Lee Yeonju
Lee Yeonju was a webcam streamer who hadn't been at it for long.
A hundred viewers, two hundred at most—she danced, chatted, and kept a small circle of regulars company on stream. Then a clip of a sexy dance that happened to be trending blew up on a video platform, racking up a ridiculous number of views, and people poured in.
She recognized an opportunity and changed her style. She started the push and pull even with viewers who hadn't donated a thing.
It worked. In a sense, maybe it was the kind of success you could only call success after the fact. As her regulars multiplied and her popularity climbed, new whales drifted in. The old ones, put off by the change, sometimes left—and sometimes grew even more obsessed. She figured it had been good stimulation. Her income jumped because of it.
It hadn't been small to begin with. Fifty to sixty million won a month. Streaming sites being what they were, she'd had to keep the broadcast alive on donations from a tiny handful of whales inside a small audience, so the money was unstable—and even that, once the management company running her channel took its forty percent and taxes were counted, left her with ten to fifteen million. Not a small sum, of course. Someone might jab a finger and say she earned it too easily. But Lee Yeonju was proud of herself. She believed that was why she'd been able to succeed.
The broadcast grew, and her monthly income multiplied several times over. Having lived poor, she started spending on the things she'd always wanted to try. She bought a car, picked up luxury goods, took up hobbies, and enjoyed traveling.
Just one thing left. A home. She wanted to buy a house, so she streamed even harder. She didn't want just any house. Among camgirls, showing off your money always ended with the house. Cheongdam. Seocho. She wanted to live in the kind of place celebrities lived.
Her income had grown a great deal, but it was still nowhere near enough. Taxes would rise right along with her earnings, and at that rate it would take forever to buy the home she wanted.
Then, to make things worse, the old whales pulled out all at once. When she looked into it, the ones who felt slighted that she no longer fussed over them the way she used to had gotten together and simply stopped donating. In the old days she might have clung to them. She would have gone back to wake-up calls meant only for them, private texts about every little thing, tending the pond as if each of them were some special connection. But things were different now. Her broadcast was still a major camgirl channel with more than two thousand regulars, and the donations were popping. Her video channel was growing too, and she decided this was a fine time to cut loose the old whales whose money had shrunk while their demands only grew. All she had to do was find new whales who fit the new style. At least until the video channel settled into steady growth. Until the regulars found their places.
Honestly, even now there wasn't much of a problem. She was earning enough that anyone would envy her if she said the number out loud—enough that she had to worry about taxes more than about making money.
The problem was still just one thing. The house. That, she had to buy. She couldn't even back out. The contract was already signed.
And right then, an angel came down from heaven.
Kim Siwoo has donated 100,000,000 won.
"Hah—!"
The gasp tore out of her for real. Every night as she fell asleep, she wished someone would show up like a prince on a white horse and fire off a few hundred million won in one clean shot. She had never once, while streaming, considered meeting a viewer in private, and for the first time she even thought she might. She drew the line in her head: if a whale appeared who could fill in the rest of the money, she could play the girlfriend for at least a few months. So the joy hit even harder.
At first there'd been a moment that might have rubbed her the wrong way, but luckily he seemed like a pleasant sort, and he showed up every day and donated without fail. Still, it wasn't enough. She wanted to keep the impact of that first donation going, but she held herself back, knowing he was so enormous a whale that pushing too soon might send him away. To the viewers she must have looked like a woman frantic with impatience, but in her own way she had been restraining herself as far as she could.
Of course, she lost to herself.
"This won't do."
The day she'd agreed to pay the balance wasn't far off. And the whale—a hundred thousand won wasn't pocket change, but it had been far too long since he'd fired anything but a hundred thousand. At this rate, him leaving would take an instant. She had to drive the wedge in.
So she brought it out. The roulette she only ever pulled when she was short on taxes, just like the viewers said. A roulette with a dinner date on the wheel. A dinner date had never once been drawn. Afraid someone might get lucky and land it, she'd set the hundred-thousand-won wheel to a flat zero percent and cheated outright. No matter how big the whale, nobody spun the million-won wheel against odds that low.
Kim Siwoo did. Watching him spin that million-won roulette, anxiety welled up in one corner of her heart. She'd set her psychological limit at something past a simple meeting, but the things he said while he donated were exactly the kind of man she hated.
Not funny. No tact. A pervert. Ugh.
And she had to go meet that Kim Siwoo. The thought of not going crossed her mind hundreds of times over. Of all places, the meeting spot was Sigriel Tower. She'd been there a few times herself. It was where people with money often took you when they were treating you to a meal. A tower with a six-star hotel. The restaurant inside sat at a level the word luxurious couldn't quite reach. Given what they spent, that was only natural—but as a rule, the date course ran from dinner straight into a room.
"Should I turn the stream on and go?"
It was time to decide. Of course, the answer was already made.
"I don't know. I'll just close my eyes and go. Yeonju. Think about the house. The house."
She was still short more than three billion won. At the bare minimum, one billion would do it, but she didn't want the smallest floor plan. So she got herself fully done up and headed for the meeting place.
In front of the tower, where crowds came and went, she let the stares turning her way slide off her as if she didn't notice them. She'd been receiving those looks forever. Today especially—she'd put real effort into coming.
"Oh! Noona Yeonju!"
Through the people glancing as they passed, a voice called her name. A low, mid-range voice that said noona without a trace of anything boyish. She turned her head, and there was a tall, striking man waving at her with a bright smile.
"......No way."
"Noona. It's me. Siwoo."
"Oh my— Hello!"
Why is he this good-looking? A smile rose to her lips on its own. It was that kind of face. A face that made you smile just looking at it.
"Did you wait long?"
"No. I just got here."
"Let's head in. I made a reservation."
He was dressed light. The slides on his feet ought to have been deeply offensive fashion to Lee Yeonju, who had spent a full three hours on makeup and a trip to the salon, and yet she wasn't offended at all. Hard to say why. They suited him, maybe. And then she was surprised.
"This way, please."
A staff member who had been waiting in the lobby came over and guided them personally—something even Lee Yeonju, who had been here a few times, was seeing for the first time. Her heart pounded.
The 124th floor of the tower. The highest place you could watch Seoul's night from. In a restaurant that held exactly one table inside a wide private room, Lee Yeonju and I were sitting. The chef came out himself, walked us through the menu, and brought the dishes one by one. Quiet, and cozy. Private enough that, so long as the chef wasn't coming and going, you could have done just about anything. Sitting there with Lee Yeonju, it really felt like I'd become somebody.
"Noona. You can turn the stream on if you want."
"Ah. No. I think it'd make you uncomfortable."
"I'm fine. I like it just looking at your face."
I really did. I'd never in my life eaten a single meal with a woman this pretty, and here I was doing it somewhere with an atmosphere like this. Dressed up, Lee Yeonju had a charm that wasn't the one from the broadcast. All I'd ever seen were those precarious outfits, skin everywhere. Done up neat and modest, she was insanely pretty too.
"The look where you're not showing skin is nice too, noona."
"Oh, stop. You're embarrassing me."
I'd worried it would get awkward, since I barely had any experience talking to women, but luckily Lee Yeonju played along. She laughed at the smallest remark and went red in the face. Money really was something else.
While we ate, I asked the things I was curious about.
"How do you feel about younger guys?"
"Starting today, I think I like them."
"Come on. Talk easy, noona. I'm twenty-three."
"Then I'll do it if you talk easy with me too. I'm twenty-five."
"Deal!"
I asked how she'd ended up streaming. Whether being a camgirl came with things that bothered her.
"I bet the hardcore fans are a huge pain."
"I eat and live thanks to people like that. I'm grateful."
"What about me? Was I too childish on stream? If I made you even a little uncomfortable, I'm sorry. You're just too pretty."
"No. That much was actually really fun. The viewers liked it because of it, too."
Even the jokes I'd tossed out a little too boldly, she seemed to take without holding them against me—probably because I'd fired so much money. While we talked about this and that, the meal came to an end.
Something felt unfinished. It also felt like we'd gotten closer. A glass or two of good wine had flushed her face. Somehow I thought that maybe, at a timing like this, I could make a move. Just a little.
"Noona."
"Yeah?"
"A dinner date. Do we really only eat?"
"......"
Wine-warm, I asked it with my hand on the table and my chin propped in my palm. Lee Yeonju looked away.
"Huh? ......"
The fluster showed. I hurried a laugh so the good mood wouldn't break.
"Noona. Joke. Joke. Want to hit the bar and have just one more, light?"
"Uh. Yeah. Sure."
The thin sigh she let out told me I'd cut it off well, before I crossed the line too far.
"That was excellent. We're heading straight over—what floor is it?"
"I'll guide you."
We followed the staff under lighting that had gone a little dim.
"Noona, this place is all right, yeah? I've eaten here once and it was fine, so...... huh?"
"Yeah. It's good."
She slipped her arm quietly through mine, and I felt something press against my arm.