Three Editors Gone
A woman with long pink hair sat in front of her computer, staring at a YouTube community post and letting out a sigh.
"How many times has this been now?"
This was Lee Dayeon — the very streamer Dohyun had been a devoted fan of for over a year.
It had been nearly three years since she'd started doing the work she'd dreamed of since high school. Her channel had grown to a respectable size, and the income had become stable enough that keeping two editors and a thumbnail artist on the payroll was no strain at all. Lately, though, one problem had been eating at her more than anything else.
"Yeah. Three of them have already quit."
"Haa..."
The source of her headache was the revolving door of editors. Matching a YouTube channel's editing style was its own kind of work, and finding a decent editor in this industry was hard enough as it was. What she really wanted was someone she could go the distance with — but none of them were even lasting six months before they walked out.
"We need to get rid of that guy."
The one grumbling across from Dayeon was Jung Eunchae, currently the channel's only thumbnail artist.
Eunchae and Dayeon had been close since high school — a senior and a junior who'd stayed friends long after. Back when Dayeon first started streaming, Eunchae had handled everything: the thumbnails, the simple edits, all of it.
"Things were easier back then. Just the two of us working together."
"I know. Then that weirdo had to show up, and it's been like this ever since."
It was true that working just the two of them had been the most comfortable arrangement. The "weirdo" they were talking about was Park Woojin. Even after he'd come on as an editor there had been things that rubbed them the wrong way — but it hadn't been this much of a headache.
Park Woojin was a considerably older senior from the university Eunchae attended. When the channel grew large enough to need a dedicated editor, Eunchae had asked around her department, hoping to find someone decent. Among the candidates, Woojin had the best editing style and a reputation on campus for being quite the gentleman — so she'd recommended him to Dayeon.
That, they could now say, was where the tragedy began.
"I'm sorry, unnie. I really shouldn't have brought that guy in."
"How could you have known? You said he wasn't like that in the department."
The gentleman act Woojin had maintained on campus crumbled the moment they started working together. He'd put on a sweet face for Dayeon and Eunchae, sure — but then he'd go on about how he was the only guy around, acting like that made him something special. That much they could ignore, and they had.
The real problem started when the channel kept growing and they brought on another editor.
The second editor had been a man around Woojin's age. Woojin had a way of cutting people down without ever quite saying it out loud, needling them until the atmosphere turned poisonous — and the guy hadn't even lasted three months before he quit.
"We should have fired Park Woojin back then."
"...We didn't know at the time."
Woojin's harassment was clever enough that at first they hadn't even understood why the other editor was leaving. But when it happened a second time, Dayeon and Eunchae started asking questions. After the third, they were certain.
Eunchae had caught him at it more than once — those little jabs he never quite put into words — and that had only made her more sure.
"If they'd just said one word. Just told us it was because of him..."
The problem was, they'd only become fully certain after the third editor had already walked out. Firing Woojin on the spot wasn't an option anymore.
"Let's protect the editor who just came in! And then we quietly find one more person and swap Woojin out..."
"The problem is how we quietly find an editor."
Given the size of Dayeon's channel now, two editors weren't optional — they were a necessity. Woojin kept insisting he could handle it alone, asking why they'd bother hiring anyone else when the new people just quit anyway. But his speed and his skill simply couldn't keep up, and that gap kept making itself felt over and over.
"Anyway, I hope we get some decent applicants this time. The last editor was so hard to find."
Even if someone's raw editing skill was solid, matching Dayeon's style was a completely different question. It didn't matter how many people applied — if getting them up to speed took too long, the view counts would start slipping immediately.
"Anyway, go get to work. If Woojin does anything weird, record all of it. Film it."
"Yeah, I've been watching him. You hang in there too, unnie. A lot of fans have been worrying about you on stream lately."
No matter how hard you tried to hide it, a worry that deep always showed through somehow. Dayeon was a streamer, not an actress — she couldn't bury it completely.
"Hah. Making the fans worry. I'm such an idiot."
After Eunchae left, Dayeon let out a long breath and sat back down at her computer. The place she logged into was—
"Mm. When I'm in a bad mood, browsing the fan cafe really is the best."
—her own fan cafe, decorated in a style that was cute and pretty and entirely her. The fans talked to each other constantly, posts went up fast, and just scrolling through was enough to catch little glimpses of their daily lives. She liked that.
"Come to think of it... I haven't seen Sense around lately."
There were a few things Dayeon always turned to when her mood soured. The fan cafe was one of them. The other, which she checked just as often, was the fan videos uploaded by someone who went by the name Sense.
"Did he drop the fandom?"
She was a streamer with a large following. For every person who found her, just as many drifted away. She couldn't keep track of all of them — but there were fans whose names she remembered, and every time one of those familiar faces stopped showing up, a little ache settled in her chest.
Sense especially. He'd been the kind of person who uploaded a fan video at least three times a week, every single week. That made the silence hit harder.
"Hoo... this isn't the time. I need to go live. Stream."
Feeling sad about it didn't mean she could drag someone back who'd already left. She tucked the feeling away as best she could, turned on the stream with her usual bright face, and spent the rest of the day the way she always did — playing games and talking with her viewers.
Eunchae had been Dayeon's close friend for years — but she was also one of her most devoted viewers.
"You're pretty today too, unnie."
And she had a dream of her own.
"Ah, I wish I had a guy friend I could stan unnie with."
What she wanted was a male friend she could be a fan alongside. Not an ordinary guy friend, of course.
...A guy friend I could do those kinds of things with...!
Eunchae had always had a strong sex drive, and what she really wanted was someone who could show her a whole new world.
"Haaaa..."
Most of Dayeon's viewers were men, so in theory it shouldn't have been that hard. The problem was that socializing between viewers was banned. The fan cafe banned it too, obviously.
Where would I even go to meet someone?
On top of that, Eunchae was a homebody who didn't like going out. The only place she ever ran into anyone was the studio where Dayeon streamed — and the only man she met there was Park Woojin.
"Hoo... there's no hope. No hope at all."
Eunchae and Woojin worked together at Dayeon's streaming studio, though "studio" was a generous word for it. Aside from Dayeon's room being a fully soundproofed booth, the place was just an ordinary three-bedroom apartment.
I wonder what the new editor will be like. I hope someone who likes Dayeon unnie gets hired.
Dayeon, though, tended not to hire anyone who looked like a fan. The first reason was simple: you couldn't do the job on feelings alone. The second was that none of the fans who'd applied so far had shown any real ambition, or any sign that they actually wanted to work hard at editing. Most of them just wanted to see Dayeon's face once. She'd grown pretty cynical about the whole thing.
If someone like Sense applied, she'd hire them on the spot.
The only fan Eunchae would ever acknowledge as someone who could actually work as an editor was the person behind that name.
"Huum..."
Not that Eunchae entirely agreed. The diligence was great, and the fan videos Sense made had a real knack for hitting the right edit points — they were genuinely fun to watch. But that was only good enough because they were fan videos. For actual edited content going up on the channel, his skill was still on the low side.
That Sense guy... is he a man? Is he good-looking?
Her hands kept moving, diligently drawing and assembling a thumbnail, but inside her head the fantasies were already running wild. She did have more reasons to be skeptical about working with him than not. That was true.
But separately from all of that — if he was a guy, if he was someone she could share her Dayeon obsession with...!
And if he was someone who could use her however he wanted, without holding anything back...!
The fantasies started spilling over, messy and unstoppable.
"...Hah. I can't take it anymore. I can't hold back."
Those runaway thoughts pushed Eunchae past the point of endurance.