Forbes' Pick: The World's Greatest Eyecatch Abuser
"Yes, understood. I'll leave it in your hands, then."
Ryu Chae-in, Märchen's manager, ended the call with the merch company and let herself sink back into her chair.
Work was going smoothly. A few ads had come in that wouldn't damage Märchen's image. The merch plan tied to the music release had been approved in a single stroke, and the design drafts had turned out quite well. She'd even brought nearly all of her old industry contacts back to life, the network she'd built back when she worked at AY Creator Company.
But the more smoothly things went, the larger Chae-in's anxiety grew. It was a bit like programmers growing more uneasy precisely when no bugs turn up.
She gave her head a light shake to throw the unease off, and in the very instant she tried to sink back into her work, the call she'd been waiting for came through. She picked up at once and kept the conversation going for several minutes.
And then.
"Whoa... how am I even supposed to tell her this...?"
Just as she'd feared, the smooth working life had come to an end.
Something had felt off.
If a brand-new mobile game had any real size to it, it usually showered streamers and YouTubers with ads and didn't hold back. And Raider was an extremely large new game.
Hello? The development budget was 270 billion won. They were plastering ads everywhere. You could catch Raider commercials on TV pretty often.
And yet, for the past few days, she hadn't seen a single major-agency streamer or YouTuber running a Raider ad. At least, I hadn't.
I'd felt that something was off, but I hadn't worried about it much. I'd figured I'd simply missed it, or that the ad videos were still being edited. Something along those lines.
I couldn't believe they'd really skipped the ads entirely.
...Well. I guess that could happen.
Raider was the game that had chosen to recruit its CBT players quietly, without even telling anyone what kind of game it was. If anything, this almost struck me as refreshingly sensible.
That wasn't lip service. I meant it.
For me, the worst-case scenario is not failing to become a Raider partner streamer. The worst case is every random nobody becoming a Raider partner streamer—a situation where the proof that the broadcaster called Märchen is someone truly special to Raider loses its persuasive power. That is the worst case I've been picturing.
So the manager had basically just told me I'd dodged the worst of it. Of course, dodging the worst had raised the odds of the second-worst: failing to become a Raider partner streamer before Seobjong.
...They'll pick someone eventually, right?
Even after hearing about Raider's closed-door policy on streamers, I kept texting with the manager for a few more minutes. All of it was work, of course.
If I had to pick the most welcome topic out of the lot... yeah, the ad talk was the most welcome. How could a conversation about money not be welcome?
She said several ad requests had come in on decent terms. Word seemed to have gotten around that Made-in-Märchen ads were high quality.
Or not! Whatever!
Anyway, I carefully read through the clean summary the manager had sent over.
"...Hmm. Yeah, these do look pretty solid."
I, Lee Hari, was a seasoned rookie who had already run a whole two ads before even joining AY Entertainment. So I recognized at once that the manager's claim about the terms being good was the pure truth, without a sliver of a lie.
Three mobile-game ads. One merch ad. One gamepad ad.
Doing all five... no, that wasn't it. High class, high quality, high efficiency. The Three Highs were the core of a Märchen ad broadcast.
...I do kind of want the gamepad one, though. That pad was a little expensive, but I'd heard it was seriously good. I'd bought mine on the value line, so I was genuinely curious just how much better an expensive gamepad could be.
Aside from that, what actually suited a Märchen special ad broadcast overflowing with class... I'd probably do a better job advertising a game I'd already played, right?
Good. Then we're going with this one and this one! The gamepad ad I can knock out while playing Raider, two birds with one stone. And this one... I wonder if my account is even still around?
I'd been agonizing over the ads so hard that, before I knew it, it was time for today's stream.
...I can already see the future. And the helplessness of being unable to change that future, even when I saw it coming, was truly pitiful.
I let out a light sigh and turned the stream on.
A late influx of viewers who'd checked the YouTube Short meant the chat's firepower was anything but normal from the very start of the stream.
...Should I use the secret weapon now?
I hesitated a moment, then opened my mouth.
"Yes, hello, this is Märchen, the eternal seventeen-year-old youth streamer currently at the peak of her interest in kissing."
Don't use it yet. This isn't the moment for the secret weapon. The perfect timing is after Part 1 ends...
...Timing, whatever. I'm just gonna use it.
Go! Secret weapon!
A few clicks, and the broadcast feed changed—from the cam that had been blessing the viewers with a national-treasure face to a screen that was nothing but white.
Dumped into the sudden situation, the viewers started voicing their confusion.
And then.
Doo-doom-doom-bam-ba——
A quick-witted viewer seemed to have guessed what I'd prepared from the sound alone.
The moment the noise I'd made with my mouth ended, 2D Märchen revealed herself. True to an eternal seventeen-year-old streamer, 2D Märchen was wearing a school uniform. She made a cute little entrance, formed a V with her right hand, and brought it up to her face, winking her right eye shut at the same time. And in the freshest, bubbliest voice she could manage, 2D Märchen called out.
Along the bottom, the words Märchen Broadcast were written prettily, like a logo.
Only then did the people who fancied themselves anime-watchers start shouting the answer.
Yes. The secret weapon I'd prepared was an eyecatch.
From the moment I'd spontaneously thought, on a past stream, that using an eyecatch instead of a clap would be a nice way to shift the mood, I'd been secretly preparing it right up until now. Ah, and of course I'd casually dropped the bait on stream.
And finally!
At laaast!
The day to pay that bait off had come!
I put the cam feed back on the broadcast. Then I gave one light clap.
"All right! For Part 1 today, I've prepared some special content!"
"Excellent explanation! If I had to add anything here... you split the episode into a Part A and a Part B around the eyecatch, right? Doesn't that suit my stream perfectly, since I already do a Part 1 and a Part 2? It'd work great for shifting the mood, too. ...So I made one!"
For the record, I had a few more eyecatches besides the one I'd just shown.
"Clapping to change the mood isn't nearly as stylish as this. And hey, you never know, right? What if some sponsor sees my eyecatch and asks me to slip a few ads in between eyecatches?"
If a request like that actually came in, wouldn't I be credited with opening a new frontier in internet broadcasting? Just thinking about it, the high came rushing in.
...And there I go, off on a tangent again.
With no other choice, I played the eyecatch one more time.
Good. This time I explain the whole thing at once, no cutting in halfway.
Let's not fire the eyecatch three times in a row!
Good! Let's go!!
"All right! For Part 1 today, I've prepared some special content! It's the Veteran Guest Seat! And who did I book? None other than—I successfully booked a veteran player who achieved the world's first clear in that recently super-hot game, Raider! Well? Aren't you excited?!"