Area Attack

"Suhwan. The editing team wants you to shoot some footage. They figure another day or two and they'll have burned through everything we've got banked."

My channel ran on a pretty short upload cycle, and I'd let the filming slide for a while. Sure enough, the reserves seemed to have finally run dry.

"What am I even supposed to film?"

I couldn't settle on anything. I'd already posted plenty of videos of the animals at the zoo, and putting up more would only feel like uploading the same thing twice. The new arrivals, or So-eun drilling the Dream Team? I turned it over, but not for long. Grab a camera, wander the zoo, and something worth shooting was bound to turn up.

"I'll film while I stream. Be back later!"

"Yeah. Give it your all."

Noona saw me off, and I picked up the camera and went live at once. Viewers poured in within seconds, and the chat dissolved into chaos.

"Does nobody know how to say a normal hello?"

I grumbled at the mess, and a donation popped in at once.

"……"

I'd taken it for a greeting. It was a donation hunting for So-eun.

"If all you ever do is look for So-eun, don't I get to feel a little hurt? This is my channel, you know."

"She's at kindergarten! Why!"

Maybe they really had only wanted her location, because the moment kindergarten came up, the troll went quiet. I shook my head and started off at an easy pace. I wasn't bound for anywhere in particular. Wherever my feet landed would do.

"……What is that one even doing over there?"

Mid-stride, I caught something strange. Between two boulders set out as decoration, Henpeck had his head jammed in deep, tail flicking back and forth.

A glance at the camera feed told me why. On screen, Henpeck looked like he was shaking his tail and his rear end together. I snorted, then walked up to the fox with his face stuffed between the rocks.

"Aigoo, save the fox! Somebody pull me out!"

"So you weren't playing. You were stuck."

Up close, his voice rose from between the boulders, a cry packed full of please-save-me. To work him loose, I wrapped my hands around his torso and the top of his head and pulled, carefully.

"The fox is dying!"

Henpeck's dramatics arrived as a string of pitiful yips. I ignored them and kept up the gentle pull, and he came free with a pop.

"Kwek……"

Freshly extracted, he scrubbed at his head with both front paws, as if he meant to hold it together. He'd been wedged in there a while. His fur was squashed completely flat. I smoothed the fur on his head back into place and caught hold of him.

"Why did you have your head shoved in there?"

"Some food rolled in……"

I looked between the boulders. Sure enough, something small, like a piece of fruit, sat in the gap.

"You crawled in there to eat that, didn't you."

"The wife gave all the food to the pups, so I hid some to sneak a bite, and then it rolled way in deep……"

I translated that for the viewers, and they ached for him. Nobody had a bad word for Miho, of course. Everyone knew exactly how she and Henpeck had ended up at our zoo. Bewitched by So-eun, he'd given away the location of the house where his wife lived and gotten himself caught, so the viewers took it as only natural that Henpeck was the one getting henpecked.

Among the people pitying him, there was even someone donating money and telling me to buy him a snack. I followed the request and held out a piece of premium jerky.

"A person named Dishwasher said to give this to you. Say thank you."

"Mmf-mmph-fank-oo!"

Henpeck, who had been frantically chomping the jerky, turned toward the camera and bobbed his head over and over. It was the sort of thing you only got from a fox who had lived with me long enough to understand cameras and broadcasts.

For reasons I couldn't place, the AI that read the donations aloud sounded downright mournful. After that, similar messages rolled in one after another. Most of the senders' nicknames looked like they belonged to married men. Fitting, maybe, for the husbands who insisted Henpeck was their favorite — the ones telling him to hang in there easily outnumbered the rest.

I handed Henpeck a whole pile of jerky and started walking again. Just like with him, though, nothing particularly worth filming presented itself. The closest thing was Daepodong trying to steal the elephant's feed and getting swung around like a windmill for his trouble. I went and found the animals people were asking for and managed to scrape together a little footage, but it still felt like something was missing.

In the middle of all that, one donation snagged my eye.

"Computer games? Yeah, I play. I'm so damn bad I mostly stay out of team games…… Anyone who ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠knows, knows."

The stories came mostly from people who had been watching me forever, while anyone who had missed those streams was openly curious. With half the chat yelling at me to just do a gaming broadcast while I was at it, I cut the zoo tour short and went home.

"This really has been a while."

I sat down at the computer, booted the game, and felt a surprising swell of fondness at the login screen. I knew perfectly well that I was terrible, but it had been genuinely fun with friends. The fondness did not last.

"……This is a bit much, don't you think?"

Sure, the last time I'd played, I had dropped ten in a row inside a single hour. I still hadn't expected them to slap a permanent ban on me for it. A person is allowed to be bad at a game, aren't they?

Resentment settled in where the fondness had been. A permanent ban, just for being bad at a game. The chat was howling, and I shut the game off with my lip stuck out. Asking them to lift it would have bruised my pride somehow.

I stared blankly at the desktop, wondering what I was supposed to do now. Then one game came to mind — something I'd been better at than the team stuff, at least.

"It's basically a retro game these days…… Anyone know this one?"

I started up a game where vegetable-looking characters hopped over obstacles, and plenty of people chimed in that they knew it.

"I'm not exactly amazing at this one either, but I can usually make it to the final round."

The moment I said it, chat exploded, calling me a liar and demanding proof. Aftershock, clearly, of what they had just seen.

"I'll prove it!"

I launched the game.

"No! This doesn't count! This does not count!"

The problem was this. It was an obstacle race that started with thirty players, and only three of them had actually run forward. The other twenty-six were, of course, obstructing me. They had boxed me in so I couldn't move an inch, and two of the three who had pulled ahead were planted at the entrance like an iron fortress, determined to keep me from finishing.

They had made the game itself impossible to play, and then they laughed at me. All I could do was howl. Howling changed nothing. A countdown started, almost as if to mock me, and I met the end without taking a single step off the starting line.

With close to a hundred million subscribers, it was entirely possible for every player in a thirty-person match to be a troll. I tried hiding the start screen. It didn't matter. Too many people were lying in wait for me, and no matter how many times I queued, the result never changed.

"Daddy, whatcha doing?"

Drawn in by the howling, So-eun peered over with open curiosity.

"I'm playing a game. So-eun, you wanna try?"

"Yeah!"

I sat her on my lap and set her fingers on the keyboard, and the character began lurching every which way. Short fingers, and no real grasp of the controls — of course she flailed. The reaction, though, was nothing like the one I had gotten.

Whenever she neared a trap that popped your character if you stepped on it, some ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠other player sacrificed themselves and burst in her place. Just before she could pitch off a cliff, others fell instead and turned themselves into footholds. One person who tried to sabotage her anyway got mobbed by everyone else.

"Hehe, I'm first?"

"Uh…… Yeah. So-eun's in first."

"I'm number one!"

I watched her march off, thrilled to be first, then turned a thoroughly sour look on the camera.

"You people are way too much. Seriously."

The words were barely out before the donations came flooding back.

The place was full of people making fun of me. I scanned the chat with a hawk's eye and could not find a single person on my side. I looked again, and again, and all I could see was everyone taking joy in my suffering. I let out a small sigh at the sight, quit the game, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and faced the camera.

"Yeah. I really can't do this game thing. So, in that spirit, I'll be releasing some pro tips for raising animals. Today I'm covering dogs, so if you've got a pet dog, go get them. And turn your speakers up."

The chat filled with people telling me to wait. I gave them a moment, and then they were all clamoring that they were ready — hurry up and share the famous pro tip.

"Walk time! Bring the leash! We're going on a walk! A fun walk! Let's run like crazy! Bark! Bark until we get out the door! We're walking until you drop!"

I bellowed it from the diaphragm, and I could feel the stress of gaming with these viewers blast clean off me. The chat, on the other hand, went up in flames.

Watching that chat burn was a genuine pleasure.

"Trample my pure devotion like this, and that's it. That's when a man becomes a thug."

I got to end the stream in excellent spirits. The editing team was pleased too, saying some perfectly usable footage had come out of it.

It was good for me, good for the editing team, and the dogs were obviously going to love it, so there was nothing to worry about. The owners? A walk is a dog owner's duty. Even less of a problem.