What Exactly Can You Do?
"When I said we should do WGM, you weren’t excited at all?"
"No, I wasn’t."
"Then you’re lying about having no dating experience?"
"But I really have never dated an—"
"Making excuses?"
"I’m sorry."
What exactly was this situation? I had pushed my chair back and was kneeling on the floor. In front of me, Xia was sitting in her chair with her legs crossed, looking down at me.
I had only decided to do the lie detector one more time because the result seemed off, and somehow things had gone completely sideways. Sure, it was a joke lie detector, but Xia clearly hadn’t liked the fact that one of my answers had come up as a lie.
"So which is it? You do have dating experience, or you just didn’t like WGM?"
"What does either of those have to do with you…"
"The first one is because you’re annoying. The second one… is also because you’re annoying."
I should’ve known better than to sit down. They say humans repeat the same mistake, and I had just done exactly that, blinded once by a hundred thousand won and now by ten thousand.
Xia looked properly sulky, propping her chin on one hand as she stared down at me. Her other index finger kept tapping the armrest as if she were thinking hard about something.
"It means it’s annoying if you said you didn’t have any, when you actually did."
"But if I really didn’t have any, then I’d say I didn’t. Why would I say I didn’t when I did?"
"Then that means you weren’t excited when I said we should do WGM?"
"No, that’s not what I— ...Wait."
Come to think of it, that was weird. Why was she so obsessed with my dating history?
"Look, whether I’ve dated or not is my business. Why are you so fixated on it?"
"……."
"You’re not serious…"
I was about to joke, "Do you like me?" when Xia suddenly let out a shriek.
"Fine! I’m a forever-single! I was jealous that you’d dated someone before, okay!"
"No, I was just…"
"What!"
"I was just going to tease you and ask if you liked me…"
After my words, an awkward silence hung around us. I kept staring at Xia, and maybe because she was embarrassed, she suddenly dropped her head. Looking more closely, I could see her face beginning to turn red.
The faint pink on her white skin deepened into a vivid blush, then a bright red, and before long the color had spread beyond her face to her ears too.
She must have been mortified to have exploded like that for such a stupid reason. She covered her face with both hands so the camera couldn’t see her and bent her upper body forward.
"Are you okay?"
"I’m embarrassed, so don’t talk to me for a second…."
"Thank you for the ten thousand won. The boss seems to be in a temporary stun and can’t keep the stream moving, so I’ll take over for a bit."
"Uuuugh…."
"Yeah, exactly. Anyway, let’s get this broken thing out of the way first."
As I said that, I moved the lie detector, which was lying face-down on the desk, to the corner and pulled over the chair that had been shoved aside before sitting down.
Even though it had only been for a moment, kneeling like that had left my calves slightly numb.
"It’s been since I was a kid that I last knelt like that."
"I’ll say this once. I’m a forever-single, and the last time I held a woman’s hand, aside from my mother’s, was in second grade when my teacher told me to hold my desk mate’s hand."
"Of course I was excited. If Xia says she wants to do WGM with me and I don’t get even a little excited, am I really a man?"
Looking at the chat, quite a few people wanted a detailed explanation of why the WGM content had been put on hold. I wondered whether I should just explain it, then glanced to the side; Xia still didn’t seem to have recovered from the shock.
We hadn’t exactly discussed it in advance, but this much probably wouldn’t be a problem to talk about.
"To put it briefly, I guess you could say we just don’t match well."
"Does saying ‘match’ make it sound a little off? I don’t mean our chemistry doesn’t fit. It’s more like we’re moving at different speeds."
I gave an example to help the viewers understand.
"Anyone remember how I lightly hinted on my stream the other day that Xia and I might end up doing WGM?"
"That’s still yesterday? Why does it feel like it was two years ago to me?"
"Right. Anyway, after that, Xia said on stream that I was her ideal type, didn’t she?"
I still remembered it vividly. Along with that donation, Xia’s viewers and the toxic WGM obsessives had all piled in, telling me to explain myself. Maybe it felt so fresh because it had happened just yesterday.
"What we’d originally talked about was wanting to keep the period before WGM pretty long. We both agreed on that."
"No, I mean we’re going to talk more, and if it doesn’t work out, then there’s nothing we can do."
At that donation, I checked the viewer count and saw that there were even more people watching than Xia usually had. Some of them had probably come because of the rumor-like drama, but plenty had likely come after seeing the hot clips too. So the whole Watch audience was just hoping for the two of us to do WGM?
"But I still have to stream."
"Let’s think about that later. For now, you should probably snap out of it."
I tapped Xia’s shoulder, since she still didn’t seem to have fully recovered. There wasn’t much else to say at this point, so whether we kept streaming or ended it, the person in charge of the broadcast had to pull herself together first.
"Xia. Get it together."
"Ugh, I’m really going to lose it."
"If you’re going to lose it, do it after we turn off the stream. I’m out of things to say."
"I can’t be the only one embarrassed. Put your hand back on."
Having finally regained her senses, Xia pulled the lie detector from the corner of the desk and set it back in front of me. I couldn’t help wondering why I had to do this again when I’d already been the only one answering questions so far.
"I’ve been the only one doing it this whole time."
"So?"
"Do I really have to do it again?"
"I can’t be the only one embarrassed."
"That’s not my fault, thou—"
"I don’t care. Just stop talking and put your hand on it already."
I wanted to ask why I had to do this one more time after she’d been the one to fly off the handle and then get embarrassed all by herself, but I managed to swallow the question down. If I had asked it, it felt like this would turn into more than just a lie detector session; I might actually get hit a few times.
Once I put my hand back in and Xia pressed the button, the tense music started up again. A moment later, before the end alarm even finished sounding, Xia hit me with her question.
"I thought Hazy would fall for me after the BattleSky event collab!"
"I did."
Xia pressed the button and asked whether it was true.
"Saying I didn’t even feel one percent of it would be a lie. Every guy does."
As I said that, I waited a moment, and then the device rang out with the sound of truth as the music stopped.
"It was real?"
"Now it’s your turn to get a taste of your own medicine. I can’t be the only one getting hit, right?"
"You’re making me do it too?"
"Yep. Put your hand here."
In the end, after a bit of back and forth, Xia was worn down by a massive fifty-thousand-won donation. She placed her hand obediently on the lie detector and looked at me, almost pleading.
"Really, really, can’t you just not ask anything weird?"
"I won’t."
"I don’t believe you. I feel like you would."
If she wasn’t going to believe me, then why ask in the first place? Of course, I had a specific thought in mind. Not a weird question, exactly, but one that would make her embarrassed to answer. It was a broadcast, after all. This was WWE to some extent.
The instant the sound checking her heartbeat ended, I asked Xia my question.
"That chicken scene made me excited."
"No! Absolutely not!"
I pressed the button at Xia’s answer. It was a breathless instant. Since the question had been asked as a joke, the answer should have come back true, but still, the viewers’ expectations…
Beep! Beep!
"Huh?"
For some reason, this felt familiar. I turned to look beside me with a strange sense of deja vu.
Xia, who was covering her face with both hands, had spun her chair around and was pressing her forehead against the wall.
"Th...the machine is weird."
Her ear, just barely visible over the back of the chair, was red beyond comparison.
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