Hate Mail
I slowly read my way down the subject lines of the hate mail.
If their claims were to be believed, I was the one who had raided Lua, and I was the one running viral campaigns across the communities on throwaway accounts. Very deliberately, at that.
Give me a break...
A hollow laugh slipped out of me on its own.
Hmph. Too bad for you. I'm not diligent enough to bother with that kind of rigging.
I knew perfectly well that the streaming world wasn't some gathering of nothing but good people. I'd watched the VTubers I usually followed clutch their heads over malicious comments and bizarre emails more than once. Even so—I'd only been broadcasting for a week. I never thought mail like this would find its way to a Hakko whose average viewership was still only a few dozen.
"Haaah."
I was genuinely wronged. I really hadn't done a single thing.
At first I let it pass like it was nothing, but the more I kept reading, the more the irritation started to climb.
"Hmm."
And then, out of nowhere, a decent idea occurred to me. What if today's stream content was a hate-mail reading?
Something Grandma had said once came back to me.
If they hit you, pay them back double.
Good. I'd roast these mail weirdos and blow off some stress.
That was when Grandma's voice came through from beyond the door.
"Yuhyeon~ Come eat the crab. The man next door brought another one again this week."
"Yes."
A person had to do what a person had to do. I got up from the chair as I was and headed for the kitchen.
I sat across from Grandma and ate crab. This time she had already cleaned it for me, so there was no repeat of last time, when the crab stole my paring knife and the two of us ended up in a knife fight. I picked the meat in silence and ate.
On any other day I would have gone on and on at Grandma about the stream, or kept chattering about nothing in particular, but today my mouth strangely refused to open. After watching me like that for a while, Grandma asked all of a sudden.
"Yuhyeon. Something happen?"
My hands paused. Grandma was uncanny. I'd tried my best not to let it show, and she still caught it in a single glance.
"Don't tell me those Nongtti brats who come to gawk at your cartoon hide have been picking on you."
"No, Grandma."
"Then why are you like this."
"......"
For no good reason, I stared at the empty crab shell left on the plate. If I told her I'd gotten a few pieces of hate mail, Grandma's temper wouldn't let it lie—and more than anything, I didn't want to worry her over nothing. That much was something I could get past on my own.
"......Thanks for the meal."
I forced myself to act like nothing was wrong and stood up from my seat. I could feel Grandma's eyes on my back.
"......"
Honestly. I'd thought it was nothing. I was only pretending otherwise—but yeah. It had done a little damage after all.
That afternoon, six o'clock. I turned the stream on the way I always did.
"Hello, everyone. Good evening."
The moment the broadcast started, familiar nicknames began showing themselves in the chat one by one.
"Aigoo~ Thank you so much for the ten thousand won, DaycareLollipopThiefMingjwe!! Whoa, seriously? But I saw that nickname in the small hours of a weekday too, you know?"
I laughed for a moment as I watched the chat, then pulled up the inbox I'd had open since earlier and pinned it to one side of the screen.
"Today's content iiis~~ a hate-mail reading~"
"Yep. I checked my mail before turning the stream on today, and there were ten of them waiting."
"No, I'm going to read them anyway. I want to see juuust how badly I've sinned."
The viewers tried to stop me, saying there was no need to look, but I'd already made up my mind. I opened the first email.
"Please stop raiding with multiple accounts and running viral campaigns on Beo-Gall......"
Picturing myself meticulously manipulating public opinion, making account after account, was so absurd it left me speechless. Chat was just as dumbfounded and cursed right along with me, so I definitely felt a little better than when I'd been reading the mail alone. If I got it out like this, I figured I'd be all right.
I opened the next email.
"A Hakko should horse around with other Hakkos, like a Hakko. Please stop trying to mix in......"
"Right?"
I let out a short laugh and moved the mouse to the next mail. Then, the moment I checked the subject, my finger stopped.
The body wasn't much different from the subject. Blatant profanity, poured out with no beginning and no end—obvious to anyone who looked. The earlier mails were unreasonable nonsense, but at least they'd written down why the sender was angry. This one was just a parent dig.
But I really don't have parents. More precisely, my mother walked out, and my father died a long time ago. Maybe that was why a parent insult thrown with no real meaning behind it landed deeper than I expected.
I'll skip this one.
I could have said that and moved on to the next mail, and that would have been the end of it. Nobody in chat would have thought it strange. And yet I went and started reading those filthy sentences, one word at a time.
I could have just skipped it, the way the viewers said. So why was I insisting on reading it? Probably because I wanted to show that words like these didn't get to me. To the viewers, and to myself.
But with every sentence I read, my voice dropped a little. In the end, when I tried to read the next line, the tail of my words caught for a moment.
...Ah.
I'd blown it. This was content I'd chosen to do, and if I was the one who killed the mood first, that was a problem. I'd meant for all of us to laugh and curse and move on together. At this rate it wasn't WWE. It was UFC.
That was when it happened. Someone behind me set a large hand down on my head with a soft thump.
"What's all this?"
I flinched and turned my head. It was Grandma. She was standing behind me, looking down at the monitor—no idea when she'd come in.
"Ah, Grandma. Just a second."
I hurriedly moved the mouse to close the mail window, but it was already too late. Grandma's gaze was stuck dead center on the screen. The mail I'd been in the middle of reading was still up there, every word of it.
"............"
I kept my mouth shut, the mouse still in my hand. Grandma looked at the screen for a moment, then glanced down at my face once. And fixed her eyes on the screen again.
Grandma wasn't someone who knew internet broadcasts or VTubers in any detail. It was only that whenever I was out farming, I kept yammering beside her about how the game was going, how the stream was going, how many viewers I'd picked up—so by now she roughly knew what it was I did.
"Don't know much about it."
Grandma slowly opened her mouth.
"...These were written by bastards jealous of my grandbaby, weren't they?"
Her face was calm, but I could feel her holding the anger down in the words.
"Mighty low writing, this is."
Grandma clicked her tongue once.
"Absolute good-for-nothing bastard. Out here spouting plague-talk, you rotten bitch. How little do you have to do, grabbing a stranger and sitting there throwing a fit like this?"
In that rough, gravelly voice, Grandma started pouring curses down on the person who had written the mail.
"The only decent thing on you is your fingers. Use that devotion to ask your own grandma if she's still breathing, you rotten bastard. Don't go pitching a fit at somebody else's grandchild."
Grandma's venom kept going for about three minutes without a pause. For three minutes she sent the hate-mail writer's three generations—and their in-laws out to distant cousins—up to heaven, over and over again. I snuck a look at the chat. With every single thing Grandma said, the messages started flying up like they'd lost their minds again.
Grandma didn't stop there.
"A bastard just like [REDACTED]. Scum like this are no different from bastards like [REDACTED]."
"What?!"
A politician's name, suddenly flying out of nowhere. I nearly launched myself out of the chair. Even my voice, which had been sunk low until a moment ago, snapped back to normal all at once from the shock.
"No no no no."
I waved both hands in a panic.
"E-e-everyone. Um, I mean— so...!"
The more I tried to explain, the more my words tangled. Grandma, though, seemed to like the chat scrolling up without end. She looked down at the monitor and lifted one eyebrow just slightly.
"You lot like this sort of thing? Want me to keep going?"
"G-Grandma!"
I quickly killed the mic and caught her arm, lightly.
"All right, all right. I'll stop."
I barely managed to see Grandma out of the room and turned the mic back on, but chat was still a disaster. For the rest of the broadcast, messages telling me to bring Grandma back kept popping up whenever I thought they'd finally forgotten.
That night, ten o'clock.
"Haa......"
I'd ended the stream much earlier than usual and set the headset down. After talking nonstop and then shutting my mouth, the room felt newly quiet. I leaned back in the chair and let out a long breath.
"Haha......"
Thinking about it again, a laugh came out on its own. I'd genuinely been startled when the politician's name jumped out. And in the middle of all that, I remembered the look on Grandma's face when she'd asked if she should keep going.
...I was sprawled in the chair like that when the door opened. Grandma came in carrying a plate of cut fruit.
"Ended early today?"
"Yes. I had something to do."
Grandma set the plate down on one side of the desk and glanced over the monitor once.
"Broadcast all right? I went and ran my mouth like an old fool. Lord knows what those Nongtti watching your stream must be thinking."
"Haha. It's fine. Everyone liked it."
Only after she heard my answer did Grandma's expression ease a little.
I was grateful to her. Out of empty pride I'd insisted on acting like I was fine, and I'd nearly ruined the stream because of it. When she got angry in my place, it cleared my chest quite a bit. Thanks to that, I could smile again.
......It's a bit of a shame I have to delete the VOD, though.
It had a politician getting cursed out in it, after all. I'd better keep a personal copy of the replay, at least. I picked up the fork on the plate and speared a slice of apple. Grandma didn't leave right away. She stood beside the desk and looked down at me for a moment.
"...There really are all kinds of bastards in this world."
"Mm. You could say bad-faith hate is inevitable for a superstar."
"Hate... what now? There you go again, using those weird words only you people know."
"Haha."
Grandma shook her head like she couldn't make sense of it, then pushed the plate a little closer to me.
"Anyway, eat your fruit and get to sleep early tonight."
"Yes."
I nodded, taking a bite of apple. When Grandma left the room and the door shut, I finished chewing and turned toward the monitor. I understood the part about sleeping early, but there was something I had to take care of first. It was the reason I'd ended early today in the first place.
I pushed the plate to one side of the desk, pulled the chair in close, and sat. When I opened the inbox again, the mails I'd read earlier were still sitting there.
"A person's gotta do what a person's gotta do."
Time to get ready to collect from Mingjwe's sponsors of darkness. I made a new folder and gave it a name.
Then I opened the mails one by one, lined them up so the sender address, the time, and the contents all showed together, and started saving them as PDFs.