The Drunkard's Prophecy
Viewers always have so many things they're curious about.
Most of it is about me. And among those questions, the one that comes up the most is what I get up to when I'm not streaming.
Strictly speaking, that's private territory. I could have brushed it off as a privacy thing, but telling people where I went and what I did wasn't exactly hard either.
More than anything, people don't pour this much attention on someone they dislike. They must like me if they're still watching a stream this late at night.
Something I'd come to realize while streaming was that streamers had a bit of a celebrity quality to them. You put yourself out there in front of an indefinite crowd of people, and there were those who loved you for it.
Of course, it couldn't compare to actual entertainers — but managing the fans who liked you to some degree wasn't a bad idea. Giving them a nickname like Ririyang's "broth" was probably part of that kind of management too.
Everyone already seemed to know how I'd ended up turning on a stream at three in the morning. What they wanted were the finer details of everything that had happened in between.
But there really wasn't anything special about it. Moments like this always made me envious of people who could take something completely ordinary and spin it into an entertaining story.
"I didn't really do much. Went to Bosingak, listened to the New Year's bell, made a New Year's wish. That was it."
"The news?"
I asked the chat back, but something already clicked. They had to be talking about that so-called interview the broadcast crew had pulled on us.
Even so, I hadn't expected word to get out this fast. According to the viewers, it had gone out live on the air almost immediately.
The buzz I'd been riding had long since worn off. Turning on the stream had seen to that.
Unlike when I'd been drinking myself under the table with Ririyang, chatting with viewers while nursing the occasional sip in between had let the alcohol fade out of my system little by little.
This, too, was thanks to Camilla's sturdy physique. I could hold my liquor far better than I ever had as a man — a hero's alcohol tolerance, befitting someone who fought on the battlefield.
There had been a theory that a transcendent hero simply couldn't get drunk at all, but that didn't seem to be the case either. Same as with the physical side of things, it looked like I'd been calibrated to roughly the level of a hard-training athlete.
Ririyang, on the other hand, still had plenty of alcohol left in her system. Unlike me, who'd sobered up somewhat thanks to the breathing room that came with talking to chat, she looked even drunker than she had before we'd started the stream.
"Heheh, I even made a New Year's wish with Mun— I mean, with Kayak. Jealous? Are you jealous? I'm the one who gets to hang out with Kayak in real life~."
Saying that, Ririyang reached out toward me. She hooked her arm through mine, poked my cheeks, and started pawing at me all over.
Da-hee has worse hands than I thought. A brand-new discovery, right then and there.
She beamed up at me like a baby, arms outstretched — and the second I tried to dodge, her face crumpled into a pout. I had no choice but to surrender my body.
I couldn't decide whether to be impressed that she still carefully avoided leaking my real name even while drunk, or impressed that she kept baiting the chat the entire time she did it.
How the hell was I supposed to handle this. I felt like I'd been put in charge of a time bomb one second from going off.
At this point I almost wished I'd stayed drunk myself. At least then I wouldn't be stuck with a headache like this.
Whether she knew what I was thinking or not, Ririyang was busy talking to chat on my behalf.
"Which channel was it that put us on the news? SBN? They're good at their jobs. Our Kayak made the news, so next up is terrestrial TV, and then she'll be Twish's biggest output—"
What kind of nonsense was she spouting now. And if you really thought about it, the chat egging on a drunk person was the bigger problem.
Yeah. Turning off the stream came first. I'd figure out the rest after that. Once the broadcast was off, I could put her to bed or knock her out — whatever worked.
"Everyone, thank you so much for watching even though we came on late. It's really late tonight and Ririyang-nim is pretty drunk, so—"
"Not Ririyang-nim, just Ririyang!"
"—we're gonna wrap it up for today. Yeah, see you next stream."
I rattled off the outro as fast as I could and ended the broadcast.
"Isn't there anyone decent out there…"
Meanwhile, a new wind was starting to blow somewhere else entirely.
A man lay sprawled across a sofa bed, scrolling through his phone. Unkempt beard, hair that hadn't seen a comb in days. He looked like a shut-in wreck — but his eyes alone burned sharp and alive.
His name was Park Suhyeok. Suhyeok was a PD who planned variety shows of the kind people would recognize by name.
The reason a man like him was currently holed up in the break room like this was that he was in the middle of casting talent.
More precisely, he needed a one-time guest for the variety show he ran.
The actor originally scheduled to appear had suddenly been caught driving under the influence, leaving the slot wide open.
Midnight Talk, the show Suhyeok produced, was — true to its name — a talk-focused program. Around four fixed panelists, with two or three guests invited each week to sit down and talk about themselves.
It wasn't exactly a major production. The ratings weren't particularly high to begin with, and the time slot sat a full step off what anyone would call prime time.
There weren't even any special props or tools required for the show. It was literally just people talking until the episode ended.
"There's no talent. No talent anywhere…"
Even so, he couldn't just drag in just anyone as a guest.
They needed at least a guaranteed baseline of buzz, and plenty of things to talk about. That was the only way the panelists could keep the conversation going and carry the show.
At the same time, they had to be famous enough not to demand a crushing appearance fee, but not so invisible they'd just sit there like set dressing.
Even Suhyeok had to admit the conditions were absurdly picky. He just scratched at his greasy hair in frustration.
"Hm?"
And then it happened. A woman's face caught his eye.
He'd been browsing the internet and Vtube out of sheer desperation, hunting for a guest — and there she was.
An autoplay news segment about the New Year's bell at Bosingak. And in it, a woman giving an interview.
She had a face you simply could not call ordinary.
That distinctive silver hair and those blue eyes had a magnetic pull that seized anyone who looked at her. Even Suhyeok, who had faced every kind of celebrity while producing television, found himself momentarily captivated.
The comment section was packed with people just as captivated as he was. Roughly thirty percent of the comments were about the actual news content. The other seventy percent were about the mysterious woman who'd suddenly appeared for an interview.
Suhyeok murmured the name people were calling her under his breath.
"Bosingak Camilla Girl…?"
As if entranced, he started digging up everything he could find on her. As a seasoned PD, it didn't take him long to track down the information.
After combing through Vtube comments and running a few searches, he learned that she ran a Vtube channel and simultaneously streamed live on Twish.
"Of course. With a face like that, there's no way she was just some nobody…"
Suhyeok nodded to himself, as if confirming his own prediction. It felt like he'd just pulled a pearl out of the mud.
Being a streamer was no reason she couldn't appear on a terrestrial program like his. There was already no shortage of precedent.
These days, people didn't watch much traditional TV. Celebrities ran their own Vtube channels and made videos, and streamers appearing on network television had become fairly common.
From Suhyeok's perspective, all that mattered was whether she checked the boxes as a guest — and as far as he was concerned, Kayak ranked pretty high among every candidate who'd come up so far.
"No controversies… gorgeous… made the news so people are already asking who she is, which means she's got buzz… she's close with Lee Jun-hyeok, and what? She's good at Abyss…? A skill-based streamer on par with the pros?"
The deeper he dug, the more kept pouring out. At this point, conversation material wasn't just sufficient — it was overflowing.
That was why a smile had already settled onto Suhyeok's face.
And after that, he kept right on watching videos of the streamer called Kayak. Far more than what any simple guest-recruitment research could possibly justify.