Eighteen Million in Twenty Minutes
“Damn… you really are something else. One hell of a woman.”
“Shut up.”
Once she'd come back to her senses, she gathered up her clothes and started putting them on, then began retrieving the tiny cameras she'd stashed all over the room.
Behind a potted plant. Between the bookshelves. Even next to the TV set-top box.
Whether you called it professional dedication or pure hustle, the fact that she'd filmed our entire round two had me genuinely impressed.
No wonder…
Even in the middle of it, she'd keep shifting the angle just so and staring off into empty air while panting her lungs out. I'd thought it was a little weird at the time. Never once crossed my mind that all of it was eye contact with the lens.
I'm still an amateur… a total amateur…
That footage was going to turn into money for us either way. Figuring we'd just knocked out a proper concept shoot, I looked over at her.
“Let's eat. Buy me food.”
“…Ha. Fine. What do you want?”
“Mmm… whatever.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Heheheh.”
We settled for some delivered burgers and put something in our stomachs. Once the hunger faded, the joking stopped and business hour arrived.
We sat across from each other at the living-room table, faces serious.
“Time for the contract.”
“Right.”
I craned my neck to watch the phone screen as she worked it.
She navigated to her K-Fans creator page with practiced ease.
Tapping the Revenue Management tab brought up the list of yesterday's live streams.
She selected the [21cm Dae-mul-nam Collab] video and clicked the [Donation Settlement Management] icon at the bottom.
Search: DaeMulNam PervertJoo
Share ratio set to: 20%
Her hands trembled a little as she typed the number into the ratio field.
“Twenty percent. Right?”
“Yeah. Send it.”
Send
“Sent. Check your phone.”
Bzzzt—!
My phone buzzed almost immediately.
I tapped the alert, and an electronic contract filled the screen.
Contract Title: Live Stream Donation Settlement — 202X.XX.XX
Party A: Ye-wol / Party B: DaeMulNam PervertJoo
Total Revenue:59,000,000 KRW
Share Ratio: 20% of total revenue
Settlement Amount:11,800,000 KRW (pre-tax)
Total revenue: fifty-nine million won.
That crushing figure burned itself into my eyes. And right under it, my cut — eleven million eight hundred thousand.
Below that, a wall of dense legal fine print filled the rest of the screen, but there was no need to read any of it.
I ruthlessly scrolled all the way to the bottom and scrawled a signature with my finger in the [Agree & Sign] field.
Settlement has been paid.
A moment later, a solid number stamped itself into my K-Fans wallet.
“Heh…”
Eleven million eight hundred thousand.
Tax is forty-five percent… right… so roughly six-fifty left after that.
For one night's lay, it was more than enough. What really had my heart racing, though, was that the video sales revenue hadn't even started yet.
Ye-wol set her phone down and spoke up.
“Also, I'm going to make a separate playlist under your name inside my channel and drop the videos there.”
“A playlist?”
“Yeah. From now on, all our collab footage and edited cuts get sorted into that. Whenever people pay to watch, twenty percent auto-settles to you just like this — so you don't have to worry about a thing.”
Basically a pension that deposited cash into my account just for existing.
“That settles the settlement!”
“Settled!”
We grinned, satisfied, and waved our phones at each other.
A little later, hearts hammering, we sat side by side in front of the computer.
The monitor showed the video upload page of the K-Fans creator studio.
Three brand-new video files — just sent over by the editor — were mid-upload.
“Hoo… hoo… tell me I'm not the only one shaking.”
“Nah. I'm fucking shaking too.”
Ye-wol's hand on the mouse was trembling hard.
“Hey, the editor said the reaction was gonna be good, right?”
“Yeah… said the community response is historic. People lining up to buy.”
“Please… please…”
I wanted to check for myself, but I couldn't quite work up the courage.
To soothe our nerves, we decided to run some optimistic math.
“Hey, let's spin the happiness wheel. Open the calculator.”
“Should we?”
She pulled up the calculator on the desktop.
“The highlight cut is twenty-nine thousand, right? If even a thousand people buy…”
“Twenty-nine million.”
“Holy shit… a thousand people and it's almost thirty mil? My twenty percent of that is six hundred thousand sitting right there?”
Just a thousand people.
Yesterday's live had nearly ten thousand viewers. If only a thousand of them bought, that was thirty million in sales.
Ye-wol's eyes lit up.
“Hey, what if… what if it actually blows up and ten thousand people buy?”
“Ten thousand?”
“Yeah! Ten thousand is two hundred ninety million! Three hundred mil! And if the full version at fifty thousand sells too… fuck, five hundred million isn't even a dream!”
Five hundred million. At those words, my heart started pumping like a maniac.
But big expectations meant big disappointment. I forced the excitement down and shook my head.
“Eh, ten thousand is over the top. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Economy's trash these days — thirty, fifty thousand won isn't free money.”
“Right…? Too much kimchi soup?”
“Yeah. Just a thousand. Hell, even five hundred would be something. Let's just be grateful if we cover dinner.”
“True. No greed. Five hundred sales is already a jackpot.”
We hypnotized each other into lowering the bar.
But the look in both our eyes, locked on that monitor, was already burning with jackpot hunger.
“Alright… we're really posting this.”
Ye-wol did a final check on the price settings.
The mouse cursor hovered over the [Publish & Post] button.
Too heavy a button for one person alone. I covered Ye-wol's trembling hand with mine and squeezed tight.
“Let's go.”
“Yeah. Let's go!”
Click.
With our hands stacked, we slammed the left mouse button together.
Spin, spin.
A loading icon whirled for a second, then a green checkmark bloomed in the center of the screen.
Videos have been published to the channel.
Confirming the upload was done, we immediately switched over to the Revenue Management page.
There we clicked the Dae-mul-nam series playlist we'd set up in advance and checked the boxes next to the three videos that had just finished uploading.
Click.
Instantly, [Total Sales Volume] and [Total Sales Revenue] appeared dead center, with the three videos lined up underneath.
“Not yet?”
“Please… God!”
We stared at the blank white window, waiting on edge. Then the numbers that had been stuck at zero twitched.
“IT'S GOING UP!!!”
“LET'S GOOO!!!”
The blue bar for total sales volume and the orange bar for sales revenue started rocketing skyward.
12… 15… 160… 480!!!
Above the X-axis of the graph marking 8 PM — upload time — the Y-axis numbers were rolling at insane speed.
“Ugh…”
Cold sweat ran down my spine. My mouth went bone-dry with tension. It hadn't even been twenty minutes. We'd already blown past the modest sales target we'd set for ourselves.
“A th-thousand! A thousand!”
“A thousand sold… a thousand sold!”
We clamped each other's hands and screamed.
Then our eyes naturally dropped to the detailed breakdown table at the bottom of the screen.
“E-eighteen million…”
“KYAAAAAA!”
The amount we'd made in just twenty minutes. We threw our arms around each other and jumped around until the living room shook.
And right after that — whether the early buyers had started posting reviews or not — the sales rate accelerated like crazy.
“H-has it been about two hours now?”
“Y-yeah!”
“FOUR THOUSAND!!!! Holy shit!!!”
Even better: the two higher-priced videos were catching up at a terrifying pace to the ten-thousand-won short, which had dominated early sales.
“Hoo… hoo…”
Watching the numbers keep climbing finally let some of the tension bleed out, replaced by a wave of relief.
“Hey, should we check the reactions now?”
“Yeah. Let's take a look.”
With our nerves finally settled, we logged into the K-Fans community.
I clicked the highest-viewed featured post.
“What?! A LEAK?!!!”
“Hey! Fuck, click it right now! Did we get cracked?!”
The blood drained from our faces in an instant.
They'd bragged about some new tech with DRM and everything — had it actually been broken? My heart dropped into my stomach.
Ye-wol and I, hands shaking, frantically clicked the link.
BAM!
A high-resolution photo filled the entire monitor.
“MOTHERFUCKER!”
“KYAAAAAAAH! What is that! My eyes!”
Instead of the video we'd been expecting, the screen was plastered with a disgusting photo of some old lady.
Clack! Clack!
I reflexively hit the hotkey and killed the browser window.
“Haa… haa… fuck, that scared me…”
“Urgh… I think I'm gonna puke…”
Clutching our racing hearts, we opened the creator revenue management page again.
While we'd been touring the community, the sales numbers had been climbing at full speed.