Mayo's Still Too Early
Our promise was decided rather impulsively.
After the crew meeting wrapped up, I was chatting with Lucy and fretting over how to spend tomorrow's day off. The conversation drifted into something like a counseling session, and Lucy was the one who spoke first.
"Then how about we meet tomorrow for a light lunch?"
"Huh? For real?"
It was a truly unexpected offer. We already knew each other's approximate addresses and had been surprised to realize we lived close by—about thirty minutes by public transit. Even so, I never expected Lucy to actually suggest meeting up.
Virtual streamers and no-cam broadcasters tended to hate revealing their Red Pills, after all. That made the proposal all the more surprising—and, on the other hand, left me genuinely happy. Photo leaks of acquaintances were hardly rare among streamers, and she was still willing to meet me. That meant her trust in me had climbed that much higher.
"Great. Unnie, I'm looking forward to this a ton, okay? Canceling is forbidden!"
"Yeah. I won't cancel, so we're seeing each other tomorrow."
I answered brightly and put on a cheerful front, but honestly, once I hung up, the nerves hit hard. To think I'd get to see Lucy's Red Pill after regressing—something I'd never seen even in the past.
There are people who feel aversion to seeing a virtual streamer's Red Pill, but…
They existed, occasionally. Viewers who immersed themselves so deeply in the virtual character that they hated having that immersion broken, and so rejected the Red Pill outright. I wasn't that type. I hadn't started watching internet broadcasts with virtuals to begin with, and Lucy's character as a virtual wasn't particularly strong either. Strictly speaking, it felt more like she'd simply upgraded from a no-cam broadcast to virtual. So I could focus on the person inside rather than the character.
Even so, the reason I felt tension was because I, too, had an imagination. An ideal image of Lucy had formed in my head without me realizing it—maybe not so different from picturing characters after reading a novel. But if I actually met her in reality, those imaginings might shatter, and that left me anxious. They might work out in a bad direction, after all.
Don't go thinking weird things after coming this far. Lucy is Lucy.
I repeatedly resolved not to be disappointed even if the ideal image I'd drawn broke. That kind of behavior would be rude. Besides, I couldn't miss this opportunity. No matter how much friendship we'd built online, it ultimately couldn't compare to offline. To pull Lucy one layer further from Blueby toward my side, a meeting like this had plenty of merit.
She said she'd never actually met Blueby in real life, after all.
It was a meeting decided after considering a great many things in a short span of time. Right on cue, Lucy's broadcast notice went up.
"…"
Polar bear tears can freeze to death. Once again, I was reminded that this world was full of truly strange people—especially in the anonymity of the internet.
Don't get tense. Honestly, Red Pill aside, it's nothing special. Just a light meal and we're done.
There was no need to attach too much meaning to it. We were in the same crew now, had kept the connection going for nearly three months, lived close by—so of course we'd grab a meal. The only surprise was that Lucy, who was closer to an introvert, had been the one to suggest it first. In truth, it was a common enough thing.
Still, what am I supposed to wear tomorrow?
That was when I looked through my closet and hit reality. After regressing and getting TS'd into a woman, I'd stubbornly stuck to my homebody lifestyle. My going-out clothes amounted to a few basic T-shirts in different colors, some jeans, and a couple pairs of cotton pants. Even if it was a casual hangout, I was going to see my favorite streamer. Showing up looking that pathetic felt… off.
I rushed out. There were five hours until stream time, so I could at least go buy something.
I hurried over to an outlet and shopped. Honestly, I didn't know women's fashion, so I took the clerk's recommendations—short coats were going to be big this winter, apparently? I bought a sweater to layer underneath, an ivory short coat, and grabbed a few skirts and pants while I was at it. After leaving the clothing store, I picked up a pair of matching heels and shoes as well.
At first I worried I'd just fallen for the clerk's sales pitch. Then, on the way back, I caught my reflection in a wall mirror at the subway station and couldn't look away. It was that striking.
First of all, the 164 cm height alone was hard to believe. The long, clean lines of my legs and the proportions of my upper body were so fantastic I felt like a 170 cm model. On top of that, a waistline so smooth and free of any spare flesh that the daily instant-food habit felt like a crime. The presence of my chest, showing off through the buttons I'd loosened against a slight tightness, had a magnetic pull that forcibly stole the gazes of men walking past.
Pale white skin. Features arranged neatly around a straight nose bridge. She was a broken, overpowered character who somehow existed in reality. If I dressed up nicely and wandered around Myeongdong, I could easily collect a handful of business cards from entertainment agency managers in a single day.
Definitely not an ordinary face.
In fact, on the way here I'd already felt the heat of stares pouring in from every direction. At first I thought I was imagining it, but after confirming it with my own two eyes like this, I was sure. Everyone had been looking at me.
And I didn't even put on makeup. My skin's just that good, so…
I wasn't sure whether this was a point I should thank Ju-ttak for, the bastard who'd sent me back and TS'd me. No matter how you looked at it, this was a face that should have been doing face-cam streams or debuting as a celebrity—and he'd stuck me in virtual instead. The old saying about too much of a good thing floated up unbidden.
Well, looking good never hurt anyone. Let's just get home already.
I'd been a homebody even before the regression, so even a simple shopping trip had already drained my energy. I kept up bodyweight training for health, and I still got this tired. Clearly, workout stamina and social-outing stamina were two completely different things.
I took the subway again and hurried home.
"Ugh! Home."
I stripped off the clothes in a rush, hung them up, washed up, and by the time I came out it was dinner. Exhausted. Completely exhausted.
Once I ate, stream time would roll around soon enough. Thinking about today's content made even eating in peace difficult. Seasoned streamers just turned the broadcast on and ate on camera. How thick did your nerves have to get before that was possible? I hadn't reached that level yet, so I threw something together roughly and carried it over to the computer.
I searched for Mayo's stream and hopped in. Might as well monitor while I ate.
"Huh? Seo-a unnie's here? Seo-ha, seo-ha!"
Our crew members had all set each other as broadcast managers, so the moment someone joined a stream, everyone knew right away. I kept the manager badge on and watched what Mayo was streaming.
Yeah. LoL, of course.
Lately Mayo had been pouring everything into League of Legends. This year's season was already over, but she'd even declared in advance that she absolutely wanted to compete in next year's LoL Myeolmangjeon. When I pointed out that the Myeolmangjeon finals were always offline and required a Red Pill reveal, she just said a mask would be fine so it didn't matter. What kind of mindset was that cool? Clearly the hierarchy in Mayo's head was LoL > Virtual. A genuine, deranged LoL maniac.
Still, that wasn't a bad thing. League was a popular game with constant demand. There was a reason every major corporate streamer kept one foot in it. With that in mind, at the last meeting I'd even suggested Mayo pick her favorite LCK team and run support streams for them. Riding a popular team's coattails gave you a viewership edge every time you did a watch-along, and if you got lucky you could even convert some of that floating traffic into real fans.
Mayo's reaction had been playful, but clearly positive.
"I already worship Faker-nim on the regular, and now you want me to worship him on stream too? Of course that's totally doable."
"Huh? 'Totally doable'? Even boomers don't use that word. Our maknae's aging herself. Should I check your ID?"
"…"
Heh. Payback for the time she called me a boomer.
Anyway, Mayo was as serious about LoL as she was about the mayonnaise she shoveled down every day. So I seriously considered it. If she wanted to enter Myeolmangjeon that badly, maybe I should help her get a foothold in the CK scene ahead of time. I'd felt it myself last time—solo queue and team play were worlds apart.
Honestly, I'm a little worried. Mayo has a tendency to just say whatever's on her mind.
I could introduce her easily enough, but I was worried she'd cause an incident. So for now I was still testing the waters—watching how well she could control her emotions on stream.
"Argh! Die, you trash jungler! The enemy jungler's living in top, what the hell is our jungle doing? Jungle diff, jungle diff, yaaa!"
"…"
Yeah. Recommending Mayo to the CK scene was going to need a little more time.