114. Do You Know What Internet Streaming Is...?
114. Do You Know What Internet Streaming Is...?
***
The interaction time that followed was...
For Serin, it was a period where the very fact of streaming felt painful for the first time.
Normally, stream end would arrive before she even properly noticed how time was passing, but now time felt so slow that she could feel every single minute and second ticking by.
"I've paused donations for now. I don't think I could properly thank people even if I received them."
Still, her voice no longer trembled. The feeling of heat rising to her face and her mind floating had also improved compared to the beginning.
The emotion she felt now was a small regret, like embers quietly remaining after a great fire had died down.
But there was no use crying over spilled milk; regretting it wouldn't change anything.
[How does it feel to rake in money like Rin?]
[She's literally duplicating money in real time and she's pausing donations?]
[Wow, she's refusing free money]
[fr lol]
[I'm watching the 50,000 won donations keep coming without a break and I still can't believe it lololol]
[Are there really this many rich people in the world?]
[Everyone's rich except me wtf]]
[It's been a long time since I've seen Plea donate in someone else's stream]
[Rin donated a ton in Plea's stream last time too]
Since time had passed, the chat reactions had also cooled down somewhat.
There were so many people who had donated that when I sorted them by donation amount, for some reason every name I saw was someone I knew.
"Yoo Eunha donated a whopping 3 million won... and Plea donated 1.5 million won..."
I spoke blankly, wondering how I was supposed to take this.
'No, why the hell are they donating?'
I couldn't understand why they were donating such huge sums of money.
I answered everything even if they just sent me a BaTalk message, so what kind of reaction were they hoping for by doing this?
There had to be a reason they were donating, but I couldn't guess what they wanted.
And 3 million won was...
No matter how I looked at it, that wasn't an amount I could brush off with a simple thank you. I agonized over how to handle it, but no good answer came to mind, so I just blurted out whatever I could think of.
"To Yoo Eunha, who made an enormous donation today... if I meet you separately in-game later, I'll give you whatever reaction you want."
Checking the donation history, I'd received a total of 10 million won from Eunha today alone, and it even made my sense of money feel slightly warped.
Even though I was receiving a huge sum, the amount was so high that it actually felt less real.
I figured I should thank Eunha by meeting her in-game, asking her directly what she wanted, and doing it for her.
"...Plea, I don't remember saying anything like that to you. But if you want, I'll say a word or two when we actually meet."
......
After that, the long, long time of donation thank-yous passed, and the stream that had felt like an eternity finally ended.
Since the amounts Eunha and Sua had donated were so large from the start, I had admittedly handled the thank-yous for the other donations somewhat half-heartedly.
And since I didn't react much even to my biggest donors, the backlash in chat was unexpectedly mild.
I got up from my chair, then just flopped down limply.
Flump.
I let the cozy softness of the bed envelop me.
I knew I was gradually becoming lazier, but it didn't feel bad.
'People need to let themselves be a little... lazy sometimes.'
The person I'd been back then—training every day to temper my body, using the same technique thousands of times to perfect it, even sleeping lightly because I was worried about surprise attacks—was gone.
My body had weakened, and my mind had begun to dull.
But all of it felt like part of adapting to this world.
That world where a person could casually smash boulders with their strength or unleash power like a natural disaster was the strange one.
'Ah. I need to work out.'
But the thought came unconsciously.
The quota I had to fill today.
I couldn't skip even a single day.
If I fell asleep again, I'd sleep for over ten hours.
Those thoughts kept gripping me, but my body wouldn't move.
I really... didn't want to do anything.
—BaTalk!
At the BaTalk sound nearby, I closed my eyes for no reason.
I knew I should check the message, but I couldn't bring myself to reach for the phone.
—BaTalk!
At the next BaTalk alert, my closed eyes slowly opened.
Even then, my hand didn't move.
"Ugh..."
—BaTalk!
When another message chimed, I sat up with a small sigh.
"......"
If I didn't check, it felt like the messages would keep ringing until they became unbearable.
Click.
I picked up my phone and unlocked it.
At the BaTalk screen that appeared immediately, Serin's eyes suddenly flew wide open.
"Huh?"
***
A woman with a small frame and short black hair was squirming slightly.
—Han Seoyun.
Seoyun was lying on her bed in her dorm, looking at her phone.
Exam period was over and she was taking a rare break, but Seoyun's hobbies and relaxation were surprisingly unremarkable.
Doing nothing on her bed.
During the past exam period, she had pushed herself in many ways, sleeping only a few hours, and she hadn't gotten proper rest because she was juggling a part-time job too. Maybe that was why she personally liked time on her bed like this.
And right now, she was looking at a video.
A video uploaded to a channel called RinTube.
—RinTube Open!
It was a NewTube video that had become a huge hit with over 2 million views, and it was on the trending videos list, so she had clicked on it without thinking.
Sure enough, it was a video about Another World.
She was about to press back immediately. But when a silver-haired female character appeared, Seoyun's hand stopped for a moment.
"Come to think of it... I never did ask Sis about it back then."
The reason she had gone to see her sister last time was, strictly speaking, because of the game video Chaerin had shown her. But the way her sister had looked when they met was so strange, so different from her memories, that she had quickly forgotten about it.
No, from the start, the sight of her sister not recognizing her had been so shocking that it still came back to her even now.
How much had she suffered for a person to become like that... she thought, and perhaps because of that, she had been worrying about her sister even more lately.
The video playing was edited so beautifully that even Seoyun, who didn't know much about games, could enjoy watching it.
[So. I'm saying let's just do it like this, with no handicaps on either side.]
The silver-haired woman looking confidently at someone like a blonde princess.
Seoyun felt something slightly off about it.
"...The more I look, the more she seems different from Sis."
But even so, the character she was seeing clearly looked far too much like her sister.
Snow-white silver hair.
Striking features.
The more she looked, the prettier she was.
But maybe it was the expression—there was a feeling slightly different from her sister's impression.
[That was fun.]
The character in the continuing video fought spectacularly, like a scene from a movie, and her eyes were drawn to it without her realizing.
Because every moment of them fighting was so pretty, with real visual artistry.
And as she listened, the voice seemed similar to her sister's too. But the silver-haired woman in the video seemed to have a higher-pitched voice, perhaps? Unlike the sister I knew, she sounded so confident that she almost felt like a different person.
'...Come to think of it, when I met her back then, her way of speaking did seem really composed.'
Her speech, attitude, even her expressions were all a little different—enough to wonder if a person could change that much in such a short time.
The more she thought about it, the more uncertain Seoyun became.
So she paused the video for a moment and opened BaTalk.
Han Seoyun.
(Link attached)
[Sis, do you know this video?]
She attached the link to the NewTube video she had just watched and sent the message.
About a minute passed.
Again... no reply.
Seoyun frowned.
Han Seoyun.
[Sis, it's already 8 p.m.... if you tell me tomorrow morning that you were asleep and didn't see this, I'm seriously going to keep calling you all day, so fair warning]
She sent that message and a minute passed. Again. No reply.
Seoyun felt her patience slowly approaching its limit.
"...Sis, are you trying to test my patience lately? Is that what you're thinking?"
Lately, her sister had gotten awfully cheeky. She habitually ignored her messages, then checked them in the morning and brushed it off with a quick apology.
This was really too much.
While she was agonizing over what else to send.
A reply suddenly came.
Serin.
[I do know the video you linked...]
Seoyun's face scrunched as she checked the reply.
The reply was so half-hearted too. She definitely hadn't replied like this before.
"No, is that supposed to be a reply?"
Han Seoyun.
[How do you know it? That character in the video looks way too much like you no matter how I look at it. Explain it properly]
Since she didn't know much about games to begin with, even if it seemed related to her sister, she didn't know how it was connected.
The character seemed like her sister herself, but when she looked at the details, there were so many differences that she couldn't be sure.
Han Serin.
[Seoyun, do you know what internet streaming is...?]