Financial Therapy
"Ah, ahahaha. Thank you, Coin God! I'm so glad you were happy with the reaction! Ahaha."
Twenty thousand Moon Balloons poured in one after another. Everything he had sent her today came to thirty thousand in all — as much as she would have made from ten hard days of streaming. The financial therapy had landed clean. The shame of having shown her bare chest wiped itself away in a hurry, and a bright happiness at having earned so much rose up to take its place. She had meant to paste on a fake smile. What broke out instead was a real one, packed full of joy.
"Haa. Please don't clip this. Upload it anywhere online and I'll sue, so think very carefully."
Su Yeoning cut the laughter and turned dead serious about the clips. Say it or not, the video would spread. But if she said nothing, it would stroll openly through every community site on the internet. Catch at least the copies out in the open, and not so many people would ever see it.
"Coin God. How old are you? You're older than me, right? Would it be all right if I called you oppa?"
"Okay, I'll call you Coin Oppa. You can talk casually too."
After that, Su Yeoning clung to Kim Taeyoung. She still talked with the other viewers, but she reacted outsized to every line he typed, and even when his chat went quiet she kept firing questions at him. He felt satisfied. As expected, having money was the best thing in the world. It was a thrill, and it never got old.
"You wouldn't happen to want a room cell or a reverse fan, would you?"
A room cell. He'd heard some whales collected them. Some took them private, for their eyes only, and some set them public on purpose, as if daring everyone to look. Taking one didn't sound bad.
"Yes! That's right. If you want your nickname added, just round it up to 2,000."
"Understood! I'll do everything I can! First I'll make you a manager. I'll put up the room cell and the nickname room cell too. And the reverse fan. Also, give me your KakaoTalk and I'll send the cell video. If you want, I'll do morning calls too."
Su Yeoning spilled it all out with a brilliant smile. Then she hesitated, and added one more line.
"I... I do have meal dates, though... What are you going to do about that?"
A meal date. Short for a dinner date, and one of the strategies a female cam used to pin a whale in place. You met, you ate, you drank. Sex happened too, but that was the woman's call. If the whale looked good in person, or if it seemed she could squeeze more out of him, it went all the way. If not, it ended at the table.
Three months into broadcasting, whales with their eye on her chest had proposed a meal date more than once. Su Yeoning, carrying a sour prejudice about the whole idea, had turned every one of them down. The whales, of course, left. Afterward she regretted it. So soon after her debut, she had assumed a meal date meant prostitution, no exceptions. She shouldn't have. She could have just eaten and gone home. But the train had already pulled out. Her room locked into place as a small-fry room with no whales at all and barely a single mid-donor.
And then Coin God walked in. Of every whale who had ever come through, he was the one who fired balloons the hardest. She had to catch him, no matter what. Seat him as her room's chairman, and her life on stream would change.
The chat pitched and rolled. Su Yeoning had always aimed her broadcasts at the pure, innocent lane, showing skin only when a chance presented itself, and to the viewers a meal date did not look good. A whale and a female cam on a meal date meant, in their heads, that the two of them were having sex.
She took the hit anyway. A small fry, she had woken up. You guarded an image because that was how you made more money. If a sure way to grow the take was sitting in front of you, an image could be spent as freely as you liked.
"Hmm."
Kim Taeyoung propped his chin, as if he were actually weighing it. What to do? He did want those breasts. The face, though, fell a little short. Pretty, yes — but not the kind of pretty that stopped a room.
"Haha."
Mid-thought, a laugh got away from him.
To think a day would come when I'd sit here hesitating over a woman like that.
Only a few days ago he had been the one sweating it out at the department store, eating whatever the jin-sang felt like throwing at him. Now he sat clean on the side that held every card, debating whether or not to meet a pretty woman with a large chest. His mood lifted. Fine. He'd meet her.
"A meal date really is a bit much, right? Haha..."
She must have read the pause in his chat as doubt, because Su Yeoning started trying to walk it back.
"Ehh? Y-you'll see me? Um... then I'll give you my KakaoTalk, and we can match a time. How does that sound?"
He had no idea when it would be, but a dinner was on the books.
"Crew oppa, drop ten thousand and of course a meal date is on the table. I'll be waiting?"
Having locked in dinner with Kim Taeyoung, Su Yeoning worked hard to soothe the room. Spending the image was unavoidable, but she could not let the fire spread until the broadcast itself burned down. She made it plain that a meal date was not Coin God's private property. Anyone who donated ten thousand could have one.
That put Kim Taeyoung in a bit of a sulk. Call it jealousy if you liked. In this room he was supposed to be the one holding the cards, the king. Paying attention to someone else while his money was on the table was not acceptable.
So he would scold her with money.
"Waaah! Another ten thousand! Thank you, Coin Oppa. By work... you mean a reaction, right? Could you wait just a second? I'll go stick a little more tape on my chest."
Getting cozy with some other guy? That's a punishment. You get one, don't you?
Club music with no lyrics spilled out. A steady boom-chk, boom-chk pleased the ear, and the eye had plenty to do as well. Su Yeoning, dancing like someone forced to swallow mustard through tears, clutching her chest for dear life with one hand — that, privately, was a turn-on.
The broadcast flipped into a dance floor, and the mood was caught again. Chat sentiment was a liquid thing. Even if a riot broke out on the way to rock bottom, handle it right and the room came back easy. Funny, or dirty, or arousing — you only had to put up something that could poke a primal nerve.
And Su Yeoning's G-cup was more than enough to seize a viewer's eye. Timing it to the end of the song, Kim Taeyoung queued the next track at once.
"Coin Oppa, thank you for the 502. Going straight into the next one."
Su Yeoning's breath had gone a little rough from dancing the club track so hard. She had thrown herself into it to look good, and it cost her more than usual. But you row when the tide comes in. She rolled straight into the next song and kept dancing.
"Coin Oppa, hoo, thank you for the 503. Hoo, oppa. Aren't you curious about a reaction that isn't dancing?"
She was already gasping. Her stamina must have been pretty poor. Hwayeon could dance for over an hour and still look fine.
Kim Taeyoung asked in chat. The music, though, was already playing.
I'm on the next level yeah
"No! It's not that... haa... I'd love it if you kept going, I just wondered how you'd feel about something besides dancing... haa..."
Su Yeoning said it while running the idol choreography. Dance reactions didn't usually come back to back in her room. The price started at five hundred. Doing something she never did made it feel harder than it was.
Your body, body, body, body, body, body
"Ahaha..."
Coin God had no mercy in him. Show you were this worn out and any other whale would have cooed and fussed. Was a real whale just built different? She let an awkward laugh slip.
In the end he ran her from 501 through 512, every song loaded into the Corea TV helper, one after another. Under that bombardment of financial therapy, Su Yeoning was overjoyed. He couldn't tell whether what ran down her face was sweat or tears. Kim Taeyoung was satisfied with the sight.
"Haaa... done... it's over."
"I'm not crying! Why would I cry. It's because... because I'm so happy. Hhh..."
She was crying, wasn't she?
Like the other female cams, Su Yeoning's room was thick with reactions, and squats were the bestseller that never left one.
"Ah..."
Her answer had no enthusiasm in it. Squats ran sixty-six balloons apiece. Nod yes, and a disaster could follow. With his money he could order a thousand of them, or ten thousand, and she wouldn't get out of bed the next day.
"Please spare me..."
She begged for her life. Drenched in sweat, rubbing her hands together, she was cute. Kim Taeyoung burst out laughing.
"Yes! Coin Oppa. Next time too — please! Please, you have to! Come back to my broadcast! I'll be waiting!"
Kim Taeyoung closed the broadcast window without a second look. The music and the voice from Su Yeoning's room cut off. He checked the clock on the computer. 7:42. He had played in her room for quite a while, and it still wasn't eight.
"So this is being unemployed."
Time was spilling over. He had done nothing but play since morning, and bedtime was still a long way off. He was happy.
Three hours remained before Hwayeon's broadcast. He might as well play a game in the gap. Kim Taeyoung turned one on and let the time go by.