Just Keep Smiling
There had been a brief commotion, but once I'd settled the viewers down, I got back to the game.
And this time, without getting banished back to the eighth floor, I made it all the way down to the first.
Even if my mind had wandered for a moment — no, even if part of my attention had been pulled that way the whole time I was playing — as long as I treated it like an exam, the game wasn't all that hard.
If it had been something like memorizing the year some historical event happened, or the name of some concept, or a math formula, it might have taken longer. But this was a game, so the memorization came easier.
Yeah. Interest really does seem to affect how well you retain things. If I'd thought of this as studying, I'd have been grinding through the anomalies with the same dull resentment I used to bring to homework. But because it was a game, I barely had to try — one look was enough to lock them in.
Of course, that didn't mean I could photographically memorize a completely normal hotel corridor. Still, every anomaly I'd already run into carried the cost of starting over from the beginning, so there was no way it wouldn't stick.
And even without that kind of punishment, the obvious ones — a flickering light, an elevator door left open — were the sort anyone would catch on sight, even without having seen them before.
Ah, luck played a part too, though.
From behind me, Unnie had said I was doing well, that at this rate I might actually clear it. That little comment cracked my composure just enough for me to make a completely basic mistake.
What was the first mistake I'd made, again?
Failing to notice the room number pattern, and having a monster come bursting out.
One side of the hallway counted up steadily from room 1; the other counted down from room 10. I was supposed to keep that locked in as I moved forward. And of course, I blanked on one of them — right between 804 and 807.
If I'd hit that anomaly earlier, I could have spun around and run before the monster got out. But by the time I was more than halfway down the corridor, turning back and outrunning it simply wasn't an option.
So what else was I supposed to do? I ran forward.
At least I hugged the right-hand wall — the one closer to the stairs — before the door even opened. The monster that lunged out of the room on the left couldn't grab me before I hit the stairwell and started down.
There's a reason people scream about the inside lane in a race. Shaving even a little off the monsters' path meant they never quite caught me.
Viewers who'd already played the game before me seemed pretty impressed by that run.
"Whoa, Noel. If that thing had caught you just now, you'd have been eaten on the spot, right?"
"Yeah. There'd have been this crunching, chewing sound, and then I'd have been sent all the way back to the start. At least there's no gore on screen, which is a relief — though honestly, that just makes it sound like they recorded someone wrapping up a lettuce wrap."
All that built-up tension drained out of me at once, and in that moment of relief I went and made a slip I immediately regretted.
Unnie wasn't actually there.
Whether she was a ghost or a hallucination, I didn't know. That wasn't the point.
I'd already told the viewers, right here on stream, that Unnie wasn't in this room. If I kept answering her like this, wouldn't they start thinking I was genuinely seeing things?
Unnie was someone precious — the person who'd been my anchor when things got hard. But the viewers were precious too. They'd cheered me on all the way until I got the chance to become a pro gamer. How was I supposed to throw either of them away?
Still, the coward's solution I'd come up with was this: act like Unnie wasn't there while the stream was on, and apologize to her once it was over. Judging by how she was reacting, she already seemed to know she wasn't someone ordinary people could see. She'd understand that much, right?
I just hoped she wouldn't decide I was too angry with her and leave for good.
But answering her out loud like that would blow the whole act. And then the viewers would decide I was actually crazy, and start hating me…
But surprisingly, the viewers didn't seem to think much of me talking to Unnie at all.
Ah — maybe they just assumed I was reacting to their chat.
If that was the case, good.
And by this point, I was starting to figure out how to handle it. Right now, the viewers only thought I was teasing them. They had no idea Unnie wasn't real. So later I could just say Unnie had come by, and go on as usual.
I wasn't treating the viewers like idiots. But if I angled the camera carefully, and claimed Unnie's voice was just too quiet to pick up — they'd go along with it. People love sticking their noses into other people's business, and yet on things like this they can be strangely dull. As long as I made it sound plausible, they'd shrug and accept it.
Honestly, "Unnie's voice is just too soft to hear" was a lot more believable than "I see ghosts" or "I'm having hallucinations," wasn't it?
Once that thought settled, I felt a lot lighter. I didn't have to hide Unnie completely, and I wouldn't have to worry the viewers for no reason either.
"See? This time I made it all the way without a single reset. Still fun, though. Like you all said — I think psychological horror hits a lot harder than just having something gross and violent jump out at you. That pressure of knowing one mistake means starting over from the beginning, you know?"
So I could give my clear-game thoughts that openly, without holding anything back.
I'd been through a bit of emotional turbulence, sure. But that was just what happened when you played a horror game and focused hard. Nobody was going to take a sudden shift in my expression that seriously… right?
Ah. The viewers' attention had been pulled somewhere else entirely from the start.
Competitiveness was a hair-trigger kind of psychology. Even when it wasn't about their own skill, people got their thrills secondhand through the people they liked. On a small scale it was my dad's a doctor, my mom's a lawyer. Zoom out a little and it became my soccer team lifted the trophy this year, my favorite singer hit number one on the Billboard charts, Joker's been winning the League of Champions World Cup for ten years straight. Brags like that.
I understood that they liked me enough to get fired up on my behalf. And of course there were people who liked some other streamer more, and wanted that person to come out on top. Same as when Kia Cats fans and Five-Star Puppies fans ran into each other and started arguing over whose baseball team was stronger.
And the Hanwha Chicks fans just gave up on both bragging and trash-talking, and sat there smiling.
…Yeah, that example was kind of bad.
Anyway.
Understanding something and letting it slide were two different things. As the streamer, it was my job to mediate.
"Hey, everyone, don't fight. I couldn't have cleared Hotel Escape without all of you helping me. I probably wouldn't even have known a game like this existed. I had a great time thanks to you — did you all have fun too?"
Well — they seemed to catch my meaning right away, and the argument died down, which was good. The problem was that the conversation immediately pivoted to topics that made me want to crawl under the desk.
Which meant I had to answer with my face burning.
"Ah… I mean, I could make one if I wanted to, but the problem is I don't know how to edit anything."
A YouTube channel. There wasn't anything wrong with the idea, really. I was already streaming with my face out there — having a channel would probably help grow the audience. But I knew nothing about video editing. And hiring an editor wasn't an option when I still didn't have a steady income.
"I'll upload stuff once I learn how to edit."
But the viewers kept pushing me to post videos. On top of that, someone had already uploaded clips to the fan cafe and was telling me I could just use those. At this rate, not doing it would make me the villain.
"Th-then… I'll make good use of the clips you all made… Thank you for watching and enjoying it. Uh, hang on a second. Gabi… my friend just messaged me."
So I had no choice but to accept it. And right then, at this late hour, a CocoaTalk notification popped up.
I checked it, wondering what it was — and it was Gabi, saying she wanted to meet Unnie too.
Reading that message, my hands went stiff. I had no idea how to answer.
Gabi wouldn't be able to see Unnie anyway.
Setting up that meeting was impossible.