How a Streamer Catches Suckers
The moment I saw that smug little smile on Yohiko’s face—the kind an adult gives a clueless kid—I knew exactly what she was thinking. A super idol with over five million fan club members probably figured internet streamers like her were nothing but a joke.
She tried to walk right past, but then her eyes caught something. Next to an empty storefront was a tiny little promo stand. And that stand was—
“Ravius Online!”
I shouted and dashed over. It was the online game I played. Thanks to my female form, Primrose, the player count had been exploding lately. Riding that momentum, they were adding a brand-new raid in the one-year anniversary update and throwing an offline coupon event at the same time. So this was where they were doing it.
Primrose immediately moved to grab some coupons. Normally for a super-male-oriented otaku game like this, you’d expect a cosplaying girl running the booth, or at least a flashy setup that heavily featured the game’s beautiful female characters. Instead, it was just a shabby little stall thrown together inside an empty shop, staffed by a plain-looking employee who practically screamed I’m just a regular office worker from the Ravius Online company.
‘No way anyone’s coming to a place like this.’
The employee clearly knew it too. She sat there in her chair with the expression of someone having an existential crisis—Who am I? Where am I?
‘Poor thing.’
Even if the budget was tight, they could’ve at least done the offline event properly. Primrose decided to cheer up the depressed staff member and called out in a bright, energetic voice.
“Three, please!”
“Huh?”
She apparently hadn’t heard me, so I shouted again, even louder.
“Three game coupons, please!”
The company employee looked at Primrose once, then her face slowly turned apple-red.
“The rule is one per person… but…”
“My older brother and my Kasif friend both play too. Can’t you give us three? Pretty please…!!”
“…I’ll give you three.”
“Thank you so much!”
Primrose took the coupons and stared at them, thinking happily.
‘These are supposed to come with warehouse expansion rights and cash. Three thousand cash!’
Finally, my painfully bloated inventory would get a little breathing room. This was pure ultra-lucky.
“Hehe.”
Primrose giggled as she turned to leave, but when she looked around, she noticed a bunch of people heading toward the Ravius Online stand. Just a moment ago the place had been completely dead—not a single visitor, just flies buzzing around. The employee had been yawning nonstop. So why were there suddenly so many people?
Everyone was lining up to get a coupon one by one. Primrose didn’t know what was going on, but it seemed like a good thing. Though she did wonder why the woman who had been streaming was now glaring at her like she wanted to kill her, and why all the men who had been around the streamer had suddenly vanished.
Had they come for the coupons? Whatever. She smiled softly while looking at the coupons.
“…Hehe…”
She walked back and slipped the coupons into the pocket of Hunya, who was clinging to me like a child. Yohiko saw it and asked Primrose,
“Are those coupons for the game I was playing?”
“Yes!”
“Why are you giving them all to Hunya? Don’t you usually get just one per game?”
“Hunya stays home all the time, so she manages all our game accounts!”
What Hunya did at our house was check whether someone was lying during contracts, make sure deals weren’t bad, or handle game events and quests in our place.
“I see…”
Yohiko said that while gently stroking the sleeping Hunya’s head, then glanced at the woman streaming alone and added,
“Yeah… if you stay next to Rose, that kind of thing happens… I understand that feeling very well.”
“Huh?”
“It’s nothing.”
What was Yohiko talking about? I wondered for a second, but then decided it probably had nothing to do with me. I went back to happily looking at the game coupons I’d received.
Saetbyeol City had once been a contaminated danger zone, but it had been transformed into a special district for other races. With the surge in foot traffic, streamers had flocked here like clouds, causing all sorts of commercial side effects. The government had decided to completely ban filming here soon.
Among the streamers trying to squeeze out the last drops of honey before the crackdown began was the female cam ‘Cherry Hanna.’ She had only been streaming for seven months, but thanks to her pure and delicate appearance and her cute, girlish way of speaking, she had grown incredibly fast.
But then rumors started spreading that she had gone on paid dates with a massive sponsor known as the “Broadcast Station Chairman.” Cherry Hanna had insisted, “It’s all lies made up by cyber leeches trying to farm views from my videos!” But shortly after, photos surfaced of her holding hands with a man who looked exactly like the chairman and entering a hotel together.
She claimed he was her older brother, but the man was in his mid-forties. For a twenty-year-old girl to insist he was her brother was ridiculous from the age gap alone. Besides, what kind of siblings hold hands and walk into a hotel together? Her absurd excuse backfired instantly, and public opinion plummeted.
Her viewer count dropped to barely a hundred, and her daily donations didn’t even reach thirty thousand won. It was the worst situation imaginable.
To break through it, Cherry Hanna had planned an outdoor broadcast in Saetbyeol City. The broadcast had worked. The viewers who had been steadily decreasing started coming back. So she was desperately trying to milk as much as possible before the ban took effect. Today was one of those days, and Cherry Hanna was one of those streamers.
‘Ah, fuck.’
I wore something a bit too revealing, and now these pathetic virgins who probably never spent a single won were drooling with their mouths open, scanning my body. It was disgusting. Every single one of them who flipped their eyes and rushed over the moment they saw even a hint of cleavage was repulsive. But if I didn’t do this, my viewer count wouldn’t go up, so I endured it.
Yet despite all my effort, the [Donation] alerts weren’t going off. Just as irritation was about to explode—
The chairman who had vanished after the scandal of paying ten million won to sleep with me at a hotel suddenly came back with a new ID. He messaged me saying he was sorry, then dropped one and a half million won on my stream. Right after that, another viewer slammed down two million won in a financial healing bomb, and all my irritation melted away instantly.
‘Broadcasting here increases viewers, but the most important thing—suckers who actually donate—hasn’t been growing. It’s been pissing me off for a while.’
But now my old sucker was back, and it looked like a new one might appear too.
‘Going to a hotel once gave me ten million in sweet honey. I should probably hold back on that from now on!’
Money was important, but doing something this shitty twice was definitely not worth it. With that thought in mind, I did my best to act cute in the way men liked. That’s when one other-race girl walked past.
There weren’t many, but since this was the other-race special district, it wasn’t strange to see them in a bustling area like this. So it wasn’t a problem. In fact, her passing by even raised my viewer count, and the audience seemed to like it, so I didn’t pay it any mind.
“Insane.”
When one man said that, the others went why is he like that? and followed his gaze. Then they all stared at her. The men who had been looking at me all turned to stare at that other-race girl, so I looked at her too.
Heterochromatic eyes beneath silver hair. Ears that looked like a mix of elf and demon. Pure white over-knee socks pulled high up her thighs, leading down to slender, straight legs. A silver tail like a wolf-type Kasif. Insane. My pupils dilated on their own, and the curse ‘Wow, what the fuck’ slipped out involuntarily. Her appearance was straight-up fraudulent.
She had a joyful expression as she received something from the otaku game event that had barely seen ten visitors in the three hours I’d been streaming. When she broke into a bright, sunny smile, even I—a fellow woman—felt my heart pound.
Cute. No, it was fraudulent. Insane.
While I was thinking that, I snapped back to my senses and announced,
“Alright everyone~! It’s time for today’s highlight—ask Cherry Hanna anything you want!”
These were all stalkers who wanted to know even the tiniest thing about me, so normally this segment would have them going crazy trying to ask questions. But no one cared about my comment at all. Not a single person said anything. Yet one by one, people started standing up and following her to the game event booth, lining up just to stare at her back.
“Ah…”
I watched with a dumbfounded expression. The chat window had completely exploded.
I quickly came to my senses and yelled at the manager.
“Hey! You son of a bitch!”
The swear word slipped out before I could stop it. The manager looked at me in a panic, and I continued.
“You fucking piece of shit! Where the hell are you pointing the camera?! Have you lost your damn mind?! I’m the owner of this stream! I’m the owner, you bastard!”