The Former Pro-Gamer Trainee
Yujacha. She was a streamer broadcasting on the Sepia platform, a small-time VTuber whose viewer count had never once broken into triple digits over ten years. Of course, I had been one of her earliest fans. Hoping her streams would do a little better, I used to clip her broadcasts and upload edited videos to NewTube. That connection eventually led to me landing a formal position as an editor at the company she was affiliated with.
I was drafting an email to my favorite VTuber in the most polite and formal tone possible. Even though I’d been lucky enough to become her editor and had been watching her longer than anyone else, I couldn’t afford to approach her carelessly. That was the proper relationship between a fan and a broadcaster—far apart, yet closer than anyone else when it came to giving and receiving support.
That said, I couldn’t accept the idea of my favorite VTuber simply ending her streams like this. Watching her broadcasts after work, finding the funny parts, and editing them had become the last remaining joy in my life.
Of course, it was possible the company had made this proposal precisely because they knew my personal background.
After all, I was the “successful otaku” who had gone from being a former pro-gamer trainee to becoming an official editor through a fan channel.
Streamer Yujacha was already thirty years old this year. Rather than viewers harboring pseudo-romantic feelings, there were now more people worrying about her marriage and relationships. Besides, aside from the first year, there had been almost no collab offers or strange RP concepts due to her eccentric character.
“…She debuted at a time when Korea still didn’t really understand VTubers. There were too many trial-and-error moments.”
In the summer of 2015, the first NewTuber appeared in Japan, streaming with a character that mimicked a broadcaster’s movements and gaze. That winter, Korean streamers like Yujacha began entering the VTuber market. However, her RP as a succubus saint—prim and proper on the surface, yet occasionally dropping suggestive remarks—was still too ahead of its time for people to accept. No matter how early she entered the market, rushing in without proper preparation had left too many regrets. Even her streamer name didn’t match her concept, which became the biggest reason she remained a small-time broadcaster.
“Ha, what a damn life.”
Right after sending the email, I stood on the company rooftop smoking and cursing under my breath. Was it really right for someone like me, just an ordinary editor, to do Marriage Show content with her? Of course, the thought of a broadcaster I’d watched for nearly ten years suddenly disappearing made my hands tremble and bile rise in my throat. There simply wasn’t any male streamer nearby who was close enough or had enough shared history to do the Marriage Show with Yujacha. If she disagreed with the company or wanted to reincarnate as an independent broadcaster, that would be one thing—but openly admitting she had no talent for broadcasting at the company she’d been with for so long was no different from saying she was looking for other work.
“Yujacha, what do you think about mediocre talent? I have a dream I want to achieve, but I keep hitting walls, so I’m sending this donation.”
The message I’d sent her during my immature days overlapped with the current situation. Back then, with no one to lean on, I’d entered a faceless, nameless stream and poured out my worries while donating a thousand won.
— Mediocre talent? There’s no such thing as mediocre talent.
Even though it was only a tiny amount, she had listened to my concerns more seriously than anyone and said those words.
— Having a dream you want to achieve means you’ve been putting in effort all this time. Just because you’re facing setbacks doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
Whether it was part of her saint RP or genuinely heartfelt, the answer streamer Yujacha gave me back then had become the driving force that kept me in this position.
— I don’t know what’s going on, but I believe there will come a day when your talent shines.
After that, despite my lacking skills, I edited videos hoping more people would recognize her, climbing from running a fan channel to becoming an official editor.
— So hang in there too, anonymous viewer!
The acrid smoke blurred my vision. It had been a while since I last smoked, and the bitterness lingered in my mouth.
After work, I returned to my studio apartment, showered, and sat in front of my computer to find this email from streamer Yujacha waiting for me. Seeing the messenger ID written below, my fingertips trembled slightly. It wasn’t just hearing her voice through a broadcast—if I pressed the call button, I could speak directly with the streamer I’d liked for nearly ten years. This went beyond my expectation that she would use SNS for private conversations. Normally, I would avoid any personal contact unless it was strictly related to editing work.
“…Do I really have to add her as a friend?”
I hesitated right at that threshold. Normally, a VTuber and a fan having a personal relationship or contacting each other privately was taboo among taboos. Most fans liked the character itself, not the person inside the VTuber. Of course, now that streamer Yujacha was thirty and had streamed for nearly ten years without escaping small-time status, most viewers were saying she should just find a decent guy and get married. There were even rumors that the reason she could keep streaming was because her family was wealthy and this was just a hobby.
“Yeah, let’s keep it strictly business and end the call quickly. It’d be rude to ignore her reply.”
I muttered while looking at the delivery box that had arrived at the company address. CEO Lee Jihye had only provided me with a microphone worth around 100,000 won and told me to handle the rest myself. Without professional content planners or scripts, she’d judged that the raw sweetness was the key factor behind the recent success of Marriage Show content. It was the minimum investment. Since we weren’t using cameras, no additional equipment was needed, and because I used to be a pro-gamer trainee, my computer specs were decent enough.
♩ Trrrring ♩
Who would have thought the notification sound of CodeCode—the messenger that allowed screen sharing and calls while gaming—could feel this nerve-wracking?
“Hello?”
The high, cute voice I heard every night. The moment I heard Yujacha speak, I froze.
“……”
“Hello? Hel-lo? Can you not hear me?”
Yujacha spoke slowly, clicking her tongue. Viewers sometimes called her “ajumma” because of her age and RP, but to me she was like a first love.
“I can hear you fine. It just took a while to set up the microphone. Hello, this is editor Kim Baekhyun who contacted you via email earlier.”
Precisely because of that, I had to hide my personal feelings. No matter how much it was for content or views, I believed an editor and a broadcaster shouldn’t become personally close.
“Aren’t you a bit too nervous? We’ve exchanged quite a few emails over the past five years. Ehehe.”
Whether to ease my tension or not, Yujacha let out a playful laugh and continued the conversation.
“Of course I’m nervous. I think editors shouldn’t get personally acquainted with broadcasters.”
“There are plenty of actual close streamer-editor pairs, you know? Some even appear on streams and gain popularity… and there’s no viewer who doesn’t know you used to run my fan channel, Kim Baekhyun-ssi.”
There were indeed such cases. Some editors were known as “Editor Number X” and regularly collabed with streamers, appearing on broadcasts as named editors.
“But what we’re doing is Marriage Show content. Normally, fans and broadcasters aren’t supposed to do that.”
“You already know my viewer count. Even if something goes wrong, there’s no one to curse at me, and they’ll just tease me for being an idiot while worrying about the stream… Besides, I was planning to quit after this year anyway.”
The moment I heard the word “graduation” come directly from her mouth, my expression hardened. At times like this, it was fortunate we weren’t using cameras.
“Honestly, after doing this from age twenty for ten years, I think I’ve done my best. Don’t you agree? It’d be a waste for an editor like you to be stuck handling a small-timer like me.”
As she said, the now-inactive fan channel used to get more views than the videos on Yujacha’s NewTube channel.
“Maybe I never had any talent to begin with. So I’m thinking of this Marriage Show as my last chance—”
But I hated the idea that something so trivial could be the reason my favorite VTuber had to quit streaming.
“That’s not true. There’s no such thing as mediocre talent in this world.”
I sent Yujacha the script and content I’d prepared in advance, throwing myself into preparing for the Marriage Show with her more than anyone else.
“Grand Arts Hero? You want to duo queue in this?”
Streamer Yujacha tilted her head after reading the script for Grand Arts Hero, an AOS game set in a sci-fi movie world where players combined various skills to fight. But why this game specifically? If we were going to break the taboo of an editor doing Marriage Show content, shouldn’t we go for something more provocative? While it was true that this was the major game with the most viewers on the platform where Yujacha was active, her streams—since she was terrible at games—were more teeth-grinding than entertaining.
— Yes, I’m confident in this game. Besides, if we announce we’re doing Marriage Show content from the start, a lot of people will find it weird, right? We need to build it up like this first.
Kim Baekhyun sent his Grand Arts Hero ID to the confused Yujacha and said those words.
“What? Oh… You’re pretty good? Wait a second…”
While checking his match history on a stats site, streamer Yujacha—Im Yujeong—noticed something strange and stopped scrolling her mouse.
“Your highest season rank is Co—Cosmos? Editor-nim, were you a ranked player in this game?”
It was the second-highest rank Kim Baekhyun had achieved ten years ago when he received a pro-gamer offer—the proof that only the top 500 players could obtain.
— Yes. It’s all ancient history now, though.