The Talula Relay
“S-Sorry to intrude──!”
His heart was pounding.
His voice cracked embarrassingly halfway out of his throat.
Kim Jinsu felt a stab of self-loathing as he stepped into the house Lee Harang had invited him to—her… no, his house.
Right now he was going to a man’s place.
To give away unused streaming equipment at a bargain price.
To act as a handy repairman and make up for the trouble he’d caused by carrying out Harang’s punishment for him.
And yet, and yet──!
Damn it, if I get excited, I lose!
His chest fluttered as if he’d just heard one of those legendary lines that killed the mood stone dead—“Wanna grab ramen?”—from some crush he’d been dying to impress.
He had been invited to a man’s house, and the fact that he still felt this thrilled made him hate himself a little.
But it couldn’t be helped.
His brain understood perfectly well that Lee Harang was a man just like him, but every time he actually looked at Harang, his sense of reality went haywire and his heart kicked into overdrive. That was beyond his control.
“Come on in.”
Worse, Harang had come out to greet him wearing something so casual it looked almost deliberately chosen.
Or rather, his skin was practically visible through it.
At that completely defenseless sight, Jinsu could only suck in a sharp breath.
“H-Harang? Since your livestream’s running too, maybe you should put on a little more clothes….”
“Huh? What’s wrong with my clothes?”
Harang tugged at the T-shirt he wore around the house as if genuinely puzzled by what the problem could possibly be.
Jinsu freaked out and hurried to stop him.
“Stop! First, just stop!”
He had definitely not come alone.
He should’ve brought someone—right, even an editor—anything, as long as there had been another person there to dilute this madness.
My heart feels like it’s about to short-circuit….
He genuinely didn’t know where to look.
What drove him even crazier was Harang’s attitude: What’s the problem? We’re both guys, aren’t we? That maddeningly matter-of-fact indifference.
Lead us not into temptation—only save us from the otokonoko!
Jinsu muttered a prayer inwardly and struggled to purge his sinful thoughts.
Watching him labor so earnestly, Harang let out a snort of amusement.
This is fun.
Of course he was doing it on purpose.
He knew exactly what he was doing and was clearly enjoying Jinsu’s reaction, toying with him for sport.
Since I’ve got him making this face, I might as well have my fun.
With that devilish little mindset, Harang suppressed a secret, impish laugh and savored every ounce of Jinsu’s distress.
He wondered how the rest of the viewers were reacting.
Feeling a pang of regret that he couldn’t see the chat, Harang took the bag of gear Jinsu had brought and ushered him inside.
Then, just as he bent slightly and the loose shirt slipped enough to reveal the line of his chest, Jinsu’s eyes followed it against his will.
The next instant he sagged with a crushing sense of defeat, thinking, What the hell am I doing? Staring at a chest that isn’t even there….
Seeing that, Harang decided to quit teasing him for the moment and get to the point of why he’d invited Jinsu over. As thanks, he offered him something to drink and said,
“I looked into it a little, and the streaming equipment you’re giving me… even as used gear, it seems pretty pricey. Are you really sure about this?”
It wasn’t free, exactly, but it was cheap—ridiculously cheap.
Unlike Ugly Harang, Angel Harang had always had enough jobs in hospitality and customer service to make good money off this face.
He’d seen plenty of nasty things because of it, sure, but he still had a pretty fat bank account.
So it felt almost embarrassing that he could’ve charged more and still been fine.
“Yeah, well, I’m getting plenty of fun out of this content too.”
Jinsu answered calmly.
Even if it was only temporary, he was still a big-shot streamer pulling in nearly ten thousand live viewers.
At this point, making a scene out of used equipment and selling it for fair market price would be a waste compared to just turning it into a broadcast-worthy bit like this.
“Still, I feel a little bad… so I guess I should give you some service at least.”
“S-Service?”
He swallowed hard before he even realized it.
Harang looked at him innocently, as if he had no idea what that word was doing to him.
“Yes, as a service──.”
“As a service?”
“While you’re setting up the stream, I’ll make dinner myself and treat you.”
Of course.
Then again, the stream was running too, so….
What was I expecting, and what am I even disappointed about? Who am I making excuses to?
The calm self-control he usually prided himself on had always been solid enough to earn him a reputation for an unshakable temperament, but in front of this pretty-boy girl thing, he became a reed in the wind.
Sighing at the realization, Jinsu answered, “Then… I’ll gratefully accept.”
“Yep, I’m good at cooking, so you can look forward to it.”
And so Jinsu handled the stream setup while Harang cooked.
Of course, in response to this arrangement, the Byeolsu had a lot to say.
They were making a huge fuss about wanting to watch Harang cook.
Among them were plenty of longtime regulars, which made Jinsu a little hurt, but….
Honestly, if it were me, I’d probably want the same thing.
When he imagined how cute Harang would look cooking with that tiny body, he could understand the appeal.
In the end, he gave in and followed the viewers’ demands.
“Ah.”
As soon as he went to bring the camera to the kitchen, he gasped.
The ultimate male fantasy…!
Why did that have to be a man?
The moment he saw Harang properly in the kitchen, apron and all, Jinsu was overcome with bitter resentment.
At the same time he was thinking he was getting one hell of an eyeful, and at the same time he wanted to rip his own hair out and scream because of the fact that that’s a guy.
“Um… Harang? The viewers want to watch cooking, so is it okay if I leave the camera here in the kitchen?”
“Huh? Sure, that’s fine. Oh, right, I’m going to be doing internet streaming now too, so can I treat this like practice and just try stuff out?”
“Of course.”
What reason could there possibly be to say no?
Jinsu set the camera down at a good angle where the kitchen would be clearly visible, then returned to Harang’s room.
Now he had to play handyman alone and miserable, without even the comfort of viewers watching him suffer.
“How’s this? Can you see well?”
Harang waved at the camera.
The Byeolsu went wild over the gesture.
Since Jinsu had left his phone beside the camera so he could monitor the chat, Harang used that to check the comments and began his first-ever stream.
And not just any stream—one aimed at nearly ten thousand viewers.
For a normal person, that would be nerve-racking.
Even if they weren’t physically beside him, it would be natural to feel the pressure of being watched by strangers in Korea and even in other countries.
But who in the world was Lee Harang, really?
Ten thousand people watching him?
That wasn’t any more impressive than getting run over by a truck and dying.
After dying and coming back to life, he’d gotten pretty blasé about most things.
So even in front of around ten thousand viewers, he could cook and chat with complete composure.
“You say I’m good at cooking? Thanks. I’ve lived alone for a long time, so this much is a must.”
As Harang deftly prepped the ingredients with a kitchen knife, the viewers buzzed noisily.
The knife work was anything but ordinary, especially for someone with such a small frame.
If there was one thing that improved thanks to the merging of Angel Harang and Ugly Harang, it was definitely his mental fortitude.
Harang didn’t even blink at the chat full of nonsense, filthy jokes, and borderline-missing-the-mark remarks.
Depending on how you looked at it, he was basically tailor-made for internet broadcasting.
These old jerks on construction sites are more vulgar than this.
Compared to the kinds of things he’d heard back when he was Ugly Harang, this was basically adorable.
This was the BlackStar channel, full of Byeolsu who spent all their time trying to poke at Jinsu’s calm and unshakeable demeanor.
And now there was Lee Harang—the real-life otokonoko—on screen.
Even with the manager right there, plenty of viewers were so worked up they were typing extra-spicy comments far beyond their usual level.
Besides, these were guys who mostly watched game streams rather than girl-cam channels, so they had the “when you’ve eaten meat, you know how it tastes” problem: they were terrible at self-restraint.
Even with all that going on, Harang just smiled and kept cooking.
He looked like a cute girl on the outside, but inside he was a sticky, shameless male—so watching the Byeolsu go wild over sex jokes and excitement only made him grin.
Unlike in his previous life, when everyone avoided him, now everybody was cheering just to see him. That fact alone filled him with a strange happiness and a sense of delight.
More, more. Keep getting excited, you little brats.
Puhuhu.
Harang swallowed down the nasty black laugh threatening to spill out and kept enjoying the reaction in chat.
Still, if the intensity got too high, that would be a problem.
After deciding to start streaming and doing some research, he’d learned that every channel had its own atmosphere, and that you had to handle that atmosphere well or things could get messy fast.
He planned to make use of his looks and his unusual appeal, sure… but that didn’t mean he intended to run a 19+ adult stream. If anything, he needed to learn how to control the line properly through this opportunity.
He had decided to use BlackStar’s channel as a useful tutorial for establishing his own broadcast style.
Just then, the perfect donation came through.
“My parents? I’m an orphan, so… I’ve had to take care of myself since I was little.”
Apparently nobody expected a sudden Talula to come flying out from there, because the Byeolsu who’d been panting like perverts at the sight of the pretty-boy newcomer snapped back to their senses at once.
“Actually, being an orphan made it even worse. Maybe because they figured there’d be no fallout if they bullied me, since I didn’t have parents….”
Harang was speaking about it with the detached calm of someone talking about another person’s life, but to the viewers listening, it was a deeply painful story.
The broadcast atmosphere, which had been heating up and heading dangerously past the line, was instantly brought under control.
“It’s okay. I guess I’ve gotten over it, or accepted it, so it doesn’t really bother me anymore.”
As he said that, Harang smiled a little.
The Byeolsu instinctively guessed that his past was probably nothing but a minefield.
At the viewers’ reaction, Harang shrugged and went back to focusing on the cook stream.
Today’s menu was doenjang-jjigae, fermented soybean paste stew, and rolled omelet.
Simple dishes, but—
That was enough to get the Byeolsu chattering happily.
The mood, which had sagged for a moment, refreshed itself again, and Harang went on making rice, simmering the doenjang stew, and cooking the egg rolls as he slowly got a feel for the pleasures of being a streamer, awkward as he still was.
Streaming… it’s fun.
Accepting that he looked like a girl, liking it, using it, enjoying it—that was one thing. But being confessed to by guys over and over was a completely different problem.
WWE was fine, but getting hit with UFC-level advances was disgusting.
That was why he’d started streaming in the first place: to solve that problem. But now that he was actually doing it, he found himself getting into it.
As a way of thanking Jinsu for helping create that opportunity, he piled on the seasoning without mercy and prepared a meal that turned out every bit as delicious as the amount of seasoning suggested.
“I’ve finished setting up the equipment, and after dinner I just need to fine-tune the stream settings and do a test broadcast. That should be it.”
“You worked hard. It’s nothing fancy, but please eat as much as you want.”
“Oh, this is quite the feast.”
Just as the freshly cooked rice and dishes finished at the perfect moment, Jinsu’s setup was almost done too.
They agreed to handle the rest after the meal, and the two sat down across from each other at the table.
He would’ve already been grateful just to get takeout, but this was homemade.
Even if the one who made it was a guy… no matter how he looked at it, the person serving it looked like a girl, and that kept activating something deep in his male fantasy brain.
Don’t. Don’t react. He’s a guy, remember? This isn’t some girl’s homemade lunchbox!
But no matter how much he scolded himself, there were some things he couldn’t help.
At the very least, it felt like he was eating a lunchbox made by a girl, and that alone made him weirdly happy.
Maybe because of that, Jinsu, who was usually more reserved, got a little too loose-lipped and ended up saying something stupid.
“Wow, this is delicious! Did you learn this recipe from your mother?”
The chat reaction was strange.
Jinsu had been in the middle of eating when he caught it, and as he blinked in confusion, the damage was already done.
“Nope, I don’t have a mom. I just learned it from the orphanage and the internet, I guess.”
The mine exploded!
The viewers knew what had been said in the kitchen earlier, but Jinsu, busy setting up the equipment, had no idea at all.
Jinsu, who’d just taken a Talula to the face, broke out in a cold sweat and had to stop eating even though the food tasted so good.
It felt like the rice he’d been chewing had turned into sand.
The silence was heavy enough to hurt, and Harang’s eating sounds in the middle of it stabbed right into his chest.
It had only been two days since he’d met Lee Harang.
And in that short amount of time, Kim Jinsu had already found himself facing the biggest crises of his streaming life—no, of his entire life—more times than he could count.