Invasion from the Bad Site

Jeong Chanhyeok was just an ordinary internet broadcast viewer.

A third-year university student and returning enrollee. He hadn't exactly been a social butterfly before his military service, but after coming back he found that every last connection had dried up. He lived alone, his family in a different house. It wasn't that he had zero friends, but meeting up with them was never easy. So he filled the loneliness that came from all those severed relationships with internet streams.

Today he'd dropped by the newly launched platform Close Up and stumbled across a trending broadcast boasting over seven thousand viewers: a so-called "Real Actual Middle School Girl Cam Stream." When an immature middle-schooler got tangled up with seven thousand people, viewers who loved crossing lines inevitably showed up. The attention-starved girl then proceeded to act out one bizarre stunt after another, until the moderator finally appeared and shut the whole thing down. At least it hadn't escalated into an actual arrest under the juvenile protection laws. Small mercies.

After riding that wave of madness and getting off, Jeong Chanhyeok felt strangely drained and bored at the same time. He idly browsed the other available streams. A handful belonged to well-known creators who'd probably pocketed huge signing bonuses. The rest were mostly mid-tier newcomers hoping to ride the platform's launch hype into stardom.

Almost against his will, his cursor drifted toward another title that screamed "middle school girl." To be fair, he hadn't clicked because of the title. The magic words had been "burger giveaway." For a broke guy living by himself, free burgers were always welcome.

Once inside, he saw the streamer was playing I Am Hero. A massively popular game he already ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠knew by heart. The problem was there was no camera. No virtual avatar either. Not even a custom character portrait. Was this person allergic to actually running a business? The title did promise they'd turn the cam on at five hundred viewers, but right now the count sat at a measly one hundred and seventeen. Reaching five hundred looked like a pipe dream.

This girl doesn't even have the basics down. Is the whole streaming scene a joke?

Jeong Chanhyeok moved to close the tab. That's when the streamer's voice floated out of his headphones.

It was a soft, bouncy, naturally cute voice. Plenty of streamers on the internet manufactured that exact tone because the demand for adorable voices was huge.

Not bad. Doesn't sound forced at all. Definitely not a strained voice.

In streaming terms it was called a "farming voice." Older generations called it a loli voice. The Japanese called it moe-koe. Whatever the label, that voice had hooked Jeong Chanhyeok before he could leave.

Most streamers were adults, and ninety percent of cute voices were pure acting. But if this one was real? That was physical gifted. Pure streaming talent.

It's pretty natural. No hint of throat tension. This isn't manufactured.

A camera that could show every raw facial expression and create instant empathy was important, of course. Add in a pretty girl and it was perfect. But the majority of viewers weren't just watching—they were multitasking. Eating dinner, grinding homework, or farming resources for their own accounts. In the end, voice mattered more than cam or avatar combined.

Broadcast Genius Kim Haru. Yeah, that confidence makes sense with a voice like this.

Jeong Chanhyeok burned the seven letters of her name into his memory.

The game was going smoothly. The stream was doing even better.

Right now the viewer count—Haru's "haspi"—had just broken through one hundred and twenty. Before switching platforms and reincarnating under a new name, that number would have been a pipe dream. Honestly, she'd never expected anyone to watch a stream with zero cam and zero avatar. Maybe slapping "burger giveaway" in the title really had been a genius move. The entire world really was full of rice-farming addicts and burgerji.

Deciding to spend seven thousand won out of her own pocket had been a divine move.

"Thanks for the one thousand Film. But I'm seriously a brain-new pure newbie playing for the first time. What am I supposed to do? I can prove what exists, but I can't prove what doesn't, you know?"

Whoa. A single thousand-won donation had turned a chat used by over a hundred people into pure chaos. Maybe throwing a thousand won was the most valuable way to spend it in the entire world?

"Of course."

They say the first drop is the hardest. Once the first thousand-won punch landed, others started throwing their own thousand-won bills in response. Today's stream revenue had already hit two thousand won! If she could pull in another five thousand, she'd at least break even on the burgers. Sure, there were platform fees, electricity, and other costs, but for the first time she wondered if becoming a popular, rich streamer might not be completely impossible.

The I Am Hero Gallery was as chaotic as ever today. It wasn't tournament season, so the board was flooded with garbage posts and angry diaries about getting screwed in ranked. In the middle of that collective monologue that nobody read, one new thread appeared.

The attached video was simple but beautiful. A flawless aerial combo with zero frame loss. Because I Am Hero was a back-view 3D action game, players with bad aim often whiffed combos on airborne opponents. It was the main reason endless fights broke out in the so-called "deep sea" tiers.

Most users guessed Platinum at the lowest, with the majority expecting Master or above. They spoke like it was nothing, but Master tier was actually the top 0.1 percent—monstrously skilled players. Instead of replying in the comments, the original poster made a new thread to reveal the answer.

Nobody believed that Kim Haru was actually playing I Am Hero for the first time. For some reason an angry anonymous army began raiding her stream.

The chat suddenly caught fire.

It was one of those rare events that sometimes happened in internet streaming: an invasion from the bad sites.

Whoa, it's actually happening to me?

During her three years as a hako she'd sometimes imagined getting raided like this. But it had never actually happened before she gave up and ran away. Yet the moment she switched platforms and laundered her nickname, it finally occurred. Maybe this was a sign that everything was about to go extremely well?

[683 viewers]

"We've passed the promised five hundred viewers! Just a moment. I'll get the camera ready!"

The bad-site raiders who'd come to set the chat on fire were starting to panic. Of course the middle-schooler thing was pure aggro and she was actually an adult, but admitting that here would end the stream.

"Of course I'm a female middle schooler. Have you people only ever been fooled?"

While lightly bantering with the arsonists who'd come to burn the chat down, I finished setting up the camera.

"Then, I'll turn on the cam now!"