Chapter 4
I had one teacher.
Not a teacher from the elementary, middle, or high schools I barely attended.
It was Teacher Han Seonghwa, my mentor who taught me for seven whole years after I began standing out as a model at the age of ten.
Now, if I’m being honest, I think Teacher Han was a lousy teacher.
‘Ahyun, that pose….’
‘Where did you learn that, Ahyun? Why….’
‘Looks like you’ll have to learn how to walk all over again.’
The poses and postures Teacher Han taught me drew a great deal of criticism once I entered the international scene.
They had been fine in Korea, but apparently they fell short of global standards.
Still, I didn’t harbor any particularly bad feelings toward Teacher Han Seonghwa.
Her language was rough, but she was witty enough to keep class from getting boring.
‘Don’t get too friendly with boys.’
‘Huh? Why?’
‘If you do, people will talk behind your back.’
Above all, Teacher Han really was my mentor, since she taught me all sorts of things while I was modeling and rarely attending school.
You might ask what I could have learned after being reincarnated.
‘Why do girls go to the bathroom together? Well… because it’s the bathroom.’
‘Don’t try to take the lead. If you act out among girls, you’ll be the first one they beat up.’
Since this was my first life as a woman, I learned a lot about the things I had been lacking.
And there were plenty of other lessons besides those.
“You’re Ahyun, right? I’m a fan.”
“...Yes.”
“It was such a shame that you didn’t appear on the runway last season.”
“I see.”
One of those lessons was this attitude that might look rude at a glance.
‘Ahyun, you know…’
‘Yes.’
‘If you just shut the hell up, you’ll become the best model.’
‘...What?!’
‘Just shut up! Don’t worry about being polite; be as quiet as possible, got it?’
‘But why….’
I didn’t understand it at the time, and honestly, I still don’t really understand it now.
But my mother nodded when she heard that advice, so I’ve been following it quietly.
To be honest, it is a little disappointing.
I’m a super-rookie VTuber who reached an average of 200 viewers in just one year, and I’m being told not to use my gift for banter.
Wouldn’t that be a loss to history?
“Have you tried our product this time?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think? Good, right? We’re especially proud of its moisturizing effect! We’ll send you our new products when they come out.”
“Thank you.”
Still, it was the method I’d stuck with for years, so I was maintaining it for now.
What good would it do for a model to talk too much, anyway?
If anything, being quiet was convenient since everyone else took care of things for me.
Still, there was one problem.
“Blah blah, blah blah! (Aren’t you being too arrogant?)”
After keeping my mouth shut and walking around like that, I sometimes caused misunderstandings like this.
Some people considered me quiet and refined,
but from another perspective, I might look rude and arrogant. That was simply how people saw things.
After all, evaluations weren’t something I made myself; they were entirely relative.
Personally, I considered it unavoidable.
“....”
“Parlez! Blah blah! (Why don’t you say something?)”
It wasn’t as though I knew no French at all.
Our overly meddlesome Roselia tended to teach me whenever she got bored.
Even so, if someone picked a fight with me, it was easier to pretend I didn’t understand the language.
In League of Legends, it was like picking support Teemo and pretending to be Chinese.
What’s more, this was a party venue.
It might have been called a Christmas charity party, but it was really a business party packed with people from the industry.
Was I really going to raise my voice and fight with someone here, just to ruin my image?
Besides, there was one more reason I couldn’t fight.
“Parle, parle! Blah blah! (You! You came to Paris and don’t even know French?!)”
In my view, that woman was crazy.
She looked like a model, so what did she think the industry people would say about her behind her back for picking a fight like this?
Girls like her appeared from time to time: hotheaded prodigies who had succeeded from a young age, looked down their noses at everyone, and lived on the thrill of their own brilliance.
The best thing to do with people like that was not to engage them.
Not the best option—the best outcome.
We were around the same age, so this was practically an opportunity to show that I was the calmer, more refined one.
Anyway, simply looking at her without changing my expression made her falter.
“Pardon…! (Th-this…!)”
She must have realized it by now.
Who was getting angry without any justification.
This was why hot-blooded entertainers in their early twenties were so difficult.
They just didn’t understand that they made their living off their reputations.
“Ça va mieux? (Feeling calmer?)”
“...!”
When I spoke in a calm tone, the model in front of me flinched.
Yes, yes, very hot-blooded indeed.
I had been like that once, too.
‘Damn it, I said we’d be done by morning! Let’s call it a day!’
‘You little shit! What do you know!’
Back then, I used to shout and fight at construction sites.
It was a hazy past now, but remembering those days helped me understand her.
Pat, pat.
I patted her on the shoulder as I passed by.
For some reason, the shoulder I’d patted seemed to tremble, but whatever.
Click, clack.
I crossed the party like that.
Since things had turned out this way, I decided to go outside and get some air.
Stop.
I stopped when I saw the person standing in front of me.
“Perfect! Very impressive.”
A middle-aged man with dyed white hair slicked back and flashy earrings.
He was quite tall, with strikingly large, piercing eyes.
“Andel, you speak Korean well.”
It was Andel himself, the star of this party.
“I only started learning recently. What do you think? Do I sound like a K-pop star?”
“Your pronunciation is good enough to pass for Korean.”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
I had only run into Andel a few times, but he spoke Korean with astonishing perfection.
Judging by the way he had been standing there blankly and by what he’d said earlier, he must have witnessed the commotion.
“I didn’t know Ahyun had that side to her.”
“I’m more surprised. You speak Korean this well.”
I didn’t particularly want to continue talking about what had happened, so I changed the subject.
There were two reasons: one was consideration for that young hotshot, and the other was that I wanted to leave as soon as possible.
Having a one-on-one conversation with the designer representing the brand was unbearably uncomfortable.
I would rather have spent the whole day talking to that young hotshot from before.
"You’ve been complimenting my Korean this whole time?"
"...."
At times like this, Teacher Han Suyeong’s wisdom shone brightly.
She had taught me how to disguise refusing to converse as a lack of communication skills.
"I have something urgent to take care of...."
"Still, that’s just like Ahyun. You noticed all my effort. I studied really hard."
I was gauging my chance to slip away while pretending I had nothing to say.
Andel grinned to himself, then said something absurd.
“You have to know the language of the Muse to communicate.”
...Muse?
When had we ever met?
**
In fashion, a Muse is
a very significant term meaning someone who inspires a designer’s creativity—in other words, someone comparable to a role model or the identity of a brand.
In other words, it wasn’t something you could casually say with a ‘Haha, you’re my muse today. Yes, what a good muse you are’ sort of vibe.
That was why Andel’s declaration that I was his Muse, as a designer receiving worldwide attention, was so shocking.
I ended up standing there and talking with him for another thirty minutes.
Honestly, the conversation was grand enough to belong in a model’s textbook, if such a thing existed, but I’ll go back and reflect on it later.
Anyway, many things happened at the party after that.
The girl came back to apologize, Andel came looking for me again, and various people approached me after apparently overhearing his Muse comment, saying this and that.
After getting thoroughly drained by all of it,
the long-awaited late evening of the 26th arrived.
“Yeah, I think I’ll be able to stream normally starting tomorrow.”
The wrap-up party had gone on until late, and as soon as I entered the hotel, I flopped around and turned on the stream.
“I’ll take off my makeup, change, and get some rest.”
“So what~”
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-She’s really letting loose just because she’s in a hotel, this bitch
-Please turn on the cam already
-For real, looks like she really went there for work
“Do you finally understand that I’m innocent?”
By this point, the viewers had more or less accepted it.
After I streamed every evening for three days straight and Roselia’s voice continued to be heard, all the talk about boyfriends and such disappeared.
In other words, proof complete. If there had been a blackboard in front of me, I would have proudly written Q.E.D. in three letters and snapped the chalk in half.
-Could you at least show us your lower face, teacher??
-Even a half-cam, please
-Fuck, she hasn’t shown us once... what a stubborn bitch...
But they say that once a person sits down, they want to lie down, and once they lie down, they want to sleep.
Having cleared themselves of their suspicions, the viewers wanted something more now that I had turned on the camera anyway.
In other words, they wanted to feast their eyes on some part of this super-rookie Wayo’s body.
“Not a chance.”
But Wayo the Great wasn’t that careless.
I’d even bought a phone holder and fixed it in place, so the phone always showed only the pattern on the brown tabletop.
-Just your hands, please
-Is this asshole Sterak or something...?
-Wayo, prove it
Since I was being so meticulous, they eventually started provoking me.
Sterak, 84 kilograms, and all that nonsense.
They demanded that I prove right then and there whether I was Princess Wayo or Bowser.
What a ridiculous thing.
Swish, swish.
“Will this do?”
Still, I couldn’t let the misunderstanding that I was Sterak continue, so I waved my hands around a few times beyond the camera.
The shadow of my hand swept past beneath the hotel lights.
-Oh..
-Damnㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Wait, are those really your hands??
My hands were very slender, with beautiful lines.
Naturally, since I took care of them, they were prettier than an ordinary person’s.
“Those of you saying ‘Sterak’ and whatever, I’ll put you in bread for now.”
“Putting someone in bread” was our stream’s expression for a temporary ban.
If a joke like Sterak’s spread the wrong way, strange misunderstandings would pile up through the online communities, so I nipped it in the bud.
As I tapped the fixed phone and sent a few people away, a fairly long donation came in.
[Thank you for the 5,000 won donation, ㅇㅇ!]
Teacher, I’m not asking for anything else, but could you at least show us the tabletop you’ve had your nose buried in for three straight days? The pattern looks fancy, so I’m curious what the whole thing looks like.
“This? It’s nothing special.”
The table was luxurious, but it was one of those famous-brand tables you could find in any expensive hotel.
It was impossible to identify the hotel from it.
-What table?
-Not that, please, hand cam
-Teacher, my only little sibling is sick. If you show us one foot just once...
The viewers seemed to know that much, too, since their reactions were rather dry.
Still, a table was harmless enough.
Before raising the camera high, I briefly examined the things on the tabletop.
At most, there was a basic AirPods case, a watch I hadn’t bothered to wear to the party, and some frozen jelly I’d been nibbling on.
After confirming that only insignificant things were sitting there, I carefully raised the phone.
-Damn, the shadowㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Oh...
-Is the streamer really a beauty??
The chat began moving a little faster.
Apparently, they had caught a glimpse of the shadow of my arm or a bit of my hair.
What, was she aiming for this?
I snorted at the rather timid attempt.
“More importantly, that’s enough now, right? Should I wrap up the stream?”
-Ah
-Can’t you show more??
-When are you streaming tomorrow?
“Well, I’ll stream as soon as I get back.”
-Ah, finally
-Honestly, if you enjoyed the livestream, upvoteㅋㅋ
-Is it a half-cam next time??
“Not a chance. Wayo’s avatar is pretty, right? Why are you all so desperate for a cam?”
-Wayo’s basically a muscle-tuber...
-Please remake her already
-I’m embarrassed for you, Wayo
“Do you really have to open Pandora’s box? I want us to stay together for a long time....”
-Ah..
-Okay, I won’t look..
-That’s terrifying;;
-A concrete-type red-pill VTuber...
Anyway, the Christmas business trip, full of talk and trouble, came to an end like that.
The next day, I returned to Korea without a second thought.
Andel and the other people involved suggested that I stay for a few more days, but this time I left without hesitation.
Attending the party was enough. I’d leave the other work to next year’s me.
“Hello!”
That was the first stream I turned on after returning to Korea, having turned down every offer.
Honestly, I had been secretly looking forward to turning on a stream and comfortably clicking away at games again, but….
-We pay our respects to the silver-spoon Wayo the Great...
-The undisputed king of hobby broadcasting
-So it was all an act this whole time…? I’m the only one who was serious.. I’m the only one who was serious..
For some reason, the chat had exploded.
Why, though?
Why, though?