If You Disagree, You're Wrong

"Wow."

—What is it, unnie?

"Five hundred emails just came in."

It was Yena's apartment, with a sweeping view of the Seoul skyline. She'd taken a short break from streaming to plan out her NewTube uploads and broadcast schedule, and now she was on Discord with her editing team, laughing helplessly at the state of her inbox.

Five hundred emails in roughly four days. Even after filtering out the joke mail, more than four hundred of them were actual offers and business inquiries.

—Are they all about Lily?

"Yeah. She doesn't have a business email of her own yet, so I guess they just dumped everything on me."

Emails wanting to do a collab stream with Lily. Emails interested in Lily's costume designs. Emails asking if she'd consider joining a company. Emails asking whether she was accepting guild applications…

"Seriously, why are they sending all of this to me?!"

Yena let out a long groan and took a swig of coffee. She understood the logic, but wasn't it a bit of a nuisance? It wasn't like she was Lily's official spokesperson or anything.

In the Discord room, where four people were gathered, two of the avatar icons suddenly lit up—no, make that one more, a third icon glowing to life. It was her main editor, the one who handled all of her NewTube edits.

—Maybe it's because Lily only ever hangs out with you, Yena-nim. I mean, there's literally no one else she meets in-game right now besides you.

"That's true, but still. Sending me their stuff like I'm her secretary is a bit much."

—Hmm, unnie? Now that Lily's streaming herself, don't you think she'll set up her own email and stuff soon?

Right. That was true.

Before, Lily hadn't streamed at all, so there had been no way to contact her—hence the emails flooding Yena's inbox instead. But things were different now. If Lily wanted to, she could open a channel for contact anytime.

The only problem was…

"If it's too open, that could get messy."

Lily had only shown her face on stream less than four days ago, and already four hundred emails had arrived asking Yena to pass things along. If Lily opened a public email of her own, far more than that would come pouring in. Some of it would be downright malicious mail sent straight to Lily, and there'd no doubt be people dangling bizarre offers hoping to lock her into a contract.

—And some of those will be guild invites, too, right?

"...Did you finish the thumbnail?"

—Huh? What, out of nowhere?

"Hurry up. I've got to post a few Shorts too."

—Seriously, you can't just—

"Can too."

The thumbnail artist grumbled and muted his mic. Oblivious, Yena sipped the rest of her coffee with a grave expression.

She wouldn't just say all that and then not show up… right?

She was anxious.

Very anxious.

Deoen had dropped out of the sky one day.

A virtual reality game that appeared three years ago without a shred of warning or advance notice—and behind it, Nutri Company, the fledgling corporation operating it. Powered by capital of unknown origin, Nutri Company bent the market to its will, and in barely three years it had proudly taken its place among the world's great enterprises.

Its aggressive, breakneck conquest and its utterly incomprehensible technology gave rise to jokes that the company must have captured an alien and tortured the science out of it. No, seriously—quite a few people actually believed that conspiracy theory. Either way, a virtual reality game more real than reality itself struck the world as something genuinely novel.

Maybe it was thanks to that technology, but Deoen had no hackers. Hacking meant using cheat programs to extract fraudulent stats or piles of in-game currency—and Nutri Company possessed technology incapable of tolerating any cheat whatsoever.

In fact, plenty of people had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tried to probe the tech ever since Deoen launched—tearing apart their access capsules, hooking them up to computers to map the internal systems—but not a single soul came within one percent of the technology's source. The very best anyone managed was adjusting the capsule's temperature control. Which, as it turned out, was a subcontractor's feature that had been slated for addition ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anyway.

Back in reality, I was surprised to find I wasn't tired at all. Maybe it was because only my mind had been moving, not my actual body. I was just a little stiff from lying down for so long—that much was unavoidable.

"Nngh…!"

How long had it been? Five duel matches, and I'd shut everything down around three or four in the morning—so eight hours of streaming in total. Granted, five of those hours had been spent reading donations, but that still counted as a pretty solid broadcast, didn't it?

Then I'd slept for three hours and woken up at exactly seven in the morning. I got up, threw together a light breakfast, and sat down in front of my computer for a moment.

"...I can't keep reading all of these every time."

I'd turned donations off, worried more would pile up if I did more duels. But eventually I'd have to turn them back on. Yena and everyone else usually kept theirs on, only muting them briefly when the queue backed up, so I'd need to do the same. If money were no object it'd be one thing, but I couldn't keep living off the trickle Yena passed my way forever.

I needed to stand on my own two feet too.

"Taking too much would be a burden on people… I think some kind of middle ground is best."

If the minimum was too low, strange people would flock in and the queue lag would get worse. But if I raised the amounts, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I'd need the confidence to deliver something worthy of them. Take big money, and you owe something big in return.

That was why, back in the day, I'd deliberately gone out even on my days off to treat the children of the slums. Wounds that would have healed on their own, honestly—but ignoring them simply didn't sit right with who I was.

"Hmm… I should set minimum and maximum limits, and—"

Ding!

Right as I was lost in thought, a Twitch whisper arrived. The notification counter had long since maxed out at +999. I'd been deliberately ignoring the flood, but since this one had caught my eye, I opened it up.

"Hm?"

A siege war?

And Yena's doing it too?