How Is This Still Not Dating?
The day Sia suddenly flew off to Japan after leaving behind nothing but a single notice, the stream turned out to be a pretty decent haul.
Among the game recommendations people sent in, there were quite a few that both Sia and I could actually enjoy a little.
But that wasn’t the problem.
“What am I supposed to do?”
After all, the reason I’d been gathering game recommendations in the first place was that I’d been killing time with a filler segment because I hadn’t decided what to do while Sia was gone.
Since Sia had posted that she’d be taking today off too, I had to decide on a separate segment for today. That was why I was sitting in front of my computer in broad daylight, my head in my hands.
“Ah, damn it.”
I had no idea what the hell I should do. Should I just play a game? But would that be enough?
No matter how hard I wracked my brain, the problem didn’t exactly untangle itself. This was the kind of moment when I should probably ask someone else for advice. Seeing that Discord was online in my friends list, I called Red-hyung.
I heard the line connecting, and then a woman’s voice came through instead of his.
“Hello?”
“Huh?”
Startled by the sudden female voice, I checked the profile. It was definitely Red-hyung’s profile. Confused, I asked, “Is this not Yoon Red?”
“Yoon Red? Hold on.”
“Hey! What’s your stream name?”
I flinched when I heard a woman shouting at someone over the speaker.
What was going on? While I was still reeling, the woman answered me again.
“It is, but who are you?”
“Ah, I’m a coworker and also like, a close hyung-dongsaeng sort of relationship.”
“Ah, just a second. I’ll put him on.”
After she said that, maybe two seconds passed before I heard someone sit down in a chair, followed by Red-hyung’s voice over the speaker.
“Oh, Hazy. What’s up?”
“Hello. I had a question about content.”
“Isn’t it fine as long as you don’t drink?”
For a second, I wondered if I should’ve asked the company first instead of him, but I still wanted to ask someone with actual broadcasting experience.
“That goes without saying.”
“Right. So what’s the question?”
“You’re a gaming streamer, right?”
“Right.”
“Then is gaming the only kind of content you can do?”
“Isn’t it?”
Red-hyung was a former pro gamer. Of course his main content would be related to games.
Usually he’d play games, then join tournaments as a player or a coach when they came around, and every so often he’d record a lecture video for YouTube, too….
“Ah, right. You said Sia went to Japan yesterday?”
“Yeah. She’s off until today.”
“So that’s what you’re worried about? About what kind of content to keep doing while Sia’s gone, or after We Got Married ends?”
Compared to that, what was I? A streamer who’d played one game for a year, then suddenly, by a miracle piled on top of another miracle, started taking off at last.
The people who’d just recently started watching me hadn’t discovered me through the year of streams I’d done before. They’d come in after We Got Married with Sia, drawn by the short stretch of incidents that had happened since.
Obviously, what they wanted was probably the chemistry between me and Sia that came out during the virtual marriage content. But the problem was that it wasn’t something I could do forever.
“Yeah.”
“You must be worrying a lot. It’s not easy to hold onto viewers who came in for We Got Married.”
I couldn’t keep them all. But even so, I couldn’t just not try.
How many chances do you get handed like this?
“Honestly, I don’t think you need to overthink it.”
“Huh?”
“Aren’t you being a little too obsessive? I think you’re fine.”
Too obsessive. Hearing that, something about me felt strangely off, so I started from the beginning and thought it through again.
Why was I so fixated on content while Sia was gone? Because she’d posted her break notice without saying anything to me?
Did that mean that without Sia, I was nothing? No, that wasn’t it. Why not just do what I usually did?
“Won’t the viewers hate it?”
“Then those people were never really your viewers to begin with.”
You can’t keep everyone.
Once I heard that, the weight in my chest grew a lot lighter.
*
“So in the end, you couldn’t decide on content.”
After I hung up with Red-hyung, I drank some water and thought about it. I’d called to ask what kind of content would be good, but in the end I hadn’t even asked the most important thing.
Was Red-hyung secretly an F on the MBTI? Somehow, after talking it out with him, I did feel calmer.
Just do what you want. The people who are going to leave will leave anyway.
Still, his last words gave me a little boost. Yeah. No matter what kind of stream I did, the people who were never really connected to me would end up going somewhere else in the end.
“If all the viewers drop off while I’m streaming, then… I guess what can I do? That would just be my life, I guess.”
After washing the cup I’d used for water and putting it back on the shelf, I sat down in front of the computer again. Then I suddenly thought of the aegyo Sia had shown me two days ago.
Maybe I should do a World Cup of Sia’s aegyo clips today.
When I turned on the stream, a pretty large number of viewers gathered.
“There are a lot of viewers today.”
Maybe because Sia had mentioned me in her break notice, some of her viewers seemed to have wandered over to my side. It was a shame that she was off until today.
“So! Today’s content is a special Sia-off-day memorial aegyo clip World Cup for my wife!”
“I’ll deal with the fallout. Just sit back and enjoy it.”
My words sent a flood of praise into chat. I was just doing the content I wanted to do. What was the big deal? Thinking that, I opened Sia’s aegyo clip World Cup.
“The max is 32 rounds.”
Thirty-two rounds meant there were at least thirty-one clips. Sometimes there weren’t enough clips and a bye would sneak in, too.
“Wow, even the drunk-stream aegyo got added, so it’s 32 rounds? The updates are crazy fast.”
I didn’t know who had made it, but I was sure one of Sia’s fans had put it together. Updating it right after clips from two days ago? That said enough.
“All right then, shall we?”
Just as I was about to hit start, someone suddenly called me on Discord.
…Sia’s house? What was up? No way, was she watching the stream?
If she’d been watching, she would’ve sent a chat message or a text first, but she hadn’t done anything like that. What?
“It’s Sia?”
I ignored the viewers’ reactions and answered the call. Maybe because her throat was rough, her voice was lower than usual when she greeted me.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Did you just wake up?”
“Yeah. Yaaawn….”
I could hear her yawn. For a one-night, two-day trip, she’d be arriving today, right? Had she just gotten off the plane?
“I fell asleep the moment I got on the plane.”
“Are you okay? You’re not too tired?”
“A little. If I’d said I was only taking one day off, I probably would’ve said I was taking today off too….”
We were in the middle of We Got Married content, after all. If one of us had the stream on, wouldn’t it be better to show this kind of side to the viewers, too?
“Are you streaming?”
“Huh? Yeah.”
“What are you doing?”
“Right now? A World Cup of aegyo clips.”
“…Whose aegyo?”
I answered her question with silence. In the brief quiet that followed between us, I was the first one to fold.
“Should I stop?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I guess I have no choice. Guess I’ll just do a We Got Married clip World Cup instead.”
“Huh?”
My viewers cheered me on not to back down, but I firmly shut the door on the idea.
She told me not to, so I shouldn’t. I’d already used that excuse once before to get her aegyo out of her anyway. Using cheap tricks was something I only needed to do once.
“Oh, right. Why did you call?”
“Huh? Uh, I’m doing something right now.”
“At this hour, I’d be streaming.”
“I forgot after waking up.”
She sounded like she was hesitating about something. Did she have something she wanted to say?
“I’m sorry.”
“Huh? For what?”
“For just posting the break notice and leaving without contacting you.”
“Ah, that?”
I’d thought it was something serious. I’d wondered if she had some urgent thing to say, but apparently not.
“It’s fine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. A streamer doing We Got Married left a break notice and didn’t even send her partner a message that would’ve taken, like, a minute, then called the next night— but it’s fine.”
“That doesn’t sound fine at all.”
“It’s your imagination.”
Actually, it wasn’t even that I was sulking. Or was I? Maybe I was? It had started with a thought I’d had for a second before going to sleep.
Did she really not have even a second? She could’ve just spent a moment on Discord.
That was what I’d thought, before shaking my head. Why would I be the one to contact her? We weren’t lovers, just We Got Married partners. I’d gone to sleep last night thinking I should just do my own stream.
But now that she’d called like this, I felt a little let down. It wasn’t even that I wanted her to ask why I hadn’t contacted her. I just felt suddenly disappointed that she hadn’t contacted me at all.
…No, I wasn’t sulking? I was obviously making it pretty clear that I was sulking. Fine. I was sulking.
I wanted her to pay even a little attention to me. Once We Got Married ended, we’d just go back to being coworkers who’d done content together. We’d return to that exact kind of relationship, but for this moment, I wanted her to care. As a fellow streamer doing the same content.
“I’m sorry. It was my parents’ wedding anniversary.”
“…Huh?”
“My brother woke me up early in the morning and dragged me somewhere, and by the time I came to my senses, I was in Japan.”
She went on to explain that she’d been so busy after that that her older brother had taken her phone after she posted the notice and only just gave it back to her.
Listening carefully, I realized she hadn’t failed to contact me—she couldn’t. And here I was, fretting over it all by myself and getting sulky over nothing. Suddenly I felt embarrassed.
“Sorry. I should’ve contacted you before I posted the notice.”
“Ah, no, it’s fine.”
“Still, I even bought you a present~! I think you’ll like it when you see it.”
After that, she kept talking, but I didn’t really hear the rest. I was too busy scolding myself for how painfully clueless I was.
“You said you were fine? Then we’ll see each other tomorrow?”
“Uh… huh?”
“Good luck with your stream!”
By the time I snapped back to reality, Sia had already left me with a message that we’d see each other tomorrow. I hadn’t even heard what she’d said, but apparently I’d answered her on pure reflex.
I was definitely going to have to go back and rewatch this one later….
“And this is my gift, with all my apologies wrapped inside it.”
Gift?
“Good luck with your stream, my darling?”
And then the call ended.
Well, that was just a simple, sweet little cheer, nothing more. I’d overthought it again…?
Wait. I heard something at the end.
Seeing the viewers’ reactions, I knew for sure.
I hadn’t misheard it.
It suddenly got a little hot in here.