Chapter 119: His Past
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 119: His Past
-Knock, knock, knock
Hearing a knock on the front door, I got up and opened it.
“Long day?”
Doah, having finished her stream, had come straight to my place instead of her own.
“Was it long?”
“Nah. It was about the length of one anime episode, I think.”
Doah took off her coat, went into the bathroom to wash her hands and feet, and came back out.
“I’m going to change, so look away for a second.”
My girlfriend, who had rummaged through her bag to pull out her pajamas, ordered me to turn my head.
We’ve already seen everything there is to see, so why…?
The thought that she might sleep naked tonight crossed my mind, but I obediently did as she said.
“Done.”
Having changed into lilac pajamas, she seemed to be in a good mood and dived right onto me as I was lying face down on the bed.
“Ah~ this is so nice~”
“Hey. The Pink Army would be sad to hear you say that.”
“Ugh~ But there were so many trolls today~”
A bigger stream meant a higher absolute number of weirdos.
Of course, the company tried to manage them, but there were always some jerks whose chats made you frown.
“Sigh… But it was like that even when you were a small streamer.”
It was just plain wrong to think that small streams were pure and clean.
If anything, it was worse.
Since every single viewer counted, it was sometimes hard to ban anyone.
“Ah, whatever! I don’t wanna talk about Luka-tan anymore~ Let’s talk about you, Oppa.”
The reason she came over.
It was for…
[Love Rides the Waves #Episode 1]
I placed the tablet I had prepared on top of a pillow.
“Do you think it’ll be good?”
“No idea.”
I don’t even watch regular dramas, let alone web dramas, so I wondered if I’d even find it interesting.
A group of boys and girls in school uniforms.
There were even a couple of people I’d met in real life mixed in.
“You’re in episode 3, right?”
“Yeah. It comes out next week.”
“Ooh… Awesome.”
Doah, who had snuggled under the covers, gestured for me to hurry up and join her, and I leaned in beside her.
“Starting it now, okay?”
When I pressed the play button, a bright, sunny sky typical of teen dramas appeared, and the camera zoomed in on the school.
[Hey! Han Seongho! You really!]
A male student burst through the door and ran out.
A female student frantically chased after him.
I already had a feeling I knew what this was going to be like.
When I tilted my head slightly to the side, I saw Doah was completely absorbed in the video.
Sigh… This looks boring…
Of course, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to watch it.
It was the first drama I’d ever shown my face in; how could I not?
I felt it was basic courtesy to at least know, ‘Ah, so this is what I was a part of.’
One episode was about thirty minutes long.
The story about high school life didn’t really resonate with me.
It seemed to be mostly about the shenanigans that happen when you run around in a big group, but I’d never had that kind of experience.
It’s not that I had no friends, but I never did things like skipping class to go hang out somewhere with a girl.
But even in this boring-as-hell drama, there was one person who caught my eye.
[Shin Gyumin! You otaku bastard, watching anime again?]
The male lead smacked him on the back of the head.
[Ah! Why’d you hit me! This was an important scene!]
…I felt a murderous impulse rising.
Who the fuck made this shit?
Who was it!!!!!!
I mean, who watches anime at school without earphones?
You might think someone who truly loves subculture could do that, but hell no.
You’re supposed to watch an important scene like that at home, by yourself, completely immersed!
You’re supposed to save it, savor it, and enjoy it to the fullest, and he’s watching it in a place like that?
I was so dumbfounded that I let out a hollow laugh.
“Sigh….”
Doah seemed to feel the same way about this scene, smacking her lips in distaste.
Her cute little finger pressed the pause button.
“…Isn’t this a bit much?”
Perhaps because it was a project I was in, she couldn’t say anything too harsh, so she expressed her thoughts in a very toned-down way.
“It’s fucking much. It’s so fucking much. Seriously.”
Disgusted, I punched the pillow.
“Aah! I really wish people would pay more attention to getting the details right when they make stuff like this.”
“Seriously! Huh? Does wearing glasses automatically make you an otaku? If you watch anime, are you just some loser otaku who gets picked on?”
Doah laughed awkwardly.
She was probably in a tough spot, unable to agree or defend it.
“Well… um… let’s just watch it to the end?”
“Hah… okay.”
As Doah touched the screen again, the actor playing the otaku gave a goofy smile.
[Hey, hey. If you know anything good, recommend it to me.]
[…I-I don’t really know much myself, hehe.]
…Can’t I sue them for defamation?
Seriously!!!
How little do they understand otakus to direct the acting like that!
Huh? Do they think all otakus go around talking with that stupid verbal tic and giggling ‘hehe’?
This was an insult to all otakus.
Apologize to every otaku in the country! Director! Apologize!
Unable to contain my anger, I was about to throw the tablet when Doah barely managed to stop me.
“Oppa. Calm down first.”
“If I’d known it was going to be like this, I wouldn’t have even been in it!”
The scene I acted in flashed in my mind, and the shock intensified.
So I’m… the one who told that Shin Gyumin kid, or whatever his name is, to know his place…?
His name is shit, too.
How can a person’s name be Shin Gyumin!
There wasn’t a single thing I liked about it, and my reunion with normie culture after so long was the absolute worst.
As depression started to take over, I pulled Doah’s waist toward me for some healing.
As expected, nothing could heal me like Doah’s soft belly.
“Doah…”
“Yes…”
“Uwaaaah.”
Aah… Pink Army… I’m sorry…
I’m sorry for acting in a piece of trash like this…
The fact that I had brutally betrayed the only group I felt a sense of belonging to felt so bitter.
“Aigoo… well… it does seem like… they didn’t do enough research beforehand. Haha…”
“…This drama can’t be allowed to get popular.”
I was serious.
With this level of inaccuracy, it deserved to fail.
If you’re going to use an otaku character for content, at least do it properly.
A work with not a shred of subtlety deserved to be buried somewhere and become nothing more than a scrap of data.
“What if your first project is a flop?”
“If I could turn back time, I would’ve asked to do something else.”
Now that I’d come to my senses a bit, I fell into a serious dilemma about whether I should press play on episode 2.
I felt like I was going to throw something every time that Shin Gyumin kid appeared.
“…So, what do you want to do?”
Doah asked me, her finger hovering over the play button for the next video.
“I’d rather just hang out with you.”
Confiscating the tablet and putting it on the floor, I decided to just look at Doah’s face instead, which always made me feel better no matter how much I looked at it.
I pushed my face forward and smelled the scent of her skin.
Aah… as expected, there’s no one but Doah-tan for me.
In this fake world, I felt that Luka was the only thing that was real.
Because Luka wasn’t just pretending to be an otaku; she was a real one.
When you actually talked to her, you could really feel that Doah, like me, was serious about subculture.
“Still… um… maybe by making it like this, it could actually get a lot of attention.”
“…That’s true.”
There were definitely cases where excessively poorly made content reached ‘so bad it’s good’ status and became popular.
But with this video’s level of cringe, it seemed hard to expect that.
No matter how I looked at it, it seemed perfectly set up to just get a ton of hate and then disappear.
“Sigh…”
An unsettled feeling.
Doah, who had been fidgeting with her fingers and tickling my chest, called my name.
“…Oppa.”
“Hm?”
“This is kind of random, but watching this made me think of something.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you… not introduce me to your friends?”
Her question was a bit out of the blue, and when I tilted my head, she added an explanation as if to clarify.
“Ah. It’s just, watching this made me wonder what you were like in high school, and I got curious about your friends.”
As the topic shifted to my high school friends, it felt like a new crisis had arrived.
“Uh… I guess that makes sense.”
“You have no intention of introducing me… at all…?”
Her anxious voice made me hesitate to answer.
Haa… My high school friends…?
First off, there were no girls, so that was a non-issue. They were all guys, but whether it was the right choice to present these guys to Doah was something that required serious consideration.
Because we were the kind of friends who were embarrassed of each other.
The so-called ‘friends you’re ashamed to introduce anywhere.’
“Ah… well… if you don’t want to, that’s fine… You might not want to introduce me. Right. Well… heh…”
I closed my eyes and steadied my breathing.
The more I think about it, the less I know.
I even doubted they’d show up if I called them.
Nevertheless, I needed to verify something, so I asked Doah with all seriousness.
“Doah.”
“Yes?”
“If you were told to do an offline fan signing event with the Pink Army, would you do it?”
“I’d rather kill myself?”
…I can’t let my girlfriend die.