Aftermath

Kim Muwon. At the start of this year, it was a name nobody knew.

If someone asked over drinks, "You know Kim Muwon?" the only answer you'd get was, "Who's that?"

That obscurity did not last. Recognition arrived at a blistering pace — and by now, if you watched the news at all, it was harder not to know who Kim Muwon was.

A fraudulent sect collapsing overnight was an incident without precedent. Newsrooms that lived and died by the scoop were never going to let it slip.

And it wasn't only the television news. Article after article went up across every major outlet on the internet.

There were explainers on what Gaejeon Cheonjingyo had been, reconstructions of how the sect had fallen, and, of course, pieces on Muwon himself — the man who had made the whole thing possible.

The scale of what Muwon had set in motion was simply too large for a lone streamer to have wandered into. Add the trail he had left over the past few months, and looking away was no longer an option.

The news was only half of it. On Inbang-gal and across every other community, Muwon's name was on fire. People who already watched his streams were there, of course — but so were the ones who had only just grown curious because of the incident. The internet was a hive.

More than anything, it was a side of Muwon his regular broadcasts had never shown. He had gathered himself into that mysterious air of a wuxia master, and even the way he spoke had brimmed with sage gravity.

That was the finishing stroke. Someone on Inbang-gal had laid out not only Muwon's motives but the meaning of his every word and gesture, and the mood caught fire.

Just as he had said at the end of the stream, he had become, in terms of name recognition, a major-league streamer no one else could even approach.

How high his actual average viewership would climb was still an open question — but the count before he went offline had already broken ten thousand. It was not impossible that from the next broadcast on, he would be operating as a fully fledged top-tier streamer.

The influx, however, brought a problem of its own.

Namely: Muwon's broadcast schedule was a complete mess.

Unlike other streamers, he had never once locked in a proper timetable, which meant every stream so far had been a guerrilla broadcast that started out of nowhere.

It was only his fifth stream, so the absence was understandable ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— but putting it bluntly, his channel was now a weight class that needed some structure. Traffic had to be directed.

And as if to say he knew that perfectly well himself—

With a somewhat unhinged title, Muwon went live.

I went live at one in the afternoon.

It was that in-between hour when people who had just finished lunch mixed with people only now sitting down to it.

Whether they had been waiting for me since midday or not, the moment I went live, viewers poured in — already more than five thousand.

It was a feeling I had every time I started a stream, but for a sixth broadcast, the number was enormous.

Five thousand from the opening bell, on a weekday, at late lunch, when a fair number of people ought to have been at school or work. How many would pile in once evening hit?

Oh, come on. I don't remember ever tearing into them that blatantly.

And as for why the stream title looked like that…

"They were things I was going to have to do at some point anyway, and I'd already finished morning training. I figured I'd eat lunch and, while I was at it, do the mukbang I couldn't get to yesterday — and that's how the title ended up like this."

After I'd blown Cheonjingyo apart yesterday, the ending had been a little rushed. And after a quick look through the communities, it was obvious that setting a schedule would be the wise move.

So I'd meant to tell the aftermath story and lock in a broadcast timetable while I was at it — and then, out of nowhere, I remembered the mukbang that had fallen through on yesterday's stream.

Which was why, for the first time, the broadcast was showing the desk in my studio apartment.

Fried chicken, pizza, burgers — the desk was loaded with food, and the chat coughed up a round of incredulous laughter.

"I'll talk while I eat, so—"

And so the mukbang began. I started with what had happened after I went offline yesterday, corrected a few things the news had gotten wrong, and worked my way through the flood of interview requests from every outlet imaginable.

I walked them patiently through the parts viewers were likely to mix up after catching only the news and the articles, and through the parts those two mediums could never have told them in the first place.

Talking like that, I watched the spread of food dwindle toward nothing. The only broadcast business left was the so-called housekeeping — posting a schedule, putting the channel in order.

Then, unlike an ordinary donation, a bright little fanfare burst across the screen, and a mission popped into view.

I let out a hollow laugh as I pulled on the manner of speech I'd used yesterday, exactly as the mission demanded — and as if it had been waiting for that reaction, a donation from a familiar nickname burst across the screen.

"…No."

What's with the RP talk? I'm not even a VTuber.