Sangnangja’s Debut Stage
My head feels like it’s going to short-circuit. He’s a man? That really… that’s a man?
Lee Harang padded into the studio right behind Kim Junsu, one step at a time.
He clutched his duffel bag in both hands and, looking awkward as anything, mumbled, “Excuse me…,” as he slipped inside. How was that supposed to be a man?
There’s no way someone like that could be a man, right?!
His face.
His body.
Just those two things alone were enough to make people deny his gender outright, and even his mannerisms had a feminine softness to them.
If he were really a man, shouldn’t the way he walked or sat—legs spread, that sort of thing—feel different right from the start?
And yet, seeing him follow Kim Junsu inside like that, you practically wanted to shout, “A man? Don’t lie to me!”
In truth, there was a rather unfortunate story behind all this.
Lee Harang—more precisely, Cheon Harang—couldn’t exactly help the fact that not only his looks but even his gestures had taken on a feminine quality.
Everywhere he went, people mistook him for a girl, so if he acted too masculine, it only caused a scene.
For example, if he sat on the subway with his legs spread like a man, the stares he got were enough to make life miserable.
And that wasn’t all.
There had been the cruel cycle of bullying that started in elementary school and dragged on all the way through his high school graduation.
Because of that, Cheon Harang had unknowingly developed a habit of shrinking into himself, and it had become ingrained in his body.
That was why his whole presence read as even more feminine.
Feminine gestures, forcibly imprinted into his body.
Even if the person inside had changed to Chu Harang, that wasn’t something he could fix overnight.
Body and mind influenced each other, after all.
By the time Chu Harang fully understood his condition and tried to correct it, he’d probably be suffering from the effects for a good long while.
But that was a problem for later. Right now, Harang himself was tense without quite realizing it, and that only scattered more femininity all over his movements.
Which was why Kang Yura, once again suspecting some kind of gender fraud, greeted him with a mixture of confusion and caution.
“……I-I’m Kang Yura, the gaming streamer known as YuraYura.”
“Nice to meet you!”
Lee Harang bowed deeply and held out a hand for a handshake.
Kim Junsu’s expression went slack with sudden regret.
On the way here, he’d meant to explain that Kang Yura had male avoidance syndrome—that she was afraid of physical contact with men—but he’d completely forgotten.
“Harang, I—”
He was just about to rush in and explain before things got awkward when something happened that anyone who knew Kang Yura would have found shocking.
“Huh?”
Kang Yura took Harang’s outstretched hand and gave it a light shake.
Kim Junsu stared, slack-jawed and blinking like an idiot from sheer shock.
Meanwhile, Lee Harang, who was politely shaking hands and greeting her, thought, Body type is totally off the Asian charts…!
The moment he saw those violently swaying armaments up front, his eyes were snatched away before he could stop them.
The handshake sent a slight ripple through her chest, and honestly… it was impressive.
It was enough to make him wonder if that kind of chest armor could really come from a Korean gene pool.
Kang Yura, seeing Harang’s reaction, thought, He does look like a man when you look at that…
Then she felt her confusion deepen, as if the familiar looks of leering men being drawn to her chest had somehow been scrambled.
The stares she’d endured for so long were so familiar she could tell them apart instantly by now.
Sometimes women looked at her in surprise too, but that was different from the sly, greasy gazes men gave her.
Harang’s eyes on her chest had that unmistakable male quality, and yet—
I can actually shake hands with him?
To her own surprise, Kang Yura found that there was almost no discomfort at all.
The moment Harang had offered his hand, she had unconsciously taken it.
It wasn’t until afterward that she belatedly realized she’d just shaken hands with a man, and that realization itself was astonishing.
“Yura…? Are you okay?”
“Yes. Weirdly enough… I’m fine.”
To Junsu’s astonished question, Kang Yura nodded and focused on Harang’s hand, still clasped in her own.
Harang, who didn’t know any of this, could only tilt his head in confusion, and then he felt her fingers lightly touching his hand.
“Your hands are really soft.”
“Th-thank… you?”
Kang Yura kept fussing over the hand they’d just shaken, clearly finding it fascinating, while Harang stood there at a loss, neither able to pull away nor to do anything else.
Is this really a man’s hand? It’s so small, so soft… it’s basically a cute, pretty girl’s hand.
Still unable to suppress her amazement, Kang Yura thought about what it felt like to hold Harang’s hand and gave a tiny nod, marveling inwardly, So people like this really do exist…
She had thought she was destined to live alone forever.
A man touching her?
Just imagining it made her skin crawl.
It felt like cockroaches or centipedes crawling over her skin—horrible enough to make her want to retch.
She’d assumed it was a hopeless problem, but the world was, apparently, much larger than she’d thought.
A man she didn’t mind being touched by—?
So there really was someone like that in this world.
And that alone made Kang Yura intensely interested in Lee Harang’s existence.
“I’m looking forward to today. Do you play games much?”
Still, she couldn’t stay lost in thought forever.
With a slight sense of regret, she let go of his hand. She hated the way the warmth lingering in her palm vanished.
It was hard to explain what exactly she regretted, but she asked the question while looking at the hand she’d shaken.
“I like them.”
At that, Harang shyly said that he played often, though he wasn’t sure if he was actually any good.
At his embarrassed expression, the editor who’d been assigned to help with the shoot dropped his jaw.
Why is he even a man? What a national loss.
He couldn’t help lamenting it from the standpoint of a fellow man.
Whether the editor was mourning or not, Kang Yura had already moved on to checking Harang’s gaming skills.
“What kind of games do you usually like?”
“I don’t really care. I play almost anything.”
Unlike real life, games didn’t punish him for his appearance.
So Harang rather liked socializing through games.
At first, he’d mostly enjoyed online games of every genre, but at some point he’d started getting into console and package games too.
“If we’re unlucky today, we might have to game all night. Are you okay with that?”
Harang, hearing that, became newly curious.
“I did bring my things in case the broadcast ran long and I ended up sleeping over, but… what game are we even playing?”
“Honestly, the game itself isn’t the problem….”
Unique Commando.
It was a battle royale game where you farmed gear, dodged the shrinking safe zone, and survived until you were the last one standing.
But unlike other battle royale games, Unique Commando was fundamentally a three-person squad game.
And since it also had a hyper-FPS side to it, with skills and ultimates, it was a little different from games where everything came down to pure gun skill.
That was why, despite being a latecomer, it had managed to carve out its own slice of the market and establish itself.
Since today’s collab stream had exactly three people, it was perfect for running the game… but the problem was that the whole point of the collab was to win first place and spin the roulette wheel for a chance to clock out.
“If we get first place and the roulette lands on ‘go home,’ the stream ends right then and there, even if we only played one match. But if we don’t get first, or if we do get first but the roulette doesn’t give us a chance to leave, then we have to keep going until tomorrow afternoon.”
Some viewers loved watching streamers suffer, so they’d be sniping them too, and if they were unlucky, they could win first place and still not hit the “go home” slot on the roulette.
Which meant they might end up broadcasting until they collapsed from exhaustion.
Well, they were all in their prime, and it wasn’t like any of them had never pulled an all-nighter before, but it was best to be mentally prepared.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Have you played much Unique Commando?”
“Yes, but I played Sura Jaengtu a lot more, because the characters in Unique Commando are just as weird-looking as the title suggests.”
Sura Jaengtu, the domestic game that had helped make battle royale a mainstream genre.
Hearing that Harang enjoyed it, Kang Yura nodded, deciding he’d probably pick things up quickly enough.
Now that greetings were done and they’d exchanged names, it was time to start the broadcast in earnest.
The longer they delayed the collab, the longer their clock-out chance would be pushed back.
Since the three of them might be in for a long haul, they decided to change into something more comfortable before starting the stream.
“Hurk!”
On the way to change in the men’s sleeping room, Kim Junsu yelped in horror.
“You can’t just follow me in!”
That was because Lee Harang had tried to follow him into the sleeping room with the clothes he was going to change into.
“Huh?”
“Not ‘huh’….”
Seeing Harang tilt his head with a question mark practically floating above it, as if he had no idea what the problem was, Kim Junsu let out a heavy sigh.
“A-anyway, change separately. Harang, you go first.”
“We can just—”
“You use it first.”
Harang was a man, all right, but he was also not.
Kim Junsu said it firmly, and Harang looked at him with the sort of expression that said, Why are you being so embarrassed about this? before heading into the sleeping room.
The collab had only just begun, but Junsu was already feeling mentally drained and muttered, “At this rate, I’m not going to die of old age.”
If he kept getting tangled up with Harang like this, he felt like his lifespan would shrink before he ever got used to him.
Then, all at once—
“Gulp.”
He reacted without meaning to at the sound of Harang changing clothes inside the sleeping room, which was being used as a dressing room.
Crap! I’ve lost it!
Only belatedly did Kim Junsu scream inwardly.
Wracked by self-loathing, Kim Junsu stewed in his own misery.
And so, taking an unexpected blow before the collab had even properly begun, they started the stream.
Once the three of them had gathered again, they began the first game under the gaze of the Byeolsu watching from the other side.
They played while trying as hard as they could to obscure their queueing in order to prevent sniping, but there was no way to stop it completely.
Assume Harang is a beginner… and like we planned, I’ll have to carry this with BlackStar.
Hoping Harang wouldn’t drag them down too much, they went into the first round with no expectations at all, simply trying to get their rhythm together.
And yet… as if mocking Kang Yura’s worries, Lee Harang was good at the game.
Very good, in fact.
The kill log climbing every time Harang spoke or moved was proof enough.
With Sangnangja’s completely unexpected performance, the trio finally managed to seize first place.
Cheering in delight, Kim Junsu and Kang Yura marveled at Harang’s gaming ability.
“BlackStar, you didn’t already know and hire him, did you?”
“I had no idea. I honestly didn’t know Sangnangja would be this good at games.”
“Haha… games are about the only thing I can enjoy without worrying about people.”
Feeling oddly proud at their admiration, Harang said it like that.
“Great. This is a very good vibe. Let’s go straight to the roulette!”
Junsu, who’d been slightly worried before, laughed as if today’s broadcast was going to be a breeze and got ready to spin the roulette wheel.
Meanwhile, Kang Yura was once again marveling at Harang’s outrageous fraudulence.
That face, that unusual look—and he’s good at games too?
She belatedly wondered if female streamers in the past had felt the same way when they looked at her.
“Viewers, I’ve said this before, but if we hit ‘clock out,’ we’re just leaving, okay? That’s the rule for today’s collab, so don’t complain even if it comes up right away on the first try, got it?”
And then Kim Junsu threw out a provocation and spun the roulette.
Seeing that, Kang Yura suddenly felt a twinge of unease.
No way, surely the odds aren’t going to pull another reverse upset, right? And the roulette doesn’t even have anything that bad on it—
“Huh?! What is this? What is this thing?! Why the hell did a drinking stream suddenly show up here?!”
Sure enough, doom had a way of finding people.