7. The Scandal Veteran’s Textbook Response (That Completely Backfires)
I couldn’t just sit there watching that mess unfold, so I dove straight into normalizing the chat.
That meant I’d shoved out all the spam and insults.
There weren’t any managers in the chat, of course. I’d just spotted and nuked them myself. With physical abilities like mine, I could suppress a raging chat window without a manager around.
[Art's Domain / 102 viewers]
After keeping up the deletions for a bit, the chat cleaned up nicely. The viewer count was still overwhelmingly higher than usual, which meant this wasn’t the full extent of the firepower—but the key was that they were holding back even while trying to burn me down.
Wait, what? You think cleaning the chat after stirring up drama makes it all good? Whoa, whoa. Hold up and hear me out.
I’m not denying that this was a self-inflicted disaster, not for a second. But the one thing I could say definitively was that it wasn’t the only factor in this mess.
Basically, I had as many enemies as the length of my controversy and incident wiki page. Why else would every community ban mentioning me?
...For me, some of that was self-inflicted karma, some unfair—but right now, how it got this way didn’t matter.
The core issue was how quickly a casual rant from Hako—that barely anyone even saw—spread like wildfire. And how heavily those ‘enemies’ influenced that spread.
I hadn’t completely overlooked it yesterday... but like I told Lee Jeong-ah when I asked her to scout, I’d put too much faith in the no-mention rule.
Being unable to become a hot topic in internet communities was a huge disadvantage for growing my stream’s scale, but in this case, it was the opposite.
Controversy is just a tempest in a teapot if it doesn’t spread. The media plays a key role for a reason, and the no-mention bans acted as a cushion to dampen the blast radius.
But the community folks itching to torch me found a workaround anyway. Who’d have thought they’d make a dedicated attack portal?
Looking at the controversy alone, it’d just backfire, so that’s why they needed blatant ban spam.
Leaving those fire-starters unchecked meant no response would matter—I knew that from experience. I couldn’t touch external sites, but I had to defend my turf to create an opening.
“Phew. Alright, everyone calm down now?”
I opened my mouth while handling the last batch of obvious doxers who’d bragged about finding me.
With more strangers piling in, I switched to polite speech—and the response was predictably fiery.
I kept nuking the renewed spam and direct insults while pondering my response.
Apologize...? Safe, but didn’t sit right.
Full-frontal push was too aggressive—giving them ammo now would blow it wide open.
Best would be transforming on stream or fetching a junior for proof. But either way, not very magical girl-like.
Guess straight explanation was the only option.
“I know why everyone’s here... but there’s a misunderstanding. I’ve never mocked or belittled my juniors. I can say that for sure.”
“Ah, crap. Slipped into old habits.”
I’d mindlessly called them ‘juniors’ without thinking. A blatant screw-up with zero room for excuses, and the chat scroll exploded, undoing all my cleanup.
Was it because I’d transformed recently? Or because the core issue was magical girls, not streamer Geukbing or Earthling Ha Seol-hee?
When I acted as magical girl Elice Calamity, that’s what came out.
I called it a ‘slip,’ but really, it felt like instinct rejecting a situation where I couldn’t call juniors ‘juniors’ because of the drama.
In other words, I’d deliberately been stubborn. And now the backlash was spiraling out of control.
[Art's Domain / 1,286 viewers]
It was spreading in real-time—even with bans on spam and curses, viewers were surging exponentially. More spectators checking out the drama than dedicated trolls now.
Lee Jeong-ah—the only one who knew the real truth—was whispering that the situation had hit unmanageable levels. Her judgment: unless I transformed and came out right now, it was unsolvable.
Hmm. Pushed this far, could I spin it as justification?
Well, the alternative was dragging in a junior, and as a senior, selling out a junior felt worse than outing myself. But revealing after hiding just one night felt ridiculous too.
I was mechanically banning while deep in thought when—
Ding-dong!
Ding-dong!
“Hm?”
The doorbell rang. A real-life troll? Nah. No lunatic would show up in person after just a day.
Plus, Perception Inhibition was active. After my old scandals doxxed me and even targeted people around me—leading to unlocking it—I kept it on 24/7.
Even if they had my address, they couldn’t find or think to come to me.
And my family seeing the drama and rushing from Daegu? Timing didn’t match. They’d call first anyway.
The chat was stunned too—the spam direction was even shifting.
Ding-dong!
Ding-dong!
No response, so it rang again. I’d made plenty of noise inside, but Perception Inhibition blocked that. This old provincial apartment had zero soundproofing, and I didn’t have a booth, so I always layered soundproofing magic during streams.
“Hold up a sec. Gonna check what it is.”
Whatever it was, I couldn’t ignore a guest forever. Honestly, it felt like a lucky breather.
With that in mind, I stood from my chair and switched the cam from my face to the VTuber setup. The computer angle caught the entryway.
No need to show my face on a burning stream, whoever it was.
“Who is it?”
I paused the soundproofing and opened the door.
You might ask why open wide for a possible troll—but no threat sense. If they tried ‘dome concert’ stuff, they’d die instead; I’d be fine. Annoying to chase a scared runner after yelling.
So—
“M-Myeongmyeong. Is this her?”
“Rude to ask like that with the person right there, mung.”
“Ah, uh. Sorry.”
“...Didn’t see this coming.”
More like fate slapped me. A girl—middle school? High school?—taller than me by a head, with a plush rabbit doll on her shoulder.
“I... heard from Myeongmyeong and came to say hi! N-Nice to meet you, senpai!”
Obvious mascot. And the ‘junior’s’ voice—wondering what she’d heard to be that tense.
“I’m Park Seong-yoon, active as magical girl Divine Blaze! Please guide me lots from now on!”
‘Guide me’ wasn’t just a greeting.
Suppressing the urge to pry, I set aside the runaway junior and handled priorities first.
Meaning I’d killed the mic broadcasting the cute junior’s voice. Should’ve done it when switching screens.
Haa. Wasn’t planning to breathe like this.
Said no selling out juniors just minutes ago.