See You Next Time (1)
"I think I'll save it around here for today."
The moment I started angling toward ending the stream, the chat scrolled even faster.
"I'll save today's file here. Everyone save and go to sleep."
"Was it that obvious?"
I'd wanted to try one of those signature sign-off lines streamers always did before ending, but apparently I'd been better off not bothering.
Embarrassing.
"If you make it yourself... wouldn't it come out around that much?"
"You've got rice at home, right? No wait. One pack of instant rice... no, if you buy the 2+1 deal it comes to about four thousand, doesn't it?"
I opened the calculator, typed in 4,000, started dividing by three—then opened Excel again instead.
"Okay. Look. 4,000... divided by 3..."
"One instant rice pack is 1,333 won, but you don't eat a whole pack, right? The important part of a jeyuk rice bowl isn't the rice—it's the jeyuk. Right?"
"So half a bowl of rice is 666 won. Right?"
"Ah. I'm asking you to agree with me. Pfft."
As I dug in with pure stubbornness, the corners of my mouth lifted before I even noticed. When the avatar smiled along with me, the chat flooded upward again in a cascade.
"Don't screenshot that."
A laugh slipped out at the blunt replies.
"Pfft. Anyway, let's pick the calculation back up."
In the cell under the instant-rice price, I typed labor cost.
"I'm making it myself, so we can subtract labor, right?"
To the right of the labor-cost cell, I entered -6000.
"It takes about thirty minutes to cook, so I'll round up minimum wage and subtract about half. There. Now we've gotten the instant rice for free. We even have over 5,300 won left!"
"If I don't pay myself, it's not an expense, and since I get a meal out of it I've already received compensation equivalent to money—so of course we subtract labor."
"I'll settle. We've just dramatically succeeded at a labor-management agreement."
I gave a tiny nod and muttered, "Thank goodness," and the chat shot upward even faster.
"It's not wage theft. It's more like a family business."
"Huh? Are you saying I don't have parents or family right now?"
I don't, though.
This viewer had good impact. I should note the username.
"I'll let it slide just this once. Alright, now we need to calculate the meat..."
I opened the browser and searched for pork.
"Hind... rear-leg bulk packs, three 1kg packs for about 27,000 won, so... roughly 9,000 per kilo?"
"No, you have to listen to people until the end. I'll put in about 300g and call it three thousand."
Every single sentence drew a rebuttal, so I raced down the Excel sheet typing ingredients before they could keep up.
Rice 666 won. Meat 3,000 won. Onion 400 won. Green onion 400 won. Garlic 0 won. Gochujang 0 won. Soy sauce 0 won. Sugar 0 won. Cooking oil 0 won. Labor cost -6,000 won. Total: -1,534 won!
"See? We made money while eating jeyuk."
"But even without subtracting labor, it only comes to 4,466 won, you know?"
"You don't have those at home? If not, buy them while you're at it. Anyway. If you make it yourself, four-thousand-won jeyuk is just barely possible. Bang bang bang!"
I rapped the desk with my fist like delivering a verdict, and the chat erupted with even fiercer reactions.
They're fun to watch.
It felt like watching entertaining friends who reacted at full volume every time I goofed around. Back in school, twenty people had seemed like so many—so why did twenty feel like so few now?
I hoped it'd grow more.
"Whew. See? That's how convenient Excel is."
"You learned a lot."
"Hmm. If I do this again next time, I'll try to do it normally then."
"I haven't decided?"
Will there even be a next time?
"I'll do it when I can."
"Whew. I'll save today's file here. Everyone save and go to sleep."
"...Yeah. See you next time."
I answered as if under a spell and cut the stream.
For a while I left the cursor over the chat, scrolling the mouse wheel with a smile, until my steadily drooping eyelids finally won and I sprawled onto the bed.
"Next time, huh..."
Thinking that streaming might turn out to be a good way to treat the social anxiety this body had given me, I fell asleep.
A tall building in Gangnam, its entire face made of glass. Still lit late into the night like a kind of lighthouse, this was the office of a major MCN—the kind of place anyone in streaming dreamed of walking into.
A short girl trudged up to the imposing building and swept her eyes from the main entrance all the way to the upper floors. Above the front doors sat a silver petal-shaped logo and a plaque lettered in cute characters.
The nest of Team Lilac, the agency home to major VTubers and streamers on the two big platforms, Jijijik and Forest.
"Ugh. Coming here at this hour..."
On the giant screen installed in the first-floor lobby, the affiliated VTubers' and streamers' schedules and promotional clips played without end. The woman watched the footage with one fist planted against her hip, standing on one leg, then let out a small sigh and stepped into the building.
The automatic doors opened and cool air spilled out—hard to believe it was a summer night of tropical heat.
"Brr. Cold. Our company really is loaded, huh~?"
Security staff rose from the desk to greet her; the rather short woman gave only a tiny bow of her head as she passed through the gate and went inside.
She stopped at the cover-song videos playing on the monitors set between the six elevators, pressed the call button, then smirked as she looked at the screen.
Today again, the goddess of victory♪ Will love only you♬
When the VTuber on screen overlapped her thumb and index finger into a heart, the woman staring blankly at the monitor did the exact same thing—thumb and forefinger crossed into a heart to match the image.
"Koko. You do video monitoring too?"
"Eek?!"
Startled out of her skin, the woman hastily shoved her hands into her clothes and spun around. It was one of the VTubers they'd planned to gather with today, so she coughed awkwardly and scrambled for an excuse.
"Ahem. Oh, it's Tia unnie. I was just practicing fan service."
"In the lobby?"
Her face growing redder with embarrassment, the girl answered the tall woman teasing her with a pout.
"You never know when or where you'll run into a fan."
"Says the one who doesn't even turn on her cam. Even if you met them IRL they wouldn't know, right?"
"...There's already plenty of leaks, you know."
Thankfully it was blue-pill content rather than red-pill—but the tall woman, recalling that a Natube search for "Kokoling red pill" alone would turn up countless cam clips, snorted and said,
"Tsk. You should've been more careful."
"...Back then I didn't know I'd live this long. My lifespan's ridiculously sticky."
"Talking like you've already lived your whole life. Cute."
Watching the elevator descend, Kokoling sighed and confided in her reliable unnie.
"I thought about reincarnating.... but I really don't wanna switch from this model to something else, y'know...?"
"You like that model that much?"
"Not so much like as..."
Kokoling looked at the monitor between the elevators again. On-screen, Kokoling was smiling and dancing to the song—soft movements, then sometimes crisp, sharp ones. Watching her avatar dance, she pulled her gaze away from the monitor with a melancholy look in her eyes.
"I just got too attached, I reckon."
The woman, who hadn't been all that different from Kokoling once, gave a small nod and smiled.
"...Koko. How do you even hold it in when you stream? Doesn't your mouth itch to use dialect?"
"Unnie already gets me, so... I just yammer however I feel like."
"What about pushing it as a concept?"
"Too late. Unless I reincarnate or something."
Catching that the suggestion hadn't been serious—just more teasing—Kokoling stuck out her lip and puffed her cheeks to make her sulk crystal clear. Knowing full well how long the youngest's temper lasted once she got sulky, the tall woman snorted and held out a coffee.
"Thanks, I'll drink it well. Oh? It's here."
The two of them stepped into the elevator and noisily sipped their iced Americanos.
"All of us going off-stream at the same time slot—feels like it's been forever."
"Right?"
The evening slot was basically prime time for streamers. News that the four pillars of Team Lilac were all taking the night off at once had already set the communities buzzing.
"So that means unnie doesn't really know either?"
"Yeah. She didn't say much to me either. Just asked if I could come to the office."
"What on earth is going on.... Even so, asking me to come all the way from Busan on the same day is too much, isn't it? Uuugh. Evil boss."
Kokoling started grumbling that booking the plane ticket was something the president who'd sprung a same-day schedule on them should naturally have handled. Looking down at her, the tall woman pinched Kokoling's cheek lightly and said, playful,
"Make sure you say exactly that in front of Mio too. Got it?"
"To Mio unnie?! ...I-I want to live a long life, unnie."
Kokoling immediately tucked her tail between her legs.
"Earlier you were talking like you'd already lived it all?"
"That was Kokoling's lifespan. I still need to live, thank you."
"You are Kokoling."
"Uuuugh. Unnie, seriously, don't tell Mio unnie. Okay?"
"Hehe. Fine, fine."
At a sudden vibration, Kokoling pulled out her phone and opened the message that had come into the group chat again.
"What on earth is this about..."
"We'll find out soon enough. Looks like the others have been waiting a while. Let's hurry to the meeting room, Koko."
"Y-yeah."