Pre-Check
"Well then… I'll put out a formal job posting for YouTube staff once my wallet is a little healthier. As for a fan café, I'll look into setting one up soon. Shall we move on to the next item on the agenda? The outdoor broadcast I mentioned earlier."
The chat exploded the moment the words left her mouth.
"First, as I said before, this will be a first-person camera with no face reveal. I even bought a smartphone gimbal for the occasion. So—where should we go? I'll take recommendations."
Quite the range of opinions.
Hmm.
Places packed with people made me uneasy, too. I wasn't a hikikomori the way Jeong Eun-gyeol had been, but standing in the middle of Gangnam Station with a gimbal would draw every eye in the crowd—and Jeong Eun-gyeol's face was anything but ordinary.
"I don't believe I need to visit a crowded location simply to prove I am not a boar… I'm not the type who enjoys being the center of attention, either. Hmm… That said, I can hardly go somewhere completely deserted."
I thought it over, then spoke again.
"Then this Saturday, two in the afternoon, Hongdae Station Exit 9—"
"What do you mean…?"
Some of the chat seemed genuinely worried for me…
…They really had been planning to show up.
A chill ran down my spine.
"I see your point. In that case, I retract what I said. The location of this outdoor broadcast will remain strictly confidential."
"Then let's leave the outdoor broadcast discussion there."
I checked the clock in the corner of the screen and found we were well past my usual sign-off time. I hadn't expected pure banter to burn through the hours this fast.
"My, look at the time. Quite a nutritious session for a canceled lecture, wouldn't you say?"
"Then please look forward to our field study this Saturday at two in the afternoon. That concludes today's lecture… or rather, today's broadcast. Well done, everyone."
Leaving the viewers' goodbyes behind, I pressed the end stream button.
The next day.
After finishing a hellish jog with the ajumma runners starting at nine in the morning—
"Our youngest! Don't be late tomorrow morning either, got it~?"
"Yes, yes… Please get home safely…"
I answered from where I'd more or less collapsed onto a bench.
This… my stamina is improving, right?
The ajummas chatted for a while the way they always did, then dispersed. One of them had forced a vitamin drink into my hand, and I twisted at the bottle cap…
"Huh?"
Why wouldn't it open?
I put more force into it, but the cap refused to turn.
"Haa."
Even allowing for how drained I was from the run, being unable to open a single bottle was pathetic. Did I need strength training on top of endurance work…?
A long road ahead.
In the end I braced the cap against my clothes and managed to twist it free. The grip strength of a twenty-two-year-old woman amounted to this—I felt a fresh wave of melancholy.
Sipping the vitamin drink, I dragged my battered body home. After a shower I lay on the bed and let myself recover for about two hours.
Ding!
My phone chimed. A delivery had arrived at the front door.
I opened the door and found the package I'd been waiting for—a smartphone gimbal for the outdoor stream.
At first I'd considered just using an ordinary selfie stick, but that approach had all sorts of problems. So I'd gone ahead and ordered a one-hundred-fifty-thousand-won smartphone gimbal without looking back.
I opened the box, roughly assembled it while consulting the manual, slotted my phone in, and switched it on.
Whirrr—
A soft motor hum, and the phone leveled itself.
"Oh."
I wandered around the room testing the gimbal's performance. No matter how I waved my hand, the image stayed as calm as a lake. At this level, walking around outdoors while streaming wouldn't ruin the broadcast with shaky footage.
It had other features too—subject tracking, voice recognition, motion control… None of them were things I expected to use, so I filed them under interesting, I suppose and moved on.
"Shall we take the rehearsal outside, then?"
I had no intention of testing once indoors and calling it done. Having decided to throw myself into internet streaming in earnest, I meant to give every piece of content my best effort. Today's schedule was to take the gimbal and scout the outdoor broadcast route in advance.
As for the location… I'd just wander around the neighborhood.
Originally I'd considered touring popular hotspots where people gathered, but walking those places with a gimbal would draw far too much attention. That was still beyond me.
I pulled on a comfortable short-sleeved T-shirt and baggy sweatpants. The weather was turning warm enough that a hooded zip-up was getting hard to wear. Once I was changed, I stepped out the front door with my phone already mounted on the gimbal.
I walked the quiet back alleys of the neighborhood, gimbal in hand. I'd considered practicing my commentary while walking, but quickly abandoned the idea. Babbling into empty air in the middle of the street with no audience would make me look like a complete weirdo. Without a stream running, I was just a suspicious woman carrying a camera.
…I'll practice the commentary at home. For now, just commit the route and the shots to memory.
Passersby glanced at me now and then, but thankfully no one stopped to ask what I was doing. I was making decent progress, eyes on the camera, when it happened.
A group of kids who looked like high schoolers were eating ice cream in a small neighborhood park. The moment they spotted me, they started whispering among themselves.
What is this…
If Jeong Eun-gyeol had witnessed this scene, she probably would have fainted on the spot. At least they didn't seem to be angling for a shakedown. The kids didn't even look like delinquents.
As I drew closer, their voices carried over.
"Dude, look at that noona. She's actually insane."
"Is she a YouTuber? She's holding her phone with something on it."
"She's crazy pretty—is she a celebrity?"
I tried not to pay them any mind as I cut across the park.
Surely even hot-blooded teenagers wouldn't just walk up to a stranger… Ask for my number? High schoolers? Come on.
"Excuse me! Noona!"
Three boys in high school came swarming over and blocked my path. One wore a school uniform; the other two were in something casual—street clothes, maybe. Their eyes were sparkling.
"Whoa, are you a YouTuber, noona? Or a TikToker?"
"Up close you're seriously… you're really pretty. What's your channel name?"
"Noona! I'll subscribe! I'll even turn on notifications, just tell me the channel name! Please?"
That raw, boisterous high-school energy—all three talking at once—made my eardrums ring.
"Kids, settle down for a moment."
They looked so young that casual speech slipped out before I could stop it. The boys didn't seem to mind in the slightest and kept right on chattering.
"Whoa. Listen to that voice. Noona, you sound like a voice actress!"
"Noona said settle down. Shut up for a sec."
"Are you filming right now? Am I on camera?"
One of them waved both hands wildly in front of the lens as he said it. I spoke in a calm voice.
"Kids. Just a moment… hyung—no, may I say something?"
"Yes!"
They answered in perfect unison and stared straight at my face. The attention was a lot.
"First of all, thank you for the kind words. But I'm afraid I have to disappoint you. I'm still getting ready, so there aren't any videos up yet. Right now I'm just filming a test run on my own."
I gave the gimbal a light wiggle as I spoke.
"Oh, for real? I thought you were shooting something serious."
"So you're not uploading what you filmed today?"
"Aww, that's a shame."
Watching the boundless energy of teenagers made something from the old days surface, and a small smile slipped out before I could stop it. The boys went blank staring at my face.
"Whoaaa."
"Noona, you're pretty."
One of them hesitated, then asked,
"Noona, uh… you wouldn't give me your number, would you?"
The words were barely out before the other two tore into him.
"You lunatic. You've got a girl you're talking to."
"I'm telling Ju-eun everything tomorrow."
The one who'd asked scrambled to recover.
"Ah, shit, I said that without thinking… Cancel that just now. Cancel!"
"Yeah, right."
Just being young was enough to radiate this bright, overflowing energy. I huffed a quiet laugh and patted the boys on the shoulders.
"Your ice cream's going to melt. Go finish it."
Even I was a little surprised by how gently the words came out—almost enough to charm myself. The high schoolers grinned wide and stepped aside.
"Yes, yes! Noona, I hope your stream blows up!"
I gave them a light wave as I passed. Once I started doing outdoor broadcasts for real, these kinds of sudden encounters would probably become routine. I wasn't planning on making this a one-time thing, so getting used to it in advance wouldn't hurt.
I wandered the neighborhood for about an hour before heading back to my studio apartment. Once home, I detached the phone and transferred the recorded footage to my computer. The video played without issue, and the quality was more than satisfactory—the image followed my gaze with silky smoothness. The run-in with the high school boys at the park was entertaining even from my side of the screen. And my recorded voice sounded better than I'd expected…
People usually said hearing your own recorded voice felt awkward. But then, the original owner of this voice was Jeong Eun-gyeol, so my case was a special one.
Either way, at this level I could run the actual broadcast without any trouble. I was watching the footage with that thought in mind when—
"Huh?"
I hit pause and dragged the playback bar back a little. It was the stretch where I'd been walking through the neighborhood shopping street. In one corner of the frame, something was reflected in the dark plate-glass window of a closed storefront. I took a screenshot and zoomed in.
A tall, slender woman walking with a gimbal was reflected in the glass.
"Oh no."
If I hadn't done a rehearsal, this would have been a disaster. Thinking about it, cities were nothing but mirrors—storefront windows, tinted car glass, the convex traffic mirrors on alley corners. If this had gone out live… there was no way the viewers would have missed it.
Good thing I'd rehearsed. If I'd casually gone live without this, Jeong Eun-gyeol's face would have been plastered all over the internet.
"I'm going to have to change the broadcast route."
I'd avoid the commercial streets and stick to residential areas… or maybe the lakeside park where I went running. Only roads without a single reflective pane of glass.