A Very Sorry Yebin
After the chaos that had erupted at six in the morning, a truly rare sight unfolded.
"Hey… Dodo?"
"What."
"Is there… anything you want to eat…? I'll buy it…!"
Lee Yebin, reading my every expression, offering to buy me whatever I wanted.
It really was a rare sight. Under normal circumstances I would have thought, She's finally lost it, and started worrying about her without even realizing it.
But the me of right now was New Neo Young Do Gyeong. An extremely cool-headed Fun-Cool-Sexy Do Gyeong.
Well — not fun, actually. Extremely angry.
Right. Head hot, heart cold. That was the way to play this.
"Do you honestly think that alone is enough to pay for leaking my personal information?"
"I… I didn't say your full real name!"
"You revealed that my last name is Do. If you put it that way, doesn't everyone basically know my whole name?"
"Still… they might not know…! Right…?"
Yebin glanced around nervously and put the question to the viewers, and the viewers…
"That's what they're saying."
I showed Yebin the chat, and she hung her head, her voice shrinking into something barely audible.
"I'm… I'm really sorry…."
"You're sorry?"
"Yes… I mean it… I'm sorry…."
She did look genuinely sorry. She really did — but this was spilled milk, pure and simple.
"Haaaaah…."
"Sorry…."
"If you say sorry one more time, I'll teach you what being actually sorry feels like."
"Hic."
She had been watching me so carefully that a single line from me made her hiccup on the spot.
"Hic. Hic. Hic. Hck!"
"……And now the hiccups won't even stop?"
"Hck! I can't hck! stop them cup! I'm sorry hic!"
"Wow. You really do it all, Bini."
I got up, came back with a glass of water, and returned to the room.
Obviously, it was Yebin's designated cup.
"Drink."
— Gulp gulp gulp gulp
"Pwaaaaaah…."
"Hiccups?"
"They're gone…."
Good. As long as they'd stopped.
I sat back down and looked at the stream screen.
With me reacting this hard, even the viewers seemed to be starting to read the room. Yeah, well — it was a stream accident, so they could afford to be a little careful too.
That wasn't even why I was like this. I was just… disappointed in Yebin.
"Um… Dodo."
"Yeah."
"I… uh… I'm really sorry…."
It was a rare sight — Yebin looking truly, sincerely sorry.
If I kept leaning on her any harder, this crybaby was going to start crying again. No — her voice already had water in it.
Pushing further than this… felt wrong.
"Sigh… Fine. Spilled milk. Nothing we can do about it."
"Sorry…."
"I told you to stop saying sorry, didn't I?"
"Okay…."
Yebin nodded, glanced at me once, then looked away from my eyes again.
Apparently the careful tiptoeing around me was something she couldn't help.
She knew exactly how badly she'd messed up, so maybe I could just be generous about it.
Not like there was anything I could do even if I wasn't generous.
"Viewers — anyone with edit access. Just put my real name on Tree Wiki. Let's call it a clean public reveal and be done with it."
The viewers' praise rolled in, but somehow it didn't land as pleasantly as it should have. Couldn't help that.
"Ugh… Hey, Bini."
"Uh… yeah…."
"What do you want to eat? It's almost eight already."
"Ah… right… places we can order from…."
"There's basically nothing around here except the toast place up front."
"Oh…."
"Tsk. Just make breakfast. You're good at breakfast."
Yebin heard that and nodded immediately.
"Ah… okay. The ingredients…."
"Use whatever."
"I'll be right back…!"
Yebin bolted out the door in a flurry. I watched her go with my eyes, then let out a long, heavy sigh for the viewers.
"Haaaaah… I really, really never wanted my real name out there."
I decided to throw a line at the viewer who'd said that about forgiveness, just because.
"Even if I don't forgive her, it's not like there's anything I can actually do about it."
That one sentence split the chat into two camps.
First, the ones who actually got where I was coming from.
And then…
The ones spouting nonsense.
The second I saw that garbage, everything I'd been holding in finally blew. I'd been trying to paper over the whole thing with forced good humor, but there were always a few clueless idiots who smashed every last bit of that effort to pieces.
"There's a few absolute lunatics in here. Are you people completely tone-deaf?"
I banned the ones making those comments without mercy.
Not a one-minute ban, not a one-month ban — permanent. Straight up.
"Even jokes have a limit. Does this look like a joking atmosphere to you right now?"
"Guys, I'm not normally someone who gets this mad. You know that. I'm the guy who just lets personal insults slide when I'm playing Bae-o-re."
Right.
The thing that first made my stream blow up was one single clip.
Some kid spamming personal insults mid-game, me just letting it go over and over, until I finally sat him down for a lecture once.
I carried the game while lecturing him, the toxic kid said "I'm sorry," and that went viral and made me pretty well-known.
Honestly, a toxic player who actually apologizes is already top one percent in character. The fact that he apologized puts him seriously in the top one percent.
And in that same sense, Yebin was a genuinely decent person too.
"Um… Dodo, food's ready…."
"Yeah, bring it over."
"Okay…."
What Yebin brought was none other than spicy stir-fried pork. The soul food of men everywhere.
"How's… this?"
"Why'd you only bring mine?"
"Should I eat too…?"
"What, you're not eating?"
Yebin read my face, then bolted back to the kitchen and came back with rice for herself. The viewers, watching all of this, started asking questions again.
"No — even so, you think she'd just cook at our place? It's not like I've never eaten her cooking before, but… I'll save that for a story time later. She just comes over a lot, so she roughly knows where things are."
"Her place and our place are laid out pretty similarly… Our moms are really close too."
While I was making that kind of idle small talk, Yebin came back again — this time with rice and utensils.
"Um… thanks for the food…."
"Yeah. Thanks for cooking."
We ate together like that, and then tried to start streaming again, but…
"Damn it. Hey, what are we supposed to do about this atmosphere?"
"I'm really sorry…."
In the end, the dead atmosphere never came back to life.
I'd contributed my fair share to killing it, so I had no choice but to pull out the last resort.
"Hey, everyone. I honestly don't think we can keep streaming with this vibe. She caused it, sure, but I also couldn't keep my temper in check, so… later on I'll either do another twenty-four-hour stream, or whatever content you guys want. How's that. You're okay with that too, right?"
"Yeah… it's fine…."
The viewers seemed to understand the situation itself and sent signals that they got it. I ended the stream right there and checked the general mood on the community boards.
Overall, the community was pretty understanding about the current state of the stream.
Every now and then someone would say something like "over a name leak, seriously?" but those comments got shut down almost immediately.
Yeah. Everything was fine. Which meant the important thing now was figuring out what kind of apology content to do…
"Um… Gyeong… I'm sorry… I'm soooorry… Really, really sorry…."
While I was briefly scrolling the community on my phone, this crybaby burst into tears all over again.
"Hey. Why are you crying."
"But… I… hic… waaaaah… I'm soooorry… I'm soooooorry…."
Apparently she'd been holding it in the whole time the stream was still on, wanting to cry and not letting herself.
"Ugh, why are you the one crying…."
"I'm sooorry… I… I'm… sooooorry…."
I pulled Yebin into a hug and patted her back as gently as I could.
Until she calmed down. The whole time.