I’d Started Taking It Seriously
I checked the broadcast on my computer.
Maybe because he’d gotten a heads-up from Seol-ah, Kang Sungjin looked a lot more composed than before.
Even now, the viewers were still mocking him.
My guess was that most of them didn’t actually care about the truth. They just found it entertaining and wanted to stir the pot.
After checking something, Kang Sungjin’s expression brightened even more.
“I decided to use a voice changer,” he said. “I got dragged into this mess for no reason, so protecting my identity is the least we can do. That’s only fair, right?”
The backlash was hardly small.
“Honestly, anything beyond this is impossible. How else are you supposed to prove it? People have lives. At this point, it just comes down to whether you believe it or not.”
He drew the line there, clearly.
He wasn’t going to let this blow back onto my everyday life.
There were already tons of posts about the whole thing on the forums too.
The difference between them and the viewers was that the forum people were standing a step away, looking at it like third parties.
They only cared because it was a hot topic and amusing to watch.
“The call’ll be connected soon, guys. The manager’s got everything ready. Hang on a second while I get this sorted.”
Seol-ah sent me a KakaoTalk message.
She asked whether now was a good time to call.
I told her yes.
“Haa... how is there not a single quiet moment in my day? I really do feel sorry for Seol-ah’s vice president. He’s the one who sent out tens of thousands in super chats at the last Excel stream. Guys, this really needs to spread everywhere. Imagine how unfair he must feel.”
I wasn’t exactly feeling wronged.
For some reason, I suddenly felt like I’d become a third party too.
I was curious how both sides would respond after the call.
“Guys, once the viewer count hits twenty thousand, I’ll call right away.”
“Give me this much, guys. Honestly, I’m the one being wronged here, so I can at least do this much.”
Wasn’t it said that the one who laughs in hard times is the top dog?
The head of the Excel crew and I must’ve been top dogs, then.
Why the hell were the viewers’ reactions this funny?
***
Hyunie, who had been exposed by sheer accident, ended the stream and watched Kang Sungjin’s broadcast while biting her nails.
“Of course it’s illegal...”
She drew both legs up onto the chair, hugging them close.
It was her most comfortable position when she was nervous.
She didn’t doubt it. That big spender was definitely some criminal.
It was a perfectly sensible judgment.
She was just a female streamer who had barely gathered a hundred viewers. Maybe if she were a major streamer, she could understand it, but to dump tens of millions of won on a girl like that?
And this had happened in less than a month.
It was a reasonable suspicion. It had to be payback, or sexual bribery.
People had been talking a lot lately. They said they were running out of female streamers for Excel streams, so they were debuting pretty women from entertainment bars.
It wasn’t exactly a baseless rumor either, since there had even been cases of entertainers debuting that way in the past.
So the most plausible explanation was that she’d sold her body.
“Tch, I guess he isn’t confident.”
It had surprised her that he was willing to take the call, but hearing that he’d do it with a voice changer made her scoff.
How were they supposed to know if he was really the big spender or not? Anyone who believed that was a sucker.
That only made her feel safer.
Even if he threw out some kind of proof, she wouldn’t have to apologize.
She could just insist he was a different person.
And honestly, that was probably more likely anyway.
The call connected.
It was obviously a voice altered by some app.
“I’m sorry you got dragged into something like this, sir.”
“It’s fine.”
“May I ask how old you are?”
“I turned twenty-three this year.”
“...Pardon?”
She snorted.
Without meaning to, a laugh escaped her.
It was hard to believe he was in his thirties. But he was saying he was in his twenties. Early twenties, no less.
An early-twenties guy who’d spent a hundred million won on a broadcast.
That left only two possibilities. Either he came from a family rich enough to be near chaebol level, or...
He was illegal.
Honestly, it was starting to lean even more toward illegal.
Just seeing Kang Sungjin get flustered proved it.
What the hell are they doing? Are they filming a skit or something?
It was funny, though.
The viewers were laughing too.
Twenty-three.
Even if he were from money, he’d still be too young to be fully out from under his parents’ influence.
It wasn’t strange at all to be certain he was involved in something illegal.
“Ah... so are you saying you’re a trust-fund kid?”
“No, I made it through crypto.”
“....”
She didn’t think she’d be able to hold back laughter anymore.
He’d made money through crypto, he said.
Maybe it wasn’t illegal. The crypto market was still so new that the law hadn’t fully caught up yet.
But he couldn’t dodge moral responsibility.
What, had a twenty-three-year-old made a fortune through honest trading?
He’d obviously made his money through something shady.
Like getting old folks to invest and then cleverly skimming off the top.
That had actually been raised as a problem in the news.
What a smug bastard.
In that respect, his youth really showed.
And then Kang Sungjin, no longer just flustered but dead serious, asked, clearly aware of how dangerous this was for him too.
“Um... if it’s not rude to ask, did you create the coin yourself?”
“No, I traded it. Spot and futures.”
“Ah. So if you were able to donate a hundred million won to the America broadcast, you must’ve made a massive profit.”
“I dumped all my spot holdings and bet on futures going down.”
“Oh, so the market crashed hard this time, and you made a lot of money. So...”
What an absolute circus.
Was he seriously expecting anyone to believe that?
At the very least, he’d need to have made several billion won for a hundred million won donation to make any sense.
And once you added in Seol-ah’s claim that she’d met the big spender, that number had to be in the tens of billions at least.
No matter how much crypto had surged and crashed recently, there was no way an ordinary person could make that kind of money.
Unless they were a trust-fund kid.
“Haha... so then, can I take it that you’re not a trust-fund kid, but someone who became incredibly wealthy through crypto trading?”
“Well, everyone defines wealth differently, but by my standards, yes, I’d say I’m definitely rich.”
“Ah, that’s enough then.”
Kang Sungjin seemed ready to wrap things up roughly there.
He had no choice.
There was already too much backlash while the viewer count stayed high.
Maybe because he was acting so confidently, and maybe because he still wasn’t giving them any believable explanation, the viewers were furious.
“I’m watching the stream right now, and it seems like everyone’s having a hard time believing it.”
“Haha... honestly, I can’t say I blame them. You need seed capital to make that kind of money in the first place. Sir, you’re not a trust-fund kid, right?”
“I was just an ordinary person. I was doing part-time jobs until recently.”
“...Honestly, that’s even harder to believe. It’s not exactly easy, you know.”
Kang Sungjin had now fully started looking for a way to cut ties.
It was absurd that these idiots were the reason our Excel crew had been getting cursed at.
Just look at how they handled it.
And then they had the nerve to demand an apology.
“Hmm... this time, I really do feel a little wronged. Everyone seems to be cursing at me.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I dragged you into this for no reason. How about I hang up and try to calm the atmosphere down a bit?”
“Do you want to meet in person? You can just make sure I don’t show up.”
“...Would that be okay?”
“I’m being a little seriously wronged here, so yes.”
“Then that’d be great! I’ll come running right away, sir!”
What the hell was this circus now?
***
I’d intended to finish things off with a simple phone call.
That was arrogance on my part.
“Well...”
Even Seol-ah, the one who’d met me in person, didn’t seem to believe it.
If the viewers, who were already suspicious, couldn’t believe it, that was only natural.
Seol-ah only began to accept it after I showed her the house.
Normally I would’ve let it go there, but...
“They’re crossing the line more and more.”
There were even viewers cursing out my family now.
I took screenshots first. I was going to ask for the recording too.
If they were going to spew nonsense and have fun doing it, then they should be prepared to take responsibility for it.
Of course, with internet broadcasting, rough language was inevitable.
So I only planned to hold accountable the people saying things so vile they couldn’t be repeated out loud.
“Could you send the address to my phone? And please make sure only the channel owner shows their face.”
“Of course. I’ll send the address right away.”
There was no need to send the chief secretary.
While he was on his way, I’d need to ask him to handle the real estate registration too.
I decided to send the driver who was already waiting nearby, just in case.
“I guess I’ve started taking this a little seriously.”
It couldn’t be helped.
Once we started talking, the whole subject had shifted to me.
Up until then, most of it had been about someone else.