Chapter 5
“...What?”
I got up and immediately went online to look for any mention of me.
Posts that got lots of upvotes on online communities were known as “featured posts.”
On the page of the online community I was browsing, all 15 featured posts were videos of me.
“...What is this?”
I bit my nails, trying to figure out what was going on.
“So someone rigged the featured posts, and now an entire page is filled with me.”
Then I checked the comments and found hundreds of them, like they’d been posted by bots.
“N-no...”
At this rate, there was no way I could start streaming.
I should take a day off, or else... or else...
“Is there any reason I can’t?”
I carefully finished setting up the stream.
You never know. No matter how toxic they were, even if they were forum users everyone called murderers.
‘Those damn fake-posting trolls can’t seriously think they can get a rise out of me, can they?’
I shouldn’t have gone live thinking that. But before I knew it, I’d started the stream.
[This room’s great, no gore here!This room’s great, no gore here!This room’s great, no gore here!This room’s great, no gore here!]
[O mighty Akarat, protect me with your eternal light. Guide me with your holy wisdom, and though darkness surrounds the path I walk, lead my soul with your sacred light.O mighty Akarat, protect me with your eternal light. Guide me with your holy wisdom, and though darkness surrounds the path I walk, lead my soul with your sacred light.]
Dozens of weird messages flooded my chat.
“Ah, what the hell...”
Weird video donations, Japanese VTuber song donations, all kinds of mashup videos and strange songs were wrecking my stream.
I hurriedly ended the broadcast.
“I’m fucked.”
It had finally happened.
Internet deadbeats, unemployed shut-ins, pathetic losers, and greasy otaku simps had no sense of moderation. Seeing me panic and end the stream in a hurry might only get them more excited and make them pull this shit again next time.
“The donations...?”
Most were 1,000-won donations, but since I’d linked two donation platforms, the actual total was 2,000 won.
“Gasp...”
I’d been live for maybe ten minutes, and I’d already made 60,000 won.
If this kept up for an hour, that’d be 360,000 won... If I streamed one hour a day, every day for a month... 10.8 million won.
“What kind of stupid-ass logic is that?”
I barely held on to my sanity and came to my senses.
This stream wasn’t going to keep going like this. If I kept streaming without paying attention to them for about a week, interest would probably fade on its own.
I had no controversy, and I wasn’t even famous yet—just a streamer with a few dozen followers.
“Let’s think. I have to choose now: do I keep doing toxic streams like this, or go back to normal?”
But was I going to stream for a year or two and then start over? No. I planned to keep streaming on this account.
For three years, five years, ten years. Unless some huge scandal made it impossible to keep streaming, or a controversy erupted after I showed my face, I’d keep going.
Once I showed my face, I’d aim for the mainstream. And when you aimed for the mainstream, your past mattered.
‘Sure, some filthy underground YouTubers do make it into the mainstream, but that’s...’
Not as a woman. I was a woman now.
“Think. Think it through. Could I handle these viewers and make it work?”
Earlier, about 380 people had watched when I went live.
But I had no content right now. Just chatting?
Fuck that. Three hundred of them would drop off in a flash.
Then what about gaming?
“...”
My mind was a mess.
For now, I should go live. They’d already seen me once, so they knew what was going on, right?
I slowly steadied my breathing and started the stream again.
#
“H-hello...”
Of course, I hadn’t gone live without a plan.
I’d come up with a few plans, using elements that online-streaming losers would like.
And the first of those was the “loser girl” persona.
Sure enough, after I started and then ended the stream once, the viewers dropped off in droves.
‘It went from 300 down to around 110.’
And from what I’d seen on the online community, the other 190 had gone to troll other streams.
The chat was moving, but sluggishly.
Most of them had probably gotten tired of waiting for the trolling and gone to the bathroom or something.
I started streaming with the chat in relatively good shape.
“Um, hello.”
Maybe because they’d seen me make a fool of myself the day before, my lukewarm tone got almost no reaction.
‘Should I make a fool of myself again?’
Then a particular website came to mind.
“So, today was my third stream, and after I’d been live for about ten minutes, all these weird posts started popping up, right? So I looked online and found that some weird community had posted my stream as a raid target...”
First, I had to self-sabotage a little and mention that I was looking at the forums.
Why? Because that would get people posting about me on the forums and draw in even more viewers.
‘Please don’t let this backfire.’
“So today, let’s try a Worst Viewer World Cup!”
I clicked on the 64-entry bracket and picked out the things that had happened during my ten-minute stream.
“All right, now for the main event...”
But whenever I tried to say anything, the chat or donation feed would go completely berserk.
“...Fuck, seriously.”
When I swore, they seemed to get even more excited and kept wrecking the chat and donation feed.
“Aagh! Fuck, why is my stream like this?!”
I thought my nerves were pretty strong, but after only thirty minutes of streaming, they were shattered.
“Does this make any fucking sense?! Did I make a wish to a monkey’s paw? I wished for my stream to get popular, not for it to get ruined!!!”
I slammed my fists on the desk and howled.
“Aah, ngh~ Shit...”
I pretended to cry and peeked at the chat.
The chat was flying by, and thanks to the publicity, my viewer count—which had been a little over 100—had climbed to nearly 200.
‘People like watching me fall apart.’
Actually, maybe that was only natural.
I hadn’t built up an innocent, demure image from the start. A clip of me drinking and swearing had spread online—why would anyone expect me to be demure?
But this could work as a selling point.
‘A character who insists she’s pure, even though nobody believes her.’
If I played that character for a few years, then revealed my face and turned out to be genuinely beautiful...
‘It’ll work...!’
I could already picture myself getting YouTube’s Gold Play Button and walking around Hongdae.
[What a fucking act.]
As soon as the message appeared, I clicked the username and put it up on the screen.
“...What a fucking act?”
I snickered and put on a loser-ish voice.
“Heh, heh. I-I got caught!”
I opened my browser and cleared my throat.
“This is only my third day streaming, so I’m still figuring things out. Can someone give me some advice? Should I play a game, or chat?”
Contrary to what I’d said about being on day three, I opened a poll with practiced ease.
The dumb viewers had no idea, and voted 70% for Just Chatting.
“Mm, I see. Then let’s do Just Chatting~!”
I searched online for some mellow, royalty-free music, then restarted the stream.
#
I talked until my throat hurt. The chat slowed down, but I figured my overall viewer base had grown.
“Ahem~”
After six long hours of streaming, I happily checked my stats.
June 5, 2023
Average viewers: 50
Followers: 38
Stream time: 6 hours, 38 minutes
Unique viewers: 617
“...Ah.”
I tilted my head.
The viewers, followers, and unique viewers had all gone up dramatically compared to the day before yesterday.
But something felt off. Something was strange.
On a hunch, I opened my donation page.
“H-huh, gasp, gasp, ngh, gaaah...!”
I passed out on the spot.
I’d turned donations off when I was streaming during the day, and somehow they were still off.
A streamer with 50 average viewers and a peak of 300. Today’s earnings:
Excluding the brief stream I’d turned on, six hours: 0 won.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck—!!!!!”
I wailed and tore at my hair.
A man was sitting on a couch, looking at his phone and snickering.
“Hey, Shin-ah, did you see this stream? This person might be useful.”
He looked up and called to a woman sitting in a chair, absorbed in something.
“What stream?”
“I was browsing the streamer forums, and some crazy bastard rigged an entire page with posts. But I watched her stream just now, and she seems like she could be useful.”
“Ugh, how many streamers have a brief moment in the sun before fading into obscurity?”
“...You know our stream’s hit a rut right now, don’t you?”
She seemed annoyed. She stopped drawing and pressed her thumb against the pencil as if to snap it.
“...Ugh. Whew.”
But she didn’t have enough grip to break it. She stopped, set it down on the floor with a tap, then turned to look at him.
“So what?”
“Remember what I told you before? About looking for talent? There’s talent right here, so let’s build her up.”
She frowned at him.
“Build her up?”
“We’ll build her up, then turn around and leech off her.”
Their gazes shifted to the phone playing Lee Jia’s stream.
(Gyahahaha~! You rotten bastard! Yeah, who the hell do you think you are, picking a fight with me!)
“...Should we?”