Hoping to Get Closer
My interest in Haryeong began purely by chance.
I'd known her name for a while, at least. I was the type who quietly kept tabs on her coworkers, so whenever I had a free moment I'd open Twish and scroll from the top of the rankings downward, one stream at a time.
Haryeong sat somewhere in the upper-middle tier. Around four or five in the afternoon — early evening, really — you could almost always find her streaming hard.
We had no real connection, so watching her go at it usually earned nothing more than a passing thought: She's working hard again today. Pretty, too. Her voice was pleasant enough that I'd occasionally leave her stream running in the background while I worked or ate.
Finding out she'd been suffering for a long time was yesterday's news — something that happened while I was browsing the communities the way I always did.
I'd been ego-searching, checking how people were talking about me, when it jumped out at me on its own.
Posts with "Kayak" in the keywords had Haryeong's name stuck next to them with suspicious frequency.
The content was malicious enough to make anyone reading it scowl — deliberate takedowns and snide digs aimed at a streamer named Haryeong.
To them, the name Kayak looked like a weapon they could use to attack her. They kept comparing the two of us, using me as the stick to beat her with.
Watching people who neither liked me nor seemed to actually watch my streams drag my name into harassing someone else was… from the person being used as the weapon, deeply unpleasant.
What the hell were they doing to someone just trying to stream? Pure malice, nothing else. Zero productivity, zero benefit to themselves — and they were doing it like it was fun.
Moments like this made me think the idea that human nature is fundamentally evil might not be so far off. At least based on those posts, it wasn't. Even Mencius, the great champion of innate human goodness, would have slapped his forehead and gone, Aigoo, I was wrong!
So I kept reading. Post after post with no end in sight. They'd sent her emails. They'd raided her live streams. They'd made her cry. They bragged about it like it was something to be proud of.
It wasn't interest or sympathy that kept me going. It was more like, Just how far are these people willing to go?
But the longer I read through that endless scroll, the more a quiet worry settled in.
Is she actually okay right now? These posts say she was crying not long ago. That she went offline without a word. This is starting to look pretty serious.
Their goal didn't seem limited to simply harassing Haryeong. It looked like they wanted to push further — force her off streaming entirely, or worse, drive her out of her own life.
I'd seen similar cases before. This was not something I could just sit back and watch.
And the fact that they were using me as the comparison stick to beat her with? That pissed me off on its own.
Which was why I went to Haryeong mid-stream and dropped a massive donation. One look at her and she seemed so fragile she might quit broadcasting any second.
While I was at it, I told them to stop dragging my name into harassing other people.
"So, to summarize — you're saying you'll help her."
That was Yu Sia, listening to my whole story over Discord.
She was weirdly fond of these calls with me, ringing me up roughly every other day. Right now she was editing while she listened, apparently.
"I just can't stand them using me to do that superior-version, inferior-version comparison crap — Kayak's the upgrade, Haryeong's the downgrade. It's disgusting."
"Still, you could've just said 'don't mention Kayak' and left it there. The fact that you're going out of your way to help her…"
The sound of her keyboard, which had been clacking steadily in the background, cut out for a moment.
"Boss really is kind, huh. Or should I call it a big soft spot for other people's business?"
"I'm just doing what I feel like doing. You don't have to dress it up like that."
It wasn't like I went around helping every person who looked like they were struggling. I had the bandwidth right now, so I was helping. That was all.
You don't necessarily have a reason to help someone dangling off a cliff right in front of you — but you don't have a reason to pretend you don't see them, either, do you?
Besides, my stream had already blown past every target I'd set for myself in the early days, with room to spare.
I'd already made it. As long as I didn't cause some kind of social disaster going forward, there was basically no way for me to fail.
So doing whatever I wanted was fair game. Haryeong hadn't committed some major crime, and helping her wasn't going to kick up a controversy.
And more than anything else—
"Her voice is totally my type. Kind of like something you'd put on like a radio? Easy to listen to."
The thing that bothered me most was the idea of losing a stream I could put on when I was bored.
Having something to watch while prepping dinner and eating was pretty important. One good background stream could change the whole density of your daily life.
From Yu Sia's end came a laugh that sounded like the air going out of a balloon.
"Boss really is the best."
"Uh… that's a compliment, right?"
"Of course."
From way back then until now—
Yu Sia's quiet voice came through the line.
The plan was simple.
Help Haryeong. How? Drive out the toxic viewers from her stream and give her a chance to get back on her feet.
"A collab would be the most reliable move."
"Yeah, that tracks."
"Right. The drop in viewers alone must've been pressure from every angle."
I'd laid everything out for Yu Sia because she knew the streaming world better than I did.
Even if I'd put in enough hours by now to have some experience of my own, thinking it through with other people was still more effective than stewing alone. Collective intelligence, as they say.
The strategy Yu Sia laid out lined up almost perfectly with what I'd already been thinking.
A joint stream — put simply, a head-on charge.
It could revive Haryeong's steadily declining broadcast and, at the same time, put a damper on the toxic comparison bait and the attempts to drive a wedge between us.
It wasn't pure charity on my end, either. Sharing the viewer pie meant some of her audience would flow over to me as well.
And by creating a real connection with Haryeong, I could reduce the reflexive hostility toward Kayak that kept popping up in her chat — and with it, the hate-bait campaigns that came from that hostility.
Viewers who'd been watching her streams just fine might have quietly built up a bad image of me without even realizing it. Fans create antis, after all — the toxic viewers constantly name-dropping me had been costing me, too.
Well, like Yu Sia said, I could also just ignore all of it and keep streaming. That was an option.
Still, the fact that my channel had gotten big enough that I even had that luxury — I was a little proud of myself. Almost teared up about it, honestly.
Anyway. The big picture, the primary plan: collab with Haryeong. Settled.
So what about the next step? The finer details?
Easy. To collab, you need to get in touch. You need to open a conversation and get at least somewhat friendly.
Unless you were going in completely cold and businesslike, collabs generally happened between people who already had some kind of rapport.
Which was why I was currently in full cling-mode with Haryeong.
I'd asked around among nearby streamers, gotten her number, and sent a message asking to meet. No reply yet — maybe she was still asleep.
Unless she was planning to quit streaming entirely, she wouldn't be able to completely ignore a proposal from me.
I was, after all, the one they were calling the next emperor of Twish.
But what am I actually going to say when we meet?
Truth was, this was the first time I'd ever been the one reaching out first, offering a hand.
I'd always been on the introverted side by nature, and even if putting on Camilla's face for streams had improved things a lot, it still felt awkward.
I turned it over in my head for a bit, then started browsing Haryeong's wiki page and her Vtube channel.
Well — if you want to get close to someone, you should know something about them first, right?
If I learned enough about Haryeong, I could open with "I'm a fan" when we met and get the conversation rolling.
Playing the fan would keep the mood warm and friendly. All around, it seemed like the right call.
And so my studies began. Research subject: streamer Haryeong.
"She started streaming in high school? That's insanely early."
"Top-tier female Abyss player. Highest-ranked streamer until Kayak showed up. Oh…"
"Wait, she can dance too? Looking like that? How is she this multi-talented?"
I read her wiki cover to cover and worked through the videos on her Vtube channel in order of popularity.
How many hours passed like that? I lost track of time watching everything she'd uploaded, and by the end I'd scraped her entire backlog clean down to the bottom.
"Huh…?"
Somehow what was supposed to be research had swallowed me whole, and I'd ended up stanning her for real, like an actual fan.
That was entirely because Haryeong was a genuinely magnetic streamer. Looks, voice, game skill, dance ability, reactions — not a single weak point among them.
That evening, a positive reply came back from Haryeong.
We set a meeting for tomorrow.