The Ultimate Cat Lover
Kim I-sol.
Just a few years ago, she had been an ordinary office worker who crammed herself onto the morning subway packed with ten thousand other commuters. But the reason she boldly quit her stable job and completely changed the course of her life was surprisingly simple.
"Oh my gosh... How can anything be this cute~!"
She was the kind of person who would stop in her tracks at the sight of any passing stray cat, clutching her chest in delight—a die-hard cat lover down to her very bones.
Plenty of office workers adopted cats to ease their loneliness. But by I-sol's standards, that was far too cruel to the cat.
Between commuting to and from work, and the occasional overtime, a cat could end up waiting alone in an empty house for far too long. In the worst cases, it might spend ten or eleven hours a day trapped in what felt like solitary confinement.
Of course, cats were generally more independent than dogs and less prone to problematic behavior when their owners were away. Even so, it varied from cat to cat. Some would yowl at the top of their lungs all day the moment their owner stepped out the door, as if the world had ended.
Having watched countless tear-jerking videos of cats suffering from separation anxiety, I-sol had kept her own longing tightly bottled up and never brought a cat home.
After all, embracing and caring for a complete living being required sacrificing countless parts of one's own life.
That was why the sight of people who irresponsibly abandoned cats or dogs filled her with such fury that she saw them as less than human. Dogs and cats weren't disposable objects. Once you adopted them as family, you were supposed to take responsibility until the very end.
I-sol firmly believed that anyone who couldn't even fulfill that basic duty and instead dumped living creatures on the street couldn't possibly be functioning properly in society, no matter how normal they appeared on the surface.
In any case, armed with her unshakable philosophy about life, Kim I-sol finally made a major decision. She resigned from her company, created an environment where she could devote all her time to cats, and began raising her first companion. Around that same time, a platform caught her sharp instincts: NewTube.
It was the miraculous platform where you uploaded videos, and the more people watched, the more money poured in through views and ads. NewTube itself had existed for quite some time, but the profession of full-time NewTuber had only recently begun to take proper shape.
Even now, more and more people were jumping into internet broadcasting like mushrooms after rain, but in the public eye it still lingered in a niche, almost fringe category—something only "entertainers" did. Back then, it was unimaginable for a NewTuber to appear as a guest on a major public broadcast network.
Yet I-sol was convinced that this fragmented market was a blue-chip stock hiding enormous potential.
As modern society advanced, human relationships grew increasingly fragmented, like grains of sand. People were beginning to prefer coming home exhausted and healing alone in the comfort of their own space by watching videos rather than going out to expend emotional energy on others.
Reading the trend, she threw herself into the path of an internet broadcaster without hesitation.
Fortunately, the timing when Kim I-sol started as a NewTuber was a stroke of genius. The NewTube ecosystem at the time was truly a lawless frontier—an early blue ocean in every sense.
There were only a handful of creators daring to produce content, while users tired of boring public broadcasts were flooding in by the millions. It was a golden era.
And just as expected, she exploded onto the scene as a pet NewTuber specializing in cats.
She captured the adorable daily life of her precious companion cat, Yumi, and diversified her content to appeal to viewers, successfully seizing the market.
In that notoriously picky NewTube ecosystem, she achieved the monumental record of one million subscribers in just two years after starting. She had officially joined the ranks of major corporate-level NewTubers.
Then one day, while peacefully surfing her monitor, the eyes of the million-subscriber NewTuber I-sol lit up at the sight of a new presence. A cat moving across the screen—Nabi.
Its fluffy, cloud-like fur looked like angel wings. Its facial features were so dainty, cute, and pretty that even the cool-headed judgment of a mega-hit NewTuber like herself had to admit it was far more beautiful than Yumi, her own child-like companion.
"Wow... Is that really a real cat? Not a doll?"
She muttered as if entranced, then suddenly gasped and clamped a hand over her mouth.
"Mmph."
A chilling, prickly gaze had stabbed into her side. When she cautiously turned her head, her companion cat Yumi—curled up on the bed—had her eyes narrowed into sharp triangles and was glaring at I-sol with a fierce, flat-fish stare.
"Nyaang."
How dare you look at some other cat when you already have the original wife of this house right here?!
It was the terrifying glare of a wife who had just caught her husband cheating red-handed. Cold sweat trickled down I-sol's back.
"M-My bad, Yumi~! I must've lost my mind for a second. You know you're the only one for me, right? You're the prettiest cat in the whole world!"
I-sol frantically scratched under Yumi's chin, begging for forgiveness. Only then did Yumi reluctantly let out a short "aeng" and turn her head away.
She had briefly glanced at another female, but it was merely the instinctive aesthetic judgment of a can-opener butler. Yumi graciously forgave her. In the end, I-sol's number-one priority in her heart would always, forever, be Yumi.
Still, business was business. I-sol's fingers had already instinctively copied the business email address listed on Nabi's channel profile.
Among her current main contents was a collaboration project featuring famous cats from other households that always drew enthusiastic viewer reactions.
If she could successfully arrange a collab stream with this cat named Nabi—who had risen to national stardom after appearing on the popular program Animal Farm—it would undoubtedly create an unprecedented legendary video. It would mark the second great leap for her channel.
With that fervent hope pressed tightly in her chest, I-sol sent a polite yet exceptionally generous collaboration proposal email.
Not long after, her heart began pounding. A reply had arrived in her inbox from Nabi's channel—positive signals and a promise that they would gladly accept the collaboration request!
"Nabi-ya! I-sol-ssi is coming over!"
"Really?"
I heard Yuyeon's words.
Someone named I-sol was coming to our house. Naturally, it was to see me. I spoke to Yuyeon.
"Nice! If we want to grow our channel's viewership... collabs are essential!"
"Right? You're happy too, aren't you, Nabi? Getting to collab with a major corporate NewTuber who has a whole million subscribers—what an opportunity!"
In the internet broadcasting ecosystem, nothing was a more reliable cheat code for growing your slice of the pie than a collaboration with a big-name broadcaster.
From the existing viewers' perspective, it was refreshing to discover new and charming talents beyond the familiar faces they saw every day. For rookie NewTubers like us, the trickle-down effect from a massive channel let us promote ourselves to the world. It was a true win-win—catching fish while draining the ditch.
A thoroughly mutualistic world. If it hadn't been such a clear win-win structure, that picky major NewTuber wouldn't have felt the need to come all the way here herself.
Of course, collabs weren't always good.
If a collab caused problems or sparked public controversy, it could damage both broadcasters involved.
Maybe that was why I found this collab offer a little suspicious.
Our channel was still a tiny Hako channel with very few subscribers.
Was there really any reason for her to take the risk of collaborating with us?
But since I hadn't actually read Kim I-sol's mind, I had no way of knowing her hidden intentions.
Still, I soon found out the reason.
"Kyaaak~! What do I do, she's so pretty! Nabi-ya, Unni! She's seriously five thousand times cuter in person than on screen!"
The moment the door opened, Kim I-sol flung aside all her camera equipment and charged forward with her eyes rolled back in delight. Business calculations and professionalism meant nothing to her—she was the very embodiment of a hopelessly, hopelessly devoted cat lover who had completely lost her mind over the ball of fluff right in front of her.