The Screening
Seorin couldn't help but be stunned when she heard Ijun's confession.
Rabi is free.
It had been the biggest clip channel dedicated to her back when she streamed as the VTuber Rabiel.
Even she, who remembered the names of every single one of the mere five or so clip channels that had existed for her, still had that particular name burned clearly into her mind.
Even during her streams, the name came up often enough among viewers that it stuck. Of all her clip channels—most of which had only ever generated a little domestic buzz—it was the sole one that actually funneled new people into her broadcasts.
She herself had dropped by whenever she had free time, watching the videos and leaving comments.
"Yeah. Why would I lie about something like this? Fellow Rabi to fellow Rabi."
He said it casually as he held out his account for her to see.
The username, the profile, every video he had uploaded.
He really was Rabi is free.
"…It's true."
Seorin stared at the screen in quiet shock.
From shorts all the way to mid- and long-form videos—anything cute or funny of Rabiel, no matter how small, had been clipped and uploaded.
She had tried editing her own videos early on for promotion, so she knew exactly how much work it took. That was why she had always felt grateful toward clippers.
Especially ones like Rabi is free, who kept uploading regularly whether the views came or not. She couldn't help feeling even more thankful toward channels like that.
And that had been Ijun all along…
"Is it really that surprising? It's just a channel that barely scraped a thousand subscribers."
He spoke as if it were nothing special.
True. Maybe it wasn't much of an achievement. There were clip channels that racked up hundreds of thousands of subscribers on their own.
But that was only if she weren't Rabiel.
From Seorin's perspective, it was anything but nothing. To her, a hundred-subscriber clip channel of her own was far more precious than any channel with a million.
Still too afraid to reveal her identity, she kept pretending to be just another Rabi and praised him indirectly.
"This guy's famous, you know. Great editing, uploads so diligently. People talked about him a lot on the fan cafe, and I even remember him getting mentioned on stream."
"Really? That much, huh. I did work hard, yeah. Trying to drop at least three a week while still going to school."
"Rabiel wasn't popular, so there was no money in it and the views never came. Just putting in that much effort is already amazing."
On top of that, Rabiel had always carried a quiet guilt toward him. The clippers who loved her would pour their hearts into videos, yet she herself had been so lacking that demand never matched the bigger VTubers. Videos made to be seen ended up buried in the deep end more often than not. She hadn't even been able to pull enough subscribers or views for ad revenue.
How could she not feel grateful toward the clippers who still made videos so passionately under those conditions?
"Nah. It's a fan channel. I wasn't doing it for money. As long as Rabiel liked them and the Rabis liked them, that was enough."
"…"
"Just having Rabiel leave the occasional comment on my videos was plenty for me."
Watching him say it so sincerely, a little embarrassed, Seorin couldn't stop the fondness for him from swelling even larger inside her chest.
…How can a person be this good?
Just from the simple fact that he liked her, he had pushed through all that effort and even run a fan channel for her.
The editing quality had been good enough that she had once seriously considered hiring him as her own channel editor if she ever made real money. If she had the cash right now, she would have wanted to press some into his hands.
"Seeing stuff like this, Ijun-ssi, the more I look at you the more you're the real deal."
"What? Suddenly? That's embarrassing. I wasn't fishing for compliments…"
And the moment she actually praised him, he turned shy and didn't know what to do with himself. Even that looked adorable to Seorin.
"Kang the Real Deal."
"You're just teasing me now."
"No. Not at all. One hundred percent sincere."
She said it with a joking smile, but every word was genuine. She truly believed he was the real deal.
"Anyway, enough about my channel. You have to watch this video. It's actually hilarious, okay?"
"…Yeah. Okay. I will."
When someone like him made that kind of earnest request, how could she possibly refuse to watch it?
A full video that painstakingly cut-edited more than eight hours of a horror game stream down to just two. Simply watching it made her feel the care and affection he had poured into it.
…Thank you. For liking me this much.
She offered him her quiet gratitude once more inside her heart.
"Ah, now that we're talking about it, I want to watch it again. Gonna rewatch it when I get home today. This is already my third full run-through."
Beaming.
Looking at Ijun's face as he lit up at the mere thought of watching the video again, Seorin felt an emotion she couldn't quite name.
So she carefully said,
"But Ijun-ssi. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not great with horror games."
"Ah, right, you said you're scared of them. Then what do we do? You really can't miss this one."
"But you recommended it so hard that now I want to watch it again too. Just how fun is it, I wonder."
She hunted for any excuse to stay with him a little longer.
"It really is fun. It's just that the game itself is scary."
"So about that. You said you were going to watch this video at home tonight, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then don't watch it alone. Can you come over to my place and watch it with me?"
Buying that beam projector for the apartment had been the right call after all. Seorin thought that for the first time that day.
"This is your place, Seorin-ssi?"
"Yeah. Around here it was the cheapest. And at least it's not a semi-basement, so that's nice."
A one-room on the first floor of an ordinary multi-family house.
Admiring the red brick I hadn't seen in a long time, I stood in front of her door.
She had said she lived alone. It was true.
We had always parted at the alley entrance on the other side, so I had never actually come all the way to her place before. Realizing this was my first time walking her to her door made something flutter inside me.
As we followed the gate in, Seorin asked me,
"You live with your parents, right, Ijun-ssi?"
"Yeah. For now. Once I get a job I'll move out. Can't live together forever."
"What's wrong with that? These days lots of people still live with their parents even when they're older. I think it's nice when families get along."
I had always thought Seorin had a real gift for saying things beautifully.
I glanced around without meaning to, then asked her,
"But isn't it a little scary living alone as a woman around here? There's basically no security, and I don't even see any CCTV nearby."
Until I started walking her this far, she had been taking this road by herself every time. It was probably unnecessary worry, but I couldn't help thinking it was too dangerous a place for a girl to live alone.
"Why? Are you worried about me?"
Seorin shot the question back with a sly look.
Feeling my cheeks heat under that gaze, I answered,
"Of course I'm worried."
"I see~ You're worried. Why is that?"
"…Well."
"Normally isn't this the kind of thing a boyfriend would worry about? Someone might get the wrong idea."
Her lips were full of a smile. She had clearly gotten a taste for teasing me.
"I-it's not like that, but if something ever happened to an acquaintance or a friend I'd feel restless, so I just—"
"I'm kidding. Why are you making such a serious excuse? Pfft."
Got me again.
She looked at my reddened face and laughed softly.
"But it can't be helped. I'm not even working a part-time job right now, so things aren't exactly comfortable. I'm living off savings I put away before. Even this place is a blessing."
"So your family home isn't around here?"
"Ah, no. It's a bit of a distance. I started living alone near here for university, and somehow I just ended up staying."
"Isn't it hard? Living alone at this age?"
I didn't know her family situation, but as a job-seeker she couldn't have a proper income. Watching her live so steadily on her own here felt impressive.
I wouldn't have been able to do it.
"It is hard, but I find living alone more comfortable. The work I used to do was like that too, and my parents are the overprotective type."
"A lot of hovering?"
"Yeah. Pretty much. I even had a curfew until I started university. I couldn't even go out for a night walk by myself."
I could understand. It wasn't as if I didn't know how parents with a daughter felt. My own parents had been extremely protective of my younger sister and older sister too.
"That's impressive. Living alone in Seoul isn't easy."
"Is it?"
"Yeah. It's cool. Self-reliance, I guess. You seem like an adult."
She had called me mature last time. Thinking about it, Seorin—who had already become financially independent from her parents—might already be more of an adult than me.
Whether the praise pleased her or embarrassed her, she glanced away and gave a noncommittal answer.
"If I budget carefully it's manageable. There's a market nearby too. More importantly, should we head in soon? Us?"
"Ah, yeah."
She punched in the door-lock code and stepped inside first. I followed right after her, and the lights in the one-room came on.
Maybe because a woman lived here. Even though it was small, the interior was neatly and charmingly decorated. Well-placed lamps and little interior pieces. Kitchen, sofa, and bed—compact, but everything you needed was there.
"Want to go sit on the sofa? I'll grab the table to put in front."
We had stopped by a chicken place on the way and picked up fried chicken. Once that was laid out on the table and the beam projector was set up, Seorin hopped up and flipped off the lights.
"Chicken's ready, setup's done. Now we just have to watch. Have a seat~"
Then she plopped down excitedly on the sofa right next to me. The sofa gave a little bounce and a faint vibration.
"This is the one you mentioned earlier, right?"
"Yeah. That's it."
When she pulled up the video from my channel on her laptop, my hands grew sweaty from nerves for no good reason.
A private screening, just the two of us at a girl's place. Even during my so-called youthful college days, nothing like this had ever happened to me.
And the video playing was one I had edited, which only made it worse.
Were there any typos? I didn't drop any weird jokes while editing, right?
Just thinking about those things made my head start to hurt.
"Shall I play it?"
"Yeah."
She clicked the mouse and the intro from my channel rolled out. A warning message appropriate for a horror game appeared, followed by the familiar figure of Rabiel.
She took her hands off the laptop and settled naturally against the sofa; her head brushed my shoulder, and our shoulders touched.
"A little cramped, huh? It's a one-person sofa."
"…It's fine. You normally use it alone. I'm the one who barged in."
"Barged in? I formally invited you."
I bit back the words It's better because it's cramped. There was no way I could say that out loud.
Thump-thump.
A pleasant pounding echoed inside my chest.
[Today's game is none other than…]
Rabiel's familiar voice drifted out—a pleasant high tone. On any other day my eyes would have gone straight there, but tonight the Seorin sitting beside me occupied far more of my attention than Rabiel.
Am I even going to be able to watch this properly like this?
In an environment where I clearly couldn't concentrate, I glanced sideways at Seorin. She was staring at the screen with complete focus, as if determined to keep the promise she had made earlier about watching diligently. She looked like she was pouring every bit of her attention into the video.
Soon an eerie BGM burst from the speakers, and Seorin flinched, hunching her shoulders a little.
"Ugh. Already scary. Just the sound is terrifying."
"Well, this one was crazy popular back then for how scary it was."
It had been called one of the scariest horror games of its time, so of course it would be frightening. Honestly, I still wondered how a total scaredy-cat like Rabiel had managed to clear it all the way to the end.
[Waaah! What the—! Ah, you startled me! Why does the protagonist's face look like that… you scared me.]
I snorted a laugh at Rabiel jumping the second the game started just from seeing her own character's face in the mirror.
What a total chicken.
Then Seorin beside me laughed and said,
"Looking at it like this, she's a real coward. Rabiel."
"Right? You probably don't remember well since it's been a while, but it gets even worse later."
Worse? More like even more chicken, but whatever.
A black screen rose and the words "Cursed Voice" appeared in red letters.
"Looks like it's really starting now."
"Yeah. That was the prologue. Now she has to escape for real."
"It already seems insanely scary. Are you okay, Ijun-ssi?"
"Yeah. I handle scary stuff fine. Plus Rabiel overreacts so much that it stops being scary."
"…I'm a little scared, though."
After finishing the prologue, she really did look frightened. The earlier easygoing expression was gone as she glanced at me softly.
I spoke as if to reassure her.
"It's okay. I'm right here next to you. Isn't that why you brought me?"
"Yeah. That's true, but—"
She looked at me with uneasy eyes at my answer, then said,
"Sorry. I'll apologize in advance."
"For what?"
"If it gets too scary I might hug you or grab onto you. Can you understand? It's a habit."
At those words of hers, a thought crossed my mind.
Sorry, Seorin, but I hoped this game would turn out way scarier than I remembered.