Preparing the Next Content

After the finishing blow, Geunkko quietly vanished.

He might still have been watching the stream—not that it mattered either way.

Since she'd already set up Sadon Attack, she decided to make the entire day's content out of it.

Bang!

A control-point mode where the team that held the designated zone the longest won.

Slash— slash—

A pure knife fight decided by blades alone.

"Aaaaaaagh! Get away from me!!"

A game of tag where only the it-player could attack, and more.

It was an old game, but there turned out to be a surprising amount worth playing.

So this is how it's stayed alive this long.

"That'll be all for today."

By then, she'd already been goofing around for seven hours. Factor in the earlier chat session and the Geunkko event, and they'd blown past eight without even trying.

"Whoa! Thank you so much!"

Right before she was about to leave, a completely unfamiliar nickname dropped a fat donation. She dipped her head in a deep bow at the extravagant gift—

A self-sub and a hundred gifted subs!

Anyone that casually flush with cash had to be a whale from some other room.

"Th-thank you so much for gifting a hundred subs!!"

Even the people commonly called "free eyeballs" mattered, no question. Just filling seats led to higher placement on the rankings, and that in turn pulled in more traffic. She'd heard the difference in ad costs was staggering.

Even so, a whale was a one-man army—worth ten thousand. There was a legendary saying that if you just locked down the big spenders, a hundred subs could mean ten million won a month. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that outside of ads, a handful of whales carried most of a streamer's income.

An absolute festival of delight. Grinning so hard her mouth practically hooked up to her ears, she waved at the facial camera phone. Of course, without any proper gear, none of it actually showed up on screen.

"Thank you so much to everyone who came to watch today! I'll be back tomorrow!"

Man. Today had been packed.

This was the stuff.

All this time she'd only lurked while other people got talked about. Becoming the subject herself was this thrilling? And most of it was pure glaze, too.

Of course it is.

Hardcore VTuber viewers loathed male streamers with a passion. There were posts like, "OOO talked to a guy today," for crying out loud. It made sense—most graduation reasons were dating or marriage. That desperate wish to keep their oshi from leaving even a little longer was what drove the phenomenon.

And in the middle of all that, someone who'd come to pick a fight with Geunkko got thoroughly dunked on and beaten?

That was every fan's deepest yearning—their long-cherished dream!

But the market was so small that doing that to a fellow professional wasn't easy, and everyone had an image to protect, so they all played it safe.

"This is so good."

But her? Fresh off a re-debut, nothing to tiptoe around, actual talent, and a carefree thirteen years old!!

At this point she basically sat at the top of South Korea's caste system.

She was giggling her way through the popular posts when one that grated on her eyes popped up.

Oh, look at this guy? Daring to drag Pazizik's V-Emperor (True), Yoo Serin?

Click.

"Waaang…."

Just looking at it felt like her brain was melting. What on earth was the government doing? If they rounded these people up and put them to work, they could conquer every community on earth.

…Ah, right—she'd heard foreigners were even worse.

Well, it was a fair question. Those kinds of comments would probably keep coming until she turned on a camera, and even if she did a handcam, unless she showed up in a public lobby or something, people still wouldn't accept it.

But what kind of profession was VTubing? The moment fans formed, infinite shielding came free with purchase. The culture itself recoiled from dragging drama straight onto stream, so suspicion-level controversies barely even left a scratch. Something like this only hitchhiked along when a real problem blew up later. For now, ignoring it and moving on was fine.

"And it went according to plan, too."

On top of that, dumping all the rage onto Geunkko was working beautifully. Right now, anyone talking trash about Yoo Serin on the VTuber sniping board had been branded as part of the small-streamer crew. In a mudfight like this, nothing was more effective than herding people into a specific group—especially on anonymous communities, where there was no way to prove otherwise.

At this point, my weight class matters even more.

Today's peak viewers: eight hundred. Personally she'd expected to hit a thousand, so it fell a little short of her hopes.

Eight hundred on day three is still incredible, though.

Of course it was an absurd start. She wasn't even a corporate streamer with a solid foundation. For a regular indie, it was the kind of number people only dreamed about.

Still, it was nowhere near enough to become the emperor of Pazizik. You needed at least a ten-thousand average concurrent to even enter the V-Emperor conversation. And VTubers already got a bit of side-eye in the market, so weight class mattered even more than the camera.

What niggled at her a little was that today's events had slotted her into the "troublemaker" position. Maybe she was overthinking it, but in other streamers' eyes she might look unsuitable for collabs. If she started something at a tournament, it wouldn't stay a personal problem.

The solution is simple.

Make refusal impossible. No—go past that. Make them obsessed.

Every server admin hunting for Yoo Serin, every viewer hoping Yoo Serin would show up at tournaments, every platform sending Yoo Serin love calls!!

And for that, she needed the thing adults loved most: numbers.

"Tomorrow's content is…."

The stream the viewers wanted. That was the shortcut to success.

"This is it."

"I'm heading out!"

"What about lunch?"

"I'll be back around when you eat!"

The next morning. She finished getting ready right on the schedule she'd looked up and stepped outside.

"Ahem! Ahem!"

The whole walk there, she warmed up her throat. She gulped down water from the tumbler she'd brought from home. She'd only just woken up, so her voice was still rough, but to hit stream time she only had the morning free.

I'm nervous….

Her footsteps carried her toward a coin karaoke. Today's content was set as the so-called VS game: the "J-POP Ideal Type World Cup That Koreans Love."

The ultimate traffic magnet. A VTuber's secret weapon!

As a side note, there was also a World Cup of some game director's dance videos, but that trend had mostly passed.

Ding-a-ling—

The coin karaoke on the third floor of the building was silent as a doused fire. Who in their right mind came to sing on a weekday morning at ten? Even a pro singer would skip morning practice.

The kiosk is…

She planted herself in front of the kiosk and pulled out her check card. The place was nicely equipped, but there was exactly one problem: the kiosk was too tall. To touch the screen she had to crane her neck and go up on her tiptoes on top of that.

"Oh, you came to sing?"

While she was straining and fidgeting, an older woman with a mop approached from the back.

"Yes."

"What about school, this early in the morning?"

"Uh… I was living abroad and I'm just back for a bit!"

Nothing better came to mind, so she just made something up. Anyone could tell she looked like an elementary schooler—she couldn't exactly say she'd dropped out. And explaining homeschooling was too much of a hassle.

"I see. Lots of families send kids abroad these days. Living away from home must be hard, huh?"

"Y-yeah!"

"That's right, that's right. Study hard and it'll all pay off."

…Please stop.

Her insides were stuffed full of that thought, but she couldn't bring herself to say it to the kindly smiling owner.

"I-I'll pay for this first."

"Oh my! You must've been struggling with how short you are."

When she hastily tried to change the subject, the woman finally seemed to notice and set the mop aside. After tapping the kiosk a few times, she gestured toward her.

"Go on to room seven. Auntie'll make it free for you today."

What kind of windfall was this? A few lines of conversation and she was getting free service?

"Thank you!"

Being a thirteen-year-old pretty girl was the best life everrrrrrr!!