The Moment She Shone
What kind of streamer was Lucy?
I was only human, so three straight years of watching her broadcasts couldn't have been pure happiness. There were times her temperament left me frustrated, times our feelings clashed hard enough that something close to resentment crept in.
Take this, for example.
A big-name streamer would put out a content recruitment call, or a competition would come along that played perfectly to Lucy's strengths—and she would turn every single one of them down, saying the pressure was too much.
Fine. I could accept that much. Not every streamer aims to become a major name. Some people genuinely prefer broadcasting cozily with the handful of viewers who truly love them.
But then she at least shouldn't have pulled that self-sabotaging crap.
Back before the regression, one of Lucy's nicknames on Pan-beo-gal was Hako Lounge—a mash-up of hako, meaning a small-time streamer, and sarangbang, a cozy sitting room. The name stuck because hakos drifted in and out of her stream the way people drop by a neighborhood hangout.
On a human level, hakos aren't bad people. Every big-name streamer started as a hako once. But by any cold-blooded professional measure, they contribute absolutely nothing to a broadcast. They get in the way, if anything.
Even so, Lucy—who had never been good at saying no—couldn't bring herself to push away the hakos who came to her first.
She could barely take care of herself, and she ended up wearing shackles by the dozen. The stress of hakos barging into her stream mid-broadcast and spamming the chat must have been brutal.
I once sent her a serious private message about it. She spent the next several days looking depressed, her energy completely tanked, and I never did it again after that.
And her self-sabotaging habits didn't stop there.
A massive server that had seized the full attention of Pangea TV. Getting into a place like that by sheer luck should have meant talking with other streamers, collabing, manufacturing broadcast moments—but her social anxiety was so severe she kept scurrying away like a total outcast. She was kicking every opportunity that came to her right out the door with her own two feet.
So why couldn't I leave her? Three years of attachment, for one… but also those moments that made me think of a superstar.
At a virtual singing competition hosted by a big-name streamer on a major server, Lucy crushed every virtual whose singing had been the talk of the town and took first place.
I still can't forget it.
Lucy's turn—the one nobody outside our room had any expectations for. The single line she left before she started singing.
Her first competition ever. A girl who until then had only ever sung on her personal stream. Right there on that stage, Lucy proved why her nickname meant light in Latin. Watching her shine so brilliantly in front of tens of thousands of viewers, I clutched my chest and trembled.
If only she hadn't driven off all those floating viewers from the singing contest win with her self-sabotaging habits, it could have been a happy ending.
The lonely conclusion still left a bitter taste. But what could I do? That was just who Lucy was.
This time, though, things would be different from before the regression. I was going to stick to her like glue and hand out advice left and right.
And it won't stop at advice. I'm going to give her so many opportunities. Really…
With that resolve, I had put today's stage together.
I pulled out the standing mic prop and took center stage again.
"This time, I'll go first."
I put on a show of confidence, but my singing was at best a notch above average. And since I'd only practiced two songs for the audition, my proficiency with anything else was shaky.
But I've got one surefire weapon.
The moment the intro rolled, the fans in chat erupted.
The song that a big-name virtual from the neighboring scene had blown up on YouTube—the one people had started calling the Virtual National Anthem. I hadn't taken any formal lessons in this body, but I'd hummed this track countless times before the regression. Proficiency wasn't even a question.
The lyrics and melody rose naturally in my head.
This isn't a dream—everyone's watching.
Make a heart, send me your love!
I'll do anything I can.
I won't stop.
Because I'm giving it everything I've got.
A song virtually every virtual streamer on Pangea TV had sung at least once. And I didn't stop at just singing it.
But it's okay—when I stand on stage, everyone's here.
Here I gooo—!
I detached the standing mic, gripped it in one hand, and sprang into the air. Dance moves launched the instant my feet left the ground, mic still in hand. Since I was singing at the same time, nothing could be too big or too fierce—but even that was enough to fill out a stage that had looked a little empty.
In the heat of the rising atmosphere, I rode the upbeat melody line and waited for the final highlight. Just as we'd arranged, the camera pushed in tight under the VRC staff's control. Framing my face and upper body in a hard close-up, I flashed a bright smile, threw up a V-sign, and called out:
"I'll give you fanservice!"
A stage that satisfied both eyes and ears. Ha—that was genuinely not easy. Singing and dancing at the same time was already brutal, and on top of that I was wearing a full-body tracker rig…
I was just catching my breath and stepping off the stage when Lucy's avatar brushed past me, frozen stiff—still not used to VRC, apparently. Brown braided hair and a refined hanbok that had no business on a stage like this. It felt exactly like someone showing up to a club dressed in traditional Korean clothes, and the awkwardness was off the charts.
The viewer count had already broken four thousand. Most of them were floaters, so the occasional spicy chat message was inevitable. On top of that, Lucy's performance throughout today's content had been lackluster, and the fallout seemed to have dragged expectations for her stage down with it.
No—actually, this is better. People are always more stunned by a reversal.
Lucy awkwardly gripped the standing mic. A memory overlapped in my mind for a split second.
The cheers and expectations that had poured onto Lucy after her first singing competition win. Lucy, who had found competitive stages overwhelming from the start, kept skipping every singing contest that followed. But the booking requests never stopped, and the viewers' chats kept shoving her forward. Eventually, after Blueby talked her into it on stream, she entered another big-name streamer's singing competition.
A stage heavy with pressure. A stage she never wanted. The sharp eyes of rival virtual streamers' fans. Under all that weight, Lucy's turn arrived—and she couldn't start singing for nearly two full minutes.
A broadcast accident in the middle of a singing competition run by a major streamer. What finally got Lucy moving again was the support of her longtime regulars—viewers who'd followed her since Rabbit TV, or who'd settled into her room in the earliest days of her Pangea TV transfer. A mere handful compared to the toxic floaters, they overwhelmed them with cheering chats.
That was the moment Lucy's avatar—staring blankly at the chat—finally began to sing. A voice so small it seemed ready to vanish at any second. And the moment that voice grew and grew until it overpowered even the toxic floaters—!
"Just a second…"
I snapped back to the present. Lucy was still hesitating, stroking the mic, tension refusing to leave her body. Before I knew it I had climbed back onto the stage and stepped up beside her. Then I whispered, soft and small:
"Unnie, you can do this."
"Huh?"
"Because unnie is my superstar."
"……"
An avatar is nothing but a dressed-up clump of polygons. I knew that perfectly well—and still, without thinking, I reached out and stroked the back of Lucy's hand.
Ugh. What the hell did I just do. Starting with calling her unnie and ending with that gesture, the whole thing was mortifying beyond words.
I scrambled back off the stage, and Miho was watching me with a very particular look. I forced myself to ignore it and turned my eyes back to the stage just as Lucy signaled the VRC staff.
So what song had Lucy chosen?
Before the track even began, a lonely piano solo laid down its mournful melody. The chat started to stir.
Number one on the 2017 yearly charts. The first song in Korean music history to break two hundred million streams. And the OST of the hit drama Goblin—I Will Go to You Like the First Snow.
Before I held you, I never knew
That the world I stayed in
Could be this brilliant
A loneliness every bit as piercing as the original echoed out. A quiet low-register resonance that sank deep into the chest. Yes—I knew this song far too well.
The one who reached me with a small breath
The love that called my name without fear
The first singing competition Lucy ever entered. That shining moment when she claimed the championship—unfolding right before my eyes once again.