Haejang
It had been a while since I'd dropped in on Lee Yeonju's stream.
"Aigoo, please. Everyone, what do you mean my face looks bad because the Chairman isn't here? All of you are my Chairmen. What are you even saying?"
She was still broadcasting with that bright expression, and her average viewership had climbed to around ten thousand. Maybe that was why people stayed—she showed up, steady and earnest, every time. Seeing her bright like that again after so long tugged a smile out of me. Yeonju and I had memories I wasn't about to forget.
Lately I'd been neglecting her, too. In her own way, she was my first streamer: the pretty noona who had gone on dinner dates with me and stamped my first time into memory. I'd sunk so deep into Haven Online that for a little over a week I hadn't thought of her at all.
"She hasn't even texted."
Was I really that easy a mark? Even if I was a green kid who barely knew how the world worked, I had some instinct. There was a reason Yeonju, who hardly ever did dinner dates, hadn't refused a kiss on ours. A reason we'd texted like we were close, gotten swept up in the mood, and ended up in bed. Even if it hadn't been only about the money, that reason probably hadn't been absent either. So why no word from her after?
"Huh? Haejang!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
The second I chatted through a donation, Yeonju's face lit up and she greeted me like she was genuinely glad. She still hadn't let the broadcast know that the two of us had dropped formal speech in private.
"Oh, please. All of you are my Chair-men, and Siwoo is my Hae-jang. Haejang. Hoho."
"Right. Haejang really hasn't been coming lately. Are you in danger of a demotion?"
It hit me again, the way it always did when I came back after a while: Yeonju had a gift for getting a sucker to donate without ever feeling bad about it. That wasn't something effort could buy. It was the feel of the person herself—the way she talked, the sound of her voice. She was born with it.
"Kya! What? Haejang. What, what is this?"
Everyone already knew I was the same user who had made those outrageous donations in Yeonju's room. They'd known it from the moment I started streaming, and I'd never seen a reason to hide it. These days about a hundred thousand people showed up whenever I went live, so of course some of them overlapped with her chat. Messages about the Dragon Words Mage started piling up.
Yeonju was playing Haven Online on a sponsorship, but she wasn't on it all day. She logged in once each time her dailies reset and played with the other streamers, nothing more. Flooding a different kind of broadcast—one where she just had her cam on and talked to people—with game chat was a good way to sour the room. And if I told them to knock it off, that could split the viewers against each other just as easily.
"Oh, right. Haejang, I've been watching your videos lately. I look them up so I can study, and you look seriously cool, you know? When I go do my dailies, could you give me a bus ride just once?"
Yeonju, instead, steered the whole thing cleanly.
I finished the donations and closed the stream. Stay any longer and this attention-seeking streak of mine was going to cross a line and kill the mood.
"Would three hundred million cover it?"
I'd baited them on purpose, dropping a hundred million at a time. The reason was simple. I'd heard it when Yeonju and I talked in private: she'd already signed for a place, she was a little short, and she was streaming as hard as she could because of it. That was why she'd spun the dinner-date roulette, too. She never said how much she needed, but she'd been honest about it, and that honesty was why I didn't mind playing the sucker.
Honestly, I wasn't even sure it counted as being played. I may not have had any experience with women, but a big part of why I'd met Yeonju was that I wanted to feel something private with her, even if she was only acting—and that if it went well, maybe I'd get to sleep with her once. I got what I wanted. So now giving her what she wanted was a fair trade.
"That's the clean way to do it."
Haven had made me forget her for a while, and the silence between us had a lot to do with me deciding to just give her everything she wanted. It might have been a delusion I cooked up on my own, but the moment the money showed up I'd caught myself worrying, alone, about what I'd do if she threw her body at me because of it.
I was poking around to see whether there were any Haven 5-star dungeon guide videos when a text came in.
She was reaching out because the broadcast had ended, so I wrote back.
"Are pretty girls just like that?"
I hadn't lived entirely cut off from the world. Get bitten the wrong way by a pretty girl and you spend the rest of your life as a sucker. She bleeds you dry. You get sued. All of that. Watching those stories, it wasn't as if I'd never worried about meeting that kind of woman—but looking at Yeonju, the worry had gone a little soft.
"Whoa, no way! It's huge! A private penthouse elevator? That's the one only you can ride, right, Siwoo?"
"Nice place, huh?"
"It really is. That suite was incredible too, but this is even fancier. Did you do the interior yourself?"
"Not me. I just told them the concept I wanted and they handled the rest. Windy did."
"Figures. I heard people with money are all getting Windy interiors these days. Wow. The AI really has an eye. Maybe I should get mine done here too."
Yeonju was still beautiful, even seeing her again after all this time. And when she shrugged off the flight jacket, what she had on underneath was basically lingerie.
"...You came over like this?"
"Yeah. I was about to change, and then you said let's eat."
"So that's what grabbing a taxi right away meant?"
"Hehe."
She wasn't wearing only underwear. It was the outfit from the stream I'd just been watching: lingerie under a mesh top you could see straight through, and hot pants you couldn't quite call pants or panties. She'd thrown the flight jacket over it and come like that. Unless the rest of the world had suddenly developed X-ray vision, nobody else could see it, so it hardly mattered.
I was showing her around the place when the bell rang and the food arrived.
"Whoa. I seriously wanted this again."
"If you get bored, come eat."
"Oh, come on. You're busy. And I have to stream, too. Call me when you're lonely sometimes. I'll come running!"
Yeonju lived alone, so she said she never had a reason to cook. She ordered in, which meant even home-style food arrived as delivery—but never with the feeling of rice that had just come off the stove.
"...Though this is still closer to delivery than home cooking."
"Hey now! The kitchen's just a little far, that's all."
It wasn't something they'd prepped and reheated. You ordered, they cooked it on the spot, and a full table showed up, so maybe it did feel that way. We caught up on this and that, I talked about my Haven, and the time went fast.
Yeonju brought it up carefully.
"Thanks for the donations today. That thing you mentioned before... you did it because of that, right?"
"Yeah. Something like that, among other things."
I didn't say it was give-and-take because we'd slept together once. That would have sounded like the worst kind of line.
"But listen. I said it last time, too, but I really did come on that dinner date because of the money."
I was ready to let it pass. Yeonju put the rest of it out first.
"It had been a while since someone who donated a lot showed up. I thought if I played it right, I might even make the rest of the balance."
That was the story from back then.
"But sleeping together wasn't because of the money."
"...Yeah."
"I know it's ridiculous, saying this after I already took the money. I really don't meet fans in private. Personal relationships, especially—I hate those."
Making the excuse, Yeonju pushed her lips out in a pout.
"Talking like this, I really sound like I'm hitting on you. Anyway. I came out to meet you because of the money, but the kiss, and sleeping together—I did those because I liked you, Siwoo. Personally. My standards for men are insanely high, you know."
"...Thanks."
Was I supposed to be happy? It was the first confession I'd ever gotten from a girl this pretty, and it left me dazed. Being purely happy about it was hard. It would have been easier if she'd just said she met me for the money. Honestly, I didn't love Yeonju. I'd watched her stream in the first place because she was pretty, had a good body, and didn't mind showing skin. Once we'd been skin to skin it wasn't as if I felt nothing, but dating? I hadn't thought that far.
"I'm absolutely not saying this to pressure you. And I don't mean I... fell in love, and that's why it was good. I was curious. You're handsome, you've got money, and your personality's good. I wondered what you'd be like in bed."
"So? How was I?"
I asked before I could stop myself. Wasn't that every man's question, not just mine? How was I? People only hold it in because they're afraid the asking will look awful.
"...It was good."
She hesitated, then said it.
"Huh?"
It was a line I really hadn't seen coming.