I Didn't Turn This On for the Money

When Lee-hyun opened his eyes in the morning, he felt around beside his pillow until he found his phone and opened his banking app.

Sitting up against the headboard, he went through the transaction history one more time. The money ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that had flown out for the car and the house was still sitting there, itemized as if it had never left. Scrolling down brought him all the way to yesterday's convenience store purchase.

"It's real."

He'd said it at least ten times overnight.

He set the phone down and sat there for a moment. He'd bought a car and a house, and another 10 billion won had simply appeared. He'd wanted things badly enough once, but now that he tried to think of what to buy next, his mind just tangled up on itself.

A watch? He only knew a handful of brands. A painting? He knew even less about those. He could buy something expensive and hang it on the wall, but if anyone asked about it, the price would be the only thing he had to say.

Maybe he should put some into stocks. He didn't need to make more money, but there was nothing stopping him from piling up what was left over. Even if he could spend 10 billion won a day, that didn't mean there was a 10-billion-won purchase waiting for him tomorrow.

Lee-hyun typed ways to put the leftover money to work into his notes app. Before tapping into any random stock, he intended to figure out who he should even be asking.

Above that sat yesterday's to-do list. Call about the car delivery, confirm the move-in date, clear out the studio apartment.

The last line was the company.

Right on cue, his work alarm went off. Any other morning he would have snoozed it once and drifted back to sleep, but today, the moment he silenced it, a laugh slipped out of him.

"I should at least go in."

There was something he needed to say there.

"You're quitting?"

The team leader stopped mid-sip and looked up at Lee-hyun.

"Yes."

"Jumping ship? Did you land somewhere good?"

"Nothing like that. Something personal came up that I want to try."

"Just like that?"

Lee-hyun nodded. He hadn't known himself until yesterday morning.

"How much longer are you planning to stay on?"

"I'll finish the handover before I go. If possible, I'd like to wrap things up quickly."

The team leader set his coffee down and started with the work currently in progress. Going through his client accounts one by one stretched the conversation out, and in the end they agreed to decide his last day after checking the handover status and his remaining leave.

Back at his desk, Lee-hyun organized his files. He wrote out the contact person and progress for each client, flagged the advertising fees that hadn't been deposited yet, and took the opportunity to rename the folders that even he found confusing.

Stuck beneath his monitor was the ad copy he'd printed out last month.

That one sentence had gone through three rounds of revisions in meetings. Lee-hyun peeled it off with a snort. His own day had changed after he'd blown more than 5 billion won — if he'd submitted a line like that, the team leader would have asked him what nonsense it was supposed to be.

Over the next few days, he took calls in the gaps between clearing out his work. He scheduled the car delivery, fixed the date for moving into the house, and coordinated the furniture delivery times.

He bought clothes and got a haircut. When he said he was planning to try streaming and left the computer and camera setup to the installers, they told him to first decide what he'd be showing, and from where.

And yet, once he was actually inside the new place, the furniture came before the cameras.

The luggage he'd brought from the studio apartment sat gathered in one corner of the living room, with plenty of space still left over. Lee-hyun counted the boxes again. Nothing had been left behind. This really was everything he owned.

He set up a desk and computer in one room, and for the bed and sofa he picked from whatever was in stock and ready to ship. Anything he liked that came with a months-long wait got pushed to the back of the list. He needed a sofa he could sit on today.

"Mind if I try this one too?"

"Of course. Take your time."

For the chair, the one sitting next to the first model the clerk recommended fit his back better. It was cheaper, too. The floor lamp was another story — he went with the expensive one. He couldn't tell what the extra functions actually did, but he liked the way it looked.

At checkout, even when the total didn't register all at once, he didn't walk back to double-check the price tags like he used to.

His account reset to 10 billion won every day. From the third day on, he gave up staying up until midnight just to watch it happen.

"Press the red button here and—"

The installation technician pointed at the screen. Lee-hyun took notes at his side while trying the buttons himself — a test recording, toggling the mic on and off, switching between the bedroom and living room cameras.

He also got the lecture about always checking for personal information before sharing his computer screen.

When he played back the test recording, Lee-hyun winced.

"Is my voice normally like this?"

"Everyone says that, the first time they hear it."

On the video, Lee-hyun wasn't even looking straight at the camera, just repeating "Uh, uh" over and over. Knowing people might actually watch that, he already felt awkward.

After the technician left, Lee-hyun sat in the empty chair for a while. Then he connected to Parut and created a channel. Nothing clever came to mind for a nickname, so he used his real name.

He was about to go live under the title First Stream when it occurred to him to wonder whether anyone would actually come in.

His eyes landed on the boxes stacked beside the desk. Plenty of newly bought things. Plenty of photos taken.

Lee-hyun changed the title and hit the start button.

Behind the system window, his viewer count was visible.

0 viewers.

"There aren't any viewers, though."

Still counted as complete, apparently. Good enough. Lee-hyun swiped the system window aside and looked into the camera.

"Hello."

No answer. With no one there to receive the greeting, that was only natural — but he had no idea what came next.

He took a sip of water and straightened up in his seat. The viewer count was still zero. For no particular reason, he double-checked that the mic was on.

About fifteen minutes in, the first chat message appeared.

Lee-hyun set his cup down.

"Hello. A Ferrari."

"Really? Congratulations."

Lee-hyun laughed and leaned in toward the camera.

"I bought mine in real life. Want to see a photo?"

He opened the photo folder he'd copied onto his computer and picked out a side view with no license plate visible. The showroom lights stretched in long streaks across the red bodywork.

"I took it when I bought it. It's in the parking garage now."

Two more people had wandered in.

"870 million won."

Hearing it out loud, even he felt a little strange. Only days ago, a price like that had him closing the browser window before anything else.

Lee-hyun thought about fetching the contract, then let it go. There was too much he'd have to black out, and he hadn't turned this on to show off just to end it reading out paperwork.

"Oh, right — I can talk casually, right? Chat casually too, whatever you like."

"So you are."

He clicked through the photos. After the side view came the front, then the driver's seat. And past that driver's seat came another driver's seat, shot from a little closer.

"First time buying one. That one I took sitting in it."

Laughing, Lee-hyun closed the folder.

"Want to see the house too? This one I can show you live, no photos needed."

He pressed the button to switch the feed to the living room, grabbed his tablet, and got up.

By the time he reached the living room, a few more lines of chat had piled up.

Standing beside the sofa, Lee-hyun checked the tablet. The floor-to-ceiling glass and the duplex staircase filled the screen. The boxes stacked in the corner were on full display, exactly as they were.

"Yep. Moved in not long ago, so I'm still unpacking."

"Everything I've bought so far. Figured I'd unbox some of it today."

He set one of the boxes on the table. Headphones from the audio store. He'd tried on this and that before settling on these, and back home he hadn't even managed to open the packaging.

He was slicing through the tape when a donation alert chimed.

"What — you donated?"

"Why?"

"It is, yeah. I only started streaming today."

Lee-hyun set down the box cutter and looked at the alert again. He'd seen plenty of them pop up on other people's streams, but he never imagined anyone would send him a thousand won.

"You really didn't have to. I didn't start this to take people's money."

"To spend it."

He held the headphones up close to the camera. After a chat asking what the model was came one asking the price.

"4.8 million won."

Lee-hyun put them on, then pulled one side back to check.

"Ears are still the originals."

"Good."

"They don't squeeze. I think they'd be fine even wearing them for hours."

Lee-hyun took the headphones off and looked down at them. They had clearly sounded good at the store, but trying to explain what exactly had been good about them left him at a loss.

"When I tried them at the store— they're songs I listen to all the time, but I could hear parts in them I'd never heard before."

"That's possible too."

Laughter rolled through the chat. Lee-hyun laughed along and hung the headphones on their stand.

"For what it's worth, I also bought them because they're pretty and comfortable. If I say that out loud, someone's going to throw a fit again, aren't they."

"Can't argue with that."

Lee-hyun dragged over the next box.

Lee-hyun's viewer count reached 23. A good number of them had wandered in after seeing the unusual thumbnail.

When he flipped over a new box, the guy who'd sent the thousand won earlier typed that he should open it from the bottom. He turned it over, and sure enough, that side really was easier.

"How did you know that?"

"In a game again?"

Laughing, Lee-hyun pushed the wrapping paper aside. Quite a few empty boxes had piled up on the table by now. He glanced at the clock — dinnertime had come and gone.

"Have you guys eaten?"

"I haven't eaten either. Should I just buy everyone dinner?"

"Everyone watching."

Only after saying it did he realize he had no idea how to actually send it. Lee-hyun picked up the tablet.

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"How do people usually do this? Collecting addresses feels a bit much."

"Delivery vouchers work too, right? That way everyone can order whatever they feel like."

Leaving the broadcast on the living room camera, Lee-hyun brought over his laptop. He wrote down the names of everyone who'd chatted so far, and with the duplicates removed, it came to fourteen people.

"Fourteen people. Everyone who's chatted so far gets one."

"You don't have to donate from now on, by the way."

On the laptop, safely off the broadcast, Lee-hyun browsed the vouchers. He'd been about to send one 100,000-won certificate each when he tapped the quantity field again.

If I'm giving anyway, I might as well give generously. That's a good while of not worrying about meal money.

Ten per person, 140 in all. The payment came to 14 million won.

The moment the payment cleared, a long list of issued vouchers filled the screen. Lee-hyun scrolled down, then scrolled right back up. Getting all of these out to fourteen people was going to take a while.

"I can order my own dinner first and send these out after, right?"

He ordered his dinner and opened the first message window. Ten vouchers went in, he hit send, and marked the name down in his notepad.

He was hunting for the next nickname when a chat message came in.

Lee-hyun's hands stopped.

"Why?"

"That's the idea?"

"Everyone's getting the same. I'm sending them in order, so hang on."

"Yeah. Order whatever you want to eat."

"Have one whenever you're hungry."

The second message went out, and the confirmations came flooding in almost instantly.

"Yep. You're on the list."

Lee-hyun checked each nickname as he sent them out one by one. The chat sped up, and for anything he missed, he scrolled back up to read it again.

"You're the one working overtime, right? Eat first, then get back to it."

"Tell her you got it from a stream."

Lee-hyun laughed, then clicked into the wrong person's message window by mistake. He double-checked the nickname and backed out.

"You sent a thousand won."

"Show her the stream. I'll explain it myself."

Sending and reading the chat as he went, he soon had only a few people left. He checked who still hadn't received theirs and finished off the final send. All fourteen names in his notepad were checked off.

His phone rang. A notification that his dinner had arrived.

"All sent. Speak up if anyone got missed. I'm going to grab my food."

Halfway out of his seat, Lee-hyun stopped to read it.

He'd spent 14 million won. But it was money that would be refilled by tomorrow. More than anything, he was curious whether that guy had managed to explain things to his wife without incident.

"It's fun, isn't it?"

"Me too."

"I'll bring mine and show you."

Setting the laptop down, Lee-hyun glanced at his stream title. He'd written that he had nowhere to show off his house and car, and here he was now, asking strangers about their dinner menus.

He clicked the title and deleted the sentence. After a moment's thought about what to write instead, he typed something new.

"Let's eat, then unbox the rest."

Lee-hyun hit the update button and went to get his dinner.