Going Viral?
A spring day, with summer drawing close.
The wide fields ringing the lake shone a tender green, flaunting their vitality. Picnic mats were spread here and there across the grass, crowded with people whose faces were full of laughter. Birds that had flown in from somewhere drifted over the still water. Tiny insects stirred in the undergrowth.
And here, on the park's loop trail, one brightly smiling delinquent.
That would be me. Seong Yuhan, twenty-three. Fired from my part-time job and now taking aim at the streaming industry.
Broadcast hours: 6 p.m. to 1 a.m.
So what did I do before I went live?
My usual routine was to get a read on the industry—trending content, other streamers, the general current—or to watch popular broadcasts and pick out things worth stealing. If you're going to stream on the internet, the saying goes, you ought to study the internet a little.
Even that has its limits, though. A few hours of industry analysis and you're bound to burn out. Which meant that before every stream, a stretch of empty time opened up in my day.
I had no one to meet and no particular hobbies. I wasn't the type who loved going out, and sitting at home, the only thing I could really do was that game I'd played on my first broadcast.
I considered firing up Legend of League again—the MOBA that never quite went out of fashion—but I wasn't mentally ready to step back into that hellscape. And even if I had been, I wouldn't have wanted to. From a streaming standpoint, amateur LoL content wasn't exactly in demand.
Then I looked at my body.
The practical, compressed muscle I'd packed on from parcel loading and unloading had been recarved into something beautifully sculpted. By the standards of this Gender-Reversed World, it apparently didn't even count as excessive—just a healthy kind of fit.
Keeping a body like this with zero actual knowledge of training would take a professional's help. My wallet, unfortunately, was a pathetic, paper-thin joke of a wallet.
So I figured I might as well go for a run, and I stepped outside. Cardio didn't have much to do with muscle, sure—but doing something had to be better than doing nothing.
I put my feet to work and found a park. Even on a weekday morning, plenty of people were out enjoying themselves. I picked a decent route and started running. With cardio, the best approach really is to just switch your brain off and go.
Which brings us to now. I had been running the park loop for an hour and a half. I was breathing a little hard. It didn't feel particularly difficult. I still couldn't get a handle on just how far this Geum Taeyang body could actually go.
Ah—today's fashion: a famous soccer team's jersey and a pair of track pants with three white stripes. Just clothes that had been lying around the house.
I was dying to find this body's limits, but overdoing it was a fast way to do more harm than good. I eased off the pace, slowing down bit by bit.
Tap-tap-tap.
Tap-ta-tap-tap-ta-ta-tap.
Tap-tap-tap.
Tap-ta-dak-ta-dak-tap.
Wait, how many sets of footsteps was that? I glanced back, lifting the hem of my shirt to wipe the sweat off my face in a manly fashion. Or—should I be saying womanly, now?
A few women came into view. Some kind of running crew? I had no idea why they'd been glued to me like that. But why were their faces so re— fuck.
In the Gender-Reversed World, a man showing his upper body, once you ran it through the Reverse Filter, landed somewhere in the neighborhood of a woman flashing her bra. Not quite full nudity, but no man went around showing his torso in public.
Well… nothing I could do about it now. Best play in a situation like this was to act like nothing had happened.
I took a slow breath and looked over the women who'd been behind me, and one of them caught my eye.
She was drinking an electrolyte beverage, maybe to cool down her overheated body.
Ah. Our eyes met.
The blazing instinct of Geum Taeyang. Just one sip!
'Excuse me, could I possibly have just one sip?'
Son of a bitch. Why does my mouth keep doing this. My life is over.
I shouldn't have followed him.
I'd been building the kind of body men liked, trying to put years of loser life behind me, and I'd come out to the park to work out like always—and then I saw him.
A man who carried the same energy as the delinquents I'd known in school. On any other day I would have gotten out of there. But I was a completely different person now. Hadn't I sworn I wouldn't flinch at a delinquent ever again?
So I ran after him. I wanted to prove that resolution to myself.
It was a long stretch for a simple jog, and at last the delinquent stopped.
He turned, lifted his shirt, and wiped his face. Was this my reward for overcoming the past? …No. I was not interested in some delinquent. Following him had not been about some filthy little desire, okay?
The sweat running down his body caught the light and glittered copper.
Having a body that beautiful right in front of me—bare, no less—I could feel my face going red.
I cracked open the electrolyte drink I'd bought at the convenience store earlier and swallowed, trying to cool the heat.
……? Why was he looking at me? Because I'd been staring at his body? That felt incredibly unfair.
He came toward me. School-day memories surged up and I almost dropped my eyes, but I locked them in place.
I am not afraid of delinquents. I am not afraid of delinquents. I am not afraid of delinquents.
I was still straightening out my heart when he slung an arm around my neck, looked me in the eyes, and said:
"W-what?"
"I said it looks tasty."
…If you're going to steal it, at least say so properly. Wasn't this incredibly rude? He looked fierce, sure, but I couldn't back down here.
"What does… what are you even…"
"……."
Fuck, he was terrifying. The second this guy's face went serious, "fierce-looking" didn't even begin to cover it. My head dropped on its own. My body reacted the way it would to a predator.
"W-would you like a sip…?"
"Heh heh… yeah."
A sip, my ass. He put his mouth to the bottle and gulped it down, swallow after swallow.
When he pulled away, a clear thread stretched from the mouth of the bottle to his lips. He licked them.
Somehow, my body felt… stirred.
He pressed the bottle into my hand along with a thousand won.
"Drank too much. Buy yourself a new one with this. Thanks."
"Y-yes."
I'd seen a post like that online once. How, if a school bully was nice to you even once, it made you that ridiculously happy…
This situation—a delinquent with a face that beautiful telling me thank you—burned itself into my brain.
I'd have to walk a long way to buy another drink, and yet a bright little joy was welling up in my chest.
'This one… I'm going to have to use when I get home…'
Filthy thoughts. I sank into the fantasy.
I had, at least, kept my last shred of conscience!
A healthy body houses a healthy mind—so did a body like this house delinquent instincts?
I wanted to be a sweetheart. The delinquent impulse kept outrunning my reason. And it wasn't even the first or second time.
Snatching someone's drink with a rough line, putting my mouth on it like I owned it, and feeling a rush while I did it. Was I actually turning into Geum Taeyang?
These little deviations kept colliding with my sweet personality, drawing a faint, uneasy line between the two.
Leaving the person whose drink I'd stolen and going back to exercising felt wrong, so I just turned my feet toward home.
I fell into my usual broadcast studying, and before I knew it the clock said 6 p.m.
Time to start the third stream.
I'd ended yesterday at fifty-nine viewers, so today's goal was to hold forty or more. Set the target too high and you not only fail to hit it—you just collect a pointless sense of defeat.
Viewer count wasn't something I could will into existence, but mindset was always a virtue worth having.
23-Year-Old Gym Guy, Form a Line ^^
A killer stream title!
Like the famous streamers did, I went live, put on a song, and waited for people to show up.
And then—what was this.
Viewer count: 107.
"Huh?"
I remembered being surprised yesterday when more people showed up than expected, but this… I didn't even know how to react.
120… 140…
The number kept climbing, then eased off a little once it crossed two hundred.
"What is actually going on? Did something happen? How many people is this?"
Viewers had poured in from somewhere. The looks evaluations, as always, split clean down the middle into two extremes.
Then a chat that jumped out at me.
I clicked it. A community site.
Oh. Pretty good reception.
According to my industry-analysis notes, this was a community with serious traffic. A nobody streamer's clip pulling a reaction like this was something to be happy about.
So what if the users talked rough? This was a once-in-a-lifetime opening. Viewer count climbing slowly, steadily.
"Did you… all come from that post?"
"If you wanted to see it, you should've come yesterday."
"'Acting real expensive huh'—apologize within ten seconds or you're banned. Why would I do that if nobody's paying?"
Who even was Jihyeok. They were making a whole production out of dragging up some school-bully name from their own past. Well—more chat was good chat, as far as I was concerned.
"Alright. Thank you for the ten-thousand-won donation, RamStuck. Watch yourself from now on."
Three ten-thousand-won donations in two days—thirty thousand won already! Maybe I actually had a genius streak for this.
Ten thousand won meant I had to do that reaction. I still hadn't prepped any others, so it wasn't like I had a choice anyway.
Same as yesterday: cam down, chair out of the way, a perfect Grand Bow. The shirt, of course, I made sure was locked in place.
"Thank you!! Ten thousand won!!"
A shocking festival of sexual harassment. Naturally, it did nothing for me. And not a single manwhore joke in the mix.
A little talk like this wasn't going to shake my mental.
"Okay… you guys have some really weird fetishes."
"In my room, this much doesn't really need a ban, does it? It was a little much. Just keep it reasonable."
"…?"
"Manwhore jokes get you banned into next week."
I was pretty sure I'd said something similar yesterday. Why did people in this world love the word manwhore so much? Had female-cam chats in my original world been full of people calling streamers sluts? I'd never seen it, so I had no idea.
At the very least, they probably hadn't been running this unhinged. Was this the Gender-Reversed World…? Or was it just me they treated like this?
Anyway, I watched the chat for about five minutes, and they ran every sexual-harassment line in the book.
"Yeah… this is getting a little brain-rot."
I'd been going for an open atmosphere, sure, but there was a difference between reasonable and so far over the line that it wrecked the vibe of the stream… had it already wrecked it?
Either way, it was time to cut this off.
Special measures were required.
"I said keep it reasonable."
As I said it, I typed big letters across the screen.
I'm an innocent guy who's never even dated, so please go easy on the excessive Sexual Compliments hehe!!
Moderation was always the key. Cut it off at the right point and the chat response was good, wasn't it!!
Hmm… why were there so many question marks? They'd gotten a little too comfortable and were starting to look down on Geum Taeyang. Time to tighten the reins a bit.
I put on a savage expression. The most savage one I could manage.
"Hey. Smile."
"I said smile. You not getting it?"
"There we go… much better to look at. Keep the sex jokes reasonable."
Man… this face was useful in a lot of ways.