Something's Changing
The call with Ari was over. The worst of the viewers had been cleared out. And my sanity felt about ready to walk out right along with them.
This was just too unfair. I had a basic moral compass. It wasn't like I'd been itching to toss someone else's real name around on stream.
It was a blessing Ari had let it slide without a word. If she'd actually gotten angry at me while we were still on the phone, the broadcast would have taken a serious hit.
Damn it... Last time, people had only said my smile looked handsome. Now I looked like I'd turned into some kind of pervert.
The one silver lining, if I had to find one, was that the overall energy of the stream had gone up.
Yeah. I couldn't take back what had already happened, so I might as well look on the bright side. It had all worked out in the end, hadn't it?
Ari would understand. Probably.
...If you really thought about it, wasn't Ari the one who'd caused this in the first place? That sounded a little—no, a lot—pathetic, but still.
Anyway. That aside.
I'd picked up on a strange emotion earlier.
When Ari had answered my order with a yes, her voice had lifted, just slightly. How to put it. Pleasure? Joy? Or affection for me?
She wasn't the type to fall in love over a single greeting, so it felt weird to even say something like that based on such a tiny clue. But my body had felt it.
It was a conclusion reason would never have reached, and yet my Geum Taeyang intuition had read something positive in that answer. A feeling I couldn't explain.
I already didn't like how my body had changed. I couldn't understand this intuition developing in such a weird direction, either.
...Forget it.
I wouldn't need to understand it going forward. No matter how much my personality shifted, I had no intention of living like Geum Taeyang.
As long as I kept my center, I wouldn't get dragged around by these changes. The "changes" would just get dragged around by my wholesome mindset instead.
Alright. Enough useless thinking. For now, the stream. Focus on the stream. I could think about the rest later.
I'd said I was stepping away to the bathroom. What I was actually doing in the bathroom was lurking on his stream.
The mirror showed my face flushed a vivid red. I'd splashed water on it three times already, and the heat still wouldn't go down. I'd never gotten this red in my life, and maybe that was why it was so hard to cool off.
My real name getting out? I hadn't been hiding it because it was some huge problem. There just hadn't been any reason to put it out there. Normally, something like that should have been mine to reveal, so I supposed most people would have gotten angry... but once I heard it was Yuhan who'd done it, I couldn't bring myself to feel much of anything about it.
The reason I couldn't get my face under control right now was embarrassment.
A woman taking something like an order—no, an actual order—from a guy her own age, and answering him in polite speech. People talked a lot about masculinity and femininity these days, but I was born a woman, and I had my pride.
And I'd done it in front of something like fifty-five hundred viewers, counting his stream and mine together. Face burning. Polite speech and all.
Of course I used polite speech on stream to begin with, but the feeling had been completely different...
Damn it. I wasn't usually someone whose emotions swung this hard.
Shame was flooding into a heart that had already been packed full of guilt toward Yuhan. And that flush in my face when I'd taken his order earlier—what had that even been?
Was I into that kind of thing? Master and servant... something like that?
Please. That was ridiculous. I'd lived a perfectly wholesome life.
I'd just... my heart had raced a little. I could admit that much. I had a boyfriend, sure, but that didn't mean I wasn't allowed to feel it!
I'd never paid men much attention, and once I'd started dating Junhyuk I'd only ever looked at him. I'd thought of myself as keeping a pretty wooden attitude where guys were concerned.
Even so, Yuhan's looks were honestly rare-level handsome. That Geum Taeyang exterior just hid it. Women were the sort of creatures who lost their heads over a handsome man, so if my heart raced a little talking to a guy of that caliber, wasn't that only natural?
Yes. It was just because Yuhan was so good-looking. That was all.
I wasn't the weird one.
I wasn't becoming weird.
I'd always approached internet streaming with a serious heart. I thought of myself as a professional in this industry. So even with all the little incidents, I was confident I could get a stream running fun again somehow.
Whether a five-day hiatus and today's raid on Yuhan's broadcast by my viewers really counted as "little incidents" was another question. What I meant was simply this: the stream had wrapped up well.
I'd gone ahead and put my full name out there, surname and all, and I'd made a point of showing off my friendship with Yuhan, which should keep more toxic viewers from piling on. By the time I was ready to end the broadcast, the usual cheerful atmosphere was flowing again.
Viewers yelling at me not to go, half joking and half serious. Me playing along a little. Then, the second the clock hit midnight, I killed the stream.
Now I was supposed to review today's broadcast, talk with the managers and editors a bit, and go to sleep... but for some reason, I didn't want to. Not tonight.
Was I tired? No—my body didn't actually feel bad. I wasn't sure. I was usually the type to stick to a plan down to the letter. Why was I like this today?
I opened the chat program, stepped into the room where they were waiting, and told them I was turning in early.
Then I shut the program down entirely.
And as if something had taken hold of me, I typed three syllables into the platform's search bar: Geum Taeyang.
Yuhan's start time was listed as 6 p.m., same as mine, but he seemed to run later. When I checked, his stream was still live. I thought of today as a fairly eventful day, and yet he was broadcasting at his usual pace. For all that exterior, he really was a diligent person.
His game streams always used the same layout: a small game window, and a cam that filled the monitor.
I'd only met him in person three days ago, and already the sight of that face sent an excitement I couldn't name welling up through me. I thought about asking myself why I was feeling this way... and then I stopped. This wasn't the time to pick that apart.
I thought back to the chats I'd hammered out yesterday, all the way until his stream ended. The actual words were already fuzzy, but I still remembered the feeling, and the overall flavor of those messages.
My fingers moved on instinct. I started typing a one-line chat, and flicked a glance at the chat window climbing up the side of the screen.
What was with these ordinary chats.
I didn't like it. The chat had gotten wholesome today, of all days. This wasn't your atmosphere. Granted, yesterday was the first time I'd watched, but it had to be like that on a normal day too. There was no way yesterday's stream would have come out that hot otherwise.
Why did it get so boring.
Someone needed to start it. That way I could just blend in at a reasonable volume.
Or... would it be okay if I started it myself?
It wasn't that big a deal. If one chat could make me feel the way I had yesterday, there was nothing to hesitate over.
I just had to hit enter...
...
...
Wait. This... this wasn't an alt account...?
The instant I realized it, my mind snapped back.
The computer was always logged into my streaming main, Lethe. I'd almost sent a chat like that—and not even from an alt.
Goosebumps rose along both arms. Cold sweat broke over my whole body.
I deleted the message, mashed the power button, and force-shut the computer down. Then I walked straight to the bedroom and dropped face-first onto the bed.
My hands were shaking. My heart was pounding like mad.
It was the kind of mistake that could have cost me everything—my reputation, my relationships, all of it. If I'd gotten caught doing something like that, what would my family have thought of me? My friends? My streamer colleagues? My classmates?
And if that had happened... what would Yuhan have said to me?
Why did thinking about that bring back the commanding way he'd spoken to me earlier?
Was this thrill just from the fact that I'd nearly caused a disaster?
I could feel my body getting worked up, and I didn't think it was only because of this near miss.
I had my face buried in the pillow... and then, thinking about tomorrow, my mood lifted all at once.
There was no question.
Lately... I think I've been changing.