Are You Jealous?
The horrific experiments had given me quite a lot.
These eyes that could see the flow of the world, exceptional intuition that could sense everything around me, and a high-performance brain capable of processing that intuition.
Thanks to them, ambushes never worked on me. My intuition would pick up killing intent, my eyes would read the world's currents, and my high-performance brain would analyze those currents and point me in the right direction.
Under ordinary circumstances, that surveillance system of mine never failed. Even suppressed by medication, a mere fraction of my brain's processing power still far outstripped anything a normal person could manage.
Which meant that in all my life, I had never once experienced a genuine jump-scare.
And so I had no resistance to them whatsoever.
"Lee Haneul!"
"Hkyah!?"
The door slammed open with a bang, and I was so startled I toppled over in a clattering heap.
It was an unavoidable accident. My mental surveillance system, half a beat late in assessing the situation, only then began to blare its belated alarm.
Countless threads of information tangled through my mind all at once. It had been so long since I'd felt anything like this that my voice came out trembling again.
"W-w-wait—wait a second...!"
I didn't even have room to wonder how I looked on stream. As I raked my fingers through my long hair and rubbed the spot I'd bumped, Maria came closer.
"Urgh..."
"Oh, you were awake? Sorry—I thought something might have happened..."
"Stream! I'm streaming! Get out!"
Maria was a civilian... well, she'd soaked up a bit too much of the gallery to really call her that, but still! Still, for now she was an ordinary person with no connection to streaming.
I couldn't just throw someone like that onto a broadcast. I had no desire to put a person I cared about in front of those underground wraiths of the chat.
"Why?"
"Huh?"
"I don't particularly mind. We've been gallery-posting together for over half a year—what's the big deal?"
"Uh..."
But once she put it that way herself, I didn't really have a comeback...
I knew Maria's personality. She was friendly and easygoing, the type who loved talking, and she actually suited a streaming situation pretty well.
"Besides, you're my patient first. A primary physician has to put her patient first."
"Urgh...!?"
Maria's hands cupped my cheeks, and a strange pressure arrived together with a pleasant warmth. Without meaning to, my expression began to soften little by little.
And into that opening, Maria's sneak-attack question landed.
"So then—why didn't you pick up my calls? I'm pretty sure I called you over ten times?"
"Ah, well, about that..."
As I fretted over how to explain, the gallery post Maria had made suddenly floated into my mind. She'd definitely said she was going to kill me, right?
"No, you just want to kill me, don't you?"
"Oh? So you saw the post?"
"Yeees..."
Unfortunately, my answer was a mistake.
I'd only handed Maria more justification to torment me.
"So you saw the post but didn't take my calls?"
"...Ah."
I was completely fucked. There was no way out. Any excuse I tried would only lead to futures in which I looked like pure garbage.
I couldn't even see an escape route. I was sprawled on the floor of a narrow room, and abandoning the viewers to bolt was simply not an option.
Naturally, a festival had erupted in the comment section. Forcing my gaze away from that dizzying spectacle, I looked at Maria crouched in front of me.
...At this point, I had no choice but to tell the truth.
"Well—the game suddenly shut off, and I passed out along with it."
"What?"
"Why it happened... I don't really know either. The guy who was with me, Lee Seon-woo, was fine, but I alone was out cold for nearly twelve hours."
I'll explain the rest later—it involves classified matters.
I added that quietly, and only then did Maria nod as if she finally understood. Taking the hand she offered and rising to my feet, I saw the absolute wreck of a comment section waiting for me.
People busy laughing and enjoying the chaos, a handful who remembered my frail body and were genuinely worried, and newbies drifting around with no idea what was going on.
Yeah... some traffic control was definitely in order.
Viewers: 472
There seemed to be more people watching than usual, too.
If I left them free to say whatever they wanted the way I used to, I had the distinct feeling the situation would slip right out of my hands.
So I purged every comment that rubbed me the wrong way.
And to the seething viewers, I made a bold declaration.
"Alright. From this moment on, I will not accept any slander or concern directed at me. Going forward, the only statements permitted in this room are praise for me and— Ow!?"
"Sorry. Our Haneul sometimes says weird things."
What put down my rebellion was Maria's knuckle-rap on my skull. I clutched my head with a start and glared at her resentfully, only to be met with that annoying little smile of hers.
Wait—more importantly, where did she even get that chair?
Why was she appearing on stream so naturally?
This is my stream?
"W-wait a second!"
"Hm?"
"Ma... wait, what am I even supposed to call you?"
I almost just called her Maria and stopped myself. I wasn't sure it was okay to throw someone's real name around in front of an unspecified crowd.
Calling her "unnie" didn't feel right either.
I only had one unnie. That was non-negotiable territory.
So as my eyes spun in circles, Maria stepped forward first.
"Hey everyone, nice to meet you. I'm Maria, our Haneul's attending physician. As you can see, I'm Russian, and... Haneul taught me Korean."
"Uh, is it okay to say that...?"
"I didn't say my last name. It's fine, right?"
"Well... I mean, yeah, but..."
The name Maria itself was common enough. You could find it easily in Russia and across the West.
The surname Gorshkov was the real problem. As things stood, the Unified Korea local government was heavily influenced by the World Government Far East Forces. If that surname came out, the stream would descend into absolute chaos.
So hiding it was the right call, but...
"Is this really okay...?"
Somehow the stream had turned into a masquerade ball of hidden identities. That pink-haired saint would probably take one look at this and go, "Wow, looks fun! Let me join too!" and come running.
My head hurt. In a month, at the Sword Saint title succession ceremony, my identity would be revealed and everything would go to hell... how was I supposed to handle that?
In the end, the only conclusion the Sword Saint's superior situational judgment and analytical power could reach was one.
Future me—hang in there...!
"So, I don't mind appearing on stream. Can't we just keep going like this?"
"Uh... even though this is a camera-on stream?"
"Is there really a problem? Unlike a certain someone, I'm fine even showing my face."
Well... she wasn't wrong. I'd been putting off face reveals for fear of being recognized, but Maria was different.
The fact that Maria was my attending physician was classified information to begin with. That was true—but that wasn't the side I was worried about.
"No... I mean are you okay with it. Don't you feel any pressure standing in front of a camera?"
"Not really. I'm pretty, after all."
"Well... that's true, but..."
Objectively speaking, Maria belonged firmly in the beauty category. There was no real reason to stop her. I didn't want to disappoint the expectant viewers either.
"Well, if you're fine with it..."
So I reluctantly gave permission—but for some reason, I felt uneasy. The attention that would go to Maria somehow put me in a bad mood.
...I didn't like the viewers' attention going anywhere other than me.
You could call it a childish feeling. I knew it wasn't a feeling to hold toward my benefactor. I knew it wasn't a feeling a second-life adult like me should have. But I still didn't like the attention being split.
So as I sat there pouting, a familiar hand stroked my head.
"My, could it be you're jealous?"
In a voice laced with laughter, as if she found me terribly cute.