Semi-Forced Collab (3)
Every now and then, the thought had crossed my mind.
What if I'd had a girlfriend, too?
Ah. That's by the standards of my old world, of course.
Calling it objective felt a little generous, but objectively speaking, I'd been on the handsome side. Not a stunning beauty, but the kind of guy people would reliably call good-looking.
Yeah. Handsome or not, I'd been a lifelong virgin all the same.
Work had kept me too busy to even think about dating, but that wasn't the point. I hadn't had a single friend my own age. Wouldn't having a girlfriend have been the strange part? The closest thing I had to company had been a bunch of middle-aged men.
Anyway, my conclusion was that a decent relationship would have been hard to pull off.
I hadn't had any money.
Pasta? Insane food. Restaurants where a plate ran you more than ten bucks were everywhere, and those limp little noodles — was that supposed to give you the energy to work? Tteokbokki? Even crazier. We'd reached an era where a serving of spicy rice cakes cost more than ten dollars too. And it wasn't as if I was some gukbap zealot either. Even a bowl of rice soup had climbed past that price.
I'd learned to cook because I couldn't stand wasting the money.
In my old world, a man who cooked had a certain market value — up to a point. Who was going to date a guy who ate at home every night because he was too cheap to go out? Sure, some people would. I was talking about ordinary people.
So I'd built up the skill. By now I'd left the usual living-alone fare far behind.
Anyone who'd actually done it knew how lonely it was, cooking for one in a studio apartment with nobody else in it. The least you could do was make it taste good enough that it didn't feel like a total loss.
The fried rice I'd loved in particular — I was confident I'd taken it to a godlike level.
Someone might have asked if I was getting a little full of myself… but one look at Ari's face right now and that question would have died in their throat.
"What even… what did you put in this?! How does it taste like this?"
"Just whatever I saw in the fridge, I think. I don't remember it item by item."
Pasta, tteokbokki, gukbap — all of it could get lost. In front of a seasoned fried-rice craftsman, that stuff was pig slop.
"There barely even were any ingredients, though?"
"Yeah, there weren't. I'm past the point of fussing over what I've got, though."
Hmm. Truly, it was a happy day. At last, my cooking had a chance to shine in front of a woman.
Whether it was the food or just the hour, Ari was clearly starving now. You could tell by the way her careful little motions with the spoon kept picking up speed.
Time I had a proper taste myself. I'd been sampling as I cooked, just to check the seasoning, but it hadn't been enough to fill me up.
Thousands of viewers in front of me, a stunning beauty beside me. If there was ever an ideal stage for a real man's mukbang, this was it.
I scooped up a huge spoonful and packed it into my mouth.
As expected. My cooking was insane.
Pff—!
I was in the middle of shoveling it down when a prickling stare landed on me from the side, along with a sound. Ari was looking at me, fighting a laugh.
What?
"Kh—! You're eating way too fast, aren't you?"
Excuse me. Slandering my peak masculinity mukbang?
I wanted to fire something back, but my mouth was too full of food to get a word out. Unhappy with the situation, I shot her a sidelong glare.
That only made Ari lose it completely.
"Ahaha!!"
So this was what they meant by being a clown.
"You. I'm never cooking for you again."
Well.
Still.
Eating together was pretty nice.
For a healthy lifestyle, moving around a little after a meal wasn't a bad idea. For two people whose job was sitting in front of a computer playing games, even that counted as a luxury. And when two streamers were in the middle of a collab, where exactly were we supposed to go?
The meal, rushed thanks to how long we'd gone hungry, was over fast. Talking was fun, but we figured we needed something else too.
Which was why we'd brought out the Tintendo Switch.
The multiplayer games you could run off a single PC were painfully limited, and honestly I didn't even know what was out there. The Switch, on the other hand, was built for multiplayer. Plenty of the games were fun to watch as well as play, which made them perfect for a stream.
There was another reason, too.
I liked showing off my game skill.
Before I'd gotten this body, I hadn't been particularly good, so I hadn't understood. Having people praise you for how you play turned out to be a seriously good time.
I mean, I was born a guy. That was allowed, right?
Anyway, when I suggested the racing game we'd played earlier — Mariu Kart — Ari's face said she was not thrilled. Fair enough. Back then this broken body of mine had done its job a little too well. First place, over and over, to a degree that had been kind of excessive.
In the end my finishing move — what, you scared of a guy? — had gotten her to fold.
…
Yeah. Winning nine out of ten races might have been a bit much. And the one race I hadn't taken first, I'd come in second and Ari had come in eighth. For reference, eighth was last place.
Even my trademark rotten luck I'd managed to navigate this time, using what I'd learned from earlier, and the result had been a complete stomp.
"Hnnngh…"
Watching her plant her face on the desk and make that noise, I did feel a little bad.
"Lethe…? You okay? I did play pretty well, huh?"
"Lethe…? Don't be mad… I'll cook for you again next time."
"A different game… One more round. A different game."
She said it in a low voice, teeth still clenched.
"Mariu Party. Let's wrap with one game of this."
"…Ah."
Mariu Party.
A turn-based game where you rolled dice, claimed the Stars scattered across the map, and whoever held the most Stars at the end won. The minigames sprinkled in between could be carried with a bit of skill, but luck ran the whole thing. Even if you had more Stars going into the finale, a lucky break could flip first place.
A luck game with no floor and no ceiling.
My natural predator.
"I mean… do we really need another game, Lethe? We've already played a lot… Let's just hang out and talk and then end the stream. Yeah?"
I'd just locked in the image of a gaming veteran. A variable like this was not acceptable!
Ari watched me scramble to talk her out of it, panic written all over my face, and a nasty little smile started to spread.
Hey. That was my specialty.
In her old streams Ari had always kept a certain seriousness. Now her expressions were all over the place. It would make the broadcast more fun, sure, but…
Oh no.
I couldn't let that one slide.
Mariu Party matches ran long. We'd only played one, and it was already time to end the stream.
I told my viewers I'd be on until two in the morning next time, so they could head out.
And the result of the game?
I don't know. I don't know, and I don't want to know.
You grinded for Stars only to have them stolen the very next turn. Who looked at that and called it a game?
"Yuhan, you okay?"
"Yeah… no."
The ending had left a hideous memory, but even so, today had been a genuinely good time. Going over to a friend's place was a first for me, which had made it even better.
The problem was that I'd enjoyed myself a little too much and missed the window to go home.
A collab stream, by definition, meant broadcasting together late into the night. I was an idiot for not clocking that.
"Oh, right. Yuhan, rest a bit and tell me when you want to leave. I'll drive you."
Wait — Ari hadn't noticed either? I hereby retracted the idiot comment.
Then again, she could always just drive me even if it got late, so she probably hadn't been worrying about it.
Hmm. Honestly, night driving made me uneasy. I didn't know how good Ari was behind the wheel, but she was twenty-three and barely out of the military. She'd forgotten her seatbelt earlier, too. She had given me a ride once before, around dinnertime, but it had still been reasonably light out then.
My body could handle anything you threw at it. Ari's couldn't.
That said, a guy staying the night at a woman who lived alone… right. Gender-Reversed World. Still felt weird, though. You didn't just sleep over at someone's place when they already had a boyfriend. They were the couple I'd given advice to not that long ago, even. "Advice" was a little grand for what it had been, but still.
I wasn't that shameless.
If my mouth would just stop opening on its own, I might even have stayed a decent person.
"Ari, isn't it dangerous to drive this late?"
"Hm? I can't just send you home alone, though."
I'd still been turning it over. I didn't get any further than that before the words came out.
"Mm… I."
"Hm?"
…My life.