Resolution
The collab stream between Kayak and Haryeong had drawn unprecedented attention from every corner of the internet.
Regulars who usually watched Kayak's broadcasts. Floating viewers who drifted through the top-ranked streams. Even users from communities that despised Haryeong.
People of every kind poured into Haryeong's channel. Before long the viewer count had rocketed past twenty thousand — and it was still climbing.
"Next, tan-tan. At your fingertips, a red rose. Now lift your toes up from the rose."
They were already three hours into the stream.
It had started with Kayak teaching Haryeong how to play Camilla. Now the roles had flipped, and Haryeong was teaching Kayak her own specialty — dance reaction content.
Two people who looked alike, each teaching the other their strongest skill. A kind of talent exchange. A favor for a favor.
Kayak followed Haryeong's guidance, her long hair swaying as she stepped through the choreography. Even the more difficult linking sequences she absorbed without any real trouble.
"Wow, that was so good just now!"
"Hehe, was it okay?"
"Those long limbs of yours make the lines so pretty. And you pick everything up so fast. Am I going to run out of material today?"
Haryeong wasn't exaggerating. Kayak soaked up every movement she was taught like a sponge.
Visually, auditorily — there was nothing to criticize about the stream. In a male-dominated broadcasting culture where two beautiful women simply chatting could pull thousands of viewers, a stream this packed with things to watch had no reason not to explode.
And explode it did.
"Alright, let's move on to the next—"
"Haryeong, hang on a second."
Even in the middle of dancing her heart out, Kayak never stopped.
Whether she had eyes in the back of her head or simply absurdly sharp vision, she scrolled the chat window back up through messages that had come in while she was dancing — and through ones that had appeared during her conversations with Haryeong — and banned a selection of them on the spot.
By this point, even the viewers couldn't pretend not to understand what was happening. Every time Kayak's mouse clicked, messages vanished in bulk.
It became a common sight — perfectly normal messages sitting above and below rows of deleted ones.
Haryeong herself, the streamer of the room, said nothing about it. She simply watched what Kayak was doing in silence.
Naturally, the toxic community users who'd been having the time of their lives were furious.
Posts started popping up from people who'd been banned by Kayak, complete with screenshots.
Viewers who'd realized Kayak wasn't on their side after all — that she was actively hostile toward them — turned their anger into arrows and aimed them straight at her.
Coordinates for Haryeong's stream went up almost immediately. Toxic viewers with freshly made accounts launched their assault.
Spam flooded the chat window. The sheer volume was enough to paralyze the stream itself.
And yet Kayak, right in the middle of content, learning dances and dancing them, blocked every single wave of the raid with uncanny precision.
Her dynamic vision and click speed were so absurd that spam messages were getting their heads cut off the instant they appeared.
It was like watching a legendary raid boss's equipment materialize in real time. Chat vanishing live, the ruthless efficiency of a professional streamer.
The toxic users who'd boldly launched their raid had been crushed into a handful of dust.
"Did you all enjoy today's stream?"
Haryeong's Studio. Kayak was nowhere to be found anymore.
The collab was over. Kayak had left. As if to prove it, the floating viewers had drained away, leaving only about six thousand people still watching Haryeong's stream.
After seeing Kayak off, Haryeong was running a kind of post-stream wrap-up.
The chat was remarkably clean. Probably because Kayak had been swinging her ban-blade so freely earlier.
Haryeong watched the chat carefully — pure reactions to today's stream, free of the usual insults and snide remarks aimed at her.
She had a lot on her mind. About today's broadcast. About Kayak stepping forward to ban the toxic viewers. She couldn't help but think about all of it.
Kayak knew everything…
Kayak had approached her claiming to be a fan. That meant she must have been watching Haryeong's recent streams as well.
As both a fan of Haryeong and a streamer in her own right, there was no way she could have missed the problems plaguing Haryeong's broadcasts.
Maybe she'd spotted those problems and approached Haryeong first because of them.
No — that was the more likely explanation. Even Haryeong herself had felt something a little forced about the way Kayak had contacted her.
The pieces clicked into place in Haryeong's mind, and only then did she understand the full picture.
Kayak had proposed the collab first, volunteered to play the villain, and taken the heat — all to fix the problems in Haryeong's stream.
As a senior streamer, Haryeong hadn't even managed to show her fan something cool. She'd shown her something embarrassing instead.
She'd ended up receiving a favor. The thought left a bitter taste in her mouth.
"An autopsy."
A viewer had requested an autopsy.
Asking for an autopsy meant they wanted her to review their chat history — which meant they felt they'd been wronged somehow.
It was the equivalent of complaining that you'd been banned unfairly without saying anything particularly bad. A common occurrence in Haryeong's room.
But her reaction this time was different from usual. She'd roughly figured out how things had gone down.
Probably someone who got banned today.
Someone Kayak had banned during her ban-blade rampage. There was a slim chance of friendly fire — an innocent person banned by mistake — but that possibility was vanishingly small.
Kayak had unerringly picked out only the chats that demeaned Haryeong and banned those. Haryeong hadn't shown it, but watching the process from the side, she'd been genuinely impressed.
Anyway, the person who'd just donated asking to be unbanned was almost certainly one of those banned viewers. The nickname stuck in Haryeong's memory. She recalled him as someone who used to watch her streams and poke at her with little jabs.
I can't keep being soft like before.
"BoredTeddyBear, I checked the autopsy. I won't be unbanning you."
She couldn't keep being pushed around by her viewers. She couldn't keep being afraid of them either.
If she did, she wouldn't be able to face Kayak. The meaning behind the courageous stand Kayak had taken for her would be completely hollowed out.
"You openly compared me to Kayak just to trash me, and now you want the ban lifted? There's a limit to how shameless you can be. Banter? You call that banter? Randomly insulting a streamer isn't banter. Stuff like that just makes people feel awful."
Haryeong spoke with cold eyes, as if delivering a verdict.
"Bring me a million won in bail. Until then, the ban stays."
Of course, he would never bring a million won. If he'd cared about Haryeong enough to spend that kind of money, he never would have gotten banned in the first place.
And if he somehow did bring the money… well, he could just donate it to Kayak's stream instead.
Old habits die hard. A viewer who'd been banned once for that kind of chat would inevitably type something nasty again.
Plenty more autopsy requests came in after that. Haryeong's answer was the same every time.