It's Me, You Bastards
I stared at the two women in front of me, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Um… didn’t the other members or staff say anything?”
The company’s youngest suddenly stops showing up, then out of nowhere debuts as a female employee—
“The boss already laid all the groundwork. She told everyone Yeon-woo was debuting as an AI virtual character.”
“Whoa… and they actually bought that?”
No matter how much the boss said it, that was the kind of story even my own parents wouldn’t believe.
“The staff seemed to buy it. AI performance these days is no joke, right?”
“……”
It looked like the recent AI singularity and I were never going to get along. I was dead set against it. Screw those AI bastards. I needed to pull all my overseas stocks out immediately.
“Even if AI is that good, a guy debuting as a female employee is still weird, isn’t it?”
“Huh? When they heard it was Yeon-woo they believed it right away.”
“?”
How the hell did that work?! The only person who knew I’d been turned into a beautiful girl was that one forum post!
“I guess the image is that you’d do anything for the company?”
“Ah, so that’s it.”
Phew… I was worried someone had found that forum post I wrote.
“…Y-yeah.”
“Don’t suddenly look away and shut your mouth! It’s scary!!”
“Hehe! Just kidding!”
“Ugh…”
Honey Eos… this woman really had mastered every single useless otaku skill in existence. I guess the otaku experience from her background couldn’t be ignored.
“So that’s why the boss told everyone to clear their schedules before tonight—she was pushing Yeon-woo’s debut stream?”
Rina, who had apparently finished ordering the sushi, slipped into the conversation with an incredulous laugh.
“Looks like it. Since she’s debuting you anyway, she wants to do it right.”
Eos raised both hands beside her face and gave a light shrug of agreement.
Listening to the two of them talk made my head spin as an employee.
“Still… making everyone clear their schedules just to debut someone like me feels completely backwards…”
What the company should care about was strict revenue and operating profit. Not entertaining the youngest employee.
“By the way, is Yeon-woo’s stream happening in this room?”
When Rina asked while looking around my room, Eos nodded immediately.
“Probably? They already sent over a streaming PC for that reason.”
“Huh?”
I glared at the mysterious computer that had appeared recently. Even at a glance, it had a massive graphics card. A sleek silver-white machine with what was basically a 5090 and fully loaded RAM, plus all the latest streaming gear.
This wasn’t for the boss?! What the hell?!
“Your original PC had decent specs too, so they said to run a dual-PC setup for streaming.”
…It really looked like my debut was set in stone. I made one last desperate attempt.
“W-what about the soundproof booth?”
“This isn’t an apartment or a villa, it’s a mansion on a hill. Why would we need a soundproof booth?”
“Umm…”
Well… that was true, but…
“W-what if the members downstairs hear…”
“Don’t worry about that. The whole building is designed with soundproofing. If you just close the doors and windows properly, it acts as a soundproof booth on its own.”
“B-but it’s not a professional soundproof booth?”
“Everyone streams from the second floor at the same time and you can’t hear each other, right? It should be fine.”
“Uh…”
Now that she mentioned it, that was true. Our members often stayed over on the boss’s second floor and streamed, but there had never been a single instance of sound leaking into someone else’s broadcast.
“In other words! The soundproofing effect has already been proven!”
“……”
It seemed… every single one of my escape routes had been completely blocked.
“Alright then, Rina! Let’s set it up! Yeon-woo’s PC!”
“Okay! I’ll show you the VTuber setup skills I mastered over nine reincarnations! Ha Yeon-woo!”
“…Save me.”
I muttered toward the ceiling.
I… I really don’t want to debut… I’m scared… I really am…
“So from today, Yeon-woo is our junior?”
“Not Yeon-woo, it’s Yeon-ha!”
“Ah, right, right. Gotta watch my words. Yeon-ha.”
“Yeah. From now on, feel free to…”
“……”
…But no one was listening to me. God damn it.
Before the stream.
After finishing work, the boss called me into the room for a brief meeting.
“So… it’s ready, I guess…”
“You look like you really don’t want to do this.”
Wow! What sharp senses! Is this what it takes to run a major company?
“…Of course I don’t want to?”
“Why not?”
“There’s no way I’ll do well if I start streaming… I’ll just end up causing trouble for the company.”
“Hmm… is that so?”
“Is that so?! What do you mean, ‘is that so’!”
Think about it! Really think!
“I’m not good at playing games in an entertaining way on stream…”
“……”
“I can’t sing well like the others…”
“……”
“I can’t even do mukbang and earn donations…”
“……”
The boss quietly chewed on her lip, then tilted her head and asked me.
“Did you actually want to debut as a third-generation member instead of staying staff?”
“No?!”
Why does the conversation always go this way?!
“I thought you were appealing so strongly that you wanted to debut as a member instead of staying staff.”
“I never appealed for anything?!”
I clearly said I had no streaming content, didn’t I? Did my ttyuttya brain somehow deliver the message backwards?!
“I’m pretty sure you did.”
“No, I didn’t?”
“……”
“…Maybe?”
“……”
“……”
After staring at me for a moment, the boss let out a short sigh and leaned back in her chair.
“Well, if you say so, I wasn’t planning to put you on stream as an official member anyway.”
“Phew…”
Well, if that was the case, it was actually a relief…
“…Then why did you suddenly schedule my stream?”
No matter how I thought about it, this surprise stream felt way too sudden. I puffed out my cheeks in protest.
The boss stared at me with an exasperated expression.
“It’s all because of you.”
“…Pardon?”
Me? What did I do wrong… wait, no, I’ve done plenty of things wrong lately.
“Can’t you remember? The thing you have to handle by turning on your stream?”
“…Is there something like that?”
What exactly do I have to handle by turning on a stream…
“That time you deleted Eos’s comments using my account.”
“…Ah?”
“There’s been a lot of talk about it on official cafes and communities, so the company wants to turn on a stream to explain and announce our position…”
With a bright…! smile that looked exactly like the one she usually wore at the office, Kang Ha-neul continued with a slightly angry expression.
“…But when I thought about it, I realized I wasn’t the one who did it, so the idea of me making the announcement made me furious.”
“Ahem, ahem…!”
…I had nothing to say. Even if it was the fault of my ttyuttya brain, it was still my mistake.
“So our ‘Woo Yeon-ha’ will turn on the stream this time and explain everything. Understood?”
“……”
I pressed my lips tightly shut in defiance.
“Answer me!”
“Hng hng… yes.”
…Of course, that kind of thing would never work on the boss.
Satisfied with my answer, she rested her chin on the desk and smiled at me.
“I’ll give you as much freedom as possible during the stream. Just do whatever you want.”
“…Really?”
“Yes. Do whatever you want.”
“……”
…The boss said she’d give me freedom? For real?
“Ugh… I’m so tired…”
A diligent game developer who worked in Pangyo. After finishing a light bit of overtime and getting home a little late, he immediately threw his exhausted body onto the bed.
“Comfort me… guys…”
He pulled out his smartphone with barely any battery left from his pocket. Then he immediately opened Pazicik.
He quickly checked his follow list to see if there were any streams from his favorite VTuber group, Star Live.
“…There’s nothing.”
No Star Live streams. Not a single one. Not his favorite Karen, not any of the other members… not even the boss’s streams that sometimes went up when the members weren’t streaming.
“This is the worst…”
But as a true Star Live fan, he couldn’t just go to sleep like this. He immediately closed Pazicik and logged into the official cafe to check the boards in case he’d missed any streams today.
“Yeon-ha?”
He had never seen her in person, but he had heard of her. Wasn’t she the Star Live staff member that Eos had introduced? He had heard that she was absolutely terrible at following the rules.
“Are they pushing staff bait because the girls aren’t streaming?”
He wasn’t particularly interested in Star Live staff—unless it was a member—so he lightly ignored the bait and kept scrolling through the posts.
“Ah, so the girls stopped streaming because of this staff member’s explanation broadcast…”
He was sure that according to the schedule he saw yesterday, quite a few members should have been streaming today. Of course most of them would have already ended, but the ones with long stream times should still be on. Especially Eos. Eos. Eos. Or Karen, who usually started late.
But the fact that there wasn’t a single stream at this hour meant something had happened. And from what he could gather on the official cafe, it seemed this staff member named Yeon-ha had caused some kind of trouble, so everyone had cleared their schedules for her explanation stream. That was the boss’s style whenever something blew up.
“Sigh… manage your staff properly, Boss Kang…”
Grumbling at the staff member named Yeon-ha who had ended Karen’s stream for no good reason, he turned Pazicik back on.
<Battery critically low.>
The low battery warning popped up at the top of the screen.
“Ugh…!”
But he planned to just hop into the stream, give the staff member a piece of his mind, and leave, so he ignored the message. Charging? That was something only pathetic men did.
“This isn’t the official Star Live channel?”
He passed by the official Star Live channel that he had no idea when they’d even made. He entered the newly created staff channel titled 『Star Live Staff Woo Yeon-ha』.
【Star Live Official Notice Explanation Stream】
The explanation stream was already live. When he clicked in, it had only been on for less than ten minutes. The viewer count was… a whopping 34,000. Close to the absolute maximum Star Live could pull.
-Come out! Woo Yeon-ha!!
-Hehehe… you can’t run away anymore, Yeon-ha.
-If you made all the other girls end their streams, you better make up for it with that body, right?
-Give birth as much as you ended the streams! Woo Yeon-ha!
-Uryat uryat!!
“These bastards really have no filter even toward a normal person.”
As expected from Star Live fans. They didn’t hold back even if the other party was a regular staff member and not a VTuber.
-Since you’re late, give birth! Uryat uryat!
He hurriedly joined the chorus. One must follow the trend. If everyone received the lawsuit together, the burden would be shared, right?
-Wow! 35,000 viewers!
-Shouldn’t you come out for real now, Yeon-ha?
-When are you coming out! You fucking bitch!
Eventually, when the viewer count in Woo Yeon-ha’s room broke 35,000—
Pop!
A virtual character appeared in the center of the black screen. It was an incredibly high-quality model.
Long silver-white hair that reached below the waist. A body closer to loli than Yeon-ha. A cute face that looked like it would grow into an elegant beauty. A neat staff uniform and atmosphere that gave off a sense of purity.
“What the? Why give a mere staff member a model like that?”
It was a high-quality virtual character that looked like it should have been given to a third-generation member, not staff. In terms of money, it had to be worth at least tens of millions of won. The character quietly opened its eyes.
[……]
Beautiful golden eyes pierced straight through his tastes.
-Kyaaaaaaaah!!
-Finally showing that suspicious cam! Woo Yeon-ha!
-So fucking cute!! Woo Yeon-ha!!
-Woo Yeon-ha! Woo Yeon-ha!
-Open your mouth already!
-Let us hear your voice! Yeon-ha!
-If you don’t let us hear your voice after all this I’m gonna shit right here?
Receiving the flood of requests filling the chat, the cute pink lips quietly revealed pure white teeth.
[……It’s me, you fucking bastards.]
“?”
The chat room fell into chaos.