Why Ha Yeeun's Mentality Crumbled Over VTubers (2)
What the hell is he on about all of a sudden?
On the screen, Naharing was moving.
A virtual YouTuber, of course. Not a real cam—just one of those 3D models, a flat little panel bobbing around.
Neat pink bob cut. Whatever real person was inside was impossible to tell, but looking at the design alone… honestly, it still felt a little off.
Weirdly hard to pin down.
Thinking about it, the original game Full Moon’s Grey City was a gacha collection title too. The kind of hardcore otaku game you’d be embarrassed to pull out on the subway. But VTubers were still a minor corner even within the subculture.
Still, I’d once been Ha Yeeun’s stream manager, and I was helping with Jiyu’s broadcasts now. I was doing my best to look at VTubers without the usual bias. As long as streaming content existed in the original story, knowing something about it couldn’t hurt.
Naharing. She was good at streaming, I’ll give her that.
Pure broadcast talent put her on a completely different level from civilians like Ha Yeeun or Jiyu. I hadn’t gone so far as to dig up her solo streams, but during the collab game between the Mungseokkyu Crew and War World, her audio had genuinely surprised me.
She never let the audio die for even a second.
No matter how long a silence stretched, it never went past three seconds. And the Mungseokkyu Crew was infamous for having filthy mouths.
“Yeah, this low-poly otaku bitch’s aim is absolute shit too~”
If someone had taken that seriously and gotten offended, the whole collab atmosphere would’ve been wrecked beyond repair. But Naharing took the popular member’s line and flipped it straight into a bit.
“Oh my, Naharing’s aim is… no, wait—my mommy is shit~? What do I do? I’m just a low-poly scrap, so my lore is that I was born without a mom~!!”
She didn’t get mad at all. She just grinned and fired right back. That self-parent-roast sent the Mungseokkyu fandom into absolute chaos.
The chat exploded calling her a total crazy bitch.
If it had been Ha Yeeun, she would’ve gone stone-faced on the spot and started politicking about how vulgar language was uncalled for. But because Naharing brazenly ate the insult and spat it back, the collab members kept trading high-tension bits nonstop. That day’s joint stream blew up.
Just who the hell is she?
I was a little curious. Naharing hadn’t just appeared in solo streams—she’d debuted with the VTuber crew Underdolls. Those girls had become Ha Yeeun’s direct competitors. Maybe that was why Ha Yeeun had grown so restless and started hunting for me even harder.
Ha Yeeun. I thought I didn’t really need her, but she might actually be useful for my work.
Just like I’d turned Song Sia into a marionette, corrupting the girl who was supposed to become the next Saintess according to the original story and dragging her down the path of evil was a very proper thing for a villain to do. And it wasn’t only that. Any broadcast that could pull serious aggro had started to interest me.
During the last villain raid, Bone China had used that Chaos-attribute potion—Chaotic. In this era, the line between hero and villain was sometimes drawn simply by whether someone used Chaos or not.
If Unknown reappears, he could throw all of Seoul into chaos.
In the original, villains had used internet articles and personal streams with surgical precision. That meant I could use streams too, if I wanted to grow the power of Chaos. Rising streamers like Naharing and Underdolls were worth keeping an eye on.
They might even be entertainment-agency streamers.
These days, agency-managed streamers had a high chance of being linked to the underworld. Underdolls didn’t exactly look like a clean crew, so they might end up crossing paths with me—someone aiming to rule that underworld.
I snapped out of the brief spiral of thought and returned to reality. Jeong Siu spoke up again.
“Y-you wouldn’t be interested in this kind of thing, right?”
“VTubers? I respect people’s tastes, but 2D doesn’t really grab me that much…”
The moment I said it, Jeong Siu frantically shoved his phone away.
“R-right? I hate otakus too. Our tastes are pretty similar! Anyone watching this crap deserves a slap across the face… I only asked just in case. I can’t stand those kinds of guys.”
“Siu! I watch VTubers too—are you going to slap my face as well?”
“Th-that’s not it, senior! Girls are exceptions…”
Club President Yun Hyeona shot Jeong Siu a sharp look.
Well, it’s not like I actually hate them.
I didn’t bother showing it in front of Jeong Siu, but I was somewhat interested. More in that Underdolls crew than in VTubers themselves. They’d collabed with the Mungseokkyu Crew, sure, but fundamentally VTubers were a different breed from regular girl streamers. It felt like someone had taken girl cams, game streamers, idols, and pure otakus and mixed them into one neat package. Honestly, that whole corner of the internet still wasn’t something I knew deeply.
Still, watching that stuff out in the open on the subway would be pretty awkward.
Anyway, neither the VTubers nor Ha Yeeun were things I needed to worry about right this second. I turned to today’s real business and asked Club President Yun Hyeona a question.
“Senior, would it be alright if I asked a few things about the Saintess’s visit this time?”
“Hm? If you’re curious, ask me anything.”
Even the underworld had plenty of Goddess Sect believers. The big bosses especially loved pretending to be devout followers while laundering their images. For this Saintess visit, underworld people would volunteer for security themselves and station their own members in the plaza where the visit was scheduled.
“But the villains’ movements have been weird lately. I only heard it from an informant I know online, but it looks like Crimson Teeth is planning to pull something big this time.”
As expected of President Yun Hyeona. She started feeding me exactly the information I’d wanted—not just about Crimson Teeth, but the current power balance in the underworld and which organizations would actively move for the Saintess visit.
Choi Hana’s organization will step into this too.
I needed to use that organization well. In this Crimson Teeth mess, I had to make sure that no one except Choi Hana’s group got what they wanted. A large number of Theia cadets were also scheduled for volunteer work at the event. Naturally, the underworld side-quest clear rate would change depending on which roles they were assigned.
And right on cue, the disciplinary committee offer came in.
President Jo Arin was a tsundere. Against someone who reverse-tsun’d her, she completely lost her edge. So when she brought up the disciplinary committee proposal to me again, I could slip in a request to include Choi Hana as well.
The underworld side quest absolutely has to be cleared together with Choi Hana.
Choi Hana had Student Council Vice President Scarlet as her backer, but Jo Arin was strict in that regard. She wasn’t the type to move on a simple favor.
At this point, the picture’s starting to come together.
I obtained a report-level stack of information from Senior Yun Hyeona. And that was when Song Sia finally walked into the club room, late.
“Oh, Sia’s here too? Perfect timing. We already scheduled the club freshman welcome party for before the Saintess visit. All the freshmen gathered here are coming, right?”
At Yun Hyeona’s words, Song Sia’s red eyes locked onto me. For a moment, the marionette of Song Sia floated up in my mind. The black threads connected to that marionette had grown even denser.
“……”
Song Sia stayed silent and looked away from my gaze.
A few days passed in a blink. Friday—the day of the freshman welcome party—arrived.
Before heading to the club room, I stopped by the free major student lounge. I’d promised to talk with Choi Hana about the party there for a bit.
Huh? Is she asleep?
On the lounge table sat the laptop Choi Hana had left open. Without thinking, I glanced at the screen.
Choi Hana let out a long sigh by herself.
“Haa…”
She was exhausted. Balancing academy coursework while keeping one foot in organization management was never easy. But she’d been doing both since her high school academy days, so it wasn’t really a matter of physical fatigue. The problem was mental.
Streaming is… too much pressure.
In the empty free major student lounge, she had set her laptop on the table and leaned back against the sofa, replaying last night’s events at the organization.
“Boss! Our viewer count skyrocketed!”
Thursday’s regular meeting of Blood Jaguar—the awakener organization Choi Hana secretly ran. It was her father’s organization. She had wanted to keep the original name, but the traitors who had destroyed her father’s group still sat at the top of the underworld. So she had been forced to create a new organization under a completely ordinary, unremarkable name. Getting wiped out before she could even grow her forces was not an option.
As ordinary as the name was, the scale was just as small—a mid-tier organization at best. That was why they had stretched their hands into every business a small hunter guild could touch. Running an organization cost a lot of money, after all. And right then, a good opportunity had appeared for them.
“Boss. If we want to even put a spoon into the Saintess visit… we’re going to need a lot more tribute money.”
The Saintess visit was next week. To create connections with higher organizations for that job, they had spent the last few months scrambling for ways to raise revenue. They couldn’t reach out to Scarlet’s company. For now, that link still had to stay completely hidden.
So Choi Hana had chosen Blood Jaguar’s two main businesses: small-scale dungeon clearing and the entertainment side. Of the two, she decided to pour short-term focus into the latter to scrape together emergency cash.
“Boss, you’re a genius! Who knew a VTuber crew would hit this hard! Our crew set a new donation record yesterday!”
She had converted every entertainment-agency girl streamer they already managed into VTubers. One of Scarlet’s acquaintances was a famous VTuber already deep in the scene, and that connection had made the switch possible. But they were short on manpower. Every organization member who had been doing girl cams was an awakener, and all of them were already dual-wielding dungeon clears and streaming. In the end, Choi Hana had no choice but to step in herself.
She had once received something close to idol trainee education alongside Vice President Scarlet, who had dreamed of becoming an idol.
“Incredible, Boss. I never imagined you had talent in the broadcasting field.”
A massive man with a long scar across his cheek—someone who looked like an underworld figure no matter who saw him—bowed his head respectfully. Choi Hana sighed inwardly.
Ah… this is bad. If I keep doing this, even my own identity is going to start getting weird!
More than anything, if Lee Junwoo ever found out—if he discovered that she was the VTuber Naharing—she would never be able to stand in front of him again.
Right. I desperately changed my voice… VTubers are perfect for that.
Even so, when she saw the total donation numbers for Underdolls confirmed at the meeting, her resolve shifted. For the sake of the organization, she couldn’t quit the VTuber work right now.
Absolutely… Lee Junwoo can never find out.
Leaning against the sofa while replaying last night’s meeting, she dozed off without realizing it. Streaming late into the night made it inevitable.
“Huh…?”
When she opened her eyes again, Choi Hana’s heart dropped.
Lee Junwoo was in the lounge. He was staring at the laptop screen she had left open on the table.
No! Right now… I’m still logged into the Naharing account!
In that exact moment, Lee Junwoo’s eyes met Choi Hana’s.