Recruiting an Editor
"Hmm... the viewer count isn't dropping."
Honestly, I'd figured a decent chunk of them would bail, even if not all of them. People only stick around to see a face for so long — who sits there staring at one for over an hour?
And yet an hour had passed since I'd turned the cam on, and the numbers were only climbing.
Already at fifty thousand...
For better or worse, the influx plateaued there. Right now I was just chatting about whatever topic drifted by. Sometimes it followed the stream of consciousness; sometimes a viewer steered it with a donation.
The yanderes mostly threw out topics to tease me, while the newcomers who'd poured in today asked genuinely curious questions. That pure curiosity was something I almost never felt while streaming, and it was surprisingly refreshing.
"Hey now! Play nice, okay?"
Why had these people suddenly turned into old fogeys?
With several times the usual influx pouring in, even the yanderes seemed hyped.
Still, the stream vibe is pretty chill.
Of course, as the viewer count rose, the so-called toxic types mixed in too.
Every time, Manager Noona's possessed-level banning kept the water from getting muddy. I still caught the messages before they got banned now and then. Somehow those were always the ones that jumped out at me.
And I was sure of one thing now: Galleria From was an extremely tame community compared to the rest. According to Manager Noona, other places were tearing into me purely for being a male streamer. That was exactly why I didn't look at other communities.
"A fan club? We've already got the Yan Sisters."
We already had one, so what was there to make? Maybe this person had just come in and missed the explanation?
"Ah. That's what you meant?"
It was true that the streamer gallery on GalFrom tended to fill that role. People even called me the gallery owner, for crying out loud.
Having one would be nice, yeah.
Normally Twitch's dedicated community, Togedder, handled that. But I still hadn't met the "stream for one month" requirement, so I couldn't open one yet. A fan club, on the other hand, just meant making a café on the portal site Piavel — I could do that right now.
"Alright! But who's going to run it?"
Just as the chat was narrowing it down to whoever had donated about fan club permission, Manager Noona dropped a link into the chat.
"Manager Noona runs the fan club too? Is that normal?"
It felt like her workload was getting way too big. Even now she was quietly handling tons of prep and research behind the scenes. Piling café management on top of that — wouldn't that be too much?
"She's always been like that? Hmm... alright, fine. But you have to tell me if it gets too hard, okay? No overdoing it."
Laughing at the yanderes' jokes, I headed into the fan club.
"Huh?"
One look at the main page and I froze. For something put together in the short time since I'd given the go-ahead, the quality was way too high. No — this wasn't just "high quality." This looked like a professional had sat down and built it for real.
"Manager Noona, did you outsource this?"
I still didn't fully grasp how incredible Manager Noona was. This kind of thing didn't even come up when you searched the internet. Then again, showing up in a regular person's internet search at all was already impressive.
Noona even had a Wiki Chronicle entry — and a pretty detailed one.
I should read it from the beginning sometime.
Last time I'd only checked which streamers she'd managed.
"Since we made a fan club, should I post something?"
I shrank my cam feed down to the bottom-left corner and blew up the browser window. The chat immediately lost its mind.
Getting hit with an actual hell-spam raid — the kind I'd only ever seen in NewTube edited clips — was a first. And if I had to guess, I was probably the first male streamer to ever get one.
"Okay, okay! I'm putting it back! I'm sorry!"
I hurriedly restored the screen. Unlike when only my upper body was showing, cracking a joke right now felt like it would get me killed.
But if shrinking the screen got this kind of reaction, what was I supposed to do about games or other content going forward? At this rate all I could run was Just Chatting — and a Just Chatting with zero materials I could put on screen.
If they wanted to look at my face, they could look at a photo. Did they really need to do it on stream too?
"Let's talk about this gradually."
They couldn't be completely serious... right? Clinging to that hope, I joined the fan café and wrote up a post.
"Yanderes! I put up a post on the fan café, so everyone go check it out!"
The yanderes who'd gone and looked typed the contents into chat, so even the ones who hadn't joined yet knew what it said. It would've been easiest if I'd just shown it myself.
"The problem is my face getting smaller on screen, right?"
After a brief debate, we reached a conclusion. Shrink the empty space on either side of my face and split the screen in half. Right half: just my face. Left half: the browser window.
A dramatic compromise had gotten me that much permission — and I still couldn't play games?
"Hey! That's way too harsh!"
Did they really have to dig into someone's weak spot like that? I was already self-conscious about it.
Was I a pet or something? Sit me on their lap and squish me. The way they thought about this was... exactly the same as Se-a Noona.
So what am I supposed to do here?
Was I supposed to hate that kind of talk? Se-a Noona's hands felt nice, though. She was probably watching the stream right now, and if I acted like I hated it and she stopped doing it...
But just letting them tease me like this also felt a little...
"I don't know, I don't know! Just look at the post!"
I shook my head left and right and cranked up the browser zoom. The tiny text enlarged until it was perfectly readable even on a half-screen.
The editor application requirements were simple: edit one of my gaming streams and today's stream, then send them to the listed email. Applicants also had to note how long each video took to make. Deadline: three days — what Manager Noona called the absolute maximum cutoff.
Salary started at a base of 1.8 million won, plus additional incentives based on NewTube revenue. The incentive structure would be adjusted by agreement with whoever got the job.
"Not a slave. An editor!"
How dare they!
"Why are you all so obsessed with unpaid labor?"
I could not understand it.
"Don't get ahead of yourselves."
Reining in the yanderes — who seemed more excited than I was — I kept chatting with them about editors and how to run a NewTube channel.
"Who the hell is this guy?"
A room decked out in luxury brands. A man lay sprawled across a bed that looked like it cost well over several million won, frowning at the phone in his hand. He made no effort whatsoever to hide his irritation.
"So this is the bastard. The one who's been making a scene lately."
He spat the words with cutting contempt and scrolled with his finger.
—Who... ties a bell... with string... on the floor... hic... damn it...
"Listen to this loser sniveling."
A short clip of about fifteen seconds played on the phone — one of those donation clips. He went through the rest of the week's hot clips ranking one by one. And the more of them there were, the deeper the crease between his brows grew.
"Look at this bastard. So he's going full pure-innocent concept on purpose, is that it?"
He snorted in disbelief. After watching a few more videos, he got up from the bed. Climbing down from a king-size mattress that looked absurdly oversized for his mid-to-late 160s frame, he sat at his desk. He woke the computer from sleep mode and dialed someone.
"Yeah, it's me. Dig up everything on one person."
The way he spoke was pure command, like he was addressing a subordinate.
"P-person? That's illegal, though..."
"Fuck, I told you not to talk back. You little rat, you wanna die for real?"
"Eek! I'm sorryyy! I'm sorryyy!"
The woman on the other end apologized over and over, her voice trembling enough to make anyone feel sorry for her.
"W-what's the deadline..."
"Deadline? What deadline? As fast as humanly possible. You not getting this?"
His answer was venomous. Another rush of apologies came through the receiver. Ignoring the endless stream of them, he opened a browser and went to Twitch.
"That's enough apologizing. Here's the guy you're looking into."
"W-who is it...?"
He typed an ID and password into the Twitch login window and hit enter.
"Yoon Dan-woo. The bastard streaming as Ian."
The corner of his mouth curled up into a sharp smile. On the logged-in Twitch page, the member info displayed a name: Fresh Hwani.