What on Earth Is This?

Lee Yuwol's mornings started brutally early.

Summer meant the sun came up sooner than in any other season. She groped across the mattress until her fingers found her phone, then checked the time.

"Five-thirty."

Jina, who shared the room, was still dead to the world. Whether she had tossed in her sleep or simply kicked it off from the heat, the blanket wasn't covering her.

"You'll catch a cold like that."

A fan turned lazily through the room. Two people shared the space, but their beds sat against opposite walls, so a single fan could never keep them both cool. She would have switched on the air conditioner, except it had been dead for days—broken, apparently.

Yuwol angled the fan toward Jina and drew the blanket back over her.

"Alright. Time to wash up."

She showered before every outing, and today was no different from any other. No—today was a little harder than usual.

The convenience store gig she had barely scraped together near the dorm started at six in the morning and ran until one. Then, from two until seven, she had picked up a new shift at a PC bang. Ten hours of labor a day, after which she dragged her worn-out body back to the dorm and still had to get ready to stream. Her average broadcast ran about four hours, starting at eight and wrapping around midnight.

Fourteen hours of work, end to end, and the money she took home barely cleared three hundred thousand won. Kuro, she had heard, pulled in more than five million a month from streaming alone. Yuwol, by contrast, counted two hundred thousand in a day as a good haul. She had been making something on NewTube and a few other platforms, but even that had dried up. Putting a team together meant more days off the air, and the ad inquiries had thinned out for real.

"Must be nice. Jiwoo said she's still getting ad offers even now."

Looking at Jiwoo, she did feel a twinge of envy. If she had been born as pretty as Jiwoo, the ads would have come knocking whether she lifted a finger or not. She did not, however, feel jealous. She might have, back when she didn't know any better—but she watched, from right beside her, just how hard Jiwoo worked. There was nothing left to be jealous of.

On a frantic enough day, there wasn't even time for lunch. What boss liked watching an employee eat in the middle of a shift? Yuwol didn't much like the look of it herself, so when she was on the clock she put nothing in her mouth. Water, at most.

When the convenience store shift ended, she rang up something she could eat on the move—kimbap, a burger—and wolfed it down before heading out. Calorie-counting was mandatory. After that, it was straight to the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠PC bang.

These days a PC bang might as well have been a restaurant, the food was that good. Cooking skill actually mattered, and after all the meals she had been making for the members, her own had improved by leaps and bounds. Her face wasn't bad either, so the owner had hired her on the spot.

"Ugh... I'm starving."

The smell of every kind of ramen and hot food humming through the PC bang needled her nose, and her mouth started to water. All she had eaten today was a single burger, and she had counted every calorie of it; it hadn't even made a dent. Especially the jjagyetchi—that blast of jjajang ramen, the richness of egg and cheese. She had tried it once, and she still couldn't forget the taste.

Her stomach growled, howling at her to put some food in it already.

Get a grip. Eat anything more here and you'll put the weight right back on.

Dinner was already decided: she would eat with the members. Three more hours and the shift would be over. She just had to hold on with willpower.

"Excuse me, this keyboard isn't working."

Ding.

Ding.

"The headset over here's broken."

Fine. Better to work so hard she forgot she was hungry. She pushed up from her chair and went to deal with the noise coming from every direction.

"Ah... I'll move you to another seat."

Not that Yuwol had any deep ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠knowledge of computers. All she could really do was relocate people. After several failed attempts to revive the keyboard and headset, she slapped an out-of-order sticker on the monitor and called the owner.

"Good work today."

"Yes. I'll be heading out, then."

The shift was finally over. The thought that the day was already half done put a little lightness in her step as she headed back to the dorm.

She opened the front door and stepped inside.

"Whoa...."

A smell so intense it punched straight through her sinuses and into her skull hit her from the entryway. Her stomach growled. The hunger she had just barely managed to forget came roaring back to life.

"Oh? Unnie, you're back? I finished my schedule and I was starving... Hehe. Want a bite?"

Jiwoo held out the bite she had been about to take. Jjagyetchi. The exact thing Yuwol had been craving sat right in front of her face.

No. I can't. If I eat that, everything I've worked for—

"I can't. If I eat this, the calories... I think I've put some back on lately."

"You're gaining weight? You don't have to worry about that. Looking at how hard we've been working lately, you should be more worried about losing it."

"Losing... weight?"

Come to think of it, Jiwoo ate about three times what the rest of the members put together could manage. She had the appetite for a mukbang. There was no way she shouldn't have been gaining.

"Are you on some kind of diet?"

"Hmm..."

Jiwoo folded her arms and thought it over.

"No, I don't really diet or anything. Just moving through the schedule is enough, I think? Maybe I just have a body that doesn't put on weight?"

What?

"Besides, eating is supposed to be a joy. Calories this, diets that—if you can't even enjoy your food because of all that, is there anything sadder?"

"...."

Calories...? Sadder?

She knew. She knew Jiwoo had not said any of it with a shred of malice. But... but!

"...Huh? What's that supposed to—oh. Because I was going to eat it all myself... Here, unnie, you can have this. I'll just cook another one."

"Yes! That's the problem! Starting today, your dinner portions are cut in half!"

"...Wait, why?"

Yuwol swept straight past her and slammed the bedroom door.

"No... why? I genuinely don't get it. Why am I in trouble?"

Jiwoo stood in the living room tilting her head, trying to make sense of what had just happened. In the end she decided she couldn't, and ate the jjagyetchi that had already gone a little soggy.

"Hahh..."

Yuwol lay back on the bed for a moment. She would have to get up again soon to go live, but for a tired body, lying down was the best rest there was.

"I just ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠want to stay like this."

She was thinking how nice it would be to live a life of rolling around in bed when her phone buzzed.

Her parents.

"Yeah."

"What about the shop?"

Yuwol's parents had been running a café for years. It sat in an out-of-the-way neighborhood where business was never good, and the coffee tasted like something you could get anywhere. Aside from people hunting for a quiet atmosphere or students looking for a place to study, they barely moved a hundred thousand won on a given day. Lately electricity, ingredients—costs had spiked across the board, and they had finally reached the point where they couldn't hold on. They needed to sell, but a shop that didn't make money didn't sell, either.

"No. That's the shop you've poured everything into. I won't let you sell it cheap. I'll just... look for more work myself."

If she went hunting for another job now, the only hours left were before dawn. If she toughened it out on catnaps in between... she could last a few months. Once the shop sold inside that window, she could cut back on the part-time work.

"It's fine. I just have to try a little harder. I'm hanging up. It's time to stream."

She ended the call more roughly than she meant to and pushed herself up off the bed. If she kept lying there, she would want to lie there for the rest of her life.

Yuwol sat down at her chair and went live.

Viewers trickled in, slowly. She waited about ten minutes on the standby screen, but no one else came.

Jiwoo pulled numbers like that just by hitting go-live anywhere. For Yuwol, even this was something to be grateful for.

"Luha-luha~! Hey everyone, it's Luna. I heard a new game just dropped, so I thought we'd give it a try today!"

"Sorry? The viewer count is exploding?"

Yuwol checked the numbers in a hurry. A moment ago she had been hovering around two hundred.

She had broken a thousand. She had no idea how, and her brow furrowed for a second.

"This isn't bots, right?"

"Then who are you people supposed to be?"

"A wanderer? Ah—w-wait, more importantly! A hundred thousand Walnuts! Thank you so much! Reaction incoming! Luna's special move: double wink!"

Papapapat—!

The avatar on screen blinked first one eye, then the other, winking with both. And then it kept coming—another hundred thousand, ten thousand, and a rain of smaller Walnut donations on top of that. In less than an hour of being live, she had pulled in more than a million won.

"What on earth is going on?"

She still hadn't wrapped her head around any of it when her phone started buzzing again. She had it on vibrate for the stream.

"Give me one second, everyone. My parents are calling."

Having been given permission, Yuwol muted her mic and picked up.

"Yeah."

"Sold? What sold? Don't get so worked up—slow down and tell me."

What on earth was going on?