Open-Moo

Kh… kkh…!

The chat that had just rolled in dragged my past life up with it, and I barely managed to swallow the laugh.

Another wave of boomer-and-fossil jokes came tumbling in, and the laugh I had just gotten under control started climbing back up my throat.

No… if I laugh here, the viewers are going to despise me…

"Pff—!"

I clenched my mouth as hard as I could. The air that slipped through anyway rode the microphone and reached every viewer's ears in no time at all.

Viewers who had wandered in late after watching clips that were already being snipped and passed around started asking what the stream was even for.

Well… maybe I should just sing all the way to the end? Hoyeon unnie signed off on five songs, and I've only done one, so that leaves four.

I needed to tease as much curiosity as I could in those four, and drag as much traffic as possible into tomorrow's Team Re:fresh stream.

"Today's stream is a simple talk stream. I'll be singing, of course, and if there's anything you're curious about, drop it in chat whenever you like."

"Mm… I do have a set list picked out, but if there's something you all want to hear, I'll sing it."

Most of the chat was anime openings and endings, with the occasional K-pop track or pop song trailing behind.

Anime songs, huh.

In my past life I used to put them on while I gamed, whenever I had time to kill. I hadn't listened to much of anything recently, though.

And even if I had…

"All right. Then I'll sing this one for you!"

A basketball anime OST from a theatrical film a few years back — the one that had made grown men leak.

Sense of Zero.

Needless to say, JO Entertainment had not prepared any anime songs. I liked this one enough that I had the lyrics and the melody walking around in my head anyway.

"Here I go, then."

When the song ended, the chat — the men in particular — completely lost it.

The viewers split clean down the middle: the women who didn't understand, and the ones wiping tears of raw emotion.

"All right. That's two songs down, so this time I'll take questions. Anything you're curious about."

"Oh! First donation of the day! Thank you so much, KuroIsMyHeart! But… what does open-moo mean?"

I knew exactly what it meant, of course.

Short for what color panties are you wearing today?

I thought I'd glimpsed a familiar handle sliding through the middle of chat.

I flicked a glance sideways. Outside the set, Yuwol unnie was hammering at her phone like it owed her money. Jina unnie looked like she was trying to pull her off it, but stopping Yuwol unnie once her eyes had gone over was never an ordinary kind of hard.

"Everyone, that's enough. It's only panties, anyway… I'll just say it clearly so this kind of question doesn't come up again. Kuro only ever wears black, you know~"

Apparently saying black had not been a small ripple. Outside the set, Jo Kyuhyun's face and Hoyeon unnie's face both went heavy.

Ah… I'm in trouble.

I knew this route. The second I called the end of the stream, I was getting at least an hour of standing with my hands in the air.

What's spilled is spilled. An hour or two — same difference!

"All right! Questions, everyone, hurry! My manager unnie is staring daggers at me from outside the set right now, you know? You are not getting a chance like this after today!"

Maybe they actually heard the desperation in my voice.

"The team name, you mean. I actually have a lot to say about that. We almost got into a fight over picking it. Still, we patched our friendship back together through the fight, and the name we settled on is…!!"

Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh!!

I drummed both hands against my thighs in a rolling roll.

"Team Re:fresh!"

"Yes! That's right. Re:fresh! As in to come back to life, or to feel crisp and new. We picked it hoping that watching our streams would leave all of you feeling refreshed."

"Ah! A hundred-thousand-won donation! Thank you so much."

The first jackpot tip I had ever popped on a stream of my own yanked me straight up out of my seat. I bowed my head.

A hundred thousand won had gone off a few times on Yuwol unnie's streams before, but those hadn't been mine. I had only been a guest.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

This one, once you shaved off the platform cut and the rest of the fees, was money coming to me.

Which still meant I would only see ten or twenty thousand won of it, but still.

Shame… if this had been my personal stream, I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could have kept a lot more.

"TipperBird! The song I sang is a new track going up today! Kuro's very own solo! It should already be live on the music sites, so please stream Not number Love a lot for me~"

"Wow… th-thank you."

There had been a viewer for a while now who treated me like some kind of divinity, but I had never dreamed he would go this far.

Fortunately, Hoyeon unnie seemed to have handled it at just the right moment.

Guys like that had a type, though.

Before long, he would be back on a new account.

"Please don't worry about it too much, everyone, and then… to change the mood! I'll start a song! Send me requests!"

I had hit the target of five songs, and my throat was finally starting to tap out. It was splitting a little, a thin metallic rasp creeping in at the edges.

I had been drinking water the whole time and it was still doing this. Was my stamina still that lacking?

I called up the Status Window.

Every stat except Appearance had climbed by at least one rank.

Of course it had. I had trained my body to pieces for today and tomorrow. If effort didn't show results, that just meant you had no talent.

This industry would never let you succeed if you didn't have the talent to succeed, no matter how hard you worked.

Streaming was no different.

"My throat's starting to hurt… and we've been going for over three hours."

A thirty-hour stream…

That was not the kind of terrifying sentence a person should say out loud. I had seen people roulette themselves into a hundred-hour broadcast now and then, and it had never looked like something a human being should be doing.

Even Yuwol unnie said she had never run a stream like that.

"I'm sorry. But if you're curious about what comes next — please look forward to tomorrow's stream! Thank you, all of you, for coming to Kuro's broadcast! Bye-bye~!"

I waved one last time.

Hah… I was wrecked.

Three whole hours of talking by myself and raising hell. My body was already cooked; I didn't want to take a single step.

"Good work. Here, drink this."

"Thank you."

Yuwol unnie came onto the set and held a drink out to me.

Ah, cold!

I almost dropped it on the floor.

"So…"

I started fishing, carefully, for her read on today's stream.

"Tsk…"

The pause stretched. So it was the open-moo thing after all, answering something like that in the middle of the stream?

What came out of Yuwol unnie's mouth, though, was not the answer I had braced for.

"It wasn't bad. It was actually good. Look at this."

For a first stream, the graph was remarkably high.

"Pulling numbers like this on a debut stream is not easy. You even made a million won in three hours."

"That isn't my money, though."

"Well… yeah, there's nothing we can do about that. Studio rental and the rest of it will eat the whole thing. Still!"

Yuwol unnie leaned in, her face close, like the excitement had gotten away from her.

"Thanks to this, people will come back for tomorrow's stream. You just have to work hard then. For us streamers, pulling in new traffic isn't the only job."

Then what?

"You have to make content that keeps the existing viewers happy too! So get up!"

"We've got to rework tomorrow's content!"

Ah… I was in trouble.

Someone had dumped dopamine straight into Yuwol unnie's brain.

This was… something no one was going to stop.