Community Uproar - 2
Aki composed her expression and sat down in the conference room.
“....”
But her hands still trembled, and there was nothing she could do about the cold sweat trickling down her back.
Shudder, shudder, shudder...
No matter that she was an active corporate VTuber.
In the end, Aki was still just a small-time internet broadcaster in her early twenties. She had no immunity at all to a situation like this. And if the matter involved hundreds of millions of won, and the fate of the company itself, then even more so.
So she shut her eyes tight and sat there.
“Phew....”
The staff around her looked exactly the same.
Everyone wore a strained, anxious expression.
“....”
“....”
“....”
It was because a new problem had surfaced.
-Can we even accept this 1 billion?
-But the project can’t move forward unless we take the money....
-We need to settle the outstanding 3D modeling balance and lesson fees for our talents first. We can’t just keep doing talk streams forever.
-But if this money is illegal, then we’re all screwed.
“....”
“....”
“....”
The meeting, which had already gone on for hours, came to a temporary halt.
If they got tangled up in money laundering or anything illegal, the company, which was already like a candle flame in the wind, would be blown out in an instant.
It was a matter they absolutely had to address.
In the end, everyone could only wait helplessly.
In the midst of the icy silence, while general affairs manager Park Young-soo had gone out to call Live Future’s legal team, CEO Baek Su-cheol clasped his hands together in front of all his subordinates and prayed, “Please, please....”
3.4 billion for the company.
2.5 billion for the talents.
Compared to the initial 10 billion figure, it sounded absurdly small, but it was enough to reactivate the project that had been frozen over payment issues.
No....
It wasn’t just enough.
It was a miracle.
The kind of miracle where, just before falling off a cliff, wings burst out from your back.
So everyone prayed that this miracle would really be real.
“....”
“....”
“....”
Then, at last, the conference room door opened.
Creak—
“!”
“!”
“!”
It was general affairs manager Park Young-soo. He looked visibly tense, with sweat beading on his bald head.
He said, “...First of all, the conclusion is that the payment will be processed normally.”
“?!”
“?!”
“?!”
CEO Baek Su-cheol’s eyes flew open. Then he lifted his head and shouted, “The full 1 billion?! N-no, after fees, 900 million—!”
“Yes. We can’t disclose the details of the money’s source, but it’s confirmed to be legitimate private assets, and not tax evasion or illicit funds being moved around.”
“W-wait... d-did Bigman say he wouldn’t allow a refund?”
“We confirmed it again with the platform operations team, and they said there would absolutely be no refund. In fact, Bigman stated that if the platform fails to pay out, he will pursue legal action. So they decided to raise Bigman’s membership level to VIP and proceed in a way that respected his wishes.”
Conclusion: the money was clean. Bigman had no intention of getting a refund.
“!”
CEO Baek Su-cheol collapsed back into his seat like a deflated balloon. Then he exhaled shakily and closed his eyes.
“We’re saved. We’re alive....”
The employees sprang to their feet.
“Waaah—!”
“So, so we can keep the project going now?!”
“We can pay for the kids’ 3D work and lesson fees and studio rental again, right?!”
CEO Baek Su-cheol nodded weakly.
At that, the cheers grew even louder.
In that hopeful atmosphere, Aki let out a sigh of relief. Then she clasped her trembling hands together. Blood, which had drained completely from them, began to return.
Aki opened and closed her numbed hands.
Thank goodness....
“Phew.”
Cold sweat streamed down her back.
She didn’t know the details, but in any case, the money was going to be paid out properly.
She and the company would use it to keep the project going.
A laugh slipped out of her before she could stop it.
“Hehe... good....”
Aki laughed at her own shameless emotions.
First I was dazed by 10 billion, then disappointed when it was less than expected, and now I’m happy again. What a joke.
At first, when she was told the realistically receivable amount was 2.5 billion, she had been sharply disappointed. But the moment it looked like she might not even get that, her chest had frozen over.
Now, the fact that money could actually come into her hands felt like a blessing. And yet, in one corner of her heart, a small, petty anxiety surged up: Is it really okay for me to get more than 200 million like this?
It still doesn’t feel real....
While Aki was still worrying over it, PR team leader Jo Eun-bi stared at her phone and shouted. As soon as the 1 billion issue was resolved, she had checked social media and the community boards.
“W-whoa?! This is insane?! Director! This is huge!”
“Why?”
“N-news...! The news is out—!”
“What channel—?!”
Baek Su-cheol hurriedly grabbed the TV remote from the corner of the conference room.
Jo Eun-bi shook her head. “The live broadcast already passed. It’s saved as a recording!”
“Play it!”
“J-just a second! Let’s all watch it on the tablet from my bag.”
Jo Eun-bi fetched her tote bag, pulled out a wide tablet, and opened the app for a major American streaming site called Stream HiTube.
The conference room staff and Aki gathered around it.
“Isn’t that it? The one that says, ‘Internet broadcast 1 billion donation sets the community abuzz’?”
“Ms. Eun-bi, turn the volume up a bit.”
“J-just a moment!”
There it was: the recorded segment from the news channel Jo Eun-bi had mentioned. As the video began to play, everyone fell silent and listened.
The attached footage was blurred all over.
Still, it was obvious at a glance that it was the Live Future site design. Likewise, the moment Aki received the 1 billion was replayed in a short clip, her figure blurred out as well.
1 billion, donation... th-thank y-you....
Aki flinched the moment she saw it.
I didn’t notice while I was on stream, but was my pronunciation really that slurred?
The announcer continued.
The report ended there.
The channel itself offered no clear judgment on the incident. But by pretending to be neutral, it subtly weighted the negative netizen opinions more heavily and left room for interpretation.
Thanks to that, the comment section under the article was a complete mess.
“....”
Just as Aki was about to keep watching, PR team leader Jo Eun-bi hurriedly switched off the tablet screen.
CEO Baek Su-cheol muttered, “This looks like it could be pretty good for promotion.”
“Yes, the internet’s going crazy right now. The news didn’t mention the streaming site or the broadcaster’s name, but everyone already knows from social media.”
Manager and operations team leader Ko Min-young said, “...I just slipped a message to the other talents who are streaming right now, and they say their viewer counts jumped from the twenties to 5,000 in an instant. The chat is nothing but people asking what happened with the 1 billion....”
“!”
“At first we didn’t respond, but apparently the stream ended anyway because of line issues.”
The director said firmly, with the careful restraint of someone standing at the edge of life and death.
“For now, tell everyone to stop broadcasting and stay quiet until we discuss how to respond. And tell them not to say anything carelessly on the community boards or social media either.”
“Yes, I’ll contact them right away.”
Ko Min-young left the conference room with the phone to her ear.
Aki flinched. An unfamiliar guilt washed over her.
Everyone’s still in the middle of broadcasting, and because of me....
The director looked at Aki and said, “Ayeong-ssi.”
“...Yes.”
“You need to steel yourself from here on out. Once attention starts, anything you say will be twisted and analyzed. But this is a chance. It’s not often you get a chance to be seen like this in front of everyone.”
“!”
Then PR team leader Jo Eun-bi spoke up.
“Director, what do we do now? It already feels like our company website’s about to crash.”
“....”
“Should we keep pushing the project the way it was? Or....”
Jo Eun-bi trailed off, but the other option she was implying was perfectly clear.
Abandon the four-member idol group project, use the funds they had received to rebrand around Aki, and wait for Bigman and the resulting buzz to come back again.
The director and Aki fell silent.
Would they wait for Aki’s sugar daddy, Bigman, again?
Or would they step forward on the basis of a single stroke of luck and continue as planned?
“....”
“....”
Aki could feel it.
At this very moment, her fate was being split in two.
*
I was scratching my stomach while staring at stock charts on my computer.
“....”
I’d long since lost any trace of sleep. They’d called me nearly five times to confirm that I really wasn’t going to ask for a refund on the donation.
Well... 1 billion, I guess that kind of concern makes sense.
I didn’t care.
“Maybe I’ll have ramyeon by the Han River for dinner.”
Muttering that to myself, I clicked through a few domestic stocks on the list and checked them one by one. Then I added them to my watch list.
They were domestic stocks that would surge hard during May.
Because of the repeated loops, I’d reached the point where I could just memorize them.
“This one, this one, and this one are all going to jump in the short term. And this one’s going to spike next week on a pump-and-dump....”
I intended to keep up the minimum economic activity needed to maintain my comfortably wealthy, unemployed lifestyle.
Once this trade was done, the 5.4 billion in seed money I currently had would grow to 7.5 billion.
...Once I’ve saved enough money, what am I supposed to do this round? Grinding my teeth and pushing it to 100 billion again sounds kind of miserable.
Scratch, scratch.
“....”
Boring.
Wouldn’t something fun happen?
“....”
Welcuhm!
All at once, the image of a VTuber with slurred pronunciation floated into my head.
It made me wonder.
I wonder what Aki-chan’s up to.
I casually opened the Live Future site, then checked out the channel for “Aki-chan, Aspiring Idol.”
“....”
But her stream was off, and the streams for the entire VTuber group ABCD were off too.
There were no notices, no meaningful reactions either.
“Hmm.”
Didn’t know what it was about, but it looked like they were thinking pretty hard about it.
Is she actually a lot more serious about the VTuber business than I thought?
My interest in Aki grew a little more.
*
The internet war that had raged through the day.
After the storm of fierce fighting by the old men and women had passed, what remained was a thick cloud of speculation and suspicion.
Most of it was speculation driven by simple curiosity. But many people also resented the incident itself.
“Fuck, I’m barely hanging on for ten hours playing shitty games just to get one 5,000-won Super Chat. Meanwhile someone else just chatters away with a slurred pronunciation and gets 1 billion? What the hell kind of country is this? This is fucked. I threw everything I’d gathered for VTubing into a corner and cried for three hours....”
The reaction was generally negative.
Of course, there were a few voices in sympathy as well.
But there was one curiosity everyone shared.
-So what happens now?
-Who is Bigman, and what happens to the VTuber?
They wanted either Bigman or the VTuber to open their mouth.
And one piece of that curiosity....
It was resolved the next day through a notice on Aurora Prism Entertainment’s site.