Hearts That Cannot Reach Each Other
"That's it for today. We'll pick it back up tomorrow, okay?"
Once she finished the round of sixty-four, she cut the stream.
Bedtime was already breathing down her neck.
Fortunately the bracket had been shuffled pretty evenly this time, so top-tier tracks almost never had to eliminate each other. The only real regret was losing one of Aimyon's songs along the way.
"Gyaaaah—!"
After double-checking that the broadcast was properly offline, she stretched until her back cracked. Sitting in a chair all day had always been something she could pride herself on as a pro—but this new body made even that feel a little heavy. Having to talk nonstop the whole time didn't help, either.
"Let's take a look."
She slammed every open browser tab shut and dove into the V-Snipe Gallery.
There was no cafe, and hardly any of her viewers used the other platforms, so if she wanted reactions, this was the place to go.
Most of the posts about her ran roughly like that. The aggressive ones had definitely thinned out a lot. Was this the power of song? We Are the World, or what?
Her image in the gallery flipped on a dime depending on what she did on stream, and the importance of content hit her like a brick to the ribs.
She clicked the concept post that looked like it would be stuffed full of praise.
How do I put her voice… young, maybe?
It's super clean and clear, you know?
Honestly every kid who "can sing" these days is just riding on quirks and gimmicks. Tons of them with gravelly voices or zoom-mic junk, too.
Give it a little time and I feel like Yoo Serin's gonna snatch the Pajijik Vocal King title.
Well, a few mean-spirited ones still showed up in the replies—but that was just how the V-Snipe Gallery had always been. All things considered, this counted as a pretty solid reaction.
"Hmm…."
Scrolling through the comments, she found herself hesitating.
Should she really go for Vocal King?
If she wanted to become a VTuber the community would actually hype up, the singing had to keep pace.
Maybe I should try a vocal academy.
Trying to grind it out alone was a stretch. Art was the kind of thing where catching the feel of it was half the battle. She needed someone beside her to tell her whether she was heading down the right road.
Ugh!
And then a memory slammed into her out of nowhere—a scene from her previous life.
"Again."
"Even if I stagger from exhaustion, believe in me—"
"Again."
"……."
Her teacher had looped the highlight section of the accompaniment over and over until she was satisfied. And it had been an insanely high song, too. Brutal enough that she'd half considered filing an abuse report.
She understood it, though. She wasn't some prodigy—just a guy who had the gall to say he wanted to be a singer. She'd even gone to the academy director herself and said, Please assign me the strictest teacher you've got!
Well. Nobody's going to push me that hard now.
Back then she'd been an adult man. Now she was a delicate thirteen-year-old girl. And she wasn't even aiming to become a singer, so there was no reason for the lessons to be that tight.
"Hmm. I'll have to think about it."
It wasn't a decision that needed rushing. She was a general gaming streamer first. If her singing improved gradually over time, the whales would enjoy that journey for what it was.
She clicked the next post that caught her eye.
Listening to her talk during the World Cup today, she seems like she actually knows Japanese music
Did she dig into that scene a lot even before she switched models?
I was getting sick of modern VTubers just surface-leveling everything and then pretending they know stuff, but this one seems a little for real
Debating whether to make her my oshi
This was the problem. Posts hunting for the old Yoo Serin. If something even she didn't know got dug up and started hurting the current broadcast, that would be a real headache.
To make things worse, someone who had actually watched the old streams showed up. Judging by the comments, it really seemed like they'd seen them.
They even knew the two small-time VTubers! Was this guy some kind of VTuber encyclopedia?
"Whew…."
Thankfully nothing along the lines of "Yoo Serin used to do this and that" had come out. If anything, getting info she hadn't known made clicking the post a god-tier move.
So one of them majored in applied music.
That was a factor that would matter a lot if they collabed again later. Like the comments said, there was a whole "singing-pick" audience—viewers who bounced around watching VTubers who could actually sing. Just collabing with Seol Yunha could pull some of that traffic in. Not a huge number, maybe, but viewers were viewers. More was always better.
I could even think up content around it.
And what was a major, after all? It meant she'd dug deep into that field. She'd still remember the methods her professors taught, so turning vocal training into a regular content series felt completely doable.
The one sticking point was how to reconnect with them…. That, she decided, could wait until after they'd returned to Pajijik. Agonizing over it alone wouldn't change anything—it would all depend on the situation at the time.
It'll work out somehow.
She shook her head hard, dumping the stray thoughts, and went looking for praise to recharge her mental battery.
"Whoa…."
Virtual YouTuber activity name: Seol Yunha. Real name: Lee Hayoon. She was browsing the V-Snipe Gallery.
She knew this wasn't exactly a nice place. Some people even called it the "VTuber-killing gallery." But Hayoon would bet money that ninety out of a hundred VTubers lurked here. What choice did they have? When something blew up in this industry, this was the place that reacted fastest. It was also the place where nothing stayed hidden.
Unlike ordinary users who came for the dopamine, she came here to survive.
"She hit two thousand…."
In a gallery that ranked first in post volume, amid the flood of threads, Hayoon found one about a particular VTuber and clicked it.
A kid she'd collabed with often back when she was still at Pajijik.
Serin had hit two thousand viewers today with a J-pop World Cup. Hayoon had already seen her crack three thousand before—but that had been people piling in for the drama. Pulling viewers with pure, self-driven content was a completely different story.
How many did I get when I did it?
She'd run a J-pop World Cup at Pajijik herself. From what she remembered, maybe around a hundred eighty people had shown up…. Back then she'd bounced around the room, thrilled that even that many had come.
"…I'm jealous."
As Hayoon scrolled the mouse wheel, the longing only grew. She wanted to collab with Serin again. Of course part of it was that they'd been close—but if she put a hand on her heart and told the truth, wanting the trickle-down viewers mattered a little more.
And no wonder. Over a year had already flown by. A year spent as a small-time VTuber.
Before starting, she'd sworn, I'm good at singing, so I'm guaranteed to make it! But once she actually stepped into the industry, singing wasn't what mattered.
"She really is good at streaming…."
Hayoon clicked through every clip of Serin's World Cup. Had this kid always had reactions this good? She'd always felt young and fresh before, but she'd clearly changed. If Hayoon had to put it into words—she'd evolved to fit internet broadcasting.
She wasn't especially witty with her words, but she threw out exactly what the viewers wanted, one after another. So the chat lit up, and the stream came alive.
Did she find some kind of master teacher?
Hayoon knew the theory too. She knew what made viewers happy, what made them type in chat, what made them come back next time. But talent was talent—it never quite went the way your heart wanted. In the end, all that remained on her stream were the whales people called "turrets."
At some point, even when new viewers wandered in, they never settled—they just left. And she couldn't exactly purge the turrets, either. They were most of her income. Unless you'd already achieved financial freedom, that wasn't an easy call to make.
A vicious cycle. The brand-new platform she'd transferred to wasn't growing, so she was back in the red. Right when she'd been agonizing over whether she could even make a living this way, Yoo Serin's reappearance had been a single ray of light.
"And this one isn't even answering…."
Watching the clips, Hayoon opened CocoaTalk. Seo Jia still hadn't replied to the news that Serin was back. Hayoon had floated the idea of sticking close to Serin once they returned to Pajijik—was Jia just not interested?
No.
That couldn't be it. Jia was just as hungry for success. Hadn't they transferred together for the money in the first place?
Tap-tap-tap—
Having made up her mind, Hayoon hammered at the keys.