Aware... - 2
Gomoku played at Tapgol Park in the middle of the day was a strange thing.
This place was a hellscape teeming with masters who each had at least twenty years of experience. And yet they played only for drinks. It was their own little courtesy, a way to keep the games going for a long time.
A place ruled by the rules of the martial world.
I was there, locked in a match with an old man wearing a bucket hat.
I picked up a worn white stone and placed it carefully on the board, where three white stones already lay.
Clack.
“!”
The old man opposite me, who had introduced himself as Dr. Jang, broke into a grin and started humming to himself. The people around us let out little snorts and sighs of amusement.
“Oh dear... I quit drinking, and now I’m getting a free round~”
“...”
-Oh no, he’s done for.
-The young guy’s too narrow-minded...
-Dr. Jang’s got the luck of the drinker.
I hurriedly read the board again.
In a game that took as long as janggi, there was always plenty of live commentary, but in gomoku it came in only when my neck was practically about to be severed. By the time people started giving advice, it meant I was seconds from losing.
I craned my neck and looked over the board.
Only then did I see it. Four black stones, shyly hidden along a diagonal.
“Ah.”
“Heh heh, you only saw it now? I thought you were deliberately trying to buy this old man a drink. Sneaking around and digging that trap was making my heart race, I tell you.”
Dr. Jang shook a black stone in his hand and laughed like a rascal. His wrinkles stood out clearly beneath the brim of his hat.
“What’ll it be? Want me to take back my last move? Or are you going to run to the convenience store and buy soju?”
“...”
I ran the possibilities through my head a few times.
Even if Dr. Jang took back a move, I still felt like I’d end up caught in a brawl all over again.
...Now that I look at it, he cleverly hid three-in-a-row all over the place.
He was a master.
I accepted it cleanly. Then I took out my wallet and prepared to head to the nearby convenience store.
“I lost. As promised, I’ll go buy the soju.”
“Heh heh! Right, right. Don’t go buying some fruit soju nonsense; get a bottle with the red cap.”
The old master showed the loser his final mercy.
I headed to the convenience store. There, I bought twenty bottles of soju, a pile of dried beef jerky, and bags of salty snacks. When I came back carrying the mountain of goods, the old men burst into applause.
“Wow! Big spender, aren’t you?”
“Hahaha! Thanks to Dr. Jang, we’re having a proper drinking party.”
“Hey! Gather around!”
“Pour one for everyone!”
Dr. Jang lifted a paper cup and grinned.
I poured soju into the paper cup he was holding.
A while later,
like pigeons gathering in the park,
the many old men who had swarmed in finished off all the soju.
They sang trot songs and got drunk on the mood.
Tapgol Park at midday turned into a festival ground.
-Long live Dr. Jang!
-He’s the smartest man among us!
Dr. Jang and I stared at the scene in a daze. We had each drunk a bottle, and a pleasant buzz had begun to creep up on us.
“...”
“...”
Dr. Jang finally took off the bucket hat he had been wearing. Sparse white hair showed beneath it. Then, in a voice that sounded almost tossed off, he said,
“I don’t know what’s going on. But go back.”
“Pardon?”
“This isn’t a place for a young man to waste time. It’s where worn-out old geezers come to forget death until the day they die. If you stay here, you’re not living.”
“...”
“I don’t know why a young man would be here on a weekday afternoon. Maybe you broke up with your girlfriend, maybe you got fired... but this still isn’t the place. ...Don’t end up like me.”
With a hand that swayed unsteadily, Dr. Jang turned on his phone.
On the screen was a photo of some girl playing violin at a concert hall overseas. The dimple at the corner of her mouth gave her an oddly familiar resemblance to Dr. Jang.
“...Don’t end up like me.”
“...”
I asked him,
“If you suddenly had some money, what would you want to do?”
“What?”
“If you suddenly had about one hundred million won, what would you want to do?”
“...”
Dr. Jang answered at once.
“I don’t even need one hundred million. Ten million... if I only had ten million, I’d book a concert hall in London and go to Europe right away.”
“I see.”
“Heh heh, anyway.”
Dr. Jang set his bucket hat down on the seat he’d been using.
“I’m going to go take a piss, so while I’m gone, sort out your thoughts and go back where you belong.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dr. Jang staggered off toward the public restroom.
While he was gone, I picked up his bucket hat. Then I took a ten-million-won check from my pocket and folded it neatly inside the hat.
After pressing the hat and check down with a single heavy stone,
I left the spot.
“...”
Why he was called Dr. Jang.
Why he couldn’t meet the girl who looked like a granddaughter or daughter.
I was a little curious about what ten million won meant to him.
But I didn’t ask any further.
I was too close to Dr. Jang already.
“...”
This was enough.
If I got any closer, my mind wouldn’t be able to take it.
I was a natural disaster made of money.
Whether it was an untalented small-time VTuber nobody watched,
or an old man killing time in the park,
I threw money around and waited for human beings to change.
That was the only kind of change left to me, Seonwoo Taek.
From that perspective, sponsoring livestreamers doesn’t seem so bad. There’s emotional distance there. Maybe in the next round, I should pick one person and keep supporting them.
Just as I was thinking that,
my phone rang.
Ring ring.
“?”
It was Live Future.
I answered.
“Hello?”
“Hello, this is Bigman-nim. I’m the operations team lead at Live Future. We’re currently surveying VIP members about any inconveniences they may have. Is there anything troublesome or any requests you might have while using our site?”
After the one-billion-won donation incident,
they had been attacked from every side by the media as a “reckless platform that sucks money dry,” so their tone was extremely cautious.
When I threw around about one hundred million in another loop, they didn’t attack me this hard. So it really does get worse tenfold.
Thanks to that, they had slashed the donation cap to 2.5 million won per day.
Even so,
they clearly didn’t want to lose a customer like me.
“No problems here.”
“Ah, ahaha... I see. Have you had any difficulties using the site’s functions, or encountered any system errors?”
“No.”
“I, I see...”
“?”
It felt like the kind of company-worker wording people used when they had a real question but were circling around it instead of asking directly.
“Is there some kind of problem?”
“Well... it’s not a problem exactly, but after you became a VIP member, Bigman-nim, you’ve never used the one-on-one chat function even once. We wanted to ask whether there might be an issue with using that feature because of the site itself...”
“Ah.”
The moment I heard the operations lead’s words,
I remembered the green glowing button in my head.
That golden-tanned NTR button?
“I just haven’t used it.”
“I see... Understood.”
The operations lead asked cautiously,
“...Might there be any creator you especially prefer, or are interested in?”
That was a thoroughly sinister question.
That’s probably the real point.
A survey of Bigman’s tastes and preferences.
It sounded like they were implying they could connect me with a female streamer I liked. They probably wanted to make active use of the crazy bastard who tossed one billion won at a small-time VTuber.
For this round, I only want to observe Aki-chan.
I answered at a reasonable level.
“...Well. Not yet.”
“Yes, understood. Thank you for your answer.”
*
Aurora Prism Entertainment held a meeting.
Today’s topic was Bigman again.
Representative Baek Su-cheol held up a plaque of appreciation and shouted,
“I mean! Why! Why does Bigman-nim keep refusing our invitations and only telling us to ‘act naturally’—?!”
“I can’t believe the boss is the one calling him Bigman-nim...”
“Of course it’s -nim! If he’s not the one saving our company, then who is?”
“That’s true...”
“If we could just use the one-on-one chat function to figure out what he wants, it would make things much easier. He keeps his mouth shut, and if we react too strongly to a 2.5-million-won donation, he hates it... he really does feel like a storm. It’s scary.”
“...”
Seated there were PR team lead Jo Eun-bi and Kim Ae-ri, a member of ABCD. They were discussing the information Live Future had passed on about the one-on-one chat feature.
Kim Ae-ri remembered what had happened over the weekend.
I got a scolding from Bigman-nim and my heart dropped straight into my shoes.
After receiving Bigman’s money,
Berry had started singing a few minutes of a grand, overflowing song of gratitude. But what came back was one cold sentence.
-Please just act naturally.
There was unmistakable emotion in it.
Namely, disappointment...
At that one line,
every member who had their stream open froze.
I can’t forget that icy atmosphere.
The first to treat Bigman publicly like a “normal fan” had been Aki. If not for that one line of hers, the broadcast might have crashed on the spot.
-I think he... dislikes it when we’re too aware of him. Let’s just keep going naturally.
“...”
I was terrified for a second,
but once we carried on the stream naturally, Bigman fell silent again.
In the end, we decided among ourselves to treat him like a normal person, but how are we supposed to treat a person like that normally...?
The members’ average concurrent viewers didn’t even reach one hundred. In the first place, the only person donating was Bigman.
The only one who had to be naturally mindful was Bigman.
PR team lead Jo Eun-bi spoke to the representative.
“Even if it’s blunt, it would still be easier to respond if we could at least learn his preferences through the one-on-one chat feature.”
“So we’re the ones to start?”
“He absolutely won’t click it himself. What else are we supposed to do?”
“Hmm... What if we annoy him by talking to him out of nowhere? Honestly, our revenue model is basically one-track right now, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be best to just keep the broadcasts going naturally, the way that man wants?”
“...”
That was the part Jo Eun-bi was worried about too.
Bigman himself had never used the one-on-one chat first. It was obvious he disliked direct influence reaching the creators.
If they tried to thank him
and ended up hurting his feelings instead,
there was no better way to reverse the roles than that.
Jo Eun-bi and the representative sighed.
“Hoo...”
“Haah...”
After a moment of silence,
the representative ran a hand over the plaque of appreciation with a wistful look.
“I want to tell him that thanks to him our company finally started running this smoothly... but even that means we have to watch our step. There’s no irony quite like this. Even if I post it on SNS, I won’t know whether he saw it or not.”
Kim Ae-ri flinched when she heard that.
“!”
It was a jumble of feelings, but the core of it was simple.
Natural.
Deliver company news.
To Bigman.
Deliver gratitude naturally, in the way he wants it...
Kim Ae-ri opened her mouth.
“...I think there might be a way.”
“?”
“?”