The First Vlog (3)
The scream pierced the air. “Kyaaaak!”
A beautiful girl was falling from the sky. The kind of scene every guy has probably fantasized about at least once was unfolding right in front of me. Of course, this wasn’t some anime trope. She was literally plummeting toward me in real life.
I instinctively stepped one foot down onto the lower stair to anchor my lower body. Then I spread both arms wide, bracing for the impact that was about to crash into me.
“Oof.”
Thud.
Yoo Chae-ryeong, who had lost her balance and tumbled forward, slammed straight into my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, stopping her from dragging us both down the stairs. She must have been terrified too, because she instinctively hugged me back, wrapping both arms tightly around my waist.
If her large chest hadn’t acted as a cushion, the collision probably would have hurt. Yeah. They really do come in handy. Big breasts, I mean.
“You okay? You idiot. I told you to be careful.”
“Y-yeah… sorry…”
She had gone completely quiet. The fact that this usually noisy girl had fallen silent meant she was genuinely shaken. I almost started scolding her more, thinking she must have been scared, but I stopped myself. She already knew she’d messed up better than anyone.
“Seriously, though. If you’d been any heavier, we both would’ve ended up as corpses at the bottom of these stairs.”
“Hmph… yeah…”
Still, she had climbed pretty high up the stairs. We were well above the height of a second floor. If she had rolled all the way down, she could have been seriously hurt. Chae-ryeong seemed to realize her own mistake and felt embarrassed about it. Her face flushed bright red as she simply nodded without offering any excuses.
“……Um, so when are we going to let go?”
“What? Oh…”
Only then did I realize I was still holding her tightly and loosened my arms. It hadn’t been intentional, but we had ended up in a much deeper embrace than necessary. Both of us had been hugging each other so closely that our bodies were completely pressed together.
“Sorry.”
“N-no, it’s fine~! You don’t have to apologize. You were helping me! And we’re… you know… dating and all…”
Her voice cracked on the first syllable, then trailed off into a mumble. The moment I relaxed my arms, she pulled away like a startled puppy scrambling to escape. Her flustered reaction was so obvious that, honestly, it left me feeling a little down.
Was being in my arms really that unpleasant for her? She seemed desperate to get away as fast as possible.
……Well, it’s all just acting anyway.
Hugging a guy friend would probably feel gross. When we were drawing that picture earlier, she had probably forced herself to do it too. The thought made my mood sink even lower.
But the camera was still rolling, so I tried my best to act like nothing was wrong. I already knew this about her. She’d never seen me as a man. Getting hurt by that realization now would be weird.
After pulling away from me, she took a few rough breaths before forcing an awkward smile back onto her face and returning to her usual energetic self.
“……Still, at least we got one good drawing out of it, right? Yeah. That was nice.”
She nodded to herself, looking pleased. That line about the drawing would probably get edited out, but whatever.
“Yeah, well, as long as you’re not hurt, that’s what matters.”
I’ve always been closer to the insensitive side than the sensitive one, so I just let it go. Besides, there’s no way someone with a sensitive personality could survive hanging around Yoo Chae-ryeong every day. This kind of thing happened constantly.
She glanced at me cautiously, then asked, “……So, are we doing it?”
“Huh? Doing what?”
What else was there to do here? I tilted my head, genuinely confused about what she meant.
“Rock-paper-scissors to decide who goes up first. Aren’t we?”
“Like hell we are!”
“You’re really not going to? But why nooot…”
We had almost died because of that exact game a minute ago, you moron. I could only clutch my head in disbelief at her genuinely disappointed expression.
“Rock-paper-scissors! Kyaaaa! I wonnnn!”
Having won with paper, Chae-ryeong skipped up five steps and reached the front of the student center. I filmed her from below as she bounced up excitedly.
……What was so thrilling about that? I already knew she was competitive, but at this point I was starting to think it would be better if I just lost every single game on purpose.
“Anyone watching would think she just doubled her entire life savings.”
I left the already-decided game behind and simply walked up the remaining stairs. I wasn’t even slightly disappointed. Yeah. It’s not like I particularly wanted to win and go up first. Nope. Not at all.
“Loser. Can’t even win at rock-paper-scissors, you loser.”
“Sure. Must be nice being so good at rock-paper-scissors. Why don’t you try using it for your midterm exams too?”
“Don’t bring up studying, that’s cheating. I’m not confident about this test at all…”
It wasn’t that Chae-ryeong was bad at studying. But if we compared our grades from high school onward, I had always held an overwhelming lead. Even when choosing universities, I had matched my scores to hers.
“That’s right, everyone. Did you know our cameraman here attends school on a scholarship?”
“That sounds like useless TMI you’d see on a League of Legends loading screen.”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Never mind if you don’t know.”
As expected of a Korean, receiving compliments felt awkward. Studying well wasn’t that big of a deal anyway. I quickly turned the camera away and started filming the building instead, changing the subject.
“More importantly, Miss Yoo Chae-ryeong, could you please introduce this place already?”
“Oh, right! This is exactly what I mentioned earlier—the landmark of our university. The tallest building on campus. This is the Student Center!”
“The way you say it makes it sound impressive. It’s just a tall building.”
“Hey, don’t ruin the mood. Just focus on filming nicely.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
After my half-hearted reply, she immediately slipped back into full vlog mode. She rattled off information about the student center and club rooms—things even I hadn’t known—and I filmed the interior scenery appropriately. Then we returned to the front of the building.
“You’re amazing. I noticed it earlier too, but how do you know so much about the school? We’ve only been here together for a little over a month.”
“You just naturally pick it up when you hang out with the girls.”
“Really? The power of girl talk, huh.”
I mostly talked about games and otaku stuff with Gang-hu, so I honestly hadn’t known much about the school.
“Anyway, hurry up and film over here. I’m about to do the ending comment.”
Finally, it was over. My arms felt like they were about to fall off from holding the camera for so long. Even though our campus was fairly large, we wouldn’t have taken this long if we hadn’t been filming a vlog. Still, just like she had said at the beginning, this was supposed to be the end of today’s shoot.
“So, how was it, everyone? I hope you enjoyed touring Jeongun University campus with us!”
“There’s nothing fun about school. What is there even to see?”
“Shh! Camera guy, shh! Anyway, we’ll wrap up today’s video here. Bye-bye~! See you later~!”
“See you~!”
“Please look forward to our next video. Please…”
The filming ended with her desperate plea. Only then did I lower the camera and press the stop button. The muscle pain that immediately shot through my arms made me groan.
“Ughhhhh. I thought I was gonna die… My arms hurt so bad…”
“Good work~ Yoon Taeo. Still, for our first try, I think we did pretty well, right? We didn’t freeze up and the lines came out smoothly.”
“I guess so. But seriously, shouldn’t we be getting paid more than ten million won for this? You want us to do this for a whole year?”
“The ad revenue from YouTube will be split fifty-fifty anyway. It’s fine. It’s fine.”
“You’re sure this is actually going to do well?”
“Of course! Don’t you trust my eye for these things?”
“I’d have to be a very gullible person to do that.”
She took the camera from me and replayed the footage we had shot. She wouldn’t be able to watch the full two hours, but she still wanted to check which parts had turned out well. She skipped around, only watching the usable sections.
“Yep, yep! This is fun! I’ve got a good feeling about this one!”
“Really?”
“My intuition after watching a million couple vlogs is telling me so. Don’t worry. Just make sure the editing is good~!”
“Yeah, I’ll do my best. I have to earn that money somehow.”
No matter what, it was nice to see her so excited. Whether it succeeded or not, as long as Chae-ryeong was this happy, that was probably enough.
She seemed to be writing down some requests for me and typed a few things into her phone’s memo app before asking, “You were surprisingly good at it, though? The boyfriend acting? I thought you’d be super stiff.”
“Was I? I didn’t feel like I was acting very boyfriend-like.”
Honestly, it had felt like I was just behaving normally. Like how I usually talked to her when we hung out.
“Really? Does that mean we already talk to each other like a couple normally?”
“What are you even saying. Never mind, I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.”
She smiled brightly and said something like that so casually, completely unaware of how much those words could shake someone’s heart.
“But you had fun too, right? Filming the vlog?”
“……Well, it wasn’t bad.”
I wasn’t as excited as she was, but since I liked making videos, I enjoyed it too. Filming with her and creating something together had been genuinely interesting. And… it kind of felt like I was on a date with Yoo Chae-ryeong, which was nice…
“Right? Right? Ah~ it was so fun~! Then I’ll be counting on you from now on too. Boyfriend?”
I carefully took the hand she offered for a handshake. It really had been a pretty good day. That’s what I thought as I held her hand.
Three days after we uploaded that first vlog, I was packing up my things in the lecture hall after class when Yoo Chae-ryeong came sprinting toward me from across the room.
“Yoon Taeo~! Taeo, Taeo! It’s a disaster!”
She kept calling my name urgently. I looked at her with a tired expression, wondering what could possibly have her this worked up again.
“What is it? You’re making a scene again.”
Had she really been waiting in that state until my class ended? She looked like a kid who had just received an award and couldn’t wait to show it to her mom.
“Just look at this first. Then you’ll understand why I’m not overreacting. Hoo, hoo.”
Still visibly excited, Chae-ryeong quickly pulled out her phone, opened the YouTube app, and went straight to the analytics screen. She shoved the view count graph right in my face. The number displayed there was so shocking that I forgot to breathe for a second.
……Ten… ten thousand?
100,386.
That was the number of views our very first vlog had reached in just three days.