I've Arrived
I've arrived.
I was never born with a particularly lively personality.
A quiet, well-behaved child — that was how my late mother used to put it.
Even as a little kid I barely cried and barely laughed. While other children her age were busy running around shrieking with delight, I would just sit still or bury myself in a book. My mother had been quite taken aback by how different I was from the rest.
A person's innate nature doesn't change without some extraordinary catalyst, so even as I grew older I remained a rather dry, unremarkable human being. I got by maintaining the barest minimum of relationships — family and a handful of friends. Only in front of them would my voice occasionally rise, and only then would I laugh with any real frequency.
That was before everything fell apart, of course.
Looking back, that was probably when it started — the part where I locked myself in my room and did nothing but game.
I quit school. Quit my part-time job. I chose total isolation from the outside world, holing up in the corner of my room like a death-row inmate waiting out the days on insurance payouts for living expenses.
Even I could vaguely sense that I was rotting from the inside.
Then I found Abyss. And inside it, I found Camilla.
Ironically enough, I fell head over heels for a game I had never so much as touched before in my life.
Why dive so deep into an amusement I had always dismissed as a pure waste of time? Because for as long as I was playing, I didn't have to think about anything at all. Pure immersion — and before I knew it the sun would have set and exhaustion would be pulling my eyelids shut.
By the time I came to my senses, I was a ranked player. Two-plus years of that lifestyle made it almost inevitable.
The one thing I still couldn't quite explain was this: after deliberately severing every connection to the outside world and burrowing into my room, I turned on a stream — buoyed by the encouragement of other people.
It was nothing more than an in-game play feed with no mic and no camera, but for the me of that time, even that was a massive leap forward.
In the end, it meant I was the kind of person who got lonely even while pretending otherwise. A contradictory human who volunteered for solitude and then, once alone, tried to reach out to the world by any indirect means available.
A person's essence doesn't change. Which is why even now, with a completely different body, I had to conclude that my personality itself hadn't shifted all that much.
So why was I suddenly dredging up the past? Why had I tumbled into this unexpected meditation on my own character?
Probably because of the plans locked in for this evening.
I looked down at my phone. Messages I hadn't checked until a moment ago. Among them, Ririyang's text stood out.
And then, fretting that she might have put pressure on me, a long string of explanations unspooled beneath it. Reading them, a quiet laugh slipped out of me.
That was Ririyang's nature, too. A good person who loved people even while terrified of getting a bad reaction from them.
Honestly, there was no reason not to go. Hadn't I sworn, after the body change, that I wouldn't live the way I used to? I had already been forcing myself to get out more often. None of the teammates were people I particularly disliked, and it was obvious they all quietly hoped I'd show up. Attending felt like the right call.
And yet the reason I hesitated was, surprisingly, less about the inside and more about the outside.
"…"
I looked past the faintly smudged mirror. Even on days when I thought I'd adapted, I would occasionally catch sight of her and feel that jolt of awkwardness — the silver-haired woman sitting there in my place.
Whether I was steeling myself to meet the editors or heading out to tonight's dinner, I fretted like a teenager over what other people would think of my appearance.
Well — honestly, who could blame me? You couldn't just carry on like nothing had changed with a face like this.
My heart was the same, but everything else — the way I moved, the clothes I wore, all of it — had shifted.
Meeting the editors at least had the excuse of being a professional engagement. This one was purely personal.
People I was meeting for the first time to build real friendships, in Camilla's body, wearing Camilla's face.
It was every bit as nerve-wracking as turning on that first stream. Then again, I'd already said I was coming. Too late to back out now.
A somewhat impulsive decision that, looking back, I was glad I'd made.
I needed to get used to this body, this face. Tonight's gathering could count as part of that adaptation. And also—
…I kind of wanted to try steak. Embarrassing as it was to admit, I had never eaten steak even once in my life.
Money had always been tight. When you were barely scraping by day to day locked in your room, craving food like that felt like pure extravagance.
Hangang claimed he knew a hidden gem and insisted he was treating.
Lately I'd had some unexpected expenses from encouraging Haim in her room. Streaming would cover food and living costs soon enough, but a full course meal at a proper restaurant — that kind of luxury — still felt out of reach for a while. So the offer had hooked me a little.
Thinking about it that way made it sound like I'd been lured in by free food, which bruised my pride a bit. Still.
Camilla ate more than the average woman anyway. If I was going to feed this body, better to feed it something good for it and delicious, right?
Even if the old me didn't matter, Camilla — the current me — did. Yeah. I wanted to dress our Camilla in pretty clothes and feed her nothing but the best.
For all those tangled reasons, I headed out, wearing one of the outfits I'd bought not long ago.
"Whoa! Course meal! Whoa! Whoa whoa! Hanwoo! Beef! Lobster!"
"…How many times are you going to say the exact same thing."
A bright, energetic-looking guy and a woman wearing a wry smile beside him.
Watching them, Ririyang thought they looked pretty much exactly as she'd imagined.
On the timid side even by streamer standards, she took a steadying breath and approached.
"Hello…! Limetaq-nim, Hakchu-nim, right? I'm Ririyang."
"Whoa! Ririyang-nim! Hello!"
"…So cute! Our little cutie Riyang got here early, huh?"
"Hehe…"
Hakchu's eyes went wide as she squealed. She grabbed Ririyang's hands and ruffled her hair for a moment before Limetaq, still scanning the area at full volume, asked,
"We ran into each other just out front — are we the last ones? Is everyone else already here?"
"No no, you two are actually pretty early. Hangang-nim just grabbed the room and went to the bathroom. Everyone else is still on their way."
Streamer Time, they called it.
For some reason, whenever streamers made plans together, half of them showed up late — hence the name. Ririyang had figured almost no one would arrive on the dot.
And yet more than half the group was already here on time. Having taken quite a while to get there herself, Ririyang nodded inwardly, glad she'd left early.
"Shall we head inside…? The rest should be here soon."
"Okaaay."
It was a quiet, upscale-feeling restaurant. Just looking at the exterior, you could tell it was expensive.
Following Ririyang's lead into the private room, both of them let out soft sounds of admiration. Fair enough — Ririyang herself had stood there with her mouth hanging open the first time she'd followed Hangang into this place and stepped into the room.
Hangang commanded a subscriber count that rivaled Taker, the so-called king of Twish and Vtube. Booking an entire restaurant of this caliber solo already gave a rough sense of just how deep his pockets ran.
"Hangang-hyung is the best."
"I genuinely want to know what the bill's gonna look like."
The two of them sat down still marveling, and Hakchu was in the middle of snapping photos — presumably for her SNS — when someone asked,
"So that's Hangang-hyung and the three of us. Cheonhun-nim and Kayak-nim left, right?"
"Cheonhun-nim left a message five minutes ago. Sounded like he was almost here?"
"Any word from Kayak-nim?"
"Ah — she messaged me earlier."
Ririyang thought back to the private message that had arrived a little while ago — about an hour earlier, actually.
A somewhat random message. Even so, Ririyang had been delighted that Kayak had texted her personally instead of dropping something in the group chat.
So even to that disjointed line she'd replied with full enthusiasm — Yes, um, right! The weather is nice! Perfect autumn weather!
Nothing after that. Judging by the fact that she hadn't even read Ririyang's "Let me know when you're nearby" from thirty minutes ago, she probably wasn't looking at her phone.
"Well. She said she's coming, so. She'll show up if we wait."
"Honestly, we're just early. I hear other streamer hangouts, people roll in thirty minutes, a full hour late every time."
They all nodded along. Hangang returned from the bathroom, and they were in the middle of choosing course menus under his guidance when—
"So basically Course A is heavy on the meat and Course B is heavy on the seafood, right?"
"It gets more specific than that if you dig into it, but… yeah."
"Splitting courses is probably a no-go? Then majority vote—"
Knock knock knock.
"Ah, that must be Cheonhun-nim."
"Why's he even knocking. Come on in!"
"You got here faster than I expected…"
Ririyang stepped toward the door alone, ready to greet him first — and froze solid.
Standing in the open doorway was not the familiar face of the man she knew, Cheonhun, but a woman she had never seen before in her life.
A woman with a presence that felt like it could pull you under. Glossy silver hair. Glittering blue eyes.
The hair draped over her pale skin looked like freshly fallen snow, and the eyes blinking at Ririyang from straight on carried a faint trace of fatigue.
Ririyang lost her words.
A woman? Teacher? No — some foreigner who walked into the wrong room?
"Uh, um. Sorry… this room is our—"
Those eyes just kept staring at her. Only then did Ririyang grasp the situation and start explaining in her limited English.
But her efforts proved pointless the moment the woman's lips parted and the words that came out were Korean — perfectly familiar Korean.
"Hello."
"It's—. Uh…?"
At the same time, that somewhat expressionless face — those eyes that had looked so cold — curved into a soft arc.
"I've arrived, Ririyang-nim."
She gave her phone a casual little shake, and once again Ririyang found herself unable to speak.