It'll Work Out Somehow
Lee Da-som: By the way, if we keep going over chat this is going to get ridiculously long. Would a call be okay?
A call.
I'd never spoken with Hina on the phone before — only over Distalk — but…
Well. It didn't matter.
Jeong Eun-gyeol: Sure. Shall I call you?
Lee Da-som: I'll call you!
And almost at once, my smartphone started ringing.
"Hello?"
"Hi! This is our first time on the phone, isn't it? I might actually be a little nervous? Hehe."
Nervous? Hardly.
"Please, speak as comfortably as you like."
"If Unknown just gives me a firm yes on joining the crew, I really will be able to relax…"
Hmm…
Whether I said yes later or said yes now — what difference did it make?
"Ah, about the crew. If my joining wouldn't be a burden… I'd like to come aboard."
"Huh? Just like that? For real?"
"For real."
"Yahoo!"
Hina sounded ready to jump for joy. You could hear how thrilled she was just from her voice.
"Honestly, out of the three of you, I thought persuading Unknown would be the hardest. And yet you're the first one to join… Thank you so much!"
"Not at all. I'm the one who should be grateful. Reaching out to a nobody rookie VTuber like me…"
"A nobody? Please! Unknown, you're the core of this crew!"
"You're too kind."
"Anyway, let me tell you about the other two. Could you open CocoaTalk on your computer? I wouldn't exactly call this a briefing, but I can at least show you their avatars."
"Of course."
Unless I was asleep, the computer was always on. I sat down at the desk, jiggled the mouse to wake the monitor from sleep, double-clicked the CocoaTalk icon, and opened Hina's chat window.
"I'm in."
"Alright — first candidate… well, she's basically already locked in. She said she wants to join, too. Anyway, she's a VTuber called Kuroneko."
I looked at the photo that had just popped up in the chat.
A black-haired girl in Japanese shrine-maiden-style clothing. The striking thing was her eyes — slightly unfocused, which gave her an intensely dreamy look.
"She's an occult specialist VTuber. Her main content is horror games, reading ghost stories, and reviewing occult items. Sometimes she does haunted-spot investigations or major-title games, too. For a VTuber, she does a lot of outdoor streams."
A decidedly unusual concept for a VTuber.
"Occult, huh…"
"What? Not a fan?"
"No. It just reminded me of that video of mine you sent."
"Ah, the cult-recruiter video?"
Hina giggled.
"Come to think of it, could that count as occult too? Though with her it's less religion and more… how do I put it? She calls herself a 'positivist occultist.'"
An odd pairing of words.
"Hmm."
"Meaning she doesn't just believe things blindly — she wants to verify them herself. Even when she goes to haunted houses, she packs every piece of gear she can carry. So she's not the type to insist she's right about everything. And so far, Kuroneko has never actually seen a ghost."
"So not the kind who digs her heels in no matter what."
"She'll admit it cleanly, actually. That's part of why I want her on the crew — that, and the fact that she's a real occultist, not just playing a concept. Last year she spent about four million of her own money on occult stuff, so…"
"Someone genuinely immersed in the occult. She sounds like a fine person."
"Huh? That's a better review than I expected."
"There's a difference between someone who sells faith and someone who tests it. She's not like those two I met in the park. I have a feeling this person would have been willing to answer my questions."
"Oh… that's actually pretty cool. If you told Kuroneko that, she'd love it. Ah — but if you ever ask her about the occult, you should be careful."
"Why is that?"
"She basically launches into a full lecture. Last time I asked her one little thing and got stuck listening for thirty minutes."
…That hit a little close to home.
"Professor?"
"No, please continue. What about the second one?"
"A friend named Harang."
At the same time, another photo appeared in the CocoaTalk window.
A delicate fairy avatar with light-green hair and leaf ornaments. Smiling brightly — the exact opposite of Kuroneko.
"She has a calm impression."
"Only the avatar… does."
"Only the avatar?"
"When she debuted, her concept was 'forest fairy.' She's got a great voice and she can sing, so she was probably aiming for that pure, ethereal vibe. The concept lasted less than ten minutes into her first stream."
"Ten minutes… what on earth did she do?"
"From what I heard, it fell apart during her self-introduction. She got so nervous she rushed through the script, tried to ad-lib her way out of it, bit her tongue, screamed — and she's been riding that energy ever since. Like an eight-ton truck with no brakes?"
"And you're recruiting someone like that because…"
"Because she sings incredibly well. Day to day she's a walking stream-disaster machine, but the second she starts singing, she becomes a completely different person. And… well, the decisive reason is that I have a feeling something incredible will happen if the four people I have in mind all get together."
I see.
Not just a gathering of friends — a combination built for synergy.
An occultist, a runaway eight-ton truck, me, and Hina.
…Hmm.
"Are you sure you can handle that?"
Honestly, everyone's personalities were so strong that Hina looked like the only possible mediator in the middle.
"I put this combination together because it's unmanageable. Doesn't that sound more fun?"
She laughed as she said it, like she was already enjoying herself.
On purpose, then.
When the industry's number one — solo or corporate — said something like that, it somehow sounded almost convincing.
"If I can't rein the two of them in, I'll be counting on you, Unknown."
"Hmm…"
She was loading responsibility onto me.
Then again, persuading people was something I found entertaining. Complete inability to communicate would be a problem… but surely it wouldn't come to that.
"Anyway! I've already talked to both of them, and I think they'll say yes. So — how about we all get together for a meal this week? You're not living out in the countryside or anything, right?"
"I live in Seoul, yes."
Giving her my exact address felt like a bit much.
"Everyone's in Seoul or Gyeonggi, so getting together shouldn't be hard. What do you think?"
Hmm.
What should I do?
But I couldn't stay sealed inside a one-room apartment doing nothing but VTubing forever. Sooner or later, I was going to need some kind of social network.
"Sounds good. As for the time… as long as it isn't during my stream hours, anything works."
Aside from streaming and morning exercise, I had no schedule to speak of.
"Then I'll talk timing with the other two and let you know the place and time."
We exchanged a few more words after that, and the call ended.
Hmm.
So this would be the first time I met strangers since becoming Jeong Eun-gyeol.
Nervous… yeah, right.
My years of adult social life as a man hadn't simply vanished. The slight problems were that Jeong Eun-gyeol's appearance drew far too many eyes… and that the people I was about to meet had personalities that stuck out just as much.
Though — would the other three look at me and think the same thing?
That evening, I started my stream as usual.
And then I doubted my eyes.
Less than a minute after the going-live notification went out, the viewer count had already rocketed past double my usual numbers.
"…Quite a few new faces."
Yesterday's outdoor stream really had blown up, it seemed.
Newcomers and regulars were already sniping at each other in the chat.
"…Torture? That's hurtful to hear. That was a regular lecture."
I corrected the record.
Then — introductions first?
"For those of you joining us for the first time: I am the VTuber Unknown. My streams primarily deal with philosophy… though going forward, I intend to expand into a wider range of content."
Let's see… the viewer count…
Eight hundred.
Roughly three times my usual numbers.
"Since we have so many newcomers today, I'll deliver two announcements. First: as promised some time ago, I have opened a fan cafe. I'll put the address in the stream description."
"Second… while setting up the cafe, I ran into a problem."
I let the pause hang for a moment.
"I couldn't decide on a name for the cafe. And as I mentioned before, we also need a name for all of you."
"Precisely. Effective today, I'm opening a contest for the cafe name and the fandom name. You yourselves will name the space you'll inhabit — and the name you'll be called by."
The moment I finished speaking, the chat started scrolling in a flood.
"Submissions will be accepted on the cafe board, not in chat."
I'd already set up a contest board in the cafe for exactly this purpose.
I continued.
"The deadline is the end of this week. Results will be announced mid-next week, during a stream. I'll narrow it down to finalists, and the decision will be made by vote."
With the announcements finished, I ran the stream as usual. About half the first-time viewers fled the moment the philosophy talk began — but the remaining half survived to the end.
Not a bad survival rate.
After the stream, I was still in the chair, stretching out a stiff body this way and that, when my smartphone buzzed.
I woke the screen. A CocoaTalk notification was waiting.
Hmm.
Invited the moment the stream ended — Hina must have been watching.
The second I entered the chat room, messages started pouring in as if they'd been waiting for me.
Even reading pure text, the room felt noisy.
Especially Lee Ha-rang — she seemed to use her real name as her VTuber name, and her personality was a capital-E Extrovert through and through. Kuroneko seemed a bit of an odd one, too.
With that thought, I sent a reply.
And just like that, next Monday was locked in.
I sent the reply and collapsed onto the bed.
My first outside appointment since becoming Jeong Eun-gyeol. The other parties: popular VTubers…
Well.
It would work out somehow.
I was about to close my eyes when the smartphone buzzed one more time.
A private message.
"……"
It would work out… somehow?