It's Nothing (While Shedding a Little Tear)
My celebration stream for hitting 150,000 subscribers was over.
Which meant I no longer had to cram nursery rhymes, drill choreography, or pour my heart's blood into hunting down content that would pair nicely with a rabbit. And that, in turn, meant I could no longer keep postponing the worry I had shoved aside on the excuse that something urgent had come up.
The worry over the MCN offer Kim Mina had put in front of me.
"...Hmm."
I sat at the dining table, sipping tea that was good for the throat, and let myself sink into it.
This was the second time an MCN had come knocking. Last time I had picked refusal. This time, my heart was leaning the other way.
Explaining why takes a minute.
Right. In Korea, otaku culture sits comfortably on the mainstream side of things. Korean anime films clear ten million tickets. Korean animation takes home Emmys, Oscars, Golden Bears. Anime made by Korean studios airs in Japan and actually hits. So in a world like that, what do you suppose happened to a voice actor's workload? It exploded, obviously. And when the work explodes, demand explodes with it. And when demand explodes, status climbs until comparing it to the old days would be embarrassing — climbs far enough that a talent agency built just for voice actors wouldn't even raise an eyebrow.
So would a major agency like AY Entertainment, one that had already tried its hand at running an MCN, really keep its hands off voice-actor management when there was money in it?
No. AY Entertainment already had voice actors on its roster. Famous ones — the kind any otaku with a few years on them couldn't fail to know even if they wanted to. Which raised the real question: just how deep did a company that fetched work for voice actors like that run into the otaku industry? And if Märchen, a streamer whose broadcasts lived and breathed otaku content, accepted this particular MCN offer, how much would actually open up?
"...It is appealing. I'll give it that."
More appealing than signing with some ordinary MCN was the simple fact that the things I might try were so much wider. More appealing still was this: there was no world in which Raider's developer, WorldMaker, and AY Entertainment had zero point of contact. WorldMaker had been an anime studio before it was a game company, and you cannot make anime without voice actors. Loe, the woman the public calls the empress of anime theme songs, was AY Entertainment's own. A point of contact? Please.
And this wasn't me filling in the blanks with my brain. It was official. Mina had pitched me in exactly those terms. She'd watched the streams, she said, and I seemed very interested in Raider. If it was AY Entertainment, they could do far more than any other MCN to help me plant an unrivaled flag in Raider. That was the shape of it.
...I showed my hand way too hard on stream!
Anyway. Hand an otaku a proposal that attractive, and of course the heart tips. But this was exactly the moment to keep my head on. An attractive offer lands in front of you and you snap it up on the spot? That is a very easy way to tangle up a life.
I, Lee Hari, am twenty-two, and I have tasted both the sweet and the bitter. For the record, if you count mental age I'm twenty-three. Anyway!
It wasn't as if I couldn't see, at all, why they'd made the offer. The me of right now was basically a golden goblin who had already been handed a great deal by Loe. On top of that I was an uncut gem whose face had earned entertainment-debut offers twice over. So maybe what they wanted, at minimum, was a loose leash in the shape of an MCN contract. Or maybe that was pure delusions of grandeur on my part.
"The second I call it a leash, it starts feeling like I'm being oppressed."
In truth, an MCN contract didn't mean they'd stick their fingers into my streams or my YouTube. The most they'd touch would be things that already ran through AY Entertainment — sponsored broadcasts, merch drops, that sort of job. So leash didn't quite fit. Collaborative relationship sat better. Even that felt a little off, mind you, when one side of the collaboration was so much bigger than the other.
If the offer was this good, I ought to take it without all the agonizing. So why was I still agonizing?
...Because the moment I pictured walking into a major agency, a caution I had never possessed conveniently appeared.
"Right. Think a little longer. There's still time."
I muttered it to myself, then went back to sipping tea that had gone completely cold.
Of course, my heart had already tipped as far as a heart can tip.
The Märchen fan cafe, at peace.
On the board that used to be Pray for Raider's Release and was now simply the Prayer Board, steady posts went up again today. That was the nature of the place. They did share one trait, though: almost none of those prayers ever made it past day thirty. Which was only natural. Until thirty days ago, the only thing you were allowed to post there was a prayer for Raider's release.
Except, that is, for the horror-game prayer.
The fifty-nine meant the author had started writing on the free board the very day the fan cafe opened, then moved house onto the prayer board the instant Pray for Raider's Release was renamed, and had been posting a horror-game prayer every day since. In other words, they wanted horror-game content with their whole chest.
But across the long and storied history of Märchen broadcasts, the number of times I had played a horror game was two. Factor in that one of those two had happened during the unprecedented lateness incident, and it seemed safe to say that, short of a miracle, Märchen was not about to play a horror game.
And then.
"Okay. Today I'm doing the bit that was supposed to be part two yesterday — the one I never got to, because I spent way too long watching the rabbit-and-turtle romance. So, what did I bring, you ask..."
For real.
"SCARY MAD RABBIT."
Dreams☆ do come true.
There is a painting called Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land.
Most people have heard the name at least once in a school history class. It's famous for the story behind it: Prince Anpyeong, King Sejong's third son, dreamed of a peach-blossom utopia, and the painting is that dream put on silk.
SCARY MAD RABBIT was the same kind of thing. The behind-the-scenes lore went that the developer had been so terrified of the rabbits in his dream that he stuffed those exact rabbits into a horror game.
"...Honestly, though, how scary can a rabbit even be? That's what I'm thinking."
"...Still. Just in case. I prepared a cheap plastic chair, and I am going to play this sitting in it."
Break a chair this time, and it would be no different from tearing two million won in half. Sitting in a cheap one I wouldn't mourn was the wise move. Obviously.
Then why play a horror game at all, you ask?
...Maybe because horror games are a reaction goldmine, and the views just show up.
A streamer with exquisite reactions who still clears the game so briskly you start to doubt she was ever scared? It would be stranger if the views didn't come. So doing it once in a while, on a special day like 150,000 subscribers, wasn't so bad. It was a view-count cheat code.
More than two months without touching a horror game had blurred the memory of what they actually felt like, and newbie Märchen talked herself into it just like that.
"Mapapppi-heubbakkke-ppoheo-ueupeu-heuheop-euhek...!!!!"
And ten minutes later, newbie Märchen was dead.
All that remained was horror-game scrub Märchen, busily resenting her past self.
"Hah, hah, heuh, hehh, heu, heu-eup...."
I dragged air in however I could and pressed a startled heart back down. Then I wiped the tears that had welled up with a fingertip.
"...I-it's nothing!"
I said it wasn't much. It was absolutely much. They might as well have gone out and collected only the rabbits that live in the uncanny valley.
Could I actually hold the scream in?
Clear Without Screaming
⏱ Time Remaining: 5 hours 45 minutes
🎁 Prize: 2,200,000 won
Could I walk out of here with 2.2 million won?
I shoved that weak little thought aside however I could and went back to the game, flinging doors open and roaming from room to room.
And then.
"...Huh?"
I picked up a handgun.
A handgun with a suppressor on it, no less.
...It felt like walking the middle of a desert and finding an oasis.