Blackmail Backfires into Recruitment
People who build businesses around pseudo-social interactions and escalating betrayal—like those silver-tongued "Likeable Fixed Nick" types—are always plagued by labor shortages. No matter how capable someone is, the limitations of an individual are inevitable. Meanwhile, the volume of work relentlessly expands without regard for those limits. Blindly ramping up headcount just means sinking even more time into training new hires, while experienced pros who can jump right in are hard to find, harder to hire, and cost a fortune in wages. That's why there's that old joke about small-business owners getting married—to plug the gap with free labor. But what era is this? In the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, "artificial intelligence" is sweeping the globe, obliterating jobs left and right. The dawn of a second Luddite movement is right around the corner!
That's why Scalaiive's president, An Huiyeon, hopped on the wave of the times, deploying "artificial intelligence" to efficiently tackle her mountain of tasks.
"VPT, tell me about this VTuber."
"Tsk... Recruiting a rice shaman might be a stretch..."
Though this "VPT" was made of carbon-based organic compounds rather than metal, moved spontaneously without commands, and sported a stunning avatar in a lab coat and fashion glasses—differentiating it from your typical "artificial intelligences"—Seol Yuna was, taxonomically speaking, still an "artificial intelligence." After all, no non-human could have created her. Whether her two creators intended her birth or it was a happy accident is another story entirely.
An Huiyeon was still racking her brains over endless tasks today. Seol Yuna's miraculous arrival had indeed halved the workload, but Scalaiive's third generation—"New Normal"—was slated for four members, and with Yuna included, they only had three recruits so far. So An Huiyeon was scouring internet streaming platforms far and wide, hunting for "talent worth signing" to fill that final slot.
But VTubers who met her standards were few and far between. The good ones were usually already signed elsewhere.
"Hmm, what about this one?"
Someone who seemed promising would turn out to have a fatal flaw:
"What the actual fu—"
Still, with VPT (VTuber Pitfall Tracer) at her side, An Huiyeon saved tons of time on background checks. Even so...
"How is there not a single decent person out there?"
After three long days, not one solid VTuber had turned up.
Haaa... An Huiyeon let out a long, weary sigh. This was truly the limit. With her entire team poured into creating Seol Yuna's VTuber avatar and streaming assets, time was up. New recruits needed those too—not just Yuna. They'd barely make the deadline if she signed someone now and started work immediately, but as mentioned, no one fit the bill.
'Screw it, maybe just go with three...'
As the pressure of looming deadlines forced a pragmatic compromise into her mind, weighing the returns and risks, buuuz—!
VPT (aka Seol Yuna) startled at the sudden incoming message.
"P-President... Do you know someone named Hoshigami Meru by any chance?"
She asked her boss about it.
"Meru...? Oh, her. I was planning to recruit her for second gen, but she turned it down, said she prefers going solo. Why?"
"Uh... Could you take a look at this?"
She showed the full message to the president.
An Huiyeon's face turned deadly serious as she read it, then she turned to Seol Yuna.
"Y-Yuna..."
"Yes?"
"A-Are you out of your mind?!?!"
"N-No???"
"Debut's right around the corner, and you're stirring up shit in the galleries?!?!"
"S-Stirring up shit???"
Likeable Fixed Nick. Slang from anonymous communities, short for "likable fixed nick," but really a sarcastic jab at unpopular users who troll, nitpick, and clique up. Horrified by the term, Huiyeon immediately moved to install a cleaner bot to nuke Yuna's entire history into oblivion—"Tiananmen" style. Desperate to save her account, Seol Yuna had to fervently explain herself to her president.
Han Sewon desperately plotted her escape from the self-inflicted disaster of "grad school." Any plan, no matter how minor, required groundwork—data scraping. So she crawled the latest 10,000 posts from the Grad Student Gallery and stumbled on the named user Fermi.
This "Likeable Fixed Nick," with encyclopedic knowledge and razor-sharp expertise, helped countless grad students—and in the no-cliqueing Grad Student Gallery, was one of the few you could actually name-drop.
Thus, Han Sewon doxxed Fermi.
...Why, you ask? She'd reply: 'Gotta contact them, duh?'
Already hooked on the thrill, taboo rush, and dopamine high of hacking—an outright crime—Han Sewon's mindset was worlds apart from ours. Why hand over your contact when you can just rip theirs from the ether? Hacking was her lifestyle.
But in the process, she uncovered a shocker:
"A girl? And only middle school educated?!?"
Fermi was a woman! With just a middle school diploma! This flew in the face of the gallery consensus that Fermi was some famous prof or PhD candidate!
Panic was fleeting, though.
"Th-This is my chance...!"
Han Sewon saw opportunity. Fermi's brilliance aside, her credentials were middling at best—and intel revealed she was scraping by financially (ref: "My house collapsed yesterday").
'Send her to grad school in my place...?'
"Whoa, perfect!"
Giddy with her own genius, Han Sewon patted herself on the back.
"Knew I was right not to give up...!"
She pictured her long-discarded GigaMeru avatar. All without realizing it was a crime.
She promptly messaged Fermi's phone with a "polite proposal" (oblivious to the blackmail vibe). When acceptance pinged back, she whooped and dashed around her workshop.
But... Han Sewon didn't know. Didn't notice. That this "Fermi" matched the nickname of the short-term editor she'd fired two weeks ago. That said editor already had her contact info. That she hadn't even saved the editor's number.
Ting-a-ling—
A figure in sunglasses, hat, and mask slipped into the quiet cafe. 'Heh heh heh...'
Of course, it was Han Sewon. Thrilled by her first outing in ages—a "top-secret spy mission"—she was lost in the fantasy, buzzing like when she'd first hacked her middle school server. That electric thrill, the tickle, the delicious sin. Giggling suspiciously, she ordered a "Dubai Chewy Frappuccino" at the kiosk, ignored the side-eye from the part-timer, and crept upstairs to the private booth where "Fermi" awaited.
About to utter the prearranged code phrase for contact...
"H-Hoshigami Meru...-nim?"
She blurted a Japanese-style name.
"Wha—"
Han Sewon panicked hard. Hoshigami Meru was her VTuber on Chizit. An avatar RPing as a fox spirit from the stars... hers.
"You're Meru-nim... right?"
The question from the booth hit like a crisis. In that instant, Han Sewon's siloed worlds collided: her real self, Chizit's VTuber Hoshigami Meru, and gray-hacker "mErU_☆." Pop! Gestalt collapse, psychological whatchamacallit, mammalian instincts honed over eons—whatever. Her response was simple: bolt.
Thud—
But a hand clamped her shoulder, blocking escape.
"Hahaha! Meru-nim? Shall we step inside and chat?"
Unable to overpower a level 30 (self-proclaimed 29) married woman's strength, Han Sewon was dragged into the "interrogation room." Under relentless questioning and mental pressure, tears welling, she signed the humiliating contract...
And that was how Scalaiive's third-gen snagged its final member.