There's No Way a Toxic Fan Could Be This Cute (1)
The chat was flooded with messages calling me cute. I mean, I’d admitted it to myself, but hearing it from other people—over seven thousand of them—made my face burn with embarrassment. Okay, fine, I am cute. But is it really okay for me to hear that? …Well, I do acknowledge it every time I look in the mirror. And these days, looks are basically an asset.
Still, right now I was here as a staff member from the operations team, sent to clean up this broadcast. So I cut straight to the point.
“I’ve been thinking about giving you a piece of my mind because people keep looking for me instead of Rain during her streams.”
“If you’re just using me as an excuse because you actually want to donate to Rain, I’ll accept that. Is there an Acceptance Committee in the chat?”
The viewers tested the waters cautiously at first, but once a few people started the chant, the entire chat filled with the same opinion.
“Alright, so you all admit it? Then you don’t need me as your excuse anymore, right? I’m leaving?”
I didn’t hesitate for even a second before exiting the call. At the same time, I signaled Rain to wrap things up.
Complaints rained down in the chat, but Rain calmly clicked the mission complete button. It had been agreed upon beforehand. She would only show her face today and promised to do a proper stream next time. And just like that, the towering pile of donations the viewers had worked so hard to build (most of it thanks to the boss) disappeared straight into Rain’s pocket. Four million won must have tasted incredible, because Rain’s voice was more excited than it had been in a long time.
Wow, seriously. The moisture the puddles made for me is so delicious. You even went out of your way to make an excuse to give it to me. Goddess will work harder and do even more crazy stuff. Thank you! Thank you!
The puddles, who had been focused on me for a moment, finally realized the mission was complete and exploded in outrage.
Nope. Eating and spitting is a bad habit. Big Ma told me that during our last collab.
Rain immediately activated her echo, laid down a beat, and started grooving for the special one-million-won donation reaction. The viewers’ responses were all over the place.
When the emotes of people gradually lying down and the “falling into hell” spam started to overwhelm the screen, Rain finally lowered the MR volume and got to the main point.
You know what? Next week I’m going to stream with D-Rain, my puddles.
That way I get to see your true feelings, just like right now.
To be honest, I could have revealed earlier that I was scheduled to appear on next week’s stream. But it looked like Rain had predicted this from the start and prepared to tease her viewers. Clicking the mission complete button and making a big fuss about how delicious it was had all been part of the plan—to pour oil on the fire the moment I left.
She was a streamer who used to get beaten up by toxic fans back in America, and now, after nearly a year, she had become the toxic one herself…
So before the one million won one reaction, how about a chat autopsy? Scary, right? Terrifying? Anxious? Trembling because you might not get to see Rain’s amazing reaction?
Soon after, the confessions of those who feared the chat autopsy and reaction ban poured down like rain from the sky.
Watching it all gave me chills down my spine. After all, I too had suffered the humiliation of having my own toxic chats sent to the boss dissected. But on the flip side, a true first-tier toxic fan is one who’s ready to take a beating from the streamer. It’s like wrestling—only when you lock up, get hit, strike back, and trade blows does it become a truly fun broadcast.
If there were a Toxic Fan Academy and I had been invited as a guest professor, I would have told the students this: A toxic fan only becomes first-class when they help the streamer’s broadcast. You must be willing to throw your entire body without hesitation if it means creating an insanely entertaining clip. In other words, everyone who panicked and donated 11,111 won was an excellent first-tier fan. Of course, the ones who dropped actual curses or parent-baiting insults should probably be locked up.
Maybe because I had already promised to collab with Rain, the other first-generation members’ streams that evening went without any major issues. The atmosphere was pretty much the same as usual. Everyone was doing casual pre-stream chats, laughing about yesterday’s Find Rain event. My name—well, D-Rain’s name—came up quite often, but… if they were really that curious they could just watch Rain’s VOD, check her official channel, or look up clip compilations. Anyone clueless enough to keep bringing me up in another first-gen member’s stream got a warning from the managers.
Still, just in case, I kept an eye on things. There were definitely a lot of people trying to fish for information from Komari and Maru. Probably because both of them had slipped up and leaked planned content once before. A lot of people seemed to be hoping they might accidentally spill more details about me again. Even so, both Komari and Maru handled it well, showing how much they’d grown.
Leafies, you can’t do that. The staff member will feel uncomfortable.
You guys are talking about another girl instead of me right now?! Ha… Maru is so depressed!! I feel like I’m turning black!!
Dora stayed curled up tight like the rock she was nicknamed after and didn’t react much. Rain, since the collab was already scheduled, just casually shared some old stories.
The staff member? What are you all trying to do by asking about her? Hehe.
She’s a good person. Really. Today she kept insisting on paying for the meal. She was almost whining like it was my first day in Korea. Kept saying “foreign worker needs help…” and stuff.
Even in the boss’s stream, which I thought would attract the most aggression, there wasn’t any major chaos. Well, the boss is an expert at handling viewers, so it stayed quiet.
Curious? Then should we set up a mission in our stream too? Hmm. How about if it reaches our staff member’s annual salary, I’ll call her? What do you think?
Anyway, it was clear that everyone was trying to protect me. Suddenly I felt like I had become the company’s youngest member. Or rather, the little sibling who debuted alongside the first generation. They had always shown a tendency to protect me because I was an important employee, but honestly, it had never been this intense. Maybe because my appearance had become cute, everyone’s maternal instincts and protective urges were going into overdrive.
But I’ll admit it—I do understand the desire to protect me. I catch myself touching my own cheeks constantly while getting ready for work every day. And today, someone even gave up their seat for me on the subway. I usually stand for the entire thirty-minute commute, but suddenly this tall older man stood up and offered me his seat. He asked if I was a vlogger, so his intentions probably weren’t purely innocent, but I still thanked him and accepted. Compared to the times I used to get scolded by grandpas and grandmas for not giving up my seat, it felt like I was living in a completely different world.
Of course, right now the thing I enjoyed most was casually texting back and forth with the boss.
I replied immediately.
After watching the boss for so long, I could pretty much guess what she was thinking. She probably figured I would have some trouble communicating with the viewers, so she was saying we (while lying down) would fill the audio, and I could just play the game and respond to us. That seemed to be the idea.
I replied that we should do Bacall. That if I talked too much I might slip up, and that it would probably be better to talk less like the boss suggested. She agreed and said we could discuss the collab details tomorrow over dinner with Rain.
The moment I sent the message, I found myself fiddling with the keyboard without realizing it.
…Did I just type “Yupp” with the final consonant “ng”? Not “Yep”? Wait, have I gone full cute-mode?
I always wore a suit to maintain my dignity as a working professional and tried my best to uphold proper etiquette in front of the boss. So this felt incredibly strange. Was my mind turning soft and cute just because my body had become cute?
The important thing was that the boss’s reaction was different from usual. Normally she would just send a single mocking “H”, but this time she sent four of them. Does the boss prefer “Yupp” over “Yep”?
When I tested her by acting a bit more bratty than usual, she didn’t seem to get angry at all. Interesting.
“Hmm.”
Suddenly, my inner toxic fan instincts began to boil. So if you’re cute, even toxic behavior gets a pass? This is something I’ll have to test with a social experiment after work.
After 2 a.m., no matter what game it is, the number of crazy people skyrockets. But there are also office workers who take the day off and stay up all night playing games they normally don’t get to enjoy. For those kinds of people, after 2 a.m. is basically purgatory. It becomes a lawless zone you should never carelessly step into.
Hello 1st attempt, hello 2nd attempt, hello 3rd attempt, hello 4th attempt, hello 5th attempt…….
Office worker Kim realized that the random teammate named “MomofinalEducationIsChickenSchool” was one of the crazy people—no, one of the crazy girls—of the 2 a.m. purgatory. Still, her voice was incredibly cute and her diction was good, so he wondered if she might be a streamer.
I’ll keep going until you respond. Hello 25th attempt, hello 26th attempt…….
But it seemed like if he didn’t answer, she would keep saying hello until the game ended. So he had no choice but to dig out the microphone he had shoved in a drawer and turn on his voice.
“Hello.”
The string of hellos finally stopped at the 42nd attempt. A moment later, she spoke again.
Wow. You actually responded. As thanks, I’ll hard carry this game.
Kim, who didn’t know much about the community or the toxic “signal flare” meme, snorted and thought, ‘…With double barrels?’