Worries
Worries
I was on the bus heading home after my shift at the convenience store
when my phone rang loudly.
There was nothing worse than causing a nuisance like this.
I hurriedly turned the phone's volume down.
Ding, ding, ding.
When someone sent messages in rapid succession,
the alarm would go off like this.
It didn't seem like it was A-ra. Who the hell was it?
I pulled out my phone to check the sender,
and it was saved as A-ra's manager.
Come to think of it, we'd exchanged numbers
in case I couldn't reach A-ra. Had something already happened?
Feeling tense, I opened the text message inbox.
"A link...?"
The manager's text contained only a single link and exclamations like 'Jackpot!' and 'Take a look!'
Come to think of it, didn't they say the video we shot yesterday might go up as early as this afternoon?
It seemed the editing was done and it had been uploaded.
Since it looked like a Qtube address, it must be that video.
"But why is she making such a fuss?"
I smirked, took out my earphones, pushed them into my ears,
and connected them to my phone.
I clicked the link, and it took me straight to Qtube where the video started playing.
It contained everything from the part where I was cooking to A-ra and the manager eating and reacting with exclamations.
PDs had been called in here and there to eat, and it seemed it had been edited quite well.
It was fun even from my perspective, having experienced it firsthand.
On top of that, there were no weird edits, and it was the footage as it was shot,
which made it more entertaining.
No unnecessary fuss.
Sssp.
But something was a bit off.
Had I been too tired lately?
My eyes were taking in several numbers that had no business being there.
It was almost like I was seeing double, with numbers overlapping.
First, A-ra's channel subscriber count.
It had definitely been in the 7 million range yesterday, but now it was racing toward 8 million.
Well, I could understand this one — she was a world star.
A-ra wasn't just doing music; she also appeared in variety shows, dramas, and movies,
so she had fans across many areas.
Even if it increased by a million in a day,
I could just go, 'Ah, I see~' and move on.
But this, I couldn't understand.
It couldn't have been long since it was uploaded,
but it had the #1 Trending Video mark,
and the view count was already over 6 million.
And every time I refreshed, the number kept changing by the tens of thousands.
This was a situation that completely surpassed my common sense about Qtube.
Videos that racked up such massive views in a short time were mostly overseas topics —
like when some huge accident happened.
And if I wasn't mistaken,
the people on the bus who were glancing over at me
seemed to be watching their phones and comparing something.
Could the video they were watching actually be this one?
And had they figured out that A-ra's husband in the video was me?
Or were they just staring like usual, trying to get my number?
Since the latter possibility was also very strong,
my head was starting to pound.
I was too scared to look at the comments, so I went to the community I always visited.
What I checked was the Today's Best board, which collects posts that have received a certain number of recommendations throughout the day.
But there, all the humor posts had vanished,
and the entire board was wallpapered with A-ra's Qtube content.
[Song A-ra's husband's face revealed... he's a fucking good-looking guy]
[Spilling the tea on how I went to high school with Song A-ra's husband lol]
[Size comparison of the tomahawk steak Song A-ra ate.jpg]
[Telling the story of how I tried to get Song A-ra's husband's number a while ago and got turned down]
If I weren't Song A-ra's husband, they were the kind of posts I'd have chuckled at while reading.
And for some reason, content related to A-ra
and content related to me each made up about half.
I'd only made an appearance on A-ra's channel, though...?
When I got home and was preparing dinner,
A-ra, who arrived soon after, came running into the kitchen with a loud clatter.
"Seong-hwan-a! Did you see the Qtube video?"
"I did."
I smiled wryly as I looked at A-ra.
Things seemed to be going well from the very first video,
so she was in a good mood.
Maybe because of that, I could only smile more wryly.
"So this is the fun of doing Qtube... I've only just realized it."
"Is it fun?"
"Yeah, it feels good that the fans are enjoying it."
Hmm.
It was definitely pretty fun
to be able to show someone the cooking I did.
The thought of it spreading overseas and people watching it there too
gave me a thrilling feeling.
A-ra was just purely delighted. She was lying down at the table,
replaying the video over and over.
...She was just repeating the part where she ate the steak.
She must be pretty hungry.
"Noona, what would you think if I said I wanted to create a Qtube channel?"
"Huh?! Really?! You're going to make one?!"
A-ra shot up from the table.
Then she came over and stuck to me with a slap.
Close enough that our faces almost touched.
"M-maybe... a cooking channel or something...?"
"Well, that's the only thing I'm good at."
I nodded and stirred the contents of the pot with a ladle.
Although I only had a certification in Korean cuisine,
I could manage Japanese, Chinese, and Western to some extent.
Of course, I'd have to study finer things like French cuisine,
but cooking was what I had that much confidence in.
"What do you think? I wouldn't do it if you were against it."
"What are you talking about! I think it's a great idea! If you start a Qtube channel, you'd be incredibly successful!"
"Hm? What makes you so sure?"
I smirked at A-ra's face as she said it like it was obvious.
I was pouring a bit of broth into a saucer to taste the seasoning,
when A-ra thrust her phone at me.
It was the comments section of the video she'd been watching until just now.
The comments section was overflowing with more comments in English, Latin-derived languages, and Japanese than Korean,
endlessly scrolling down.
If I tried to scroll down to the next page by refreshing,
new comments would appear and prevent it from going down, instead just repeating in place —
an absolutely absurd situation for a comment section.
"This comment, that comment — they're all shouting for you, Seong-hwan-a, to give them your channel link. See?"
"Wow... that gives me goosebumps."
I took A-ra's phone, used the auto-translate feature to read them,
and unexpectedly, there were a lot of foreigners asking questions related to me.
If I opened a cooking channel and these foreigners flowed into it, that was a guaranteed ticket to success.
Because it would definitely spread through overseas communities like 8chan or Reddit.
Couldn't I just hit a million subscribers straight away?
"And if you do Qtube, the CEO unnie said she'll provide an editor and all sorts of support!"
"The conversation's already gotten that far... Come to think of it, your agency had Qtube creators too, right?"
From the sound of it, the CEO seemed to share A-ra's opinion.
A-ra's agency was one of the top 3 in the industry and was expanding its business like an octopus.
I knew they'd started their MCN business a few years ago, and with their abundant support,
the growth rate of their affiliated Qtubers was very fast.
If I were to join A-ra's agency?
It would be all good, nothing bad.
I'd also had some fun with this shoot.
"Hmmm..."
A-ra's eyes were sparkling.
Still, it would probably be better to think about it a bit more.
Even if college students do a lot of Qtube,
it wasn't something to take lightly.
If I started, I had to see it through to the end with a sense of responsibility.
Didn't I dislike authors who stopped serializing web novels or webtoons
without any notice midway through?
"I'll think about it just a little more."
"Okay. If you have anything you want to ask, just ask."
So saying, A-ra gently stroked my head.
Anyway, I'd expected her to oppose it,
but I didn't think she'd actually encourage me.
Well... my face had already been revealed,
and A-ra probably knew to some extent that this was how things would be
when she married me, right?
That included the original me of this world.
Since it had come to this, wouldn't it be right to just enjoy it?
I thought deeply as I stirred the pot's contents with the ladle.
***
A-ra had gone to the gym to work out, and since I'd arranged to meet Jeong Hwan-yi and Lee Min-ho, I went to the cafe.
The two of them had come to the cafe on the first floor of the apartment building out of consideration for me.
This was why people said you should make good friends.
"The water's already been spilled? What's there to worry about."
"You said it was fun, right? Isn't it your calling? Looks like you could quit the convenience store."
The two of them, who'd delivered these blunt, matter-of-fact remarks,
were drinking iced coffee.
Come to think of it, if I started doing Qtube, it would be hard to keep working at the convenience store at the same time.
"Ugh..."
"Come to think of it, there aren't many male cooking Qtubers, are there?"
"Right, they say chefs need strong stamina."
The two of them looked me up and down.
I was probably far from their image of a chef.
I had a weak body and wasn't the macho type.
Just as top-tier chefs were mostly men in that other world,
in this world too, the top-tier chefs were mostly women.
What I'd learned while studying was that in cases like fine dining,
two-thirds of a day's work was said to be prepping ingredients and mise en place,
and the stamina consumed there was no joke.
If you think about it simply,
starting from trimming potatoes, carrots, and onions, to prepping beef, pork, chicken, and fish,
and even stews, aren't they dishes that require you to stand in front of the stove for a long time?
It essentially demands high stamina.
Compared to sturdy women, weak-bodied men inevitably fall behind in quality,
and accordingly, they've become hard to find on Qtube as well.
"But the steak Seong-hwan made didn't look that hard."
"Grilling is something anyone can do once they learn it. Making sauces or mashed potatoes, though, he probably nearly died from exhaustion."
I let out a sigh and listed the agonies of cooking one by one.
Viewers who only watched the edited video would think it was simple.
Because they didn't show the work that went into making it.
Grilling meat was something anyone could do if they knew the basics.
Regardless of gender or age.
Whether you sous-vide it, sear it, put it in the oven, and measure the temperature with a core thermometer,
it was done once you just waited until it reached the desired doneness.
Rather, things like demi-glace, chateaubriand, and béchamel sauce that you dip steak into
took far more time and were several times harder.
On top of that, making the mashed potatoes to go with it from scratch?
You boil the potatoes, mash them yourself, pass them through a sieve, mix them with butter and heavy cream, and grind them finely.
Then you pass them neatly through a sieve once more and stir them in front of the fire all day so they don't burn — that was when mashed potatoes were complete.
It would be easier to knead buckwheat soba dough than to do this.
"As expected, stamina..."
was what I lacked.
Stamina.
Even if I said my body was inevitably weak,
reality was cruel.
"Then why don't you try learning to work out? Didn't you say your wife went to the gym again today?"
"Hmm... A-ra Noona worries too much, so I'm never taking her up on that."
A-ra knew well that I collapsed when my stamina reached its limit.
If I were to collapse on an exercise machine, what would happen?
It would turn into a 100% major incident.
Maybe that's why A-ra never took me to the gym or pushed me.
This part was overprotectiveness, though.
"Or just try running when you wake up in the morning."
"Same thing — if I fall, it's a disaster..."
"Isn't she being overprotective at the level of a dad?"
Lee Min-ho said he was jealous and sniffled.
Was it because I was the husband of his idol?
Was he envious that A-ra was overprotective of me?
"You really met a good wife. Where in the world is there a wife like that?"
"Well... that's something I can't help but admit too."
"She earns well, only has eyes for one man, doesn't drink or smoke, and has a great personality."
Lee Min-ho said, and Jeong Hwan-yi added.
What I considered the ideal husband material
seemed to be the ideal bride material to them.
"Ah~ I want to meet a cool woman and get married too."
"Fix your drinking habit first. What woman would want to take you?"
"This bastard... That's an excellent and outstanding point."
Lee Min-ho smirked as he crunched noisily on the ice left in his cup,
the drink long finished.
Watching him, Jeong Hwan-yi smacked his forehead and
let out a sigh.
"See that feminine behavior? No wonder women don't like you."
"What are you talking about? Then what the hell is manly?"
"Haah... The fact that you need me to explain that means you're too early for marriage."
"Shut up, man. Words become seeds."
"You've already scattered plenty of seeds in your field, but you're just chasing sparrows on the roadside."
It wasn't that a man couldn't chew ice,
but stuffing a ton in your mouth and crunching it noisily
was definitely different from the image of a man women liked.
Women liked men who were a bit coy and demure.
Extremely masculine types close to women, like these two,
were handsome enough to be called good-looking, but as a type,
most women would tilt their heads?
If you think of it with the feeling of that other world, it was convenient to think of them as sharing a category with boyish women.
Actually, a look like mine, with no muscles and one that stimulated maternal love,
was said to be popular.
Not long ago, while browsing a community, I'd seen dozens of comments like 'Papang' on a post that had an image of a delicate male character.
It seemed that was the taste of women over here.
Inversely proportional to that, the women popular with men on this side
were the ones who looked slim on the outside but were solid and dependable.
Still, I was really glad it wasn't a world where rough, hulking women were popular.
It would have been terrible if only people like that appeared on TV.
Lee Min-ho finished crunching all the ice in his cup
and set the glass cup down on the table.
"We finished our coffee. Should we get moving?"
"Hey, are you really not going to drink? Can't you just drink a little?"
"If you're drinking, just you guys drink."
"But I'm not drinking either."
"Then just let Lee Min-ho drink alone."
"Then there's no point in drinking..."
I smiled wryly, watching Lee Min-ho try to drink to the very end.
We'd planned to have dinner together, just the guys today,
so I'd told A-ra in advance.
For reference, alcohol was forbidden.
"Don't even think about ordering alcohol. Or I'll just leave."
"Alright, alright. Ugh, are you my dad?"
"If you were my kid, you'd be grounded, you little shit."
I watched the two of them bickering until the end,
and we moved to a different place for dinner.