Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas.
“Strike a pose for me, please. All right, taking the shot. One, two!”
I struck a light pose at the entrance and let them snap a quick photo.
“Ah, Miss Ria. Have you tried the new product yet?”
“Yes, I’ve been using it a lot.”
“Wonderful, isn’t it? This is the one we poured our hearts into this time…”
I exchanged a few words with the company’s high-ranking executives.
“You’re Ria, right? I’m a huge fan!”
“Ah… thank you.”
“How about a glass of champagne together… Oh, you mentioned you’re a high school student? I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine. I’ll drink later.”
I painted on a fake smile and chatted with the VIPs.
“Once again, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to everyone gathered here today…”
After that I half-listened to the chairman’s speech…
“Miss Ria! This time our company…”
I made small talk with industry people while watching the jazz performance, and just like that the event was over.
It looked simple from the outside, but…
I’m so tired…
Holding a smile for an entire day left my face feeling like it had cramps. The corners of my mouth and eyes felt locked solid.
On top of that, speaking in a high, bright tone the whole time left my throat screaming. It felt like my vocal cords had given out.
I should’ve gone with a cool concept from the very beginning…
Then I could’ve just kept a blank expression… spoken in a low register… but no, I had to pick the pure-and-innocent concept…
This is exactly why customization matters.
Not that complaining does any good. What am I supposed to do when I’ve already customized myself like this?
Still… even knowing it’s useless, the urge to complain is just human nature…
Sigh… I’m depressed. So depressed.
I need to get home fast and stream this mood away.
I was trudging out of the venue when—
Grab—
A hand settled on my shoulder.
A familiar hand. Rough, yet warm.
In this entire venue, the only person with hands like that… was him.
I forced another fake smile into place and turned around.
Neatly arranged white hair. Skin that still looked firm and elastic thanks to careful maintenance and cosmetics, despite his considerable age. A rather tall man whose signature was a smile that put people at ease.
“What is it, Chairman?”
It was none other than Kim Jin-chul, host of the event and chairman of Herian.
“Did you enjoy the event?”
“Yes, it was lovely.”
“Thank you for saying so.”
“Not at all.”
Sly old fox of a grandpa.
He knows perfectly well I hate these things.
I narrowed my eyes just enough for only him to see—get me out of here already.
He, of course, acted as if my feelings were none of his concern.
“Stay a moment and chat with me.”
He said it with that gentle smile of his.
“…Pardon?”
Inside the empty venue after everyone had left.
Or rather, saying “everyone had left” might be inaccurate. Right now Chairman Kim Jin-chul and I were sitting face to face in that very hall.
“So… how is your mother doing?”
“…She’s well.”
Why he had called me aside was easy enough to guess.
First, judging by that opening question, he wanted to know how my mother—whom he had worked with more than a decade ago—was faring.
Second… he simply felt like teasing me a little.
True to form, questions about Mother kept coming for a while. What Seol-ah had been up to lately… whether she was eating properly… whether she had any thoughts of returning to the entertainment industry… and so on.
In between he also asked how I was doing. Of course, unlike the questions about Mother, he made it obvious from the start that he wasn’t particularly curious.
We kept the conversation going through one-sided questions and my answers, until—
“You can relax and act the way you usually do, you know.”
He suddenly said that, wearing that sly smile of his.
“No. This is more comfortable.”
A lie. Who on earth finds forcing a smile comfortable?
But if I dropped the act, I would get sucked into his pace and end up stuck here all day. That much was certain.
So I kept forcing the smile as a silent protest, begging him to let me go. The corners of my mouth and eyes threatened to twitch, but if it meant getting home even a little earlier, that much was worth enduring.
I held the smile with everything I had… yet the old man showed zero intention of sending me home.
“When you were little, that slightly prickly side of you was cute—like a little hedgehog. These days you hardly show it anymore.”
“…Please don’t bring up old stories.”
Black history was about to surface.
If I ever told this to someone who knew my circumstances, they might ask something like, “You have childhood black history even though you reincarnated?”
And the answer to that question is… of course yes.
Humans are ultimately slaves to hormones. If the body is young, behavior naturally follows. On top of that, I had only just reincarnated, so wariness of my surroundings and confusion over my memories were still strong. Of course I created black history.
That is why I hate stories from my childhood.
Not that this old man seemed to care in the slightest.
“Do you remember? That time you followed your mother and…”
He cheerfully spammed stories from my childhood. Just listening made my ears burn.
This won’t do. I had planned to play along a little, but I needed to escape this place immediately. My whole body was heating up from the black history, and no matter how well I knew him, sitting one-on-one with a brand chairman was still crushing pressure.
“Chairman, I have something urgent, so I’ll be taking my leave…”
The moment I said it and rose from my seat—
“Wait.”
The chairman erased his sly smile and looked at me with serious eyes.
“I believe that is enough of a warm-up.”
He lifted the teacup in front of him, took a sip, then slowly leaned forward.
“Now… shall we have a serious conversation? About our future.”
The conversation that followed was genuinely shocking.
I was so focused I never noticed the time; we talked for more than thirty minutes right there.
That conversation will without a doubt have a major impact on both my career and Herian later on. I am certain of it.
But the time we spoke of is still far away, so for now I decided to set the conversation aside and revisit it when that day arrives…
“We’ve arrived.”
“Thank you.”
I stepped out of the taxi and entered the house. The clock read 2:30 a.m.—a time when people in the real world would already be long asleep.
But the internet world is hottest at this hour.
Before starting the stream I headed to the bathroom and washed up. Maybe it was the warm water, but my body felt languid even as sleep gradually cleared away.
I roughly towel-dried, escaped the uncomfortable dress into soft loungewear, blow-dried my hair, then went up to my room on the second floor and sat in front of the computer.
“Hoo…”
I’ve been streaming for a year now, yet this moment is always tense.
And… exciting, too.
I turned on the computer and opened the streaming platform on the desktop.
All right… shall we give it a go?
I moved the mouse and clicked the start-stream button. A soft beep echoed through the room.
Stream Title | Late-Night Stream
#JustChatting #SkillStream #VarietyGames
“Riho.”
Chat started flooding in the instant the stream went live. Everyone had been waiting for me even at this hour. If it were me I would’ve given up and gone to watch someone else by now.
Watashi… I might be a little moved?
“Merry Christmas, everyone.”
“Three hours is still within the margin of error. Shouldn’t you be thanking me instead? You probably didn’t hear it from anyone else, so at least I said it.”
“Just kidding, kidding. Anyway, since we started late today, let’s skip Just Chatting… and jump straight into a game?”
Today’s game was the one where you pick one of eighty-nine test subjects and fight a fierce survival battle on an island…
“……”
Come on… it’s been a whole week since I last played…
And today the Bianco skin even dropped, so I need to grind ranks…
“…Fine.”
The backlash was too strong. I had no choice but to close it.
Sigh… I’ll just play it alone after the stream ends.
“Yeah. I handed over three million won and they said they’d take me.”
“Ah.”
Another slip of the tongue.