.”
-Okay.
-I’ll carry the log for you.
-Wait, uh, no, that won’t work.
-LOL… you’re definitely a small-timer.
Civilization.
It was called one of the three devil games, and was supposedly so addictive that if you launched it after lunch, you wouldn’t turn it off until it was time for lunch again.
To put it simply, you choose a leader and develop your nation from prehistory to the modern era, winning by fulfilling certain conditions.
It’s not a particularly good game for streaming. The player may have fun, but from a viewer’s perspective it’s slow, and they just think, “What even is that?”
In fact, aside from playing it myself, I use videos of it as sleep aids, so that tells you all you need to know.
But actually playing it is fun. Probably.
Once I finished setting up my leader and pressed Start, a loading screen appeared with narration.
From the first emergence of life beneath the waves, through the great beasts of the Stone Age and the dawn of humankind’s first upright walkers, you have come a long way.
From the cradle of civilization to the exploration of the stars, your greatest mission begins now.
That narration is thrilling no matter how many times I hear it. The previous numbered installment was more fun, but I’d play the sixth one just to hear this.
“Isn’t the narration awesome, everyone? I get moved every time I play. Guys?”
The chat abruptly cut off. Looking at the viewer count, there were ten people.
“Hello? Where did everyone go?”
-The kids all went out for a walk.
-Sorry. I’ll never suggest playing a game again.
-Throwing away Big-Streamer Trickle-Down right away.
-This is how you shake off the ants, bb.
No. You guys told me to turn it on.
Return to small-timer in record time.