The Same Person
"Ugh… Kyaaaaah!"
Seorin screamed right along with Rabiel on the monitor.
I looked at her and couldn't help laughing, utterly dumbfounded.
…Her scream sounds exactly the same as Rabiel's.
I'd already thought their voices were pretty similar even on ordinary days. Of course, Seorin's calm low tone stood in complete contrast to Rabiel's high-pitched one, so I'd only ever thought they were kinda alike.
But screams weren't something a person could control.
The timing of when they came out. The little habits in the way the sound was made. The exact pitch the scream climbed to.
The fact that all of those felt almost identical to Rabiel's was somehow fascinating.
…They say people who love each other start to resemble one another.
Seorin was a Rabi who loved Rabiel every bit as much as I did. Maybe it was inevitable that her screams and reactions would end up matching.
I'd even been told my own speech patterns had gotten more feminine after watching Rabiel's streams. Rabiel's favorite verbal tics and reactions had stuck to my tongue more times than I could count, and it had been a real problem.
"Is it that scary?"
"…Huuuh. Yeah. I've already watched it once, so why am I still this scared?"
Seorin answered with a little sniffle.
I'd even put a five-second countdown subtitle over every jump scare while editing so she could brace herself. And yet she was still jumping in perfect, textbook fashion exactly the way the game developers had intended.
Of course I wasn't really focusing on the video myself. I'd already watched it so many times I knew the whole thing by heart, so chatting with her wasn't a problem.
What I couldn't stop thinking about was my sleeve.
Seorin's cute little fingers were clenched tight around it. So this was the habit she'd mentioned earlier.
Ever since the first jump scare, she had grabbed my sleeve and refused to let go. Whenever she got startled she squeezed harder; when the tension eased she loosened her grip again.
…Why does something this small mess with me so much?
It was just someone lightly holding my sleeve. Yet it felt as heavy as if a thousand-pound weight had been hung from it, and I couldn't even move my hand. Every single sensory cell in my body had zeroed in on that one spot; there was no room left to look anywhere else.
Was it because the person doing it was Seorin?
Kyaaaaah! Stay away! Hyaaah! No! I said no! I'm sorry I'm sorry I'll be good… sob
On the screen, Rabiel had her eyes squeezed shut and was frozen in place, begging for her life. Seorin couldn't bear to watch and turned her head slightly aside.
At that exact moment our eyes met.
"Pfft. Your eyes look a little wet, Seorin."
"…No they don't. I didn't cry."
"I never said you cried."
"Ugh…"
She was at a complete loss for words. The face she made, half sulky and half flustered, was so adorable I almost wanted to tease her more.
"You're scared too, Ijun."
"Huh?"
"You were looking at me instead of the screen because you were scared, weren't you? Why else would our eyes meet?"
Ah, so that was how she was going to redirect the attack. She seemed to be under a major misconception.
"No?"
"Then what? Why were you looking at me?"
I smiled and answered her question honestly.
"Because you're cute."
"…What?"
"The way you get scared is cute. So my eyes keep getting pulled that way. Sorry I couldn't focus."
At my apology Seorin's expression went blank for a second. Then, as if she'd been flash-frozen and suddenly thawed, her face turned bright red. The color spread all the way down her neck and to the tips of her ears.
"Th-th-th-that's… what kind of… nonsense… seriously…"
She stammered, her voice growing smaller and smaller with embarrassment. The natural little aegyo that slipped out when she said "seriously" nearly drove me insane.
Damn. How can a person be this cute?
"The gap with your usual cool vibe makes it even cuter."
"…Ugh. Hold on."
"Call it reverse charm, I guess. To be completely honest, I kept looking at you more than at Rabiel because I couldn't stop thinking about you."
"Auuu… uuuuh… aah… stop teasing me…"
I'd dumped so much praise on her that she'd completely short-circuited. Her face was a mess of flustered helplessness, her eyes rolling around the empty air like she didn't know where to look.
Was she just as nervous as I was? Did her heart pound at every single word of mine the same way mine did at hers? Without meaning to, I found myself hoping we were feeling the same thing.
"Ugh, my face is burning… This is all your fault, Ijun… Don't look over here… It's embarrassing."
She kept her gaze fixed on the floor and fanned her bright-red face with her hand, but that little bit of air wasn't nearly enough to cool the heat. Her cheeks stayed scarlet.
Maybe I should ease up on the confession attacks for now.
Any more and Seorin might actually break. Coming on too strong would only make her uncomfortable. I swallowed the urge to keep gushing and deliberately changed the subject.
"Seorin."
"What. What are you going to say now."
She shrank back like a stray cat meeting a stranger, warily eyeing whatever words were about to come out of my mouth. I snorted a quiet laugh.
"It's nothing like before. You don't have to be on guard."
"…Then what is it."
"I'm in that video. Want to try finding me?"
"What? You're in the video?"
She looked at the screen as if she had no idea what I was talking about. Maybe she thought I'd stuck my own face in there while editing. She scanned every corner carefully, then turned back to me when she still couldn't spot anything.
"Where? Don't tell me you appeared in the horror game? Ugh, that would scare me to death."
"No. What are you even saying. Seriously. Pfft."
How on earth would that even work? Unless I was friends with the game developer or something. Her completely random idea made me burst out laughing before I could stop myself.
"No. I'm in the chat window over there."
"Ah… so that's what you meant."
She nodded as if she finally understood.
Who was Kang Ijun, after all? The guy who'd taken first place in total viewing hours on Rabiel's streams three years running. Top donor. Highest chat count. A completely unhinged Rabi fanatic. Of course I'd been hammering the keyboard like a madman during that very broadcast too.
"See that guy spamming chat like crazy over there?"
"Who?"
"Rabielbaragi. That one."
Rabiel's room never had huge viewer numbers, but chat participation wasn't low either. Still, once it got late, people started drifting off to sleep one by one. Eventually only a dozen or so regulars were left filling the chat. That was why the same nicknames kept repeating over and over.
And among them, the one wearing the sub-and-donation badges and typing the absolute most messages… was me.
"…Ah."
The moment she heard that, Seorin seemed to freeze solid. She stared at the chat window exactly the way I'd told her to, eyes tracking the endless stream of messages from "Rabielbaragi." After a few seconds she seemed to come back to herself. She turned her head and looked at me with a strange expression.
"S-so you're saying…"
"Yeah?"
"Ijun is R-Rabielbaragi-nim. I mean… that person?"
"Yeah. That's right."
Why was she panicking even harder this time? Her reaction was weirder than when I'd revealed the name of my clip channel. A strange feeling settled over me. And for some reason it looked like the corners of her eyes had grown even wetter than before.
When Seorin heard Ijun's words, her heart seemed to plummet straight into her stomach.
Maybe she'd misheard. She tried denying reality for a second, but she already knew better. There was no way she had misheard. He had clearly said "Rabielbaragi" with his own mouth.
…Really? For real? Ijun was Rabielbaragi-nim?
She couldn't believe it. She had entertained the wild fantasy once or twice, only to shut it down immediately. It was far too convenient a story, far too much like something she would invent just to make herself happy.
The person she had wanted to see face-to-face just once. The person she had always wondered about. The fan who had cherished her so sincerely that even the streamer herself had thought of him that way…
…had actually been Ijun all along.
Still dazed from his words, she glanced back at Rabiel's stream. In the cascading chat window, his messages stood out more than anyone else's.
The teasing chat almost made her hear Ijun's actual voice.
Every single one of his messages overlapped with the words he had just spoken to her.
"Because you're cute."
"The way you get scared is cute. So my eyes keep getting pulled that way. Sorry I couldn't focus."
They looked different on the surface, but they were the same. The warmth that came through the words was the same. The way he found both the real her and Rabiel adorable was the same.
"S-so you're saying…"
"Yeah?"
"Ijun is R-Rabielbaragi-nim. I mean… that person?"
"Yeah. That's right."
And he answered her final confirmation as if it were nothing at all. Looking at him, she couldn't close her mouth.
Kang Ijun.
Rabi is free.
Rabielbaragi.
The three people she loved most in the world… had all been the exact same person. And she had only just found out today.