Crossed Paths
All the urgent tasks had finally been completed. A red slash cut across the four neatly written words Regular Performance in her diary. The only major event left for this semester was the final exams. But that was only her responsibility as the student Park Juyeon. As the streamer Yeoni, she had a mountain of work waiting from here on out.
She had no idea what the audience might think, but Juyeon believed her on-stream commentary had improved considerably. At least compared to her first year, that was an undeniable fact.
The memory of her very first performance was pure trauma. That was why the progress she had made this time felt all the more brilliant. It was all thanks to her relentless effort. The countless hours spent alone in her room with the broadcast running, muttering to herself, had finally borne fruit.
“All right…!”
Juyeon clenched her small fist in triumph. She had already prepared every song she planned to perform on today’s broadcast. All the instrumental tracks had been gathered and saved in one place. The only thing left was to hear her manager Suhyuk’s opinion. Yet he had not reached out at all. They had definitely agreed to review everything together on the weekend after the festival… Had he forgotten?
Fiddling with her phone, Juyeon sent him a message.
The reply came faster than she expected. It seemed he really had forgotten, and Juyeon felt a small sting of disappointment.
“Ah. But wasn’t that just you asking me to be your manager back then?”
“If you’re the manager, you have to help figure out how to put the broadcast together, too.”
“…Is that how it is?”
“Yeah. I’ve prepared everything already, so just come over, take a look, and you can head out.”
The streamer Yeoni was extremely strict about security. At her request, Suhyuk scratched his head. Still, she had helped him before. When he had been left a mess after taking care of a drunk and rampaging Hana, Juyeon had been the one to step in. From carrying him home to cleaning up, it was fair to say she had handled nearly everything.
“Yeah… well… it’s not that difficult…”
It was only a three-minute walk, after all. Since he had visited often, the nervousness of entering a girl’s house had almost completely faded.
Suhyuk threw on jeans and a plain white t-shirt, slipped into his sandals, and stepped out the front door.
Knock knock.
When he rapped on the door, Juyeon peeked her face out.
“…Come in.”
“Hey.”
The moment she saw him, Juyeon could tell at a glance that something was different.
“Did something bad happen?”
“Hm?”
“Your expression. It doesn’t look good.”
It wasn’t exactly bad, but Suhyuk did have something on his mind. As both his comrade and his manager, the model student Juyeon was ready to listen to whatever was troubling him.
“…You know.”
Suhyuk settled into his usual spot and leaned back against the bed frame.
“Yeah.”
Juyeon answered as she poured orange juice for her guest.
“I think I have someone I like.”
The plastic bottle slipped from Juyeon’s hand and clattered to the floor, spilling its contents.
“Oh? Are you okay?”
Suhyuk jumped up and looked for a towel. Luckily the sink was right beside them, so it didn’t become a disaster.
“Ah… yeah… I’m fine…”
It simply took Juyeon a moment to gather her scattered thoughts.
“Ah… wait… Then that means you shouldn’t be here, right? A-are you here to tell me you can’t even be my manager anymore?”
Because she had agonized over this scenario many times before, her mental manual was clearly prepared.
“…No. It’s not that.”
“But… if you like someone, coming here is…”
No matter how she looked at it, for the conservative Juyeon it felt unacceptable.
“No. Well. Liking someone doesn’t automatically mean you have to confess or become a couple, right?”
Suhyuk gave an awkward smile.
“Then what does it mean?”
“Um… if I had to put a label on it, I guess it would be unrequited love?”
“Unrequited love…”
It felt strangely new hearing those words from Suhyuk’s mouth.
“Who is it?”
“That’s a secret.”
The question had come so naturally that Suhyuk nearly answered without thinking.
“I see.”
She had planned to chat about all sorts of things once he arrived, but now nothing came to mind.
“Then what are you going to do?”
Developing a crush was understandable. The important part was what came after.
“I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“There’s no chance.”
If his hot-blooded friend Choi Kang had heard that, he would have slapped Suhyuk on the back, but Juyeon was different. She understood exactly why he would say something like that.
“So you’re just going to give up?”
“If I leave it alone, won’t it pass on its own eventually?”
Offering advice in an area she wasn’t knowledgeable about would be arrogant. Especially when it came to relationships—something Juyeon had always been weak at—she couldn’t decide what to say.
“…That could be true.”
This was the best she could offer. The best answer she could give.
The story Suhyuk had shared was a sad one, yet Juyeon caught herself feeling secretly relieved. At least she wouldn’t lose the broadcasting partner she had worked so hard to grow close to.
Silence settled over them. Realizing the mood had turned strange, Suhyuk forced an awkward laugh.
“Sigh… Enough of my pathetic whining. Let’s talk about your promising broadcast instead. What do you need me to help with?”
“Just a second.”
Juyeon unfolded a simple folding chair and set it in front of him. The two sat side by side before the monitor. What Juyeon had written out was the setlist for today’s broadcast.
“What do you think?”
“Looks good.”
It carried the feeling of why even ask? No matter what Juyeon sang, her skill easily surpassed most cover creators. Since these were songs she had carefully chosen after reviewing all kinds of reference material, success was practically guaranteed.
“Really? Then… I was also thinking of trying some games, so I looked a few up.”
Juyeon generally wanted to fulfill every viewer request she could. Of course she ignored anything about revealing her face or personal details, but she made an effort to accommodate other broadcast-related asks.
In that spirit, if it was a game that wasn’t too hard to control, she figured she could give it a try.
“Oh. What kind?”
If it was games, Suhyuk could actually be useful.
“First… the ones people have been recommending lately. This one, and…”
Juyeon searched them up one by one and showed him. They were all games Suhyuk recognized. He had never played them himself, but they were the sort streamers often tried as one-offs.
“My recommendation… hmm… how about trying this?”
Suhyuk’s pick was an endless jumper where you stepped on obstacles and kept leaping higher.
“Is this fun?”
“It’s not really fun, but it’s easy.”
“But… if it’s too easy to clear, wouldn’t that make it boring?”
Suhyuk chuckled at her words.
“Once you actually play it, clearing it is definitely not easy, you know?”
Simple rules did not mean an easy clear. Even a shooter where you simply dodged incoming attacks was brutally difficult.
“Then… should we try it for a bit now?”
Juyeon tilted her head slightly, as if checking whether he had time.
“Sure.”
It was a holiday and Suhyuk had no plans. After chatting, the game finished installing before they knew it.
“Ooh…”
Juyeon clicked the arrow keys and moved the character around.
“So I just have to keep going up like this…?”
“Yeah. That’s it.”
“Okay.”
The model student Park Juyeon thought that a game based purely on inputs would hold no challenge. But.
“…It’s telling me to start over from the beginning?”
After several attempts she had climbed fairly high, only to fall. Juyeon stared at the monitor with the expression of someone who had lost everything. How could a carefully built tower collapse so meaninglessly? Did this game not even have a save button?!
Watching her devastated face, Suhyuk couldn’t hold back a laugh.
“Well… guess you have to…”
“Streamers these days all clear this? Really?”
At Juyeon’s dumbfounded tone, Suhyuk nodded up and down as if it were obvious.
“Ugh…”
Juyeon, who had been debating whether to try climbing again, pressed the quit button.
“What? You’re stopping?”
“Yeah. I’ll turn on the broadcast and go all the way there.”
That made sense. Clearing it here would rob the stream of any sense of achievement.
“All right. I’ll definitely watch the whole thing with you.”
Suhyuk smiled.
“You might not get any sleep.”
“You always said a manager has to watch the entire broadcast.”
“Th-that’s true, but if it gets too long it’s okay to leave partway…”
Juyeon was already starting to feel sorry for the suffering Suhyuk would endure.
“Sigh… Still, hanging out with you really cleared my head.”
Until Juyeon had called him over, Suhyuk had been writhing under his blanket, tormented by a single recurring thought. Getting blackout drunk. Showing up hours late without a word. All of it should have looked pathetic, yet the only image that kept rising in his mind was her smiling face saying she liked it. Suhyuk was experiencing the so-called “head over heels” feeling with his entire body.
“…Really?”
She was glad it had helped even a little.
“Yeah. Enough that we could hang out like this sometimes even when it’s not for broadcast stuff.”
Juyeon’s eyes widened into perfect circles before returning to normal.
“…Th-then… next time, will you call me first?”
It had always bothered her that she was the only one who ever reached out.