If You're Going to Be Like That, Don't Do It So Well!!
If you're going to be like that, then don't do it so well!! 'If you just hire me, I'll bury my bones in this company!' Those were the first words that bastard spat out during the interview when he first applied to Star Live.
"You said you'd bury your bones here! You son of a bitch!"
The broadcast had barely ended when Kang Ha-neul, seated in the black sedan, snatched up the new hire's documents from his joining date and slammed the pedal toward the address listed on them.
"You think you can run away now? Ha Yeon-woo!"
To be honest, she hadn't held any expectations when she hired him. A twenty-one-year-old who had finished his military service in record time, dropped out of college, and submitted an application. Sure, he was fluent in internet memes and community discourse, but there was no reason to expect anything from an applicant without a single proper certification.
However, the 0th Generation director who had sat in on the interview with her—Honey Eos—had said......
"They all seem about the same anyway, so let's just pick the one with the decent face."
"......"
Because she had spouted such nonsense and fast-tracked the guy using her personal authority, they had ended up hiring the young man named Ha Yeon-woo in the 'planning and general affairs' position.
"If you're going to be like that, then don't do it so well!!"
But contrary to her expectations, the new employee named Ha Yeon-woo had shone in multiple fields. And he had done it in just six months.
The first task assigned to him came right before the 2nd Generation launch. It was to take the 2nd Generation members—each with strong individual personalities but subtle compatibility issues—and fuse them into a cohesive unit.
The level of talent applying to Star Live rose in a steep upward curve with each passing day. As the company grew and every VTuber they debuted achieved massive success, anyone dreaming of becoming a VTuber naturally knocked on Star Live's door first.
They had selected only the best of the best to prepare the 2nd Generation group, yet the four they chose created subtle disharmony that tormented the company right up until launch.
If they highlighted the members' talents, the group's discord became obvious. If they eliminated the discord, each member's individual talent died.
Such disharmony was never a good element in a VTuber group. Especially for the Star Live fandom, which was always ready to ship the members in yuri pairings, discord between members was something that could destroy the company image they had built up until now.
In that impossible binary choice, the new employee named Ha Yeon-woo casually raised his hand and offered her a suggestion.
'How about we just name the group "Dissonance"?'
'What?'
'Ah, "Dissonance" sounds a bit off. Let's call it "Discord"?'
He proposed naming the entire 2nd Generation group Discord and turning that very disharmony into their core concept.
'No, looking at the kids' current character concepts......'
'Still, revising the character plans seems faster than trying to fix four actual people, doesn't it?'
'Uh......?'
'I'll just pull an all-nighter. Well, it's better than the company going under because we can't launch the 2nd Generation.'
'Uh...... yeah.'
Somehow they managed to produce character concepts that fit the group name and introduced the 2nd Generation to the world.
The 2nd Generation Discord broke every all-time record Star Live had and made an enormous contribution to more than doubling the company's recognition and scale.
Yet even that wasn't the end of it.
"Even when the 1st Generation were struggling......!"
The 1st Generation group of Star Live, Prism, had once suffered greatly from groundless false accusations in the community and malicious viewers spamming their chats.
By taking manager permissions for every channel himself, he completely eradicated the malicious users from the chat rooms. He personally scoured the communities, gathered evidence that could actually lead to lawsuits, and even provided guides on how to file them. On top of that, he suggested, 'To calm the rumors that have already spread, the company should take official action, don't you think?' He planned and prepared content that could wipe out the community's baseless slander, all while firmly supporting the 1st Generation's mental state.
The only problem was that the 1st Generation members later competed to make him their personal manager, but......
"......Now that I think about it, the same thing happened with the 0th Generation kids."
After the successful launch of the 2nd Generation, Star Live's scale had doubled. However, viewers addicted to the fresh dopamine began abandoning the 0th Generation and migrating to the 1st and 2nd.
Of course, both sides pretended on the surface that it didn't bother them at all. But it was obvious to anyone watching—the drop in viewers, the crumbling mentality, the loss of energy. Once mentality and energy broke, good content stopped coming to mind. Without content, the broadcasts became boring. More viewers left for the 1st and 2nd Generations.
As that vicious cycle repeated, both of their viewer counts eventually fell into the one-thousand range.
She hurriedly gathered the company staff and asked for emergency measures.
'First, let's run a solo event to pull in viewers and restore their self-esteem?'
'Let's pick new outfits the viewers will love and charge straight through!'
Amid those stale, predictable suggestions, the guy had said:
'How about we just have the two of them do a collab where they openly fight each other?'
He had been named Employee of the Month.
"Besides, we haven't even received the government subsidy yet!!"
The government subsidy given to small and medium enterprises for long-term employment of young people. Half of it would be paid out soon. She couldn't let him go without claiming even that. No—even if they received it, she still couldn't let him go. Just take the money and stay.
Screeech......!
"This is the place!"
The villa where the guy lived wasn't far from the company. Five minutes by car at most. The neighborhood couldn't exactly be called clean, but it was still somewhere people could live. Of course, for someone who had already joined the ranks of the wealthy like her, it wasn't a place she would ever choose.
"Ha Yeon-woo, you bastard!!"
Right before the broadcast ended, she had seen it. The ID of Ha Yeon-woo—who possessed manager permissions—sitting boldly in the viewer list.
"You were watching the whole time and didn't send a single chat?!"
Whether he had some truly urgent matter or had simply lost interest in the company and in her, she still didn't know anything. But there was one thing she could be certain of.
She absolutely could not lose an employee like Ha Yeon-woo!
Ding-dong!
After pressing the strangely slow doorbell, she heard faint footsteps from inside—pitter-patter!
"......"
She pressed her ear to the door to confirm the sound, then immediately typed on her smartphone and displayed the message on the intercom screen.
She had delivered her ultimatum.
"Hawawawa......"
......She was screwed.
The boss who had clearly said she would give him a week had stormed all the way to his door in less than seven hours. Just how angry was she...... He couldn't even count properly and she was already here!
"F-for now, I'll pretend I'm not home......"
The moment he tried to quietly sneak back to his room while muffling his footsteps—
Badump badump badabam! Badump badump badabam!
"You crazy traitor bastard!!"
The apple phone that had been acting suspicious since yesterday had finally committed the ultimate betrayal. It wasn't even being tortured, yet it had revealed his location all on its own.
"Agh......!"
As if to prove it really was a traitor, it delivered the enemy's messages first. This must be why their ancestors had erected monuments against appeasement and blocked foreign invasions.
"Hmph! If I hold out, how are you going to get in!"
What if he claimed he had left his smartphone at home and stepped out for a bit? What could the boss possibly do then!
"At least count properly!!"
The moment he unconsciously retorted out loud—
Beep beep beep beep!
"?"
The boss, who had been staring hard at her smartphone, began entering the door lock's password.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
As expected, it seemed like baseless bravado at first as the lock rejected it—cut! Cut! Cut!!
Beep beep beep beep!
But the boss refused to give up and hammered the keypad again.
"What, you think it'll open if you keep pressing it a hundred times—"
Beep-beep-beep!
No, why the hell is it opening?! Fuck?!
Screeech......!
"......It really opened."
Having looked up the master key for that particular door lock model online, she stepped inside and immediately closed the door behind her, sealing off the guy's escape route.
Beep!
"......You're dead."
There was nowhere left for him to run anyway. Confirming Ha Yeon-woo's presence from the hurried footsteps coming from inside, she stepped further into the house.
"Look at this bastard?"
A smartphone lay fallen right at the entrance. Whether he had dropped it in shock or was trying to insist that the real Ha Yeon-woo wasn't here, it was lying brazenly on the floor right in front of the genkan.
Maybe it had been abandoned as punishment for making noise earlier. Or perhaps it would only get in the way of hiding from now on.
"You think I'll fall for that? You bastard!"
She had already checked multiple times. She knew Ha Yeon-woo was inside.
"You'd better prepare to get scolded twice as hard......"
If something bothered him, he could have just said it. To dare attempt to run away on the same day? Without any warning whatsoever?!
"Then......"
To avoid giving the guy any chance to escape, she opened the nearest door first. It was the bathroom.
"......Not here."
There was no space in the cramped bathroom where he could possibly hide. Immediate pass.
"Kitchen......"
She checked whether he had emptied the space under the sink to hide there.
"......Not here."
Now only the veranda and what appeared to be his room remained.
"Veranda......"
In case he tried to bolt the moment she looked away, she kept her eyes on the bedroom door while inspecting the veranda.
......There was no place to hide.
"Last one......"
Screeech......!
She flung open the door that complained for oil with a long creak. A single bed. A single desk with a computer on it. A single wardrobe. That was all the small room contained.
"......"
The bed bulged slightly upward. She grabbed the blanket and......
"You think I'll fall for that, you bastard!"
Bang! With a rough sound, she threw open the wardrobe door.
What appeared from inside was—
"Hawawa?!"
Only an impossibly beautiful girl with wide, trembling eyes and a body shaking violently, the kind whose existence made one doubt she belonged to this world.
"Uh......"
Her brain froze at the completely unexpected sight. This was clearly impossible. The employee she knew as Ha Yeon-woo was definitely male. It wasn't that a woman had cross-dressed her way into the company.
Yet standing before her after she had stormed into Ha Yeon-woo's house was an incredibly beautiful silver-haired girl in place of Ha Yeon-woo, and that girl was trembling violently at the sight of her—a person she was seeing for the first time.
......Exactly the way Ha Yeon-woo would.
What that meant was......
"You...... are that guy?"
The fishing line she had quickly cast in the moment of confusion.
"I'm not Ha Yeon-woo though?"
......The big catch named Ha Yeon-woo had bitten down hard.
"......I never once said the name Ha Yeon-woo. You damn kid."