The Manager
After the hurried apology, and before I opened the piano app, I scrolled through the list of songs I had sung and recorded myself.
And I settled on one.
A song about drifting back through the memories of a place you used to go with someone you had already left. It sat just a shade faster than a typical ballad, and it had been huge with younger listeners.
Of course I didn't know the sheet music. Three years of playing instruments, though, and you develop a feel for these things — which kind of line will sit right under a melody. And now that I already had the tune locked in my head, laying down an accompaniment was that much easier.
"Hah..."
I drew one long breath, shook out my fingers, and began to play.
The opening was a quiet piano line, gentle enough that the yanderes who hadn't been paying much attention suddenly leaned in.
The chat's reaction — and the way the messages had thinned out — was proof enough. And when I judged the moment right, I started to sing.
In that instant, the chat went completely still.
The piano would be buried under the vocal, but I could hear it. That was enough.
The first verse ended. The second climbed toward the chorus, the feeling rising with it. There were no brutal high notes, but holding an emotional line while keeping a raw edge was no easy thing — especially now that my body had shrunk and taken my voice with it, thinning it out.
My solution was to do the opposite of the original recording: lean into the transparency. Fortunately, my voice wasn't the piercing brightness of a child's. It was a kind of birdsong that made people feel good just listening to it.
That wasn't my assessment. It was Se-ah noona's. I could trust it.
When the song ended I sat in silence for a moment, letting the last of it hang in the air. The chat still hadn't moved. They were sitting in it, the same as I was.
I gave them time to enjoy it.
"So? Still think a 500,000-won reaction isn't enough?"
Watching the yanderes too stunned to even type, I felt a surge of confidence and asked it straight.
Only then, in answer to my question, did the chat start moving again. This chat window had no middle gear — it was either a dead trickle or a full explosion. This time, of course, it was the latter.
"See? I told you I can sing well enough for a reaction. Why didn't you believe me?"
I was sitting there satisfied, watching a chat that had flipped completely from before the song, when the notification chime I had already grown used to rang out.
The amount, though, I still had not gotten used to.
This time she hadn't even left a comment. She had just dropped a million won and gone silent. Something about that sent a chill I couldn't name down my back.
"Ah — Alpha noona! A million won, thank you. But why didn't you say anything? That's kind of scary..."
This is not the reaction I had in mind when I suggested it. If I'd known it would go like this I never would have done it!
"Whoa! Pia, RPS — thank you for the 100,000! And the mastermind of it all, Neighbor Armed Robber! Thank you for the 300,000!"
Don't know. Don't care.
"Yes, Neighbor Robber, I heard you loud and clear. For a 100,000-won reaction, I'll now demonstrate a ten-minute ban."
Ah, this was fun. So this was the pleasure of going back and forth with your viewers. It was a kind of thrill I had never felt before, and it felt good.
After that, donations poured in — thank-yous, reactions to the song, all of it. The VOD I still had running had already been clipped, and the song I'd just sung looped in the background like BGM without a break.
"Of course. I won't sing the whole song when I actually do the reaction, though."
An original. That one stung the conscience. Stung it hard. But I couldn't exactly come clean here, so I pushed through.
"It's an original. I mess around and write them whenever I'm bored. Turns out I've piled up quite a few."
"Then I'll lock the 500,000-won reaction in as a song?"
It was going according to plan, which should have made me happy. Somewhere underneath, though, something sat wrong.
Is this actually okay...?
In the heat that still hadn't settled, we finished deciding every reaction. I could finally say I had become a real streamer.
"Think I feel a little more like a streamer now?"
I was feeling it too. The viewer count had been climbing steadily and was about to break five thousand — and the chat had been getting dirtier right along with it.
I didn't exactly keep a tight rating, but was it even possible for the temperature to jump this fast?
"A manager? I do need to hire one, yeah."
"I can't just pick anyone, though. I want someone proven."
A manager held the room's moderation keys — the power to mute viewers, kick them, ban them, all of it. Hire the wrong person and the whole stream could blow up.
"This is giving me a headache. Who would even be good?"
I was still turning over how to even judge a candidate when someone stepped forward without being asked.
Plenty of people had volunteered. This one was different.
"SnapSnap, thank you for the 100,000! I'm sorry, though. Handing it to someone I've never met is a little..."
The same yanderes who had rejected every other manager applicant agreed with one heart and one mind.
"Huh? Is she famous?"
"If you're trustworthy, I'd like to ask you. Would that be all right?"
The chat lost its mind telling me not to let this one get away. I didn't know what a Kingmaker was supposed to mean, but if she had a title people used instead of her name, she had to be someone serious.
And looking at the yanderes affirming her instead of pushing back, I figured I could trust her too.
"Ah — okay!"
I hurried to click SnapSnap's name and handed over manager privileges.
"Go easy on them, please?"
What had she done in a past life to get a reaction like this? The thought lasted only a moment. I felt her extraordinariness almost immediately.
A glimpse of the woman they called the Kingmaker. The purge began, and a great many messages were cut down.
Fortunately she left the ones that stayed inside a reasonable line alone, and only carved out the ones anyone could see were too much — and the precision of it was astonishing. How could anyone be that accurate?
"Incredible..."
"I don't think I need to worry about this."
I didn't even have to say anything. SnapSnap banned only the messages that clearly crossed the line, and she did it with surgical precision. Five thousand viewers dumping chat at once, and she missed nothing. She made no mistakes.
"I'll still let a certain amount slide, so it'll be fine. I have no intention of kicking away my own advantages. SnapSnap, please keep that in mind too."
I already knew, but I asked anyway, just to be safe. A donation arrived in answer.
The contents were close enough to madness that the hair on my arms stood up.
"Ah — okay! SnapSnap noona! There just wasn't anything yandere-looking about you, that's why! I'm sorry?"
Aren't you enjoying this a little too much for something that isn't even about you? I was about to say as much when another donation landed.
I assumed it would be SnapSnap again. It was Alpha noona.
...What was she doing? Too many things were happening in too short a time, and my head had started to hurt.
They're joking, right? They're just messing with me, right?
"Th-that's not how you should take it. Noona, you know that, right?"
If this was a joke, I hoped they would end it here. I put that wish into the words. And then—
"Ah, noona, why are you like this now?"
A thought occurred to me, sudden and unwelcome.
Maybe I had hired the wrong manager.