Sweet Naksu from a Big Company
“I only set up the stream and picked a stage name, so why the hell am I this exhausted…?”
Kim Junsu let out a deep breath, thinking he felt like he’d been wrung dry.
But, apparently misunderstanding that,
The Byeolsu were typing nonsense like that in chat.
Watching it, Kim Junsu could only click his tongue.
Just a little while ago, when Lee Harang was on his mukbang stream telling his story, they’d all been bawling their eyes out and solemnly promising to watch what they said….
Of course, the Byeolsu were a collective made up of all kinds of people, so one person was one person and another was another, but still—it was impressive how quickly their moods could flip the moment you turned around.
Even if the person in question, Lee Harang, had said he was fine and that a few appropriate jokes were no big deal….
“It’s not like that. Don’t go making me out to be a pervert.”
Honestly, what a bunch of troublemakers.
He was about to shrug it off with a tsk and move on, but the Byeolsu weren’t letting him off that easily.
No matter how advanced technology got, it still couldn’t transmit taste or smell over the internet, so they asked Kim Junsu—the one actually seeing Sangnangja, Lee Harang, in person—for his impressions.
While Harang was still watching for a good moment to answer,
“I don’t smell! Seriously, I work part-time in service—why the hell would I smell? And I like showering, so I wash every day. I even put on body lotion religiously so my skin doesn’t get dry, so stop slandering me.”
As if he refused to tolerate defamation, Lee Harang cut in first and said all that.
Hearing it, Kim Junsu was just sitting there like an idiot, thinking, Oh, so that was body lotion, not shampoo.
“Don’t know. I just bought it at Daiso.”
Meanwhile, seeing him honestly answering everything the Byeolsu asked, Kim Junsu slapped a hand to his forehead.
He was good at catching the rapidly climbing chat flow.
But you still had to know when to ignore things. If he tried to read everything and reacted to every weird little comment, it would only hurt the stream.
So Kim Junsu gave the textbook advice you’d expect to hear from a rookie broadcaster.
“And when you get a little worked up, you switch to casual speech… that’s actually pretty good for your character. You might as well just use informal speech whenever you’re dealing with the Byeolsu. If you flip between casual and polite speech like an on-off switch for the stream and private life, it’ll be a lot easier for you.”
Keeping a line between public and private life was pretty hard for people who streamed on the internet.
As they kept doing it, personal life started feeling like it disappeared, until everything became part of the broadcast.
At times like that, it helped to set up something you could consciously use to switch gears.
“Ah… really?”
Truthfully, the rough speech that came out when he got excited was a lingering habit from Ugly Harang.
Lee Harang had been thinking he ought to fix that now that he was going to live as Angel Harang, but unexpectedly, Kim Junsu suggested another method.
Come to think of it, that didn’t sound bad.
Traces of a previous life… stripping away every last one of them did feel a little lonely.
“Got it. Then I’ll use casual speech on stream.”
“Yes, I think the Byeolsu will like that too. Think of it as building a character.”
“A character….”
He glanced at chat, and sure enough, the Byeolsu were also saying that sounded great.
Nodding, Lee Harang followed Kim Junsu’s guidance and started the Sangnangja channel stream.
Then, as if they’d been waiting for it, the viewer count began to surge.
“Oh, o-oh?”
Lee Harang was startled by how fast it was climbing.
From what he’d researched the night before, the video-creator market had already gone beyond a red ocean and turned into a blood ocean.
He’d heard that some channels, even after they started streaming, could go for long stretches with zero viewers because no one would come in.
Unless there was something special about you, that was normal, and plenty of people gave up streaming while crying blood over it.
The situation overseas wasn’t any different, and the reason a woman pretending to be a man got caught running an otokonoko stream was exactly that.
You had to create some kind of special edge, some sort of novelty or distinction, just to survive.
In that sense, Lee Harang was already a prepared talent before he’d even begun.
Not a “fake” one, either—a real femboy.
On top of that, he was receiving the spillover effect of a big company streamer like Black Star right now.
Most of the people flooding into Sangnangja’s channel were temporary viewers who would drift away again, of course, but even if only a tiny fraction stayed, that was still enormous.
The fact that people were willing to watch him live, continuously, while he was streaming at all was astonishing in itself.
If another rookie streamer knew about Harang’s situation, they’d probably be crying tears of envy.
That was how rich the environment was that Lee Harang was starting out in.
Harang knew that much too, and he was grateful for it.
That didn’t mean only Harang was getting the better end of the deal, though.
Today’s stream had become the highest point of Kim Junsu’s entire streaming career.
So,
“We’ve got a collab tonight—would you want to join us? Of course, the crew member I’m collabing with would have to agree first.”
He decided to really push things while he had the chance.
He was going to spread that big-company naksu all the internet broadcasters were desperate to receive, properly.
“Huh? Is that okay?”
Naturally, Lee Harang liked the offer, but he was also worried.
This hadn’t even been part of the original plan, and now he was saying he’d slot him into the collab.
If he pushed too hard, it could just breed resentment, and Harang was the kind of guy who understood timing.
No, if you took his whole life into account, he was better at reading the room than most people.
If they pushed him this blatantly, the Byeolsu might also get contrary and start feeling resistant, so he was being cautious.
A big company was backing him from day one, and now he was even getting collabs?
He wasn’t some VTuber being raised by an agency, so wasn’t this basically a broadcast silver spoon?
That could provoke the jealousy of those who didn’t have one.
“Consider it an apology for spitting soybean stew all over the floor earlier.”
And, of course, Kim Junsu was aware of that level of caution too.
So he gave the Byeolsu a reason they could all accept.
The Byeolsu immediately voiced their approval.
Since he’d caused that kind of inconvenience, returning the favor with a collab was only natural.
Especially because they’d already been leaning toward sympathy after hearing Lee Harang’s story, so the Byeolsu were actually clamoring for him to be taken care of more.
The mood was good. All that was left was to ask for permission from YuraYura, the streamer they’d originally planned to collab with.
There wasn’t much time left before they had to head over to the Black Star crew’s filming studio for the collab.
Kim Junsu hurriedly contacted Kang Yura.
“Yura, sorry, but about tonight’s collab—”
Huh? A special guest?
After hearing the brief explanation, Kang Yura on the other end of the phone sounded surprised.
That’s not a problem, but… Lee Harang, you mean the person you met yesterday for that punishment thing, right?
“Yes, that’s right. Would it be okay to invite him?”
Kim Junsu asked carefully for permission.
He was a streaming rookie—though judging from what he’d shown today, maybe he’d do well—but still, a newbie was a newbie.
It’s one thing to say rookies should be treated well in games. In the streaming scene, they were also competitors.
And if such a newbie made some mistake that hurt the broadcast?
She might not be thrilled about an unexpected participant.
In that case, he’d put the original schedule first and ask Harang again tomorrow.
But contrary to Kim Junsu’s expectations, Kang Yura readily agreed.
Sure.
She said it was fine as if she’d been expecting the request, and suddenly all his worrying felt absurd.
There was a reason for that. She had become interested after learning about Lee Harang, and she’d been curious all along.
She’d been wondering for a while whether, if the opportunity ever came, she should check how her male-avoidance phobia would react.
That said, it wasn’t exactly easy to go out of her way to find the PC room where Lee Harang worked just for that reason.
She’d thought the interest might just be left to sit there and die, but then a golden chance like this had fallen into her lap, so of course she was going to take it.
“Then shall we head to the studio? Depending on how the stream goes, you might have to sleep there, too. Would that be all right?”
No matter the reason, now that Kang Yura had said yes, there was no need to hesitate any longer.
Kim Junsu moved to lead them to the filming studio shared by the crew, and since there was a chance they’d be staying overnight, Harang packed a few things just in case and asked,
“What kind of place is the studio? Does it have a sleeping room too?”
“We rent out an office, remodel it into a filming studio, and use it as an editing room and for collabs and stuff. You could call it a sort of crew hideout.”
The Black Star crew wasn’t quite a full-scale corporate MCN yet, but what had started as a group of friends had now grown fairly large.
To handle the crew’s various schedules, they’d prepared a studio that naturally included space for sleeping and eating if they ever needed to do a full marathon stream or something similar.
“When sponsored work comes in… ah, by sponsored work I mean ads. We also use it for those kinds of shoots, especially when we need to do them in a more serious group setup.”
“Ah.”
While the two of them moved toward the studio with that sort of small talk, Kang Yura, who had been waiting there, heard surprising news.
The Byeolsu were saying:
“They already made a wiki page for him?”
Lee Harang had already been listed on GreenWiki, the site where internet record-keepers prowled around.
The internet archivists really did record just about everything, but even so, unless someone had reached a certain level of fame, they didn’t usually get a dedicated page.
It wasn’t as if Joseon-era court historians had recorded every random peasant they passed in the street, and the wiki was no different.
It was hard for Kang Yura to even continue speaking after hearing that Lee Harang’s exploits were already being documented there.
Ugh, I got a wiki page too, but that took a whole year….
For some people, a page popped up after just two days of streaming.
When she thought about how that was all thanks to the Byeolsu watching Kim Junsu’s stream, she couldn’t help but feel that this was the kind of broadcast silver spoon you only heard about in legends.
To debut in streaming through a big-company broadcast? Unbelievable.
Swallowing her swirling jealousy, Kang Yura checked the wiki so she could figure out what kind of person she was about to meet.
“The channel name is Sangnangja? Ah… they named it after spinning a roulette wheel? Couldn’t they have come up with something better?”
The Byeolsu, who were either watching the stream at the same time or had come over here anyway because they were going to join them later, protested as if they’d been wronged.
That was already the best they could do, they insisted.
Then Kang Yura pointed at another wiki entry as if to say, then what was this?
“This guy’s dream is… a harem romance full of macho vibes…? What the hell does that even mean?”
“So you’re saying the archivists weren’t just messing around, and he really did say stuff like this? Hm….”
She’d have to take a closer look to figure out what kind of context could possibly have led to those words.
And after checking the parts of Lee Harang’s past recorded on the wiki, Kang Yura got the strange feeling she was looking at her own history.
You could call it a sense of kinship.
She, too, had been tormented because of her chest.
Still, she’d had people on her side, whereas Lee Harang seemed to have nothing but enemies, male or female alike.
Sympathy turned into empathy, and though she hadn’t even properly met him face to face yet, she somehow already felt close to him.
I’m going to have to take care of him a bit during today’s collab, if I can.
As if her earlier jealousy over his broadcast silver spoon had been a lie, Kang Yura’s maternal instincts kicked in.
“Hello. I’m streamer Sang…nangja, Lee Harang.”
And the moment she finally met Lee Harang in person, after he arrived at the studio with Kim Junsu, Kang Yura experienced the sensation of her brain being shattered by cognitive dissonance.
……A guy?
The scene before her and the image in her head refused to match, and the mismatch itself felt so intense it was almost physically destructive.
It was even stronger than it had looked on video.