YouTube
......What is this?
The second I opened Bae Jihyun's channel, a familiar face filled the screen and I nearly spat out my coffee. The Shorts video sitting on the main page was none other than me.
......Two million?
There I was, in the very first Shorts on the page. I hadn't even known Shorts tracked views. This one was closing in on two million, the likes had cleared fifty thousand, and the comments were past two thousand. The moment I clicked it, the memory came rushing back. I was pretty sure I'd handled myself decently enough—and still a worry flickered through me. Had I screwed something up?
It was a short edit that opened on the moment I'd been sitting there when she first approached. And seeing how cleanly they'd cut Hyunji out of the footage, they seemed pretty trustworthy.
To my eye it was nothing but an ordinary conversation, yet the comments were remarkably friendly. No—friendly didn't cover it. Most of them were openly fond of me.
......People watch a lot more of this than I thought.
I knew street streams were a thing, but not even a few days had passed and the views and likes were already enormous. Watching the edited broadcast from that day, I had no choice but to nod. That one had already cleared a million and a half views.
It was four times the views of the video beside it, which had gone up even earlier. From the comments, a lot of people seemed to have come in through the Shorts. So this was how they ran the channel.
......But seriously, even I can see these guys have zero manners.
The men talking down to Lee Hyang-suk were so far out of line it barely seemed real. Swearing came standard, and their faces and eyes were ice-cold. Through all of it Hyang-suk kept smiling brightly, trying to keep the mood alive, and it was pitiful to watch. The moment she finally got someone to agree to an interview, they'd wait until her back was turned, sneer, and bolt from the seat.
If you're going to act like that, why agree in the first place?
The chat was even worse. They weren't cursing those men. They treated the behavior as obvious and laughed about her getting baited, then moved on to recommending some other group of guys caught on camera. And then a man appeared who genuinely made my skin crawl.
"Eh, what? Twenty-eight? You're old. You make a living doing street streams at that age?"
He looked quite a bit older than me, but he was easily the best-looking man I'd seen lately. A handsome man in his middle years, if that was the word for it. On the taller side, too. The lazy, arrogant posture he took while talking to Hyang-suk told me everything I needed to know about his character.
Even so, she kept her smile, talked him around, and somehow got him to agree to the interview. The problem started after that. The moment he sat down, he reached for her chest as if it were his right, and the camera caught him kneading her without mercy.
"Ack! That hurts. Gently......"
"Figures. They're all sagged out, no bounce at all. Work out a little. Or is this the age where you need surgery?"
"Come on, surgery's still too soon. I've actually been working out hard lately, you know. Want me to show you an old photo? This is already a big improvement. Which means it's only going to get better from here."
"Not interested. What matters is right now. So. Down there. You keep that managed?"
"Ah!"
She still hadn't handed the camera off to the woman with her, so the view jolted and swung before it caught again, and my mouth fell open on its own. Somehow the man's hand had already hiked Hyang-suk's skirt up. The ornate band of her chocolate-colored stockings was biting into the flesh of her thigh; pale skin showed beneath, and black panties trimmed in flashy lace of a similar design peeked into view. The man muttered.
"These are all right. You've got some sense. I hate it when pantyhose stink."
"P-please don't. We're in a café, there's a limit on how explicit we can—"
"The stream rating's plenty, isn't it? Why are you backing out now?"
"Ah! Augh!"
But his hand shot up under her skirt in an instant. Hyang-suk let out a startled moan and immediately shoved him off. In that same moment her face twisted in pain, and she screamed.
"You fucking bitch, you shoved me?"
The shove yanked his hand free and sent him staggering into the window as if he'd been thrown. Swearing, he looked at her with a greasy smile, then held his fist up to the camera and opened his fingers. Something black and threadlike drifted down, fluttering. No way. It couldn't be. But the voice that followed left me speechless.
"Looks like she really doesn't take care of herself. Ugh, look at the length. Long enough to tangle on my hand. Filthy."
"......That's too far. I'll be going."
"Sure, go ahead. As expected, the quality's lacking. Where was all that begging for an interview? You assault someone and can't even manage an apology. In the end you were after my dick too, weren't you? You think I've only seen one or two slut bitches panting after it under the excuse of a stream?"
Hyang-suk only glared at him. She gave no answer at all, and barely managed to get to her feet. As she turned away, the man clutched his stomach behind her, laughing like something was hilarious. My head understood. She'd shoved him, so it had become mutual—filing charges would be useless. But the look on her face said she wasn't even considering it. The moment she sued, the broadcast would be finished.
......Unbelievable.
A moment later she shifted the focus, faced the camera, and asked the viewers to bear with her. The shot caught a run in her stockings from the man's rough hands. They'd looked expensive.
"I think I'm better off just taking the stockings off. Sorry, Jureungies. I'll be right back."
What scrolled up in the chat was nothing but that man's abuse. But the moment Hyang-suk came back, she went looking for the next person as if none of it had happened. It might as well have been her saying this sort of thing didn't happen often, but that it did happen sometimes. Uploading it as-is also meant this level of content wasn't even worth editing out.
Is this insane?
The man's attitude was beyond anything I could have imagined. Enough to make me wonder if he was out of his mind. And his face was fully on camera. Now that I thought about it, even with his face exposed, there wasn't a shred of caution in how he acted. Ordinarily, if only out of embarrassment, a person would show the bare minimum of manners with a camera on them.
......Her nerve is something else. And she's got a professional's sense of duty.
Now I understood. I remembered how Hyang-suk and the woman with her had acted, how they'd reacted. I'd wondered if it was really something to be that moved by. The overweight man she managed to interview after that one answered in almost nothing but single words, staying blunt and indifferent right up to the end. When the interview wrapped, he took the cookie she offered with a scowl. Anyone could see the disappointment on his face.
As Hyang-suk walked away, the man caught in the background popped the cookie into his mouth—and then, with nothing filtered out, spat it straight onto the floor. She was smiling and reading the chat when someone must have told her about it in a message. It lasted only an instant, but her face darkened, and even my chest ached at the sight. Then I appeared, sitting in the window seat on the opposite side, and I quietly scrolled the video down.
So what are men supposed to be like, then?
I poked around YouTube, searched for men's street streams, and a thumbnail of a rather cute-looking guy came up. When I tapped it, the opening was nothing like Hyang-suk's broadcast. It wasn't here. It was abroad—somewhere in Southeast Asia, by the look of it.
The flag that appeared a moment later was enough to tell me it was Thailand. The title said Bangkok. But that video, too, kept ending the same way. He couldn't endure the sexual harassment, two women who looked like staff stepped in from off-camera, the camera cut, and it started again somewhere else.
Guess I should give up on traveling alone.
I found that YouTuber's domestic broadcasts and hit play. What started had a completely different atmosphere from Hyang-suk's. Women competed with each other to be interviewed, and men came up smiling and agreed to talk. Then the moment he got even a slightly mischievous joke, or a question about his private life, the chat went completely wild. A little later, as if someone had called the police, a female officer approached and started asking questions, caught in a shot from some distance away.
......The temperature difference is way too extreme.
Running my mouth—well, I was around that age myself, so I could probably keep a conversation going. But the thought of having to go through that made me hesitate. The domestic videos were at least bearable.
Yeah. These outdoor streams are a bit much.
Maybe because I'd watched Hyang-suk's video first, the image wouldn't budge. If I started streaming I'd have to be careful about private meetings anyway, so I'd been hesitating from the start. Adult broadcasts weren't even a consideration. And then I remembered that Hyang-suk's video had been edited. I didn't know whether they'd braced themselves for an adult rating, but if this wasn't a world that slapped those on, it meant the content was extremely explicit across the board. I'd have to ask when I saw her. Just then I heard the bathroom door open.
"I left a T-shirt there. Wear those."
"......Ah. Th-these......?"
"Yeah. They're trunks, so they should be comfortable. Want something else?"
"N-no, it's fine......"
Rahee, covering herself with a towel and flushed with embarrassment, grabbed the T-shirt and the underwear and hurried back into the bathroom. I let out a small laugh at the sight and sank into thought. I hadn't managed to watch the game stream I'd meant to, but I wasn't particularly worried. I'd just have to go in, keep my head down and behave, and give it my best.
......Today I just need to watch how they do the game stream and learn from it.
I had to admit the nerve. How anyone could do it like that. There were definitely parts worth learning. At that moment the phone I'd set beside the keyboard rang. It was Hyunji.
"Oh, hey. Hyunji. Good morning."
"Oppa! Good morning!"
Hyunji's clear voice, first thing in the morning, pulled a smile out of me on its own. The unpleasantness from a moment ago seemed to wash clean away.
"Yeah. School?"
"No. Oppa, I don't have practice today!"
"Oh, really? I'm not going to the café today either. I do have plans this evening, though."
"Really? Then are you still with unni?"
At Hyunji's words I turned my head. Rahee, in a loose T-shirt, was fidgeting awkwardly in my trunks, looking at me with her face red. She looked surprisingly good in them, so I smiled and mouthed that it was Hyunji. Rahee nodded too and walked over to the capsule coffee machine.