Semi-Forced Collab (2)
As I always say, Ari and I click to a degree that ought to be suspicious.
The first time we met, we talked each other's ears off at a café—though calling it a chat is generous, since most of it was Ari apologizing—and that same evening we talked the whole way over in her car. Today we'd spent almost every hour of the day just talking.
Hanging out with Sehee had its own kind of fun, but I hadn't seen her much since coming to this world, so a faint awkwardness still lingered. Ari, though—she was someone I'd met for the first time after arriving in the Gender-Reversed World.
From the start, our tastes and our temperaments lined up on almost everything, and that hadn't changed since I'd gotten to know her. Well. We'd only met recently, so maybe "hadn't changed" was a given.
Anyway. Two people who talk this easily. Opposite genders. Both of them look this good. The synergy from that is enough to carry a stream on conversation alone.
Two hours of talking already. The topics were mostly games and other male-oriented… no, female-oriented hobbies. It suited not just the two of us, but the viewers' tastes as well. Ari's streaming instincts plus my kinetic vision meant we could pick the fun messages out of chat with surgical precision and read them on air, so the chat was exploding.
A genuine boom. The only people dying were Lethe's stream managers. Embarrassingly, the viewers who'd wandered over from my broadcast today didn't moderate their language until I warned them, and Ari's position until that warning had been to just let my viewers run free. Infected in the meantime, Lethe's regulars had started posting messages that ran hotter than usual without quite crossing the line into something you could slap down. Yeah. I felt bad, but neither Ari nor I could really do anything about it. Managing a stream isn't supposed to be easy work. I just hoped they'd ride this one out.
The result of that packed house was a serious number of viewers. Lethe's original mega-corp audience, plus Geum Taeyang's hole-in-the-wall crowd, plus the floaters who'd shown up after hearing about this weird collab. This was going to be a huge help for my channel, wasn't it?
Not that I was hanging out with Ari for that reason… but sometimes, to put it crudely, you have to plant the straw when it's time to plant the straw. And to plant it properly, keeping this high energy going was the most important thing. Which meant…
We hadn't even thought about being hungry before the stream started, so we'd talked on empty stomachs all the way to eight p.m. Time to put something in our mouths. Hard to keep the energy up when you're starving, right? Even I, with this ridiculously efficient body, had started getting hungry a while ago. How was Ari still not saying a word about it? Maybe she'd been hungry for a while and just hadn't mentioned it.
I stared at her with that thought, and she looked back at me like, what?
"Lethe, aren't you hungry? We haven't eaten a thing today."
"Ah… now that you mention it, yeah, I am."
Watching Ari, you really… how do people put it. She was overpowered in a lot of ways. Looks, brains—and that body. How did it even work, going this long on zero meals?
"Want me to order something? Taeyang, is there food you like?"
"Hmm… not delivery, though…"
Delivery would taste fine, but it wouldn't beat cooking it myself. And it wasn't healthy. Yes, that was a stingy thing to say, but honestly I also didn't want to spend the money. Why had I mastered cooking in the first place? To save the money I earned wrecking my body, and to take better care of that body. I barely ordered delivery anyway, so I didn't even know what was good.
"Lethe. Mind if I use the kitchen for a bit?"
It was basically a declaration. I was already standing up to leave the room as I said it.
"Huh? You're going to cook? Wouldn't ordering be easier? You're the guest—I'll treat!"
"Nope. I'm cooking today, so you hang out with the viewers."
"No, but still—!"
I caught Ari by the shoulder as she tried to get up from her chair and sat her right back down. Where did she think she was going, turning me down. The Tintendo Switch I borrowed wasn't cheap. I could at least cover one meal.
"I've been living on my own for over six years. Just sit."
Yuhan left for the kitchen on that line. Left without anyone to talk to, I kept the stream going as best I could, watching messages vanish under the now-fuzzy chat rules.
I'd been a little surprised just now. That Yuhan cooked, too. Judging by the viewers' reactions, he'd done it on stream a few times—I just hadn't caught those broadcasts.
"Taeyang's viewers. Does Taeyang do cooking streams too?"
I was pretty confident in my own cooking… maybe I should've just said I'd do it? Though even if I had, Yuhan probably would've stopped me. Well. No need to overthink it. What he'd asked of me was to keep the stream going, so I just had to do that well.
Following the advice of a viewer who'd come over from Geum Taeyang's channel, I pulled up Yuhan's page. Viewers told me that if I skipped about an hour into a VOD from a few days ago, he'd start cooking. Had they timed it perfectly? The webcam had been turned to show Yuhan at the stove. The quality wasn't perfect, but you could see everything that mattered.
"Is that… an apron?"
It's such a nothing item. An apron. But with Yuhan wearing it… the thing didn't quite cover that body comfortably. It looked a little tight, and that was what caught my eye. And if you let your gaze drop, there were the ripped jeans he always wore.
TwizyTV's VOD feature also shows the chat from that time, and the chat on this video was something else. His back, the apron—crude comments everywhere. The kind of chat I'd wanted from Yuhan's stream. Yes. This was the real thing. This was what I'd wanted.
I swallowed saliva I hadn't even noticed pooling.
I needed to get a grip. We were live. If I looked like I was glued to that video, what would people say? I moved my frozen hand and paused it.
…Had I been staring that blankly? How long had I even been watching? Why were chats like that going up? I wasn't sure, but I had to at least act. I had a boyfriend. I had to hide that I'd enjoyed looking at another man's back—and the filthy comments about him.
"Ahaha… I thought I was pretty decent myself, but Taeyang really cooks well."
Did I get through that somehow? My body felt flushed, so I looked for water—apparently I'd drunk it all while talking with Yuhan earlier on stream. Lately my face had been coloring easily, and I didn't want that on camera either.
"I'm going to grab some water real quick!"
Yeah. This was exactly a one-mountain-after-another situation. Why hadn't I thought of this. I was annoyed at myself from a minute ago.
I went to the fridge in the kitchen to pour water, and there was Yuhan in the middle of cooking.
"Hm? Why'd you come out, Ari? Oh—I'm borrowing this apron, okay? I used it before and it's actually pretty comfortable."
"Uh, uh? I came out to… get some water. ……Yeah."
"Right. How's this look? Doesn't it look good? It's fried rice."
An unbearably domestic scene. A domestic conversation. It threw me into confusion. Normally when I stepped out for water during a stream, I'd play around a bit with Junhyuk resting in the living room. That had felt properly couple-like, and it had been enjoyable in its own way. The wholesome cohabitation of a man and woman in their twenties?
But this… what was I supposed to call this.
Maybe it was the heat from the cooking, but a warmth lingered through the house. That warmth, and the mouthwatering smell that came with it. The sounds of cooking from the kitchen. And if you went there, a man in an apron, grinning as he showed off his food.
Someone cooking for me. Looking at the leftover traces of delivery and worrying about my health. Family… so, parents? A dad?
No. It was different from that. Even among family, this was more like… a married couple?
Damn it. I was definitely going weird. The fact that crazy thoughts were coming out on their own was proof.
"Huh?! Ari, can you check my back real quick? I think the apron came undone. Can you tie it for me?"
Yuhan twisting his head side to side, trying to see his own back—it was so different from his usual imposing look that it felt cute. A domestic man. Going behind that man and helping him the way he asked. Yuhan smiling at me with his usual expression, saying thanks. The fact that looking at that mean-looking face made me think the word beaming was probably evidence I'd gotten pretty weird.
"Go on back first. I'll be there soon."
The short walk back to the streaming room, water cup in hand. In that brief span, I thought.
I wasn't sure what the feeling I'd just had even was.
But one thing was certain.
It was a feeling I was experiencing for the first time since I'd started living on my own.