Why Does Everything Keep Getting Bigger...
The Parallel VTuber Gallery was already on fire.
The top comment on the gallery post already had over five hundred upvotes.
The next day, I arrived at the office after confirming that the bomb I’d dropped yesterday had detonated perfectly. Ra Seung-hyun was waiting for me in the building lobby. For some reason, our team leader had come out with her.
The reason became obvious immediately.
“…What kind of baseless accusation is that? It’s not like that. I just came down to buy coffee since we have a meeting. Let’s go.”
Ra Seung-hyun was a marketing genius who had received the highest performance ratings at a major corporation for ten straight years. She was the one who had created that festival eve project where the first-generation members went on an adventure together. Our CEO never stopped applauding her work and results, yet Ra always seemed dissatisfied.
It wasn’t because she had a sharp personality. Honestly, it was mostly because of me.
It wasn’t anything dramatic. I would casually toss out reminders to the CEO like, “Shouldn’t we do this content?” or “What about that content?” And those suggestions always came a few hours—or sometimes days—earlier than hers. So whenever she brought in what she thought was a brilliant proposal, the CEO would say, “Oh, I already talked about that with Jia,” and it would completely ruin her mood.
Of course she wouldn’t feel good about it. But it wasn’t because she was incompetent. I just threw ideas out without thinking about the consequences, while she analyzed industry trends, the current atmosphere, and even the potential fallout before submitting a full report. That’s why hers took longer.
When you thought about it, the timing of when ideas first came to us was actually pretty similar. Unlike me, who had been immersed in internet broadcasting culture since I was young, Ra had only started watching streams about three or four years ago—just like our team leader. The fact that she had absorbed everything about the industry in such a short time and knew exactly when to push her team to submit proposals showed just how much of an elite she was.
That was why having her as the head of the planning team meant new songs, new outfits, and perfectly timed content all came out exactly when they should. The Lunar New Year karaoke event was also her creation, so I trusted her completely. She was the best talent supporting our CEO, and I was genuinely grateful.
Of course, even someone with such a strict image like Ra Seung-hyun always wore a subtle expression around me ever since I had shrunk. It was like she was slightly annoyed, but the corners of her mouth kept twitching upward.
We bought coffee and entered the conference room. The draft proposal I had written and uploaded last night was already displayed huge on the screen. The moment we sat down across from each other, she gave me a rare smile.
“The draft is a bit rough, but I like it.”
“Thank you.”
Her team members had said her meetings felt like hell, but this one proceeded in a surprisingly smooth atmosphere.
“Still, if you want to do planning properly, you’ll need to learn more. The proposal isn’t detailed enough to present to upper management.”
“I’m not even on the planning team to begin with.”
“Considering the CEO specifically told me to help you, it seems like she wants you to learn this side of the work too, doesn’t she?”
“Is that so?”
“More importantly, the environment between people who broadcast and people who plan is completely different. You have to point things out in extreme detail. Otherwise the understanding shifts and problems can arise during actual execution.”
“Ah. But I was planning to handle this one mostly by myself. I thought this level would be enough.”
Ra Seung-hyun looked at me with genuine surprise.
“You were going to run the content with only this much preparation?”
“Yes. I was planning to ad-lib the rest.”
If I had to describe her expression in that moment, it was basically “What the hell is this kid?”
Soon enough, similar words actually left her mouth.
“What about during the MoovGun civil war?”
“Pretty much the same.”
“During the Wicker server and the Combative tournament too?”
“There wasn’t any time to prepare back then.”
“…So when you said ‘we’re fucked,’ you didn’t actually have a plan after that?”
Kang Team Leader suddenly pulled me into a hug.
“Team Leader Ra, you’re scaring Mabean.”
“I didn’t even do anything? We were just having a normal meeting?”
Ra Seung-hyun let out a short sigh.
“Anyway, it’s honestly impressive. I think I finally understand why the CEO keeps putting Mabean on stream lately.”
“Why do you think she does it?”
“It’s not common to find someone who can single-handedly clean up a mess even if the broadcast goes off the rails. And it’s not just cleanup—she can control the entire mood however she wants.”
The way she described it made it sound like I had some kind of brainwashing ability that could captivate anyone instantly. I didn’t show it outwardly, but my mind was actually quite busy. Still, the important thing was that I had earned Ra’s trust, regardless of what image I projected.
Unlike the other team leaders I interacted with frequently through miscellaneous tasks, I’d barely had any work-related conversations with her, so I had been worried. But once we started talking about the proposal, everything went smoothly. I barely said a few words while she filled in all the blanks and turned it into an excellent content plan.
“Then let’s submit the report like this.”
There was one major change from my original draft: the addition of a sponsor called Aurora and an award named after them. When I asked Ra about it, she explained right away.
“We got a bottled water ad for the members’ karaoke event.”
On the day of the karaoke, the CEO and members would gather at the Motion Studio on the ninth floor. It seemed they were even planning to set up tracker-equipped water bottles there. So she was suggesting we also run image ads for that water company during the Illegal Duet content the day before. The winner would receive a one-million-won prize sponsored by Aurora. That was the gist of it.
“So the first place in the viewer vote gets the prize money. The award we were originally going to give will be me picking two people, right?”
“The CEO seems like she’ll be appearing that day too, so just have her and the CEO each give out one award.”
“I see.”
Did the CEO even have time? Well, Ra probably knew the CEO’s schedule better than I did.
“That should be enough, right? I’m busy, so I’ll head out now.”
“Thank you for your help.”
“Since I helped, make sure you do a good job.”
Ra let out a little “hmph,” turned on her heel, and strode out of the conference room. Our team leader, who was still standing beside me, spoke up.
“She always talks like that, but she’s actually a total tsundere.”
“Now that I think about it, you two seem pretty close, huh?”
“We’re the same age, after all. Oh, what was it she said before? ‘Hug Jia once—’”
“Hey. Kang Ji-ho.”
The conference room door, which we thought had closed, cracked open again. Ra was glaring at our team leader with eyes so intense they looked like they were shooting flames.
“Don’t say unnecessary things.”
“Sorry, sorry. I won’t.”
“Tsk.”
The conference room door slid shut again. Our team leader barely held back her bursting laughter.
“I didn’t know you two were close enough to speak casually to each other.”
“We have to keep communicating about the kids’ external schedules, so it happened naturally.”
“So what was that story about me?”
“Ah, that. Ask Team Leader Ra directly later. If I tell you, she’ll come all the way to my house and grab me by the hair.”
…Just what kind of story was it?
* * *
Since Ra had gotten involved, I wasn’t worried about the content’s quality anymore. But after a few days, an unexpected additional sponsor appeared in the content announcement.
“Why is Pazizik involved?”
The CEO spoke as if it were no big deal.
“Remember the viewer count for the Wicker Town concert?”
“I remember it went over three hundred thousand.”
“And for the Dog Mom tournament?”
“Was it two hundred and fifty thousand…?”
“Exactly.”
The CEO stared at me pointedly. Was she saying it was because of me? The only memories in my head were of me beating people to death while muttering about Lapiz potions and cursing the game. It definitely wasn’t a result I had created alone.
Of course, more sponsors was a good thing. The more production support fees they provided, the higher quality content we could deliver.
“Anyway, that means the viewer vote prizes have increased to four. Pazizik is providing two million won for two winners, and Aurora added another million for two more.”
“Four million won total… We’re still giving out our own merch set as planned, right?”
“Yep. Since the prize pool got bigger, we don’t want any controversy about internal favoritism. Pazizik will manage the participant list to guarantee anonymity.”
“I really suggested this with a light heart, but it’s somehow turned into something huge.”
The CEO let out a small laugh.
“Our Jia really is still a beginner streamer, huh? Getting scared over something like this.”
“I’m not scared. I’m more worried that you’ll cause an accident, CEO.”
“What are you saying?! That’s my line!”
“If you intentionally cause trouble on the official channel and raise the rates again, I won’t stay quiet either.”
“You’re killing me…”
The fact that we could casually joke around like this showed that, at this point, I wasn’t too worried about what was coming. Even though sponsors had joined, it was still ultimately an internal Parallel event, and the viewer vote judging method continued to emphasize that this was entertainment, not a serious competition.
But the moment the streaming platform Pazizik got involved, the rumors were bound to inflate.
Pazizik is sponsoring it. The prize pool is four million won! What? Four million per person?
As the rumor grew wings and spread, gaining traction, another piece of news arrived.
Roofkr had suddenly scheduled the Parallel World Cup he had promised to do someday for the exact same day as our members’ karaoke event. While he was debating the date, Pazizik started openly promoting our content, so he must have decided to jump on the momentum.
True to the Mad Dogs crew’s combined three million subscribers, the effect was immediate.
“Pazizik just told us the number of applicants suddenly doubled?”
“How many are there now?”
“Two hundred and ten.”
“?”
“And even though we can’t see the list, apparently there are a lot of names we’d recognize…? The most famous one has two and a half million Nutube subscribers.”
“Did everyone get bored because the Lunar New Year holiday is so long?”
I had only planned to stir up a moderate amount of attention by participating anonymously, but I had no idea why the scale kept growing like this. Still, even at this point, I thought it wasn’t a bad thing that things were getting bigger. Having recognizable names participate was good news. Our members weren’t the type to lose to anyone when it came to singing.
Actually, famous people were coming to sing with our members without even being paid? There was no reason to turn down an opportunity like that. I just hoped the well-known participants would make it through the preliminaries and show off their voices on the actual broadcast.
Besides, this increased the chances that I would be eliminated in the preliminaries. If I got eliminated early? Then judging on the day would be much more comfortable. People would be desperately searching for me, while I could just smile and host.
“So what song did you submit for the preliminary judging?”
“It’s a secret.”
“…It would be really bad if you suddenly sang a Lapiz song, you know? I wouldn’t care any other time, but this time it seriously can’t happen.”
“I didn’t.”
* * *
Even after that, variables kept appearing.
The video I submitted had somehow passed the preliminaries and made it to the finals.
With the participation of Lee Yu-ra—the utaite with 2.5 million subscribers—now virtually confirmed…
On January 30th, the event that had originally been predicted to draw a maximum of twenty-five thousand viewers began with more than double that number—nearly sixty thousand concurrent viewers.