Advice
No matter how I poked and prodded at the footage this way and that, nothing that actually pleased me would come out of it.
Aris, May, and Elia thrashing Lulu came out extremely entertaining. Elia in particular had an utterly novel way of attacking that I had never seen before.
At her core, Elia was—how to put it—extremely well-mannered. So polite you almost wondered if it was possible for anyone to be more polite than this.
And yet she was roasting Lulu without the slightest restraint, all while maintaining that polite demeanor, and it was seriously funny.
On top of that, she seemed fully aware of what she was doing: after beating Lulu down she would say things like, “I probably shouldn’t do this~,” or “I think I understand why people bully their seniors now!” while thoroughly, deliciously tormenting her.
I was starting to seriously wonder whether Lulu’s true counter wasn’t Aris or May at all, but Elia, given how thoroughly she got wrecked.
Normally Lulu would take the hits with that easygoing bounce of hers, but this time she was whining more than usual, like it actually hurt.
Watching Aris and May join in to comfort her while she complained was pretty great to watch, too.
Anyway—the three of them bullying Lulu came out pretty entertaining…
…but when the other three interacted with each other, nothing particularly fun came of it.
At best, maybe the game battles between Aris and Elia?
Even that fell short the moment you asked yourself, “Is this place for you to show off your gaming skills!?” Because the answer was no.
People came here to watch VTubers play games—not to watch VTubers play games well.
Taking that into account, Aris and Elia might have an audience, sure, but the absolute entertainment value felt a little lacking.
And I felt a little bad saying this, but while May was pretty solid in the supporting-spice role, she was a bit lacking as a main focus.
Her voice itself was the softest and most serene of the four, with that gentle-older-sister vibe that made her stand out a lot.
But before long the stream started to feel like it was being led by Lulu, and around that point May shifted from main presence into the supporting-spice role.
Of course May’s fans would be perfectly happy just listening to her voice—they’d be delighted by that alone—but from an editor’s perspective, she was far from easy to salvage.
As for Elia… she seemed to have realized it herself.
That thrashing Lulu produced the best stream moments by far.
So she walked that fine line, bullying Lulu just enough, but the problem was that she got so absorbed in it that her back-and-forth with Aris or May was a little sparse.
With Aris there was still a strong game-rival energy, but between May and Elia there was almost no synergy at all.
Honestly, it was a combination that shouldn’t have lacked synergy. May was the big sister and leader of the first generation, and from what had been revealed this time, Elia was essentially the leader of the second generation.
The first-gen leader and big sister looking after the leader of the juniors? That was gourmet content right there.
But neither May nor Elia seemed to have paid much attention to that angle.
May at least tried to look after Elia a little, but Elia was so independently solid and capable on her own that it almost backfired.
She should have thrown in a bit of petulance, leaned on May now and then—done the little things that make a collab fun.
It was lacking. Strip Lulu out and the entertainment left among the remaining people was painfully insufficient.
There were things editing could salvage, sure.
But I didn’t get the sense that editing could save everything.
Maybe that was why: when I edited Lulu’s parts, I could cut them in a really fun way and get that feeling that the video was coming together well.
Conversely, when I tried making a video with no Lulu in it at all?
I felt a little bad saying so, but it wasn’t nearly as fun as I’d hoped.
And I wasn’t saying that just because I was a Lulu fan. As a clipper, I was confident I understood Aris’s and May’s strengths better than almost anyone.
Which was exactly why today’s collab left me so disappointed.
May especially. Aris at least had that rival dynamic with Elia I could lean on, but with May I was basically stuck making “headpats compilation” or “mesugaki May compilation” videos and calling it a day.
There just wasn’t enough material for meaningful or genuinely fun clips.
Setting that disappointment aside, today—for the first time in a long while—I finished and uploaded clips of the other VTubers as well, not just Lulu’s.
For the record, the comment reactions themselves were fine. From what I checked briefly before heading to school, there were plenty of people saying things like “it’s fun because it’s Mangjjonku” or “a collab even hardcore Lulu fans couldn’t get past,” so it was entertaining enough in its own way.
Even so, I couldn’t shake the dissatisfaction.
Maybe that dissatisfied look of mine was obvious even at school, because during break Lua came over to my side.
“Jinwoo, are you okay?”
“Out of nowhere?”
“It’s not out of nowhere. Your face looks terrible right now.”
“…That bad?”
“Yeah. You look like you’re drowning in worries. What’s going on?”
I couldn’t bring myself to brush off Lua looking at me with that face full of concern, so I had no choice but to talk about what was bothering me—dropping subjects and all the proper grammar along the way.
“I’m making a new video, but it’s different from the usual ones.”
“Mm.”
“And… it’s just not fun.”
“Making the video? Or the video itself?”
“…Both.”
Lua listened, then asked me a question of her own.
“Is that video something you absolutely have to make? Like an obligation?”
“No, it’s not.”
The moment she heard my answer, Lua delivered a reply so refreshingly blunt it almost hurt.
“Then just don’t make it.”
“Huh?”
“That’s all there is to it, right?”
The answer came out so cleanly that I stared at her in spite of myself, flustered.
Lua only tilted her head at me in return.
“Isn’t that obvious? If it’s not an obligation, there’s no real need to force yourself to make it.”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“Is there another reason? Some reason you have to make it?”
Another reason… the only other reason I had was “because it feels uncomfortable that I have more subscribers than the Sweet Mare streamers.”
If you wanted to call it trivial, it was extremely trivial. If you wanted to call it absurd, it was extremely absurd.
“…Should I really just not make it?”
“If it’s going to leave you looking that worried, it’s better not to make it at all. You’ve got studying to do, and the festival’s coming up soon, too.”
“…Ah, right. There was that.”
Come to think of it, there was the festival.
I didn’t usually throw myself into festival prep, but this year I felt like I actually wanted to put in a proper effort.
…Yeah. I really did have a lot on my plate.
If I was going to get through all of it, I needed to stop stressing myself out over things like this.
“Thanks for saying that.”
“Please. It was nothing.”
Lua gave me a bright little smile and headed back to her own seat.
And Jihye Kim, who had clearly overheard the entire conversation, looked back and forth between me and Lua before leaning in to whisper.
“You two are actually dating, aren’t you?”
“We’re really not.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“But you’ve got feelings?”
Honestly speaking, these days I wasn’t sure.
Before, I would have said absolutely not without hesitation. But I had grown close to Lua again—close enough that I’d even learned a secret I absolutely shouldn’t know.
And that secret was bound up with me in ways that ran far too deep.
Maybe that was why I felt even closer to her, and why I had come to understand just how precious she was.
“…I don’t know.”
“That’s a yes.”
“What do you mean, a yes.”
I whipped my head away to ignore her, and Jihye Kim snickered.
“If you keep dragging your feet, some other guy’s going to snatch Lua up, you know?”
“Huh?”
I looked at her in mild surprise, and she pointed toward Lua with a finger while still whispering.
“Someone like Lua has a great figure and is pretty, right? She’s good at studying, good at sports. How could she not be popular?”
“I get that she’s popular, but… who would like a girl who never smiles and acts that cold?”
“She’s not exactly the super-warm type, sure, but once you get close to her there’s no one more sincere and good-hearted. And she smiles plenty for you.”
…Was that true?
Thinking about it carefully, Lua did smile at me a lot, in a quiet kind of way.
Not even that quiet—she openly smiled at me. She had just been smiling while we talked a moment ago, too.
Could she actually… have feelings for me?
I glanced over at her for a second.
Lua was studying with her mouth neatly closed, perfectly composed.
The sight of her looked almost dazzling, and at the same time it made me feel the wall between us all the more sharply.
Lua shone so brightly. She never dropped either her studies or her streaming.
And me?
I was someone whose entire claim to fame was a single fan channel. Impressive in its own way, maybe, but next to Lua it felt painfully shabby.
“…I’m just going to study.”
“Huh? All of a sudden?”
Something I had realized while studying: when I focused on it, the random thoughts disappeared.
Because even more headache-inducing things took over my brain instead.
So whenever I wanted to think about something else for even a little while, like right now, simply studying like this seemed like the best move.