Epilogue: The Toll of 34 Songs
The live stream ended in success. Roughly three and a half billion won in investments had poured in over the course of about three hours. It blew straight past the two-billion target without breaking a sweat. Naturally, Akgyeon got absolutely crushed, and the Bankruptcy War closed with an overwhelming victory for our company. Thanks to that, every streamer who had invested managed to recover more than their principal.
An anonymous sponsor has gifted 1,000 coins!
Whoa, it's the completion of a world where no one gets hurt?
Yeah, that's how it probably should've gone.
A perfect happy ending where everyone except Akgyeon was happy. Only…
“Ugeeeek…”
There had been one person who took physical damage in the process. And the problem—if it could be called a problem—was that the person happened to be me.
“Kek… krrrk…”
“My throat… my throat…”
Three hours. Three and a half billion won. In other words, I had sung thirty-four songs in three hours.
People aren’t singing machines. Even if the recovery power of my gender-bent beautiful-girl body was superhuman, even if I had perfected my technique and know-how through countless stage performances—
Thirty-four songs, fuck…
An experienced singer usually performs around twenty songs in a concert. Even then, with MC segments and breaks, it easily runs over three hours. Yet I had sung thirty-four songs in just over three hours. By simple math, that was more than one and a half times a normal concert.
Well… I had endured even more brutal schedules in my prime, so maybe a few months of rest really had dulled my skills. Still, for ordinary people it was apparently shocking enough that the viewers kept chatting in open amazement.
“Stop treating a person like a singing machine.”
Once again: people are not singing machines. I am not a Vocaloid that spits out songs according to input data. Though I suppose some of the higher-ups at the company had thought of me that way. That was exactly why Zenith had been treated like garbage back in the day.
Anyway. After chatting about this and that with the viewers, we arrived at the company grounds where three people were already waiting. They greeted me with applause.
“Congratulations on the plaza performance.”
“I watched the live. Thanks to you, we won.”
“Damn, Yume!! You’re the hero of our company!!”
The sound of thunderous applause mixed with ridiculously over-the-top congratulations. The whole scene felt like the ending of some giant-robot anime. I hurriedly changed the subject to hide my embarrassment and asked Prism.
“Anyway, what about Akgyeon? What happened to him?”
“He never showed up in the first place. His stream went offline and he wasn’t even on the connected-users list.”
When I asked again in disbelief, Prism continued.
“Looks like he left the server shortly after the live started…”
“Why… would he do that?”
“I have no idea either. Well, he was always the kind of person whose thoughts you could never read…”
It was true that I had gathered investment money quickly by performing the live. Still, it had taken a full hour and a half to reach the two billion needed to counter Akgyeon. In other words, he had been given a grace period. Yet instead of stirring up trouble to flip the board, he had quietly accepted defeat and logged off the server.
Behavior that was very unlike Akgyeon. I tilted my head, a question mark practically floating above it, and muttered.
“Just… why?”
This time, I genuinely could not understand his actions.
Meanwhile, at the same moment.
[Angel: 104 Misandong-ro, Gangnam-gu, Alpha Tower, 13th Floor]
“Goddammit.”
The Seoul address had arrived without warning. At first I’d tried to ignore it, but the more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Angel was famous for her mystique; she never revealed personal information. The fact that she, who wouldn’t even tell her fellow streamers her real name or age, had suddenly sent me an address was completely out of character.
So I came in person. The disruption attempt on the server had already failed anyway. With Sung Eunha controlling the mood, it was nearly impossible to drag her down no matter what I tried.
“If only I had gone all out from the start…”
I never imagined she could raise two billion won with a few silly antics. If I had known, I would have created solid controversy the moment we first met. But it was already far too late for regrets.
Akgyeon shook the thoughts of Sung Eunha from his mind, let out a long sigh, and waited for the elevator doors to open.
Ding!
[13F]
BK Entertainment Integrated Management Division. The nameplate visible beyond the open doors revealed a middle-aged man with bloodshot eyes and a blonde girl whose entire body was covered in bruises.
“……”
Akgyeon frowned at the sight and stepped closer. The man offered a light handshake and began his introduction.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Kim Youngho from BK Entertainment.”
“…I’m the streamer Akgyeon.”
Kim Youngho. He was familiar. The New Media Division that had acquired Angel’s former MCN, Black Horizon, and the Idol Division that Sung Eunha had belonged to. As far as Akgyeon knew, the Integrated Management Division was the new department created by merging those two.
Of course, since it had been absorbed under the Idol Division, Kim Youngho was still sitting as its head.
Which means… that kid over there is probably Angel.
A two-million-subscriber VTuber whose real identity was a girl who looked like she had just become a middle-schooler. The bruises visible all over her body suggested some interesting gossip, but he didn’t have the luxury of caring about that right now.
Kim Youngho got straight to the point.
“The MCN ‘Quasar’ under our Integrated Management Division has decided to file a lawsuit in order to protect the rights and interests of our affiliated streamers.”
The sudden threat made Akgyeon’s brows furrow. Kim Youngho ignored his reaction and pushed a thick stack of documents toward him.
“We have been carefully monitoring your activities for some time, Mr. Akgyeon… or rather, Mr. Kang Tae-seok. Regrettably, we have reached the conclusion that your behavior has crossed the line from mere deviation into clear cyberbullying.”
Thick stacks of documents piled up in front of Akgyeon. Starting with a document labeled “Content Certification,” every page detailed the circumstances of sexual harassment and threats Akgyeon had directed at various streamers.
Kim Youngho continued with a sneer.
“Honestly, does a human being even do things like this? Can you take responsibility for the mental and financial damage you have inflicted on our Quasar’s ‘affiliated artists’ under the guise of ‘evil content’?”
A clear moral condemnation aimed at Akgyeon. The deliberate emphasis on “affiliated artists” suggested he had lured the threatened streamers in and was now running some kind of daycare operation.
Instead of talking back, Akgyeon forced a bitter smile and asked in a low voice.
“…What do you want?”
Even Akgyeon had no choice. There was no other option here but to bend. BK Entertainment was a conglomerate—a real one with a market cap in the trillions, not the kind people joked about on internet broadcasts. And Akgyeon wasn’t stupid enough to stake his pride against a corporation like that.
They’re trying to use me.
The fact that he had failed to stir up controversy around Sung Eunha on the streamer server was probably the reason. Otherwise there would have been no need to dig up his past and threaten him. From BK’s perspective, “streamer Akgyeon” was nothing more than a disposable cyber tow truck.
“I like how quickly you catch on.”
Seeing Akgyeon immediately lower his tail, Kim Youngho smiled. Beside him, Angel bit her lip and lowered her head. Akgyeon broke into a cold sweat and asked again.
“What would you like me to do?”
This was practically a natural disaster. No matter how disgusting Kim Youngho’s hypocrisy was, survival came before pride.
Challenging a giant as an individual is just stupid.
David could never defeat Goliath. That was how the world worked.
“BK, those fucking bastards?”
An old, familiar name. I frowned and spat out every curse I could think of.
The article claimed BK Entertainment had launched a new MCN called Quasar. The title was already ridiculous, but the content was even worse.
[…At last week’s regular shareholders’ meeting, BK Entertainment passed a resolution to fully integrate the Idol Management Division and the New Media Division…]
“Idol Management Division? That’s that bastard’s department.”
The head of the Idol Division. The bastard among bastards. Old man trash, the JOAT. Representative Kim Youngho. The fact that he was behind this made my frown deepen.
“That incompetent asshole couldn’t even manage idols properly, so why the sudden bullshit?”
Kim Youngho was incompetent. That was common knowledge in the industry—everyone knew it. Yet that same man had merged the New Media Division with the Idol Division and created a new MCN called Quasar under the resulting Integrated Management Division.
It was an utterly bizarre move for someone who had worked in the idol department. And at that point one obvious question rose to mind.
“No way… it can’t be…”
It felt a little suspicious, but he wasn’t that stupid. Well… he was pretty stupid, but not this stupid. Besides, even if I didn’t like it, there was Park Kiwoo acting as a brake above him. There was no way he would mobilize an entire company just to mess with me. Unless he was exceptionally, extraordinarily stupid, it would never happen.
Yeah. Unless he was exceptionally, extraordinarily stupid.
……
“……”
To be honest, a few scenarios had already crossed my mind. But I shook my head and forced myself to ignore them. At this point BK couldn’t touch me anyway. We were in completely different industries, and as long as I didn’t do music-related activities, I wouldn’t run into any trademark issues.
“Or… now that they’ve merged, it technically is the same industry…”
While I sat there clutching my complicated head and groaning, my phone suddenly rang with several incoming messages.
“…Ugh. What the hell.”
The same chaotic energy as her usual speech. I clutched my throbbing head and immediately replied to Saint Noa.
I already knew that. My own company, Galaxy Electronics, owned a plot too. Not that it mattered anymore since we had recovered all the investment money and the company was now bankrupt.
Anyway, Saint Noa continued.
Roughly a few hours later, I was standing in front of an omurice wearing a bunny-girl outfit and doing aegyo.
“O… oishiku nare…”
Prism spoke in the tone of a difficult customer.
“There’s zero sincerity. Again.”
“……”
AutumnMan kept letting out breathless laughs beside him, while Latte, watching from afar, was desperately trying to hold her laughter in.
“Put more love into it. From the top.”
“……”
How on earth had things come to this? I let out a long sigh and began recalling what had happened just a few hours earlier.