I Do What I'm Told (2)
In the group chat where the Parallel members gathered, conversations usually flew back and forth at a frantic pace whenever there weren't any streams going on. It was basically the company group chat, so that made sense. Topics ranged from joint streams and content ideas to which games were fun lately or dinner recommendations. But on days like today, when we were doing a big group collab stream, everyone was too busy focusing on the broadcast. The only real activity came from Do-hee watching the stream or the occasional one or two important messages.
“Oh, hell yeah! Pondies! Dropping the rain from the sky. Here to soak the dry ground nice and cool again today!”
The moment Mazia's absurd vocal impression, backed by her voice modulator, poured out over the stream, the group chat exploded.
Rain was so shocked she lost her words. Cheon Do-hee immediately sent feedback.
Only then did Rain snap out of it. She scanned the chat and started ad-libbing.
“Phew~ Surprised, huh? What do you think? This is my secret weapon. I prepared a copy of myself. So you can look forward to it!”
Even though she responded right away, there was no hiding her panic. Do-hee had given her a heads-up before the stream started, but she never expected someone who could mimic her so perfectly it was like looking at a doppelganger. Sure, it was thanks to the voice modulation program, but that still meant the accent, the filler words, everything except the adjusted tone was almost identical.
The viewers seemed to feel the same way. The chat was flooded with playful messages.
But Rain was already an eight-month veteran streamer. She wasn’t about to be swayed by the split opinions battling it out in chat. If anything, the fact that Jia was copying her so well was a huge win. If she built Jia up as the “real” one from now on, wouldn’t the twist when the real answer was revealed be even more delicious? The content could blow up way beyond just a big hit; it could become an absolute smash.
The fun of Find Rain didn’t just come from the actors trying to imitate her and slipping up. It also came from the genuine awe of the participants who got completely fooled.
Rain worked her mouth and fingers at the same time.
“Hey hey. Everyone, shut up. Calm down. Come down. It’s obvious I’m the real one. I’m A-Rain. Why don’t you get it? I’m so disappointed.”
But the person who was supposed to play the crucial role, Jia, didn’t respond. In the end, Momo, who had been watching the situation, dropped a single pointed message.
As if she had been waiting for exactly that, Jia responded.
Rain was floored when she heard it. She was used to seeing how Jia only listened to the boss and selectively ignored everyone else, but she never expected Jia to have even memorized her old pronunciation mistake with “Pondies.” Since Rain herself was a Korean-American, she’d had trouble pronouncing her own fan name in the very early days and only did it wrong for about a week. And just now, Jia had even moved her hand to match the exact gesture. The swag was so on point it felt like a hometown friend who had known Rain for years.
‘This isn’t just imitation. This is straight-up copying?’
*
I stayed quiet at first because I wasn’t sure if it was right for someone who had never done this kind of stream before—and who wasn’t even a VTuber—to butt in. That’s when the boss’s razor-sharp message flew in. But I don’t think I did anything wrong. It’s because of the mindset that every Parallel employee should have, and because it’s one of my core beliefs.
When I think back to all the times staff members at the main branch’s VchuVchu or Yoruasa got beaten down and shrank back after showing too much of their own ego, it’s clear that employees should always act like employees.
Still, when the boss who’s a streaming genius tells me to do something, I should do it. There’s a reason the first-generation members say that if you listen to the boss well, even subscribers will fall from the sky while you sleep. So as a good, obedient employee, I’ll do exactly what I’m told and help increase Rain’s subscribers and fans. She’s been hitting a bit of a plateau lately anyway. Maybe today would be the turning point.
‘It means I’m doing well. It means I should trick them even harder, right?’
Bring it on, Pondies. This is a battle to see who loves Rain more. This is exactly why I diligently practiced singing and rapping.
The first Pondie appeared in the group chat.
The moment the Pondies saw his nickname, they started whispering among themselves. He was the true Rain meat stock chairman who had never once lost the number one spot in Rain’s donation rankings, and a big spender who rotated through every Parallel stream, always carving his name into the top donor list.
Rain was surprised he had shown up first and was quite excited.
But the chairman, who was receiving everyone’s expectations, was clearly very nervous. It was because he hadn’t been able to tell the difference between the real Rain and Jia during the actors’ self-introductions earlier.
And so the search for Rain began. The first to step up was A-Rain.
The chairman thought for a moment, then spoke immediately.
The one who had been shot down was first-generation member Midori Komari. As soon as she was eliminated, B-Rain spoke up next.
Next, first-generation member Nezumi Maru was also eliminated. It hadn’t even been two minutes since the first two were filtered out. Cheon Do-hee, who had been watching, burst into laughter at how ridiculous it was.
“I thought both of them were pretty good at it…”
Because of the sudden comet named Mazia, the first-generation members who were supposed to be the competent ones had been reduced to comedians. The original plan had been for Mazia to be the one doing an obviously terrible job for laughs. But this flow wasn’t bad either. After all, vocal mimicry is relative. If someone does it overwhelmingly well, someone else is bound to create comedy. The roles had simply changed, but the momentum was perfect. The viewers were clearly excited. The Pondie who would guess the correct answer was chosen randomly, but the fact that Rain’s chairman had been picked first only heightened the atmosphere. If even he, who could easily spot clumsy imitations, couldn’t tell them apart? That was the mark of something huge.
Next it was Mazia’s turn, now playing C-Rain. Would the chairman be able to guess correctly and win the pizza? Everyone participating in the stream waited for C-Rain to speak…
A brief silence fell over the broadcast. Just like during the self-introductions earlier.
When D-Rain spoke next, the broadcast descended into complete chaos.
No matter how good a mimicry is, the more someone talks the more differences from the original should appear. But because Mazia had collected so much data from watching streams and organized it well while practicing, her mistakes were strangely minimal. To someone who didn’t know better, it would look like there were simply two Rains. Even Do-hee, who had been watching as a regular viewer without knowing which Rain was real, would have taken quite a while to figure it out. And that was despite having grown familiar with Rain’s unique accent and filler words from doing so many joint streams with her.
With the situation like this, Rain’s chairman could only watch the two Rains arguing for a while about who was real and repeatedly say “Good grief!” Where on earth had they brought this person from? He could only marvel at CEO Cheon Do-hee’s scouting ability.
In the end, deciding it was hopeless, he raised his hand first.
Anonymous Donor has donated 5,000 Clouds!
You're giving up on the pizza?
Using the chance meant the person would sing a short snippet of a requested song, but the pizza prize would be downgraded to a Mama Burger set. But was the prize even the issue right now? The number one donor, the chairman who loved Rain the most, was about to fail to find the real one. Well, even if it failed, it would still make good YouTube clip material. Still, someone who called themselves Rain’s biggest fan couldn’t fail at a question like this.
The original song Rain released two months after her debut was a very K-pop style track that added powerful high notes and her specialty English rap on top, like sprinkling cheese as seasoning. Obviously not something just anyone could imitate easily. Especially the rap part—it was so fast and full of slang and abbreviations that anyone who hadn’t perfectly memorized the lyrics would definitely make a mistake. Even Rain herself had made quite a few errors during recording, so everyone thought a fake would have no choice but to slip up.
But the Pondies were making a huge mistake. The person currently acting as C-Rain was Mazia, whose watched VTuber streams weren’t limited to Korean ones. This vicious fan of Momo even used a VPN to snipe the streams she did once a month in Japanese or English for her global fans. How much pronunciation practice had she done just to avoid being caught as a non-foreign fan? Even Mazia herself hadn’t known that effort would come in handy now.
"Voices in the shadows, we’re risin’ loud,"
"No more silence, we’re standin’ proud."
An explosively fast machine-gun rap. The viewers quickly mistook it for Rain’s rap and started waving their glowsticks. Their ears and brains had arbitrarily decided that this had to be Rain’s rap.
It was only four seconds long, but the lingering aftertaste remained for a long time afterward. Do-hee, who had been watching, sat with her mouth hanging wide open.
“Wait, Mazia. Just what the hell are you…?!”