Back to My Day Job
The place my mother dragged me to was a commercial building in Mapo-gu.
She pressed the button for the fifth floor inside the elevator.
The floor directory posted beside the door read: Mirage Live.
Seeing it, something she'd said at Seollal this year drifted back to me.
'I started a little company called Mirage.'
That was Kang Yuri — my cousin, who used to be my younger cousin before the world got rewritten and turned her into my older one.
No way. Could this be it?
While I was still mulling it over, the elevator chimed at the fifth floor.
When the doors slid open, there stood my cousin Kang Yuri, exactly as I'd guessed.
"Auntie!"
"Yuri, it's been a while."
"First time seeing you since Seollal. Was the trip here all right? Any trouble finding the place?"
"Trouble? I came by car, dear."
After exchanging greetings with my mother, Yuri's gaze shifted to me.
"Seha, it's been a while for you too."
"Yes, it has been some time."
"And that stiff way of talking is still going strong, I see. Ah, both of you, come this way for now."
Mother and I followed Yuri into the Mirage Live office, of which she was the CEO.
And what greeted us was —
"H-haha. Things have been so busy lately. I've been trying to clean up, but there just weren't enough hours in the day."
The reasonably spacious office was buried under papers piled any which way, half-finished coffee tumblers, cup ramen containers stacked ten stories high like a pagoda, and a stale, unventilated stench thick enough to chew.
"...This is the office?"
"Yeah. There's something I've been preparing, so. It's a bit of an eyesore, huh?"
"An eyesore would be a compliment. This looks like the scene of a natural disaster."
"Hey! Now that's just going too far!"
"Then are you saying it doesn't?"
"I-I mean, it does, but... And most of the staff pulled overtime yesterday, that's all. Overtime, I tell you."
"One day of overtime does not produce this volume."
"Haha, okay, okay, let's leave it there?"
A vein bulged on Yuri's forehead, but she apparently knew better than to argue with a messy office behind her and didn't press it.
I let out a long sigh and rolled up my sleeves.
"I suppose there's no help for it. Starting now, I will 'clean' this place."
"Huh? No, no. I can't make a guest do the cleaning."
"If you would prefer not to be 'cleaned' yourself, then kindly wait outside in silence."
I chased everyone out — my mother, Yuri, and every last employee in the office.
I had already confirmed the locations of the cleaning supplies, trash bins, and garbage bags the moment I walked in.
All that remained was to clean along the route I'd simulated in my head.
Moving like the wind, I threw the windows open and collected the cleaning tools.
First, I took up a garbage bag and swept in all the big items.
Recycling sorting could wait until the end.
With a quick eye, I grouped related documents together, stacked them neatly, and set them aside.
I cleared and wiped down the filthy desks and tables, then swept and mopped the floor.
A narrow-bristle brush handled the tight crevices, and I tidied the tangles of cables and scattered personal belongings.
I lined the bins with fresh bags, and finally sorted everything I'd gathered into recycling.
Ten minutes. That was all it took.
The office now gleamed, spotless as new.
Huh. My skills haven't rusted after all.
"Cleaning complete."
"Wh-whoaaa...!"
Clap clap clap clap—!
Yuri's gasp of admiration joined the applause of the employees who'd spent those ten minutes exiled in the hallway.
And there was my mother, regarding me with sharp eyes that seemed to say, so you've been letting this talent rot at home all this time?
I led Mother and Yuri into the CEO's office.
Then, quite naturally, I brewed the tea leaves I'd spotted during my cleaning and served it to the both of them.
Hoo...
"It's — it's delicious?!"
"It turned out passably well, I'd say."
"THIS is passably well?"
"With leaves that haven't been properly stored, this is the best I can manage."
"Ha..."
Yuri wore the face of someone who couldn't believe her own tongue.
But it was true.
Give me properly kept tea leaves, and I could confidently brew something three times better than this.
"Whew... You see that? The girl has skills like this and all she does is hole up at home playing games. So, Yuri — why don't you take her off our hands and put her to work?"
"W-well, Auntie? That's rather sudden..."
"Forget the salary. Bake her, boil her, work her however you like."
Mother? That sounds less like an employee and more like a slave — or am I imagining things?
"Hmm..."
And Yuri? Please don't make that tempted face. What does that make me?
Right about the time I was starting to feel uneasy, Yuri gave a firm, decisive nod.
"Excellent. You're hired."
"Gladly."
Win — win.
The two of them shook hands with satisfied smiles.
"And may I ask where my opinion went?"
"Hush now, before I freeze your card."
"Yes, Mother."
And so I was sold off, and my employment at Mirage Live was settled.
Mother left the office with a contented smile, and I rose from my seat to follow her out — naturally, or so I thought.
"Seha, where do you think you're going?"
"Home, of course..."
"This is your home now."
"As I understand it, no employment contract has been signed yet."
"Since when did a slave get to wave an employment contract around?"
"I will report you to the labor board."
"Fine. Should I call your aunt and have that card cut instead?"
"Please, I beg you. Just this once, show mercy."
I will kneel, I will grovel — behold, your daughter grovels.
Alas, my great escape was thwarted before it even began.
Still, she apparently had no intention of working me for free, because the employment contract did get drafted, step by careful step.
At minimum wage, of course.
But hey — my card survived. Small mercies.
"Seha, looking forward to working with you."
"Hah. No help for it, I suppose. Likewise, I look forward to it."
"Great. Honestly, I haven't even decided what to have you do yet, so for now, just spend a few days feeling out the place and helping the staff with odds and ends. Get a sense of what everyone does while you're at it."
"That, I have already done."
Those ten minutes, once everyone was out and I was cleaning alone.
Sorting through the papers strewn about told me exactly what this company did.
Mirage Live Company is, in a word, a VTuber agency.
Currently, Mirage Live is divided into three parts:
The Technical & Broadcast Support division — manages everything from broadcast equipment to full 3D gear, along with the two soundproof streaming booths built into the office.
The Management & Planning division — runs the company itself and plans content for the first-generation talents slated to debut.
The Manager & Monitoring division — handles the Gen 1 members' schedules and their physical and mental well-being.
The problem? Each division had exactly one person in it.
"A blacker company I have never seen."
"Khh—ugh...!"
"I now understand perfectly why your office looked the way it did."
"Kugh... hck...!"
"And what, pray tell, do you believe distinguishes 'passion pay' from outright exploitation?"
"Hrghk...!"
Yuri — no, excuse me, the CEO now.
I had sunk the CEO.
With her vitality at zero, she clutched her chest and crumpled to the floor.
"Two months left, was it? If things continue like this, a casualty before debut day would not surprise me in the least."
"Nnngh, I know, I know..."
"Is there some problem with hiring people?"
"It's this. It's always this."
The CEO curled her fingers into a ring and showed it to me.
Ah. So, no money?
"As I recall, this year marks your eleventh as a broadcaster."
"It's not like I spent all that time just saving up, you know. And I invested every last won I had left into this place."
Kang Yuri — eleven years in the business since high school, half a million subscribers, a streamer so established people called her one of the big-name broadcasters. Stream name: Yuyuri.
And even she was short on cash.
I'd need to see the financial statements to know for sure, but apparently VTubing burns through money faster than anyone would guess.
"So you're saying you have no funds to hire anyone right now."
"Yeah. And taking on more loans at this point feels like a bad idea."
"Very well. Then let us proceed on the assumption that we lighten the load as much as possible with the current staff."
"Really? If you'd do that, I'd be so grateful— wait. Hold on. Why am I explaining all this to you piece by piece?"
"I wonder. Perhaps because the CEO has proven remarkably untrustworthy. In any case, I shall now begin my duties."
"Seha, what is that supposed to—"
Ignoring the CEO entirely, I walked out of her office.
All right, then. Shall we commence full-scale care operations?
It had been a long time since I'd felt my will ignite like this.
To Kang Yuri, Lee Seha was a mystery of a person.
A quarter British, yet with porcelain skin that looked Korean to no one's eye, platinum hair like threads of spun gold, sapphire irises so clear you could almost see straight through to the back of them.
Her looks conjured a fairy out of a storybook.
And the cleaning display she'd put on today, her skill at brewing tea, the way she'd grasped and responded to the company's entire situation in a matter of minutes — that part made her seem less like a fairy and more like something superhuman.
I don't know why someone with that kind of talent wasn't out working, but still.
Between her aunt's request and those frankly outstanding abilities, Kang Yuri had hired her on a whim — and now she found herself genuinely curious what Seha would show her once she marched out so self-assuredly.
Everyone's been on edge lately, with so much work piled up.
And at the same time, she worried whether Seha's aloof, high-and-mighty attitude might clash with the staff.
Carrying both hope and worry in equal measure, Yuri was watching Seha through the transparent glass as she headed straight for the office floor. That was when she witnessed a scene that made her doubt her own eyes.
The moment Seha stepped out, she pressed down firmly on several of the unused chairs around the office, selected one, and carried it over to an empty spot.
Then she promptly grabbed one of the employees on duty.
Her target: Park Jungsoo of the Technical & Broadcast Support division — the man doing the most physically punishing work in all of Mirage Live.
Busy as he was, Jungsoo frowned at being suddenly accosted, but let himself be led to the chair and sat down anyway.
And then —
"UUUOOOOOOHHH! DAMN IT! What IS this massage?!"
"Wh-what is that...?"
Seha had pressed a few spots on his body with her thumbs, and Park Jungsoo made a sound no human should make, rolled his eyes back, and went completely limp.
Seha gave a satisfied little shake of her hands, then casually hoisted the one-hundred-and-eighty-centimeter-plus Jungsoo into the air, laid a blanket over an empty table, and set him down on it.
After which she went to the desk he'd been working at and began finishing his tasks at blinding speed.
And then the same thing happened three more times in a row.
Choi Yuseon of the Management & Planning division:
"HAAAANG! I didn't knooow! I never knew anything like thiiiis!"
Ha Siyeon of the Manager & Monitoring division:
"Ogogogok! Half my life was a waaaaste!"
She'd only pressed on them a few times with her fingers. So why did they all react like people being electrocuted?
Kang Yuri watched the whole unbelievable spectacle from beginning to end.
And somehow, she found Lee Seha just a little bit frightening now.