As Long as Both Parties Are Happy
Well, as long as both sides are happy, that's all that matters, isn't it?
The total number of applicants came to 871.
It had started at just under 800, but even while we were sorting through them, more application emails kept rolling in, and it swelled to this.
Of those, 340 were manager applicants.
And 531 had applied for the editor position.
Part of me thought, if this was going to happen, we should've just run the two openings separately — but we needed both sets of hands immediately, so there was nothing to be done about it.
We'd just have to live with it.
"I'll handle the manager selection on my own, so let's go through the edited videos together and decide from there."
Unlike the videos, a manager application was nothing but personal information and viewing history — hardly anything worth putting on display to judge.
Videos at least gave us something to watch. That was the only reason we were selecting them this way.
"Ending it after just one day? You're not taking any more?"
"We've already had far too many people apply… If someone truly wanted to become the editor, wouldn't they have sent something in long ago?"
Opportunity belongs to the prepared.
It was a line the Celestials loved to bandy about even more than they lectured about vengeance and due compensation — words they spouted to proclaim their own greatness and worth.
The problem was that the Celestials had been born clutching opportunity in their hands from the moment they drew breath.
It's a funny thing to hear from them, but it's not exactly wrong.
I had no love for those who did nothing and simply demanded an opportunity be handed to them, either.
And I had seen with my own two eyes that hundreds, thousands of my videos were already flowing through NewTube.
Barring anything unusual, I'd have wagered that more than thirty percent of them hadn't been sent in by their creators until after my announcement.
"…Anyway. Out of the 531, the number I've marked as 'keep' comes to 80 total. My criteria were simple: when I watched each video, I only selected the ones that were actually entertaining and met the basic requirements."
Even cutting 531 down to 80 had taken quite a bit of time.
Entertainment value aside, application emails that didn't come close to meeting the standards Yena had drawn up beforehand were absolutely everywhere.
And tucked into the bottom of the submission template, line after line of the same plea: 'I know I don't quite meet the requirements, but I'm ready to work hard and…'
I understood the sentiment, but I was powerless to change anything either.
I had seen far too many things in life that will and effort alone could not achieve.
It wasn't their fault — but that didn't mean it was something they had to have, either.
They had a point.
Truth be told, there wasn't much in the way of requirements at all.
If the standards Yena had sent me had been too strict, I'd have changed them long ago.
"Then let's start with the first video."
I played the video at the very top of the keep pile.
It began from the moment Yena and I first met — the two of us bewildered by the gold coins I'd handed over.
Yena pulls a tent out of her inventory, and the conversation between us unfolds from there.
The scenes cut along at a brisk pace, and the font work seemed fairly well done too.
The chat was split down the middle.
But chat opinions aside, my decision was already made.
"Moving on to the next one."
Just how many people were watching right now?
I had no way of knowing for certain.
The only thing that was certain was this: the boss of my future was about to play my video.
That much, at least, was ironclad.
"Phew… how many have passed so far? Five, was it?"
White Autumn, video editor, stared at Lily through the screen with her heart in her throat.
Roughly fifty videos had been reviewed so far, which put the pass rate at about ten to one.
Considering Lily's fame, that was actually a decent ratio — but this was still only the first round.
One more hurdle stood between her and actually becoming the editor.
White Autumn scooted her rickety chair a little closer to the screen.
Now the monitor filled her vision.
Lily — the Boss — was more merciless than she'd imagined.
She hunted monsters and people alike without hesitation, thought nothing of playing the outlaw when it suited her — so you couldn't exactly call her a saint — but White Autumn had still believed her heart was fundamentally kind.
Which was why she'd assumed that when it came to these application videos, at least half of them would get a lenient pass…
She's absolutely ruthless.
The moment something looked wrong, it was cut without a flicker of hesitation.
If it seemed worth a longer look, she'd watch for about a minute, then poll the viewers.
If the chat said it was mediocre, she skipped ahead immediately; if the reception was good, she'd watch another minute or so before moving on.
Every single pass so far had been decided by the Boss's judgment within one minute.
In other words: once the clock passed the one-minute mark, it didn't matter how much longer she watched — the video was dead.
White Autumn held her breath in the dark room.
Her old chair creaked, and tension pooled in the silence.
A single thought had taken up residence in her head.
I want chicken.
How long had it been since she'd last eaten fried chicken?
She was still chasing that inane little thought when, at last, the screen she'd been waiting for appeared.
"It's — it's here!"
A somewhat sluggish edit had just scrolled past, and now, finally, the video bearing her own name began — White Autumn (REAL REAL REAL Final Version).
The video she'd been working on since before the Boss had even announced the contest.
When the news of the recruitment broke, she'd revised and revised until she could barely scrape it out the door in time.
Please! Just let me eat chicken!
The video opened with a short preview of her putting a sailor firmly in his place.
She'd assumed everyone else would edit the Boss and Yena's first meeting, so she had deliberately chosen to edit their most recent collab instead.
She'd had barely a day, but she ground through the whole night and managed something presentable.
Not that she'd cut a single corner or skimped on a single effect — absolutely not.
"Ten seconds… already past?"
The Boss just watched, murmuring a vague hmm… while the chat's reaction…
Not bad!
This was genuinely good. All that remained was the pass.
But twenty seconds went by, then thirty, and the Boss said nothing.
If anything, she looked like she was deliberating.
Whether to eliminate it or not.
"No! Please, pass it, hurry!!!"
Time flowed on.
The hours of the dying were passing.
Fifty seconds… sixty…
"Ah."
The one-minute mark had come and gone.
On screen, the Boss was being picked a fight with by a pack of sailors.
And her life was being picked a fight with too.
It's over…
Eliminated.
Goodbye, my sweet chicken…
The Boss — no, not anymore — asked the viewers for their opinion.
But what difference would it make?
Not one person had passed after the one-minute mark.
On screen, Lily, freshly challenged by the sailors, swept her gaze over the five or so of them.
When Yena, standing behind her, began to fidget, Lily turned to her like a scene out of a film.
'Go on ahead.'
'That's going to be a problem, isn't it?'
'I'm sorry. I meant not to cause any trouble.'
And with those last words, Lily handed back the straw hat with a bright grin.
"Khhhh… that was insane…"
It was such a striking scene that even on rewatch it was legendary.
She'd replayed it more than ten times over the course of editing it, after all.
The chat, too, as if reliving that day, flooded with praise — though what the compliments celebrated wasn't the editing, but Lily's masterful moment itself.
"Ah, no, this won't do?"
If it ended here, bland and unremarkable, wasn't she completely done for?
She'd deliberately kept the direction restrained around that powerful scene, figuring that piling heavy effects on top of it would only cheapen it.
"Ugh… I should've just thrown everything at it."
White Autumn clawed her hair into a mess over her pointless regret — then a doubt struck her, and her head snapped up.
Wait, why hasn't it ended?
It had surely been well past the two-minute mark by now.
"That was fun. The editing isn't overdone at all, either. Your skills look genuinely good."
"…I'm sorry?"
"I'm hiring this one."
Hiring? She said hiring?
Not even a keep — a hire?
Really?
And so, from a cramped one-room apartment in Seoul, a roar went up to the heavens — a roar crying out for chicken.
"You're asking why I hired her?"
Well, let's see.
If someone could take raw footage of a two-day-old stream and deliver a flawless edit in a single day, isn't that talent enough?
'Listen carefully, Lily. I know it sounds bad, but the more an editor is like a slave, the better. Not that you should pay them like one, of course.'
…I absolutely did not hire her because I was thinking like Yena.
Anyway — as long as both sides are happy, that's all that matters, isn't it?