The Concert
Streamer Oh Yeong-jun stood at a crossroads of conflict.
Would he keep his conscience intact, or drop to his knees before desire?
After thrashing back and forth, Yeong-jun suddenly realized something.
Ah. The mere fact that he was writing this post meant his heart had already tipped one way.
Once he admitted that to himself, uploading the notice became a little easier.
The goodwill he'd burned through in the StarCraft scene still hadn't recovered.
Even so, Oh Yeong-jun boldly chose to cancel. And he did it with a lie, dragging his mother into it as an excuse.
But what choice do I have? How am I supposed to sit this one out?
Yeong-jun quietly slipped into Seo-a's channel and reread the notice that had already blown past twenty thousand views.
Pangea TV's first-ever virtual concert.
Truth be told, Yeong-jun had gotten seriously interested in virtual streaming after his collab with Seo-a last time. Even with over a decade of broadcasting under his belt, it had been a rare and genuinely fresh experience.
So he'd hunted down Rabbit TV virtual streamer clips on YouTube, and every so often he'd lurk in Seo-a's live streams while logged out. Bit by bit, he'd started to understand the appeal.
First, those pure, anime-character-like avatars maximized the visual impact. Sure, it could feel alien at first — but once you adjusted, the look alone became its own kind of charm. It was an advantage flesh-and-blood streamers, stuck with the faces they were born with, simply couldn't replicate.
On top of that, relative freedom from the constraints of time and space was a clear practical benefit. Compare it to human streamers for a second. Wanting to go see the ocean or the mountains meant real time and real effort. Virtual streamers solved those limitations with technology, just like that. And that advantage would only shine brighter as tech kept accelerating.
In that moment, Yeong-jun had an epiphany.
Virtual streaming is the future of internet broadcasting. No wonder the metaverse is blowing up these days.
He had to act on a realization this good. Fired up, Yeong-jun dove into market research on male virtual streamers.
And then he despaired.
Among the virtual streamers who'd migrated over during the 720p fiasco, there had been men — and not a single one of them had survived. A survival rate of absolute zero. Nightmare difficulty. Pangea TV was a brutally cold place for anyone labeled a "creep."
But Oh Yeong-jun was human. The owner of more than ten years of streaming experience. He'd survived every hardship with the tenacity of a weed. He didn't give up easily. He pivoted.
Fine. If diving into virtual streaming myself is too much, then I'll insert myself into the virtual scene as aggressively as possible. If I can become the streamer most friendly with the virtual side…
And that was why Yeong-jun had his eye on virtual streamer Seo-a.
Even during their collab, he'd felt it — her individual skill was absurd for someone with such a short broadcasting career. In particular, her talent for drawing aggro without taking on any real risk only got more impressive the more he watched. If any other streamer kept pulling aggro like that, the backlash would have come roaring back by now. On top of that, her content was well-crafted and fun, her chat engagement was solid, and her donation-pulling power left almost nothing to criticize.
I'm getting involved in the virtual scene anyway, so I might as well get close to a streamer who actually has talent. And personally, she seems like a decent person too.
Approaching her with that kind of calculation might look mercenary — but honestly, everyone was like that. Who wanted to befriend someone capable and put-together versus some talentless shut-in otaku rotting in a corner?
In that sense, Seo-a's concert was an event Yeong-jun couldn't afford to miss. This was Pangea TV's first virtual concert, period. If he ever wanted to build goodwill with the virtual crowd later, he'd at least need a story like, "Yeah, I watched that concert live." And if he ever happened to get a chance to talk with Seo-a again, it'd make for smooth conversational material too.
Ten minutes left.
Time was running short. After checking the community mood, Yeong-jun logged into Seo-a's stream while signed out.
The concert hadn't even started, and the waiting room had already blown past seven thousand viewers.
"Whoa. I honestly can't remember the last time I cracked seven thousand."
From the perspective of a named small-time streamer like Yeong-jun, it was pure envy. He stared blankly at the screen.
At first he'd just been glancing at it casually — and then the quality hit him like a truck.
"Holy shit. This is insane."
It felt like waiting for a famous girl group's music video premiere. A pink pastel backdrop filled the entire screen. Whether they'd commissioned a custom font or not, the phrase Everyone Is an Idol swept across Pangea TV's logo in elegant calligraphy. A ticking sound accompanied the remaining time counting down at the bottom of the screen.
Watching it, Yeong-jun felt the anticipation in his chest swell higher and higher.
For real, for real, for real? Are they actually going to deliver?
When five minutes remained, the waiting screen vanished and a video began to play.
At first he tilted his head. He'd expected something concert-related and gotten hyped — but instead, some virtual streamer he'd never seen before appeared on screen, mid-broadcast.
Don't tell me they queued the wrong video?
He couldn't let a technical screw-up shatter the hype. His heart pounded with unnecessary worry as he checked the chat.
Huh? The reaction coming back was nothing like what he'd expected.
Yeong-jun had only ever watched the better-known virtual streamers centered around Seo-a, so these faces were completely unfamiliar. But the viewers gathered here were different.
Some were pure virtual fans who simply loved the medium. Some had fallen for the Wooga-dol content and followed it all the way here. Some were smiling in this moment as fans of the eliminated contestants.
One story that made everyone feel something.
Each streamer only got about thirty seconds — short highlight cuts — but the hardcore fans laughed and cried, and even people who didn't know them found themselves getting more invested. Yeong-jun was no exception.
Wooga-dol… maybe I should've followed it more closely.
If he'd known the full story properly, the heart hammering in his chest right now would have been pounding even harder. It was a little disappointing not to fully share in the scorching heat shaking the chat.
While he was absorbed in the video, the timer at the bottom ticked down fast — until only about ten seconds remained.
The occasional trolls were being cleaned up fast by the Pangea TV Police — the platform's monitoring staff.
Yeong-jun found himself impressed all over again. People said Pangea TV was pouring a lot of attention into virtual streaming, and seeing PanPol show up confirmed it was the real deal.
Meanwhile, the viewer count had already blown past twelve thousand. This wasn't a weekday morning — it was Friday night prime time. Competitors everywhere, and twelve thousand from the opening alone.
He couldn't believe it. Wasn't this practically big-corp streamer territory? Even riding the Wooga-dol audition hype and the virtual boom, this level of performance was hard to accept.
This isn't luck. If something that flimsy could pull this off, every other virtual streamer would've done it by now.
This was an achievement only Seo-a had pulled off. The first virtual concert. And the first virtual streamer to break ten thousand concurrent viewers.
"Ooooh!"
At last, the countdown at the bottom of the screen hit zero. Roaring cheers rose in lockstep with the chat going berserk. Yeong-jun's eyes locked onto the screen and wouldn't let go.