The Interview
The interviews ran in reverse order: third place, then second, then first.
IanIsGod had taken third with twelve percent of the vote, and the more we talked, the clearer it became that she was interested in me — not the job. She was the type who'd never last if she kept that up after getting hired. Worse, working off a crush like that, she was bound to cause an incident sooner or later.
I cut her on the spot. A shame, but there it was.
Still — men were scarce, and Grade 1 men scarcer still. Was it so wrong for her to like me?
That's something you'd only say if you hadn't seen just how hard IanIsGod was coming on. It was bad enough that the yanderes — the same ones who normally ratcheted up the tension bit by bit until they were right on the edge of crossing the line — were telling me to filter her out.
The vibe had completely tanked.
I hadn't done anything wrong, so nobody in chat called out a stream-killer, but the atmosphere went so ice-cold I almost wished they had. If Alpha noona hadn't dropped a five-hundred-thousand-won donation and requested a song reaction to haul the mood back up, I would have been in real trouble.
Who else spent donations that perfectly — right when they were needed — and saved a broadcast with a single reaction? I really couldn't sleep with my feet pointed in Alpha noona's direction. Same went for Manager noona, and Se-a noona...
At this rate I might have to start sleeping standing up.
There were just too many people I was grateful to.
For the record, we'd already come to an extra agreement about reactions: if someone who'd already donated asked for one, I'd do it. Anything under a hundred thousand won was a few words and done, but above that it could run anywhere from a minute to ten. So we'd made a sort of pact — anyone who wanted a reaction would flag it separately, so we wouldn't accidentally kill the stream's flow mid-broadcast.
"The second-place candidate wasn't exactly normal either..."
This one showed far too much affection. Not so much a crush as the sense that she wanted to take care of me like family. The problem was she had the air of someone who'd rip out her own liver if I asked — and I got the distinct feeling that if this kept up, something terrible was going to happen to her. I had never heard a voice that radiated that kind of cult-devotee energy.
I was playing along with those kinds of sex jokes several times a stream, so the yanderes were getting infected too, and the frequency was only climbing. From here on I had to walk a tightrope. Go too far and I wouldn't be an Innocent Bitch anymore — I'd just be a regular bitch.
"Is this SM? No. It is not."
If it kept going like this, I'd land pretty close to the image I was aiming for. I smiled, satisfied, and decided it was time to start the last interview.
"GOFuD's been waiting, so let's jump right in. Aaand — can you hear me?"
I moved her from the waiting room into the call on Discord, where she'd already been sitting, and spoke.
"Yeah. I can hear you."
The voice that came back was low for a woman, and it sounded like even answering the question was a chore.
"You are GOFuD, right? What should I call you?"
"Just call me Hae-ryeong. That's my name typed out on a keyboard."
I glanced at a keyboard. She was right. I wasn't sure what the capitals and lowercase were supposed to mean, but maybe they didn't mean anything at all.
"Looking at the videos you sent, the longest one says it took six hours. Is that true?"
"Yeah. The first highlight reel I cut took six hours."
That video was high quality, no question — but even compared to the shortest one, the three-hour cut, the difference wasn't that dramatic. There had to be a reason. You'd normally assume more time meant a better product.
"I wanted to give you a different image from how you actually look when you play on stream."
A different image?
"On stream you leaned on the yanderes and stayed passive. I wanted the video to make it look like you were the one taking action."
"Ah... yeah, I can see that now. It was so natural I didn't even notice."
I was genuinely surprised. I hadn't imagined she'd thought that far ahead when she made it. Chat looked just as stunned.
"There's gotta have been at least once!"
Surely I hadn't been that passive.
"Could you walk me through it?"
"Of course. Once you know, it's nothing special. I just sneakily cut the parts where you repeated what a teammate said, or muttered the role you'd been given, and stitched those together."
She was right — once you knew, it was nothing special. Coming up with the idea in the first place, though, was the hard part. And the so-called proactive moments were, in reality, just him parroting someone else or talking to himself. Turning that into something that looked heavy and charismatic was real skill. Real technique.
"That's impressive. Hae-ryeong, how long have you been editing?"
"Just call me noona. No need to be formal. I started in middle school. It's been over ten years now, if you're counting."
Maybe it was because I had a thing for older women, or maybe it was because everyone applying actually had a career — but aside from Frost White, every last one of them was older than me.
And that just stacks another charm bonus on top.
The first two had been filtered out before I even asked their names, so I didn't know if they were older. Frankly, I didn't much care whether someone who acted like that on a voice call — not even in chat, on a call — was older than me or not.
"Hae-ryeong noona, is there a reason you wanted to be my editor?"
"Just... because you're a good person? Gender aside, I thought you were kind. So I wanted to try working together."
Kind? Me? She had the wrong guy.
I was underhanded. I was a coward. I only showed people kindness once they'd shown it to me first — that was the size of me. I was nobody's idea of good.
"That... is a little hard to accept."
"No. I'm sure."
"How can you say that so flatly? You've never even seen what I'm like off-stream."
The certainty in her voice needled me, and I pushed back before I could stop myself. Being called kind was a compliment, sure — but only when it was true. For someone who wasn't, it was just a knife twisting in the chest.
"Because I have an Innate Ability. One that sees through a person's true nature."
An Innate Ability? Was that better than an Awakened Ability? Chat was saying it was rarer, but I couldn't get a feel for it. I didn't even know how rare Awakened Abilities were to begin with. Being told something was rarer than that didn't help.
"This isn't relevant to the interview, so let's move on."
"You're the one who brought it up."
"...Please just drop it."
Really — could she not be right only at times like this. And they said she wasn't a yandere.
The rest of the interview went smoothly.
That voice of hers — the one that had dripped with couldn't-be-bothered — changed as we talked. Or rather, the voice didn't change. The way I heard it did. She wasn't bored. She simply wasn't interested in most things. The proof was that the moment the subject turned to video editing, or to me — the two things she'd admitted she actually liked — a little life crept into her tone.
It was such a faint spark of energy I hadn't caught it at first, but apparently her tension had been high from the moment we started the Discord call.
It definitely dropped whenever we hit a topic she didn't care about.
Again: the difference was tiny. I never would have noticed if she hadn't told me herself.
"So I'm locked in as the editor, then?"
"Yes. If anything, I'm the one who should be asking you."
The yanderes didn't seem to have any complaints either. Laid out like that, though, the lineup really did look flashy.
"But that means there's only one editor. Is that going to be okay?"
The thought hit me all at once. Could one person actually handle all of it? I streamed every day, which meant she'd probably have to make a video every day. On top of that she'd have to watch lives that ran five or six hours on average and pull out only the good parts. Just watching that much was exhausting. Analyzing it on top? There was no way she'd last.
"It's fine. I can do three a day."
Even if three a day was possible, I had no intention of working her that hard. I wasn't hurting for money. I just wanted enough output that the gap between the live streams and the NewTube videos didn't get weird. If the lives were from February and a January VOD went up, that would look strange, wouldn't it?
"No need to push yourself that hard, okay? Looking forward to working with you!"
And just like that, with Hae-ryeong noona as the one and only hire, the editor recruitment came to an end.
I ended the stream earlier than usual and hopped back on Discord. We needed to sort out the schedule going forward. Manager noona joined the conversation over chat, and by now the discussion was wrapping up.
"So we start today, then?"
"Yes! Just send the video over to Manager noona."
We'd decided to upload a video that very night. The yanderes were probably expecting tomorrow evening at the earliest.
"Now this is a real surprise."
"You really like surprises, don't you, Dan-woo?"
Hae-ryeong noona asked it like she was turning the thought over.
"Of course! They're fun. It's not a bad surprise — it's a good one."
"Is that so...?"
She didn't sound like she particularly understood. Fair enough. People were different.
As things wound down, Manager noona offered one last piece of advice.
"She's right! I'd rather you focus on quality than try to pad the video count."
"I know. I have no intention of making a streamer named Ian look cheap."
Cheap. That was a good way to put it.
I was Yoon Dan-woo. Ian was the streamer. In a sense, he was closer to a brand. And with a brand, image was everything. Once an image stuck, it was almost impossible to take back. Back on old Earth, people said it took endless time and effort to repair a ruined reputation. Starting out looking cheap was not an option.
Should I tell them what image I'm actually going for?
Admitting I was aiming for Innocent Bitch was embarrassing. It made me sound like a total pervert. I'd landed on it because when I acted on old-Earth instincts, the heat level shot way past what the men of this world considered normal. But being too shy to say it out loud was a problem, because NewTube was obviously going to have the biggest hand in shaping the image. If Hae-ryeong noona decided on her own to lean into something soft and sweet, walking it back would be hell.
Alright. Just say it.
I made up my mind and opened my mouth.
"Hae-ryeong noona. Manager noona. I have something to say."
"What is it?"
I let the pause hang for a second, then put the words in my mouth.
"Innocent Bitch... pfft."
In a small room of about three hundred square feet, washed in blue and purple light, a woman sat before her monitor and snorted at the memory of what had just happened.
"Cute."
The desktop wallpaper was a man's face. A male streamer whose popularity had exploded overnight — her employer. Ian.
Her languid eyes narrowed as she smiled, and she reached out, slowly, to stroke the screen.
"So he likes surprises...?"
After a moment of caressing the glass, she leaned back against her chair and closed her eyes. The smile was still there, but from her slightly parted lips came a breath that was growing hotter.
"Haa... I wonder how surprised he'd be if he knew who I am."
She crossed her arms and hugged herself, holding back a tremor.
"Will those eyes go wide? Or will he just freeze on the spot?"
Was she picturing it? She leaned forward, head bowing, and her hair — already sticking out in every direction — spilled down around her face.
"I won't tell him. Not until we meet. And if he doesn't remember..."
She didn't finish. Her whole body shuddered. A breath far hotter than before spilled out of her, and she opened her eyes.
In the darkened room, a pair of red irises seemed to glow.
Cha Hae-ryeong. The day Dan-woo would meet the woman who had saved him from nearly being raped was no longer far away.