Face Reveal
"Are you sure about this?"
"I already told you I'm sure."
I'd made up my mind to turn the camera on, but I couldn't just flip the switch on a whim. I had to tell Se-a noona first — my assigned Escort Officer.
Manager noona had filled me in on the rules. Anytime a man was about to release information specific enough to identify him, he needed clearance from the Male Protection Bureau. It was a safety measure, and the process took two or three days on average.
"They said it wouldn't happen this fast."
I'd called Se-a noona, filed the request on the spot, and gotten approved in an hour. I'd been about to sit down to dinner when it came through.
Her voice spilled from my phone speaker. She'd called to let me know the permit had gone through.
"I get the Rank 1 part. But what's streaming got to do with it?"
There were only four Rank 1 men in the entire country, so of course they'd try to accommodate one. That much made sense. What did a broadcast have to do with anything?
"Any mass media a man appears in gets full monitoring. Especially a Rank 1. 'Monitoring' makes it sound worse than it is, but if I explain it properly..."
Ah. I knew where this was going.
A Rank 1 man's voice carried farther than anyone else's. Among men — whose very existence already held power — Rank 1s stood in a class of their own.
No wonder people call it a special caste.
That wasn't just a joke people tossed around.
And a Rank 1 man running a stream? Of course the government was watching. At first they'd been worried I might stir up social unrest. Now they were watching because a good-natured man was a rarity worth tracking.
According to Se-a noona, the Male Protection Bureau had been reading every community post about me and had already predicted I'd turn the camera on soon. They'd prepared in advance, which was why the permit landed so fast.
It was only a guess, but it fit a little too well. The part about the government keeping an eye on me, at least, seemed to be true.
"There won't be any problems, right? They're not going to jump in midway or anything?"
"I wouldn't go that far. They won't control you directly, but if the government rolls out a new policy, they might try to use you for it."
Like a walking advertisement? The way idols used to get used back in the old world.
If that's all it is... depends on the content, but it's not like I couldn't do it.
Stick whatever label you wanted in front of my name. At the end of the day, I was a streamer. If the government had any sense, they'd use a celebrity.
"Settings are perfect! Should we start a little early today?"
Presents hit harder when they come as a surprise. Go live thirty minutes early, startle the yanderes — then flip the camera on and startle them even harder. That was the plan.
Huh. She had a point. The biggest reason I hadn't been running a NewTube channel was that the footage looked like garbage. I had no on-screen character, nothing but a black screen and me talking into the void. You couldn't upload that and call it a video.
Starting games three days ago had patched the visual problem somewhat, but if I was turning the camera on today, it made sense to treat this stream as the new baseline.
No reason to put it off any longer. We settled it there: face reveal today, editor applications opening the same night.
We talked through what I was doing tonight and where the channel was headed, and by the time I looked up it was nearly six-thirty. I hurried the program open, typed in a title, and the second the clock hit the half hour, I went live.
That last one had officially become this stream's signature bit — subtracting my broadcast hours from the twenty-four and calling whatever was left "the day." Watching them enjoy it that much, looking forward to it that much, I couldn't help feeling grateful.
I want to run events for them someday.
Too early to be thinking about that. But I would, eventually. I wanted to give back some of the love they'd poured into me.
"Well? This counts as the big one, right?"
"Excuse me?"
The real surprise was still waiting, so their reaction didn't actually matter — but still. After all that screaming excitement, this felt like handing someone a gift and snatching it back.
"Alpha noona! Thanks for the 300k. I only went live early today."
Alpha noona, who fired off a donation the second I went live, every single time. I wanted to meet her in person someday. What did this woman even do for a living, that she showed up without fail and dropped donations in the hundred-thousand-won range? And why had she made my stream her main watch in the first place?
"No? I slept great last night. Dead to the world."
Unfortunately, I really had slept like a rock. Being tucked into Se-a noona's arms will do that to a person.
We killed the rest of the time on equally pointless banter, and then it was seven. Time to get the camera ready.
"Hey, so — the yanderes don't still doubt that I'm a guy, right?"
Revealing my identification number early had been the right call. I'd only been in this world a little over a week when I did it, so I hadn't understood the weight that number carried. I hadn't needed to use it since, so I'd forgotten.
"Right. Then I guess I don't really need to..."
A few of them had already sniffed out what I was planning and started losing their minds in advance.
The second that donation said the word "camera," everyone caught on. Chat detonated.
Ten thousand!?
I glanced at the viewer count. People had caught the scent and come running, and for the first time since I'd started streaming, we'd smashed through ten thousand. Even when Hae-myo noona had shown up, the influx hadn't been this violent.
"I talked it over with manager noona. Felt like it was time to turn the camera on."
The second the camera became a confirmed fact, chat turned into a festival. Viewers poured in even faster. We were already closing in on twenty thousand.
"I only decided today, so Se-a noona filed the report this afternoon. Apparently you need a permit from the Male Protection Bureau?"
"Yeah. I heard two or three days too. But they approved it on the spot. Look — I've got the permit right here!"
I threw the screenshot of the approval email Se-a noona had forwarded me up on screen.
Chat, which had just crashed through the floor, launched right back into the stratosphere.
"And with that — camera's going on!"
I reached into the broadcast software and switched the output from the monitor capture to the webcam. The angle and lighting I'd set up in advance framed me perfectly.
"Pfft... pffhk..."
I was in trouble. Holding the laugh in was getting impossible.
The feed currently showed everything from the neck down and nothing else. A muted navy turtleneck sweater, shoulders shaking with the effort of not cracking up. Everyone could see it. The sound had probably leaked through the mic, too.
"See! Compared to no camera this is way better, right? Want me to just turn it off entirely?"
A few chats rose to my defense. I hopped on their coattails and doubled down, all confidence. This was my stream. If I wanted to mess with them, so what?
Then the situation started sliding somewhere I hadn't planned for.
"Wh-what? What are you gonna do about it?"
I couldn't back down here. The yanderes could talk all they wanted — they didn't actually have a move. Pure bluster. They were banking on me folding. I told myself that, and I almost believed it.
As if to laugh in the face of that little pep talk, the second I sat there with a go-ahead-I-dare-you attitude, they came at me like they actually intended to tear me open.
"Huh?"
Why was that coming out here?
I froze for a second, then killed the donation alert and pretended I hadn't seen it. That was only the opening volley.
Before I knew it, more than fifteen of them had come in. I killed them one by one, fighting a losing war of attrition. The yandere offensive did not let up, and in the end I was the one who broke.
"I'm sorry! I was wrong, I'm sorry!"
I took a sip of water and caught my breath.
"Haa... Fine. You just want to see my face, right?"
I reached for the camera and tilted it up, slow. The frame climbed, and my face came with it.
The yanderes had gone feral. You'd never have guessed they'd been bullying me thirty seconds ago.
I let myself enjoy it, and then the last of my face came into frame.
Hair I'd cut today, clean and neat. Green eyes catching the lights and shining brighter than usual. Fair skin with actual color in it. Looking at myself without quite registering that it was my own face, I could be objective about it.
My verdict: a genuinely cute-looking boy. Even being generous, he was a boy who looked like he was trying to pass for a grown man.
"Well? Match what you imagined?"
I asked it with a grin full of mischief. There was no way they'd imagined this. I hadn't seen a single male celebrity in this world who looked like me. Forget looking like me — I'd been stunned to learn that some of the popular actors were men I couldn't even tell were supposed to be celebrities.
I was sure this would be the biggest reaction I'd ever gotten.
Except...
"Huh? What's going on?"
Why had chat stopped?