A Standard Far Too Vague
"…Wait. What color am I wearing today? …Pink!!!"
"Where the nickname comes from? Märchen means 'fairy tale' in German, you know? Like the hero of a fairy tale, I'll overcome any hardship, any adversity, and still keep a bright face. That resolve is exactly what I poured into the name Märchen! Well? Moving, isn't it? …I am not lying!"
"Today's underwear color?! …This is a time-honored Q&A national rule, I suppose. How on earth a rule like that ever came to be, I ask you. Part of me wants to refuse on principle, but just this once, as a real man—no, as a real woman—I'll make a special exception and answer! From here on out, even if this question comes in, I will absolutely, absolutely not answer it! …Wait. What color am I wearing today? …Pink!!!"
"Plans for a fan meeting…. Well, I've already shown my face, so I figure I'll do one someday. When I start going to offline events later, won't a fan meeting just come along for the ride? Fan-meeting questions are rolling in too. Märchen, you really have grown!"
"Am I still grinding hard at Jewel Connect and Fluffy Bread Memories these days? …The truth is, I started those to mine stream content, and then I kept dragging in other stuff, so I've been neglecting them more than I should. I am still clearing the dailies every day, though. At this rate, the moment Raider drops, I might just… delete them?"
"You haven't been taking pictures with your camera lately. Has the Catch the World high completely worn off? Did you waste your money again? …If a second season ever comes out, won't I just be back out there with a camera, making a whole production of it and swearing I'll take photos then? Not my fault. Pretty sure it's the developers' fault for not releasing season two!"
"…All right! That's the end of the Q&A! All that's left now is the final song performance for the Late-Night Festival! Let's burn hot right through to the end!!!"
Better than expected!
That was the one-line review Eunha—Märchen's die-hard fan—gave the hundred-thousand-subscriber celebration stream.
"Another solid broadcast today…!"
Even as the words left her, Eunha's mind was already hard at work, marking edit points through the whole show. She was Märchen's most ardent viewer, yes, but she was a diligent editor too.
Of course, she didn't dive straight into the edit the moment the stream ended. To give her eyes a short rest after watching so intently, she closed them and worked through an eye massage exactly as she'd learned it online. If she was going to edit at all, easing the fatigue that had piled up while she watched was nonnegotiable.
She pressed the right spots at the right pressure, firm and steady, and never once stopped replaying the broadcast. Her brain kept pulling edit points—until, all at once, the work simply stopped. She had drifted back to the final segment, the commemorative song performance for the Late-Night Festival, and the feeling it had left in her.
"…Her singing really has gotten better, hasn't it?"
Hari had only been through vocal training once. Barely three days had passed since. Even so, her singing was unmistakably different. Not a dramatic transformation, but enough that you could feel, without doubt, that she had grown. Vocal training from an entertainment agency really was something else.
And since she'd already done the training, it wouldn't hurt to give song content a little more room. There were plenty of viewers who lived for Märchen's singing alone.
Eunha was still turning all of this over while she massaged her eyes when a notification chimed in her ear: a message.
She stopped at once and checked it. Up in the Medongbu group chat sat a long message from Hari—employer to both Eunha and Yeryeong.
Strip away every flourish, and it came down to this: thank you for working so hard all this time; hitting a hundred thousand subscribers was never something she had done alone; she had only managed it because Eunha and Yeryeong were there. And, as thanks, she had put in a generous bonus.
The moment Eunha read that far, she opened her account.
"…You put in a lot."
One million won.
It was a hundred-thousand celebration, so she had assumed the bonus would be a hundred thousand won. In the best possible way, Hari had betrayed that expectation. Judging by the chat, the amount had caught Yeryeong just as off guard.
Watching Hari and Yeryeong's messages—so much closer than they had been at the start—Eunha smiled, warm and pleased.
…She really hoped it would stay like this. That the three of them could go on like this for a long, long time, laughing together, easy and bright, and simply know one another. That was what she thought as the chat kept filling.
And even while she thought it, another thought refused to leave her head: that something like that could never actually happen.
Human relationships, after all—
"They can snap at any time, and nobody would even find it strange."
"…Is somebody talking about me?"
I muttered it while the right hand that had been working so hard to send messages reached up and gave my right ear a gentle scratch. Then I told Medongbu's two editors I was counting on them from here on out, and let the phone leave my hand for a while.
On a normal day, stream's over, so this would be about the time I washed up and got ready for bed. Today was the exception. I'd gone live earlier than usual and ended earlier than usual, which meant it was still far too soon to pull the blanket up and sleep like the dead.
Second vocal training is only a few days off. Maybe I should get in a little more practice while I'm at it…? No. I was hosting right up until a minute ago, and I did the Late-Night Festival performance on top of that. More singing now would be overdoing it. No question.
Which meant the easy option was watching anime—
Grrrgle.
"…Right. I still haven't had dinner."
Dinner first, then.
I headed straight for the kitchen. The second I got there I pulled a pack of yukgaejang—spicy beef stew—out of the freezer and set it boiling, grabbed a pack of instant rice, and gave it two minutes in the microwave.
Ta-da! Dinner is served!
Ignore the minor flaw of it being a zero-side-dish feast, and it was a perfectly respectable dinner. I dumped the entire pack of rice into the yukgaejang, slurped the whole thing down like a drink, and blasted through the dishes in a rush.
For the record, compared to the old days this was tremendous growth. Back then, a meal meant delivery. No exceptions.
So why had someone like me suddenly looked away from delivery food?
…Because the moment my paternal aunt found out I was solving every meal with delivery, she suddenly started saying she was sorry, pulled me into a crushing hug, and cried her eyes out. And I was supposed to keep eating nothing but delivery after seeing that? Really?
She was ready to cut ties with the relatives if that was what it took to stand on my side. See her tears and feel nothing? That wouldn't be human. Damn right it wouldn't.
Not that I was swearing off delivery entirely. It was delicious and easy—how was I supposed to never touch it, living alone? Even single celebrities living far more elegant lives than mine probably couldn't hold out. Obviously.
I drank a glass of cold water on the back of that baseless thought. Not because I was thirsty. Because I wanted to settle, even a little, this strangely restless feeling sitting in me now.
"A hundred thousand…."
On stream I'd talked a big game about a million subscribers and all the rest, but the unsettled feeling still wouldn't clear.
I'd been running a neighborhood corner shop for a year, and in less than three months that same corner shop had turned into a big-box supermarket. The days when I was still a small-fry streamer kept flickering at the edge of my sight.
Honestly, it had gotten to the point where I wondered if I was dreaming. …And since the thought had occurred to me, I pinched my cheek. Hard.
"Gyehh…. Hurts like hell."
Fortunately, it wasn't a dream. If it had been? I would have cursed this mocking world out three times over, then, as a formal protest, flung piss and shit at it.
…The piss and shit felt like too much, so scratch that.
Anyway, the cold water did seem to take the edge off the restlessness. And once the feeling sank, cold reason started filling the space it left.
…A hundred thousand. A YouTuber with a hundred thousand subscribers, at the very least, wasn't going to catch heat for being some total nobody dragged in to play partner streamer when the time came for Raider. No one would have grounds to nitpick that.
But I didn't smile, satisfied. Reason, cold enough to freeze, had started tossing hypotheticals at me.
What if Raider never picked partner streamers at all? …Then I'd keep at it until they did. That far, there wasn't much of a problem. The problem was the next hypothetical.
What if the bar for a Raider partner streamer was absurdly, impossibly low? What if plenty of people besides me cleared it? And on top of that, what if someone else took the spot of being first? Could I really say the developers had acknowledged me?
Could I really say I'd seized success?
…And if he saw that, would Dad acknowledge it?
"A streamer who can't rest until Dad acknowledges her would have to be at least about that far—"
Huh?
Now that I thought about it.
……Wasn't this standard ridiculously vague?