The Tide of Public Opinion
Was Na-ro-si a talented asset? Absolutely. But was she someone I absolutely had to acquire even if it meant kicking up this much of a storm?
If someone asked me that, I would answer with a firm NO!
Huh? Then why was I doing all this now?
Looking only at the shape of what was unfolding, it seemed as if I had stepped forward to clear Na-ro-si's name on her behalf. But once you knew the real picture, the story shifted a little.
It's actually the opposite. The scumbags from Panbang Gallery were hunting for dirt on me, and Na-ro-si just happened to get used as their weapon.
From Panbang Gallery's perspective, Na-ro-si was already discarded scrap — a tool they'd briefly used to tear into Freeca and then thrown away. That was why they hadn't paid her a shred of attention for the past month.
I, on the other hand, was always under their spotlight. Those malicious bastards stalked my every move, desperate to dig up any weakness they could find. In the end, the final target of this whole affair was me, not Na-ro-si — which was exactly why I was responding so aggressively.
Honestly, this worked out fine. If I crush them thoroughly this time…
The Panbang Gallery scumbags were obviously going to keep coming after me no matter what. If I could thoroughly break their noses and make the audience aware that people like them even existed, it would be a massive help going forward. Every time something went wrong for me, public opinion would start asking, Wait — didn't that Panbang Gallery place get involved again?
Of course, that all hinged on one condition: I had to clean up this mess properly.
"From this moment on, I'm blacklisting every single person spouting weird agitator nonsense. Listen to my explanation first, and if you still have questions after that, then speak up. Manager, you don't need to go easy on anyone from here on. If anyone says even a slightly weird thing before I finish explaining, blacklist them."
I even cut the donation message voice that might interrupt the explanation, then glared through the screen with full force. It was a presence hard to believe belonged to a streamer only four months into her debut.
The scumbags were probably rattled. They never expected a twenty-four-year-old female streamer, standing in front of ten thousand viewers — including people who'd already been stirred up by agitators — to show this kind of decisive attitude and polished response.
But if you thought of it as the kind of complaint that came with the territory at a tiny shit company, it was nothing I wasn't used to. Besides, I'd already anticipated the scumbags would go wild and prepared for it.
"Alright. First, I'm going to give all of you the facts. December 21st of last year. An incident happened to Na-ro-si, who was a member of Freeca at the time."
A hit piece had gone up on FM Community — a video post branding Na-ro-si a feminist. In that clip, Na-ro-si had said the word heobeo-heobeo, and the thing exploded into a massive issue that swallowed Freeca in an instant.
"Na-ro-si worked hard to explain herself. She said she had no idea the word was feminist slang, and that there had been a viewer in chat at the time who typed it and pushed her to read it out. The problem was that this all happened back in her Rabbit TV days, and it was so long ago that there was no VOD left."
In the end, an explanation that was only words didn't land. Public opinion piled pressure on Na-ro-si and on Ssa-yo, Freeca's leader, until they had no choice but to decide on her departure.
"But then she got incredibly lucky. She managed to get in touch with a longtime fan from her Rabbit TV days. And that person had recorded a ton of Na-ro-si's old streams — including the broadcast from the day of the controversy."
The video that had been posted to the community was maliciously cut front and back, edited specifically to snipe Na-ro-si. The full recording of that day's stream, on the other hand, still held clear evidence.
"○○, what does that word mean?"
"Heobeo-heobeo? First time I've ever seen that word."
"It's a word people use when they're gobbling food down in a hurry? It's trendy these days so a lot of people say it?"
A malicious anonymous viewer deliberately baiting her into saying a so-called feminist word on stream. And Na-ro-si, with no idea it was a trap, walking straight into it.
I'd already received the footage from Na-ro-si in advance, and I put it on screen mid-broadcast without hesitation.
"Na-ro-si did air this video on her stream and explained herself — but by then it was already too late. She'd already left Freeca, and the number of people who even showed up for the explanation stream was under a hundred. Seriously? When it was time to throw stones, more than ten thousand people stampeded in to curse her out and call her a feminist with every slur they had. But the moment the truth came out, nobody cared. Isn't that just completely messed up?"
"Eup…"
Behind my scolding, I thought I could hear Na-ro-si's choked-back sobs.
Her explanation stream at the time had been buried under a mountain of other issues and never became a topic at all. Na-ro-si remained, to the public, a streamer who'd left Freeca with a feminist brand stamped on her forehead. And even that was only among the small minority who paid attention — most people didn't care in the first place. Virtual streamers had always been a niche corner of the broadcasting scene.
"And now today, you've all been whipped up again by the Panbang Gallery scumbags and stampeded over here to throw rocks at Na-ro-si and me? Look at this!"
I cleared the video and this time put up the materials I'd spent the last ten days collecting hard. It hadn't been enough on my own, so my manager had worked right alongside me.
Popular posts and materials proving that Panbang Gallery had been targeting me for a hit for a long time. On top of that, I had clean screenshots of a recent popular post from just a few days ago laying out a plan to snipe me by tying me to Na-ro-si.
Normally, dragging a shady underground gallery into the light on stream was a clear unforced error — but in this case, Na-ro-si and I were unmistakably the victims, so there was nothing to worry about.
With the materials dropping one after another, public opinion had almost completely flipped. Even so, pockets of resistance still showed here and there. Alt accounts of the Panbang Gallery scumbags? Or maybe actual Freeca fans operating under a mask. If it was the latter, they might still be carrying a little leftover resentment toward Na-ro-si.
I was saving this as a last resort, but I've got no choice. It's a shame, but I'm burning it now.
When you've got the momentum, you push hard and finish it clean.
"One second. I'm going to make a call."
A phone call in the middle of this chaos? Leaving the puzzled viewers behind, I calmly waited for the ringtone to end.
"Hello?"
"Yes. Hello, Ssa-yo. Are you free to talk right now?"
The Na-ro-si incident had been fabrication and manipulation. But the problem was that Freeca had still taken real damage from it. That was something even I couldn't erase.
So while I'd been gathering the Panbang Gallery materials over the past few days, I'd also reached out to Ssa-yo on the side. And the two of us cut another deal.
I agreed that if he clearly took our side this time, I'd actively answer the next time Ssa-yo came with a request of his own. There was a cost to burning that favor, but compared to cleaning this whole mess up neatly, it wasn't a bad trade.
We talked through it slowly, bringing up what had happened back then. Ssa-yo, who'd believed in Na-ro-si and wanted to protect her to the end, but had been forced to let go of the hand he'd been holding because the public pressure at the time was too fierce. And Na-ro-si, who understood that and still blamed herself for causing damage to everyone.
If you only looked at the script, it was a ready-made tragic drama in one sitting. In reality, he'd probably been trash-talking Na-ro-si behind her back when it all went down.
They'd barely known each other two months through the Wooga-dol audition. How much real affection or loyalty could there have been? Pure image-making.
Either way, Ssa-yo repeatedly emphasized that the damage from Na-ro-si hadn't been that severe. On top of that, he even put on a warm little performance of advising Na-ro-si to finally set down the weight on her heart.
Watching that, even the last holdouts in chat who'd been hanging Freeca over our heads had no choice but to vanish.
"Yes. Ssa-yo, thank you so much. Even though she's already left the group, you still thought of her all the way through and helped us like this. You really do have a lot of heart."
"Thank you, Ssa-yo!"
"Na-ro-si, keep working hard going forward. I'll be rooting for you."
"Alright, alright — the explanation's clear enough now, right? Na-ro-si, go ahead and say something definitive yourself. The viewer count is… oh my, it's already climbed to 13,752 people watching."
Apparently my explanation show had become a topic, and the numbers had swollen further in the meantime. Na-ro-si, her voice thick as if the past stretch had worn her down hard, swallowed a few times and sniffed.
"To my friends in Freeca… I'm truly sorry once again for causing you so much trouble. And from now on, I'll be extra careful not to say anything that could be misunderstood like that again… I really mean it. I'm so grateful to Seo-a for making this space for me today, and to Ssa-yo for helping, and…"
As she spoke, emotion seemed to overwhelm her; by the end, Na-ro-si looked ready to break into full sobs. She probably hadn't planned it that way, but it wasn't a bad piece of staging. That fragile look would drive home for people just how vicious the Panbang Gallery bastards were, and how clearly we were the victims.
And one more thing. The feelings from today won't fade easily.
In this moment, I was practically a lifesaver to Na-ro-si. The second her streaming career was about to collapse, I'd not only held out a hand — I'd hauled her up hard. Roughly speaking, that meant I'd just acquired a diligent slave(?) who would follow my word like it was heaven itself.
Exposing Panbang Gallery in front of a huge crowd and landing a clean hit on them was a nice bonus, too.
"…… So in the end, Mayo wants to know why she was even called here, geosida. Mayo's existence is being forgotten, geosida."
There was one person who seemed less than thrilled with the current situation — but either way, today's interview stream had been a complete success.