Fame

"Shall we head out too?"

"Already? Oh—look how late it's gotten."

We'd arrived a little past noon, and by the time the precision test wrapped up it was nearly four. If we took our time coming down out of Children's Grand Park and then made it home, it was obvious we'd be walking in right at dinnertime.

Yeongji looked a little disappointed, but she didn't throw a fit about it. She played the airhead, sure, but that didn't mean she was actually dim. She was a grown woman, with about as much sense as that called for. Constantly performing cute was a bit of a problem—but she wasn't a genuine idiot.

"Hey, hold on a second!"

Yeongji was still flapping both hands at the elephant in a big floppy goodbye when the keeper in charge of it suddenly stepped in and blocked my path.

"Your phone! Give me your number!"

"……Sorry?"

I stared at the keeper shoving his phone in my face and felt nothing but pure disbelief. The first time in my life anyone asked for my number, and it was a zookeeper. Not a woman—an ajusshi who, even viewed charitably, was in his late thirties!

Noona found the sight funny enough to giggle beside me. Hey. Your boyfriend is getting his number taken by some ajusshi, and you're not even worried?

But the keeper looked dead serious. He showed no sign of putting that phone away.

"Please. I won't ask you for anything else. Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Just, every now and then, help me look after that one. You don't even have to come in person—a phone call would do. I'm begging you, sir!"

He was pleading, going so far as to call me sir, and I had no choice but to type my number in. I could feel how desperately he cared about the elephant, and I couldn't simply ignore the help he'd given us during the precision test. You could argue I'd already paid that debt by reading the elephant's condition, but having a zookeeper in my contacts wasn't a bad move either.

Whether I ought to call it a favor, the way down was nothing like the climb up. We got to ride the electric cart the keepers used.

"Look at that. A boyfriend who's popular with ajusshis, and we get to ride a cart down."

"……Don't tease me."

I gave Noona's cheek a light squish for needling me about getting my number taken by an ajusshi, and then we each ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠headed home.

And the day after we went our separate ways, the bomb went off.

Ding— ding— ding— deedle-deedle-ding— deedle-ding!

"Aaaagh! So loud I'm gonna die!"

Notifications had been chaining together without end since morning, and I hurled the pillow I'd been hugging across the room. Let me sleep! The chime drilling into my ear mid-dream didn't ease me awake. It shoved me off a cliff.

Why are there this many alerts?

I snatched up the phone at once. The screen was strobing, the alert tone going completely feral.

The moment I had it in my hand, I understood why the alerts had gone insane. MuTube notifications had piled up past the point of counting, and that was what had chased my sleep clean away. Curious what on earth ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had happened, I opened the app at once and checked the notifications that had come flooding in.

What filled the notification history was a parade of comments, more of them than I could count. I only uploaded one video.

I pulled up the video I'd posted right away.

"Whoa. Holy shit."

The state of my MuTube was so wrong I couldn't help swearing out loud. For a second I wondered if I was dreaming—but every time I reopened the video the numbers climbed, and that was reality telling me otherwise.

"……It blew uuuuup—!"

I stared at it for a moment, then yelled and flung the phone. Carefully. Toward the bed.

Barely two days had passed, and a channel that had maybe two hundred subscribers had grown a hundred and fifty times over in a single shot. There was no way I wasn't thrilled. At this pace I could gather several hundred thousand subscribers in no time, which only made it better. This ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠is already Silver Play Button territory, isn't it? Heh heh heh.

I was drooling over the sudden fame when it occurred to me to wonder about the actual reason any of this had happened. The answer wasn't hard to find. Wedged in among the endless MuTube alerts was a single message from Auntie Jangmi.

The cause of MuTube's sudden explosion was the article Auntie had written. Still—what on earth had she put in it, to get a reaction like this already? I closed MuTube and opened a portal app.

"Well, I'll be……. Never thought I'd live to see the day I searched my own name."

For the first time in my life, I typed my name into a major search portal. There wasn't even a celebrity who shared it, so this really was a first. And the results were beyond anything I'd imagined.

The moment I searched my name, article after article spilled down the page. It wasn't just articles, either. Blog posts copying every piece for the sake of clicks, and videos from cyber-wreckers chasing the story for views, ran on for pages. Most of the articles, posts, and videos said more or less the same thing. One piece, though, stood out.

I clicked it at once and found an article with my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠entire conversation with Auntie written into it, intact. Laid out as a Q&A, it had lines that made me think, huh, I really did say that. Then I checked the very bottom, and the reason for MuTube's sudden growth became perfectly clear.

At the foot of the piece, it announced that I planned to be active on MuTube—and printed my channel name right there with it. It even included the line I'd tossed out as a joke: "Subscribe, like, and hit the notification bell, please." Auntie really went out of her way for me.

She'd used a capture from my video as the photo, and right beneath it she'd pasted the MuTube address as-is. One click on the link, and you were watching my video. There wasn't a single line I hadn't said, not a single thing that could come back to hurt me—a clean article that did nothing but help.

……This isn't because she's scared of Mom grabbing her by the hair, is it?

Something Mom and Auntie had both said flashed through my mind, and I faltered. But either way, it didn't matter. Whatever went on with hair-grabbing was between those two ladies. Not my problem. What mattered now was that an enormous fame had landed on me.

"Ah, this……. Should I at least wear sunglasses when I go out?"

I fiddled pointlessly with a mask and a pair of sunglasses, feeling as if everyone around me were watching. Useless, of course. Neither the article Auntie had written nor the video I'd uploaded showed my face.

"First things first. I have to go brag to Noona."

Grinning like an idiot, I headed for the café where she'd be. Unlike me—written "MuTuber (pending)," read "unemployed"—Noona ran a café and couldn't just step away. If I wanted to brag, I had to go to her. I wouldn't say I could do the trip with my eyes closed, but I had the fast bus transfers and the shortcuts memorized, and I reached the café in no time.

"Noona!"

I found her at the counter, chin propped in her hand. It wasn't an hour when customers showed up, so the place was dead quiet. The only people there were Noona, and Yeongji, who'd left the back door open and was playing with Namcat.

"You're early today."

Ever since I'd quit the company I'd been coming to the café almost like it was a job, so she wasn't surprised to see me so much as puzzled that I was early. I usually showed up just before lunch and helped handle the rush for a bit. It was only around ten, which was why she looked confused.

I didn't bother clearing it up. I held out my phone with a thoroughly smug look.

"Heh. Take a look at this."

"……This is real?"

Noona's eyes went perfectly round at the screen I'd handed her. Round enough that I half expected them to fall out.

"Auntie said she put the interview up early this morning. I don't know if that's why it turned into this, but the notifications were going off so hard from the crack of dawn that they woke me up."

"Whoa……."

That seemed to be all that would come out of her. She held my phone and wore a blank look for a long while. The subscribers and the views, both of which had smashed through the tens of thousands in a flash, left her unable to close her mouth.

"I checked on the way over. I can turn ads on now. One video, and I cleared every requirement."

"Already?"

She'd already been staring at me like I was unbelievable, and that pushed her all the way to something close to shock. The look filled me with a pointless pride, and I squared my shoulders wide.

"So? How's it feel, having a capable younger boyfriend like this?"

"……Want me to call you oppa?"

"Ahaha!"

I burst out laughing at that. She thinks I'll say no?

"Say it."

"……Huh?"

"Call me oppa. Ha-eun. Try oppang~. Ha-eun, come on. Oppang!"

"……."

"Ack!"

I pushed my luck, and Noona pinched me for it. It hurt, but I'd gotten to watch her get flustered enough to blush, so I figured I hadn't lost out.

After that I spent the day helping with the café here and there. When there were no customers, I filmed videos with Namcat as the star and tended the channel. We had plans to open a large café, but pulling that off would take a great deal of money, and gathering that money meant waiting on the results of the precision test.

Then, on the morning of the third day after the test, the call I'd been waiting for finally came. It was Deputy Jang Il-woon, the man I'd met during the precision test.