A Strange Misunderstanding
The Lunar New Year holiday had passed, and everyone was back to their regular streaming routines.
We had all gathered early that morning for roll call.
"Mayo."
"Mayo is right here, geosida."
"Manager Sub."
"Yes. Manager Sub present."
Subnitti was the oldest among us, and I'd taken to playfully attaching job titles to her name as a show of respect. Lately she'd been upgraded from Assistant Manager to full Manager.
At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if she made it all the way to CEO or Director someday.
Anyway, once Na-ro-si checked in last, I confirmed the full roster was present.
"Ahem. Did everyone have a good Lunar New Year?"
"Yeeees!"
"No."
"……."
Who was the one person with zero social awareness who just said no?
I swept a sharp gaze across the group hunting for the culprit — and flinched before I could stop myself.
Because the culprit was Lucy.
There was no hiding the thoroughly depressed look on her face. Once roll call wrapped up, I was going to have to pull her aside for a talk.
Don't tell me our Lucy is one of those streamers who needs attention?!
No. Absolutely not. The Company Commander trusts Lucy.
"Ahem. Now that the vehicle auction is over, we've returned to our daily routine. It feels a little empty without the Bad Potato Company folks whose contracts have ended. But we can do this!"
With the Bad Potato Company members gone, we needed to reorganize our teams starting today.
Miho, Subnitti, and Han A-yeon were permanent fixtures on the building crew, while Na-ro-si and Lucy would take turns running the mini tractor for farming and fill leftover hours with construction work.
For example: if Na-ro-si farmed in the morning, Lucy built; if Lucy farmed in the afternoon, Na-ro-si built.
Everything else fell to me and Mayo — hauling building materials, selling essential gear like Mending-enchanted equipment and Shulker Boxes, the works.
"It's gotten a bit tighter, but for now this is the best setup we've got. Let's move!"
Waaaaah—!
I might have looked like a tyrant, but the truth was we'd already hashed this out thoroughly in the group chat before deciding. What era was this supposed to be? Dictatorships didn't fly anymore.
I sent everyone off to their posts and kept Lucy behind for a private talk.
"Lucy unnie. The Company Commander… no, I am always on your side. So you can tell me anything, okay?"
"It's just… my parents aren't happy about me living alone. They keep saying a young woman has no business living by herself. And they look down on internet streaming, too."
"Huh?"
"The news has been going on and on about violent crimes targeting women who live alone. So they want me to move back home. If that happens, I won't be able to stream the way I do now."
"……."
I had just been hit with a confession I never saw coming.
There was a survey once, run by a polling firm, targeting the parents' generation. The question was about their perception of internet streaming — the kind that was exploding in popularity among younger people.
What kind of results do you think came back?
Anyone who'd been hoping for something decent was in for a crushing disappointment. The report card was so abysmal that even talking about likes and dislikes felt pointless.
Streaming ranked even worse than highly addictive games, and a lot of respondents associated it with something like Japan's hikikomori culture. Framing it around YouTube helped a little, but only a little.
Over 90% answered that they would do everything in their power to talk them out of it and change their mind.
That, right there, was the ordinary perception of people who didn't watch streams. Survey younger generations and you'd get better numbers, sure. But stacked against sports, film, gaming, and every other entertainment industry, streaming was still a fringe, underground culture.
And virtual streaming is treated as fringe even within streaming. Honestly, if word got out at the company I worked at before my regression that the chairman not only watched VTuber streams but had spent tens of millions of won on them…
Social death wouldn't even begin to cover it.
There were still VTuber fans out there huffing and puffing, refusing to accept that reality. Fine. Go ahead — confidently come out as a VTuber fan to your parents and everyone around you.
What, your bones hurt too much from the beating?
……Sorry.
But that's just how the world works. Belonging to a fringe culture means choosing the thorny path from the start. Until you make it big, don't expect a warm welcome from anyone around you.
I hadn't heard the full details, but Lucy's family seemed to have real pedigree and social standing. That was probably why they applied such a strict standard to their children's futures.
This is genuinely awkward.
Before my regression, I'd been nothing more than a viewer. I'd had no idea any of this family stuff was going on. Had Lucy's eventual decision to quit streaming been influenced by circumstances like these?
I still didn't know.
The one silver lining was that the pressure to quit streaming hadn't reached unbearable levels yet. According to her, the holiday gathering talk had the same energy as the classic "So when are you getting married? When are you getting a real job?" interrogation.
In other words, they didn't even recognize streaming as a legitimate profession. They treated it like a hobby and were gently suggesting she start looking for a proper job.
But continuing to live alone — that seemed to be the sensitive issue. There had been a recent social uproar about rising violent crimes targeting women living by themselves. The media had been making a huge fuss, running it as top news for days, and parents with a precious daughter weren't exactly sleeping easy.
From what Lucy told me, she had two older brothers and had been raised as the treasured youngest daughter of the family. I understood how her parents felt.
Wait. Hold on. Maybe…?
They were worried about her living alone. Wasn't there a solution right here?
I slipped into deep thought without realizing it, completely forgetting Lucy was standing right in front of me — until the sight of her waving her hands in my face, teasing me, finally snapped me back.
"What, is hanging out with me that boring, Seo-a? You just zoned out on me."
"Ahaha, no way!"
The way she puffed out her cheeks, just a little, was almost unfairly cute. That was Lucy for you — an iron wall until you got close, and then she got weirdly full of aegyo around people she trusted. That gap was what made her even cuter—
Snap out of it!
Remember pure fan devotion. Good thoughts, good thoughts, good thoughts!
Anyway, a solid idea had just landed.
If Lucy's parents were worried about her living alone, wasn't the solution surprisingly simple?
"Then how about we live together?"
"Huh?"
This time it was Lucy's turn to go completely blank. I waved my hands hard right in front of her face.
Meanwhile, chat had started flooding with everything from "???" to every bizarre take imaginable.
Oh, right. We were live right now.
These rotten viewers twisting my pure fan devotion!
After mass-muting the whole lot of them, I waved my hands frantically at Lucy, who was now looking at me with deep suspicion, and tried to explain.
"No, unnie! Everyone in chat right now is just a troll, ignore them. I was already planning to move anyway. My place is tiny and the soundproofing is terrible. But any decent apartment has ridiculous rent, right? So if we split it fifty-fifty, I benefit, your problem gets solved — total win-win…"
I was talking so fast trying to clear up the misunderstanding that I realized mid-sentence this was not the kind of conversation to be having on stream, and my words trailed off.
Lucy seemed to be thinking the same thing. She suggested we talk it through properly after the broadcast ended.
"Okay. Then let's talk later."
"Yeah. See you in a bit."
With that, Lucy headed off to the Sky Island for building work, and I made my way to the Bad Potato Company headquarters building to handle some business.
Even on the way there, the viewers refused to give up, noisily spinning wild rumors and fabrications about me the whole time.
Ahh. So this was the suffering of streamers who'd earned the nickname "gay" from their audience?
Of course, in my case the word was something else entirely, but still.
"……."
Just how far were these people going to take this brainrot?!
Somewhere in the middle of all that, a private whisper came in from Mayo — apparently the cuckoo had already flown the nest.
Wait.
I'd fired that off in the heat of the moment, but one second later I realized it might have been a slightly dangerous thing to say.
A moment later, Mayo's response came back as a drawn-out "Bweeeeh!"
…Okay, maybe "flat dumpling" was a little harsh.
Separately from that, chat had caught fire all over again.
"……."
Were these people completely unhinged with the bits?!
The strange misunderstanding was only getting deeper.