Seo-a's Birthday
January 25th, a Wednesday, was not over yet.
A little later than my usual stream start time—eight in the evening.
I slipped out of Park Bong-sik's broadcast, where I'd been secretly spying, and checked my preparations one more time.
Hmm! Perfect.
Honestly, there wasn't much for me to struggle over.
Why? Because Park Bong-sik's return was such a massive topic that it overshadowed everything else a little, but I was still the undisputed main character.
That's right. Surprisingly, today was the first birthday I would celebrate while living as Seo Min-ah.
More than me, my manager Je-yuk-sam-kki had been making a racket since morning.
What on earth was there so much to prepare?
Huh? If you keep getting that worked up, I'm going to start expecting things, you know?
If someone asked how I felt about my birthday, the honest answer was just so-so.
Originally, the first digit of my age should already have flipped to three.
Feeling a small, quiet happiness at finally turning twenty-four?
Everyone probably felt something similar.
Birthdays aren't a one- or two-time deal.
It happens every year, and the more times it piles up, the more indifferent you grow.
Without some special event, that might just be natural. After all, it's only the same thing repeating every year.
That was exactly why I was looking forward to today a little.
Because it was my first birthday as a streamer.
It had to feel different from when I was just a regular person, right?
So I had pretended not to notice my manager busily running around these past few days.
These kinds of surprise events only produce real reactions when you experience them knowing nothing.
You could call it my own form of consideration.
He seemed to be preparing hard, so I should answer with my best effort too.
Finally, the time arrived.
Eight in the evening.
The hour when people's wallets open most easily.
Ahem. Pure speculation on my part.
Don't call me a money-grubber.
It's my birthday—I'm allowed to have expectations.
What I had prepared for today was simple.
An avatar outfit and background suited to a birthday stream.
And a few BGMs ready for different situations.
Huh? Too half-assed for a birthday?
Any other day, sure—but on a birthday, this was fine.
From what I could tell, the fan café had been buzzing for days preparing birthday congratulatory posts.
Heh! Today I just had to set everything down and enjoy it to the fullest.
A birthday is a special day that comes only once a year.
Even the stingiest casual viewers couldn't completely ignore a streamer on a day like this.
Quite a few people dropped in saying they'd been enjoying my Rena World runs and wanted to throw at least a little viewing fee my way.
The count had already broken a thousand right from the start.
The moment the opening song ended, I pulled up the broadcast screen I'd prepared for today.
Balloons and colorful decorations hung from the ceiling, and on the wall facing the camera, "Happy Birthday" was written in a sleek font.
On the round table beneath it sat a three-tier cake glowing in pink-and-white two-tone, looking every bit the star of the day.
Bam-ba-bam, bam-ba—! Congratulations~♪
The song rang out at the same time.
Viewers flooded the chat with cake and firework emotes in answer.
"Hello, my beloved Seo-a Corps! And all you casual big-bro viewers from Rena World who enjoy my streams. The day has finally arrived. My birthday! Everyone came with their wallets nice and fat, right?"
Seo-a's Empty Wallet has donated 125 Candies!
"Hey! When did I ever say that? You vicious bastards keep framing me. President, thank you so much for the 125. Matching my birthday on January 25th with 125 Candies! Though if we were going to do this, I should've been born on December 31st. Just kidding, of course. Everyone knows that, right?"
Opening talk always worked best when it stayed light.
Starting with the Candy image the President had donated, I began stacking every 125-Candy donation image that kept trickling in, lining them up from the bottom of the broadcast screen.
It was one of the old cultures on Pangea TV known as the "Candy wallpaper."
This started as a product of girl-cam culture too, right? A brilliantly subtle sales tactic that plays on human psychology.
When casuals scan streams looking for something to watch, they pay close attention to each broadcast's thumbnail.
And if, while scrolling through thumbnails, they suddenly spot a stream plastered wall-to-wall with high-value Candy images?
In a capitalist society, "money" is the most powerful aggro tool there is.
Whether they like the stream or not comes second—curiosity about why such huge donations exploded there is enough to make them click in.
In the end, Candy wallpaper was a culture that began as a girl-cam sales strategy designed to hook casuals' curiosity and pull them into the stream.
It had spread so widely that most streamers used it now.
"Thank you for the 125, MaruIsBouncy! Thank you for the 125, Reminio! Thank you for the 125, MyNameIsKimChunbae!"
The 125-Candy donations kept coming without end.
If my birthday had fallen in the second half of the year, the number might have felt burdensome enough to cut the donation count, but because it was 125, I had been stuck repeating thank-yous for nearly ten minutes straight.
Many a little makes a mickle—before I knew it, the Candy donation gauge in the upper right had blown past 100% and hit 15,250.
"Guys, hold on a second! At this rate I'm going to spend the whole day just sticking wallpaper. Manager said he prepared something, so let's look at that first. Pause the donations for a bit!"
"Actually, Manager said he was handling everything for today's stream, so I don't really know either. First we'll watch the video he prepared, then look at the birthday messages from the fan café... and the last part is a secret, he says. What is it? Now I'm curious. Anyway, starting the video."
Honestly, I could roughly guess what the video would contain.
I was a four-year streaming veteran as a viewer myself—how many birthday streams had I watched?
He would have highlight-edited this year's broadcast clips and asked streamers I was close with for birthday message videos.
Still, the effort was adorable, so I put on a face that looked extremely excited.
Lately some viewers had started grumbling that I was a T-personality and my reactions tasted bland.
Ugh. Viewers really are royalty.
As the good girl I was, I had no choice but to match them...
While I was thinking that, the video began.
To show genuine reactions, I hadn't even previewed it.
If some porn suddenly started playing here, I'd eat a week-long ban on the spot.
Surely nothing out of a trashy melodrama would show up, right?
Thud, thud—!
The screen was dark.
That only made the sound of dress shoes approaching even clearer.
Was someone coming closer?
The atmosphere kept rising.
A tension-soaked BGM steadily jacked up my heart rate.
Flash—!
"Hup!"
I flinched for real.
This was supposed to be a birthday congratulatory video.
Why did he bring something that felt like a horror flick or noir genre piece?
The sudden light banished the darkness and revealed a small round table.
"Oh! That's me?"
And under the light sat my avatar, dressed in a black suit and dress shoes.
It looked almost identical, yet subtly different.
Had he used AI technology?
It definitely felt that way.
Creeeak—!
Accompanied by the sound of a chair scraping, Seo-a AI dropped heavily into the seat.
Then, from somewhere, she pulled out a notebook and pen and began writing something.
Scratch, scratch—!
"Mayo's been acting up a lot lately. And Miho unnie too. Ha! Like age is some kind of rank. One of these days I'm going to pick a day and teach them a lesson."
"Huh? Wait, I've never said anything like that about Miho unnie? Hey, Manager! This is a doctored video! The voice cuts out and reconnects in the middle—that's 100% synthesis!"
Caught off guard, I shouted in genuine panic.
Right then the camera angle tilted slightly, highlighting the words Death Note written on the notebook's cover.
Wait, I thought this was a congratulatory video—don't tell me?
Beyond the overreacting chat, the video screen switched rapidly.
Highlight clips edited from every Purge Day I had participated in.
My character carving through Oh Yeong-jun, Oh-ha, Dorai and others with a netherite sword, cross-cut with scenes of me writing their names in the Death Note.
That wasn't all.
Whipping the Lethal Company members into labor on the big farm.
Scenes of me negotiating wages with the Bad Potato Company crew and boldly declaring it would be unpaid, one after another.
Mayo appeared like a cameo, repeatedly shouting at me, "You're a demon, geosida."
"……."
I would have preferred the video to end right there.
Suddenly the BGM changed.
From the tension-maxed atmosphere to something bright and refreshing.
And the footage followed suit.
My brightly smiling face looking straight into the camera at the end of the Wooga-dol Audition third-round concert performance.
Scenes of me squeezing out non-existent aegyo and beaming for funding, all strung together with sparkly special effects.
There was even a scene of me dropping capitalist "I love you" lines at the viewers.
And the video's highlight.
With my dual performance as both devil and angel playing behind it, the text flashed across the screen:
After watching the entire video, only one review remained for me.
"Manager-aaaaaaaah!"
There was no one left in this world I could trust.