146. RinTube's Monstrous Growth
146. RinTube's Monstrous Growth
***
—All work has been completed. If you notice any issues after checking, please contact us.
After confirming the cleaning company's text saying all the work was done, Serin left the PC bang.
Three hours had been just right for eating various foods and checking several websites, so she had no lingering attachment to the place.
It was now a little past 8 p.m.
Serin quietly took off her beret and opened the front door.
Click.
She was actually looking forward to seeing how much it had changed.
Through the dark interior.
Then she used the control app to turn on all the lights inside the space at once.
Click.
"Wow. Can it really change this much?"
The sight genuinely drew an involuntary exclamation from her.
In just the three hours or so she'd been out of the house, the inside had been tidied so immaculately that it was hard to find even a speck of dust, as if the place had been polished to a shine.
I clearly remembered tidying up with Seoyun recently, but what I was looking at now was on a completely different level from anything Seoyun or I had done.
It wasn't just neatly organized—it looked as if the inside had been made to gleam like a brand-new home. Just looking at it, she could feel that something had fundamentally changed.
Swish.
For no real reason, she ran her hand once over the table right in front of her, the way she'd seen in old dramas or movies.
"...This is insane."
The sensation of her hand gliding across the table with no resistance at all was genuinely hard to describe. It was so remarkable it felt as if the table had been replaced with something brand new.
Click. Click.
After that, I checked my room, the utility room, the spare room, and even the bathroom.
She opened each of the other spaces one by one to inspect them, and every single one was immaculate.
Aside from the living room and my room, I didn't remember where things went in the spare room or utility room since I rarely used them, but most items seemed to be in their proper places and neatly organized.
Beep.
Absently, she turned on her smartphone screen and opened BaTalk.
Me.
[Sua, what exactly do the people from that company you sent do...?]
A few minutes after sending the message, a slightly delayed reply came.
Yoon Sua.
[Looks like they're finished if you're messaging me now. How is it, Serin!? Are you satisfied?]
Sua's message showed she already knew what I meant. I let out a wry laugh but sent her a sincere reply.
Me.
[Seriously. I'm satisfied beyond belief.]
While messaging Sua, she also checked the living room sink and stained spots, and even those were spotless. Even the bag of delivery containers she'd set aside to throw out was completely empty and clean.
She couldn't believe they'd done such near-perfect work in just three hours. It really seemed like they'd worked some kind of magic.
"Is there some special way to care for furniture too?"
Sinking into the immaculately groomed sofa, Serin laughed.
The fact that her everyday living space felt not just clean but brand new was surprisingly pleasant.
And having someone else do it without her lifting a finger made it even more satisfying.
Yoon Sua.
[Ah, Serin? I'm streaming right now... I'll properly tell you about the cleaning company after my stream ends.]
She flinched for a moment at the new message.
"Right, it's Sua's streaming time now."
Feeling like she'd bothered Sua, Serin sent a message saying to contact her whenever she was free after the stream, then ended the conversation.
After showering and changing into simple clothes, Serin wandered around the place again, feeling quite giddy, as if she'd moved into a new home.
***
August 18, Wednesday.
Just past midnight.
00:27.
A man was staring at his monitor, his brow deeply furrowed.
"Ha. The people who chase you to the very end just to leave hate comments are really something. Seriously."
The man muttering coldly was the NewTuber Big Cat—Cha Dohyeon.
He was looking at the replies to a comment he'd left on a RinTube video, and he let out a small sigh.
[Everyone keeps saying Rin, Rin... now I see there was a real reason. I watched like I was possessed.]
1.0K likes
＾ Hide 162 replies.
└ Whoa, is this actually Big Cat?
└ Seems like it's really him.
└ Washed-up Big Cat going around commenting on a rising NewTuber's videos
└ After ruining collab after collab, now he's trying to latch onto Rin lololol?
└ Isn't his top comment actually fabricated too?
└ Public opinion's in the gutter and he's still shamelessly commenting around lol
└ Fr, he's got no conscience lolololol
......
"Seriously, why don't they mind their own damn lives."
Dohyeon let out a huge sigh as if he were suffocating, but he kept examining the replies with an odd expression.
The replies ranged from malicious comments amounting to personal attacks that crossed the line, to light mockery, to comments simply expressing that people were glad to see him.
It wasn't as if he'd never received comments like this as a NewTuber, but lately he couldn't shake the feeling that they were especially vicious.
Viewer sentiment toward him had turned very sour because his energy had been low during collabs with other NewTubers, or because he'd half-assed content preparation.
"And anyway, it looks like a channel that's just starting out on NewTube. So wouldn't a collab with me be good for both of us?"
Dohyeon was baffled, wondering if people knew how hard it was to make content or collab with a million-subscriber NewTuber.
He worried that if Serin saw these replies, she might get a bad first impression of him. He briefly considered posting a rebuttal, but in the end he didn't.
If he responded clumsily, it would only provoke more people into flaming him even harder.
"Ah, seriously. If Soyul was going to turn me down, she could've at least not blocked me on BaTalk. I mean, she won't even give me an excuse to collab, what the..."
Bringing her on as an editor was one thing, but if that didn't work out, he wanted to at least build some kind of connection with Rin, who was hot right now.
And now that all of that had fallen apart, he'd left a comment to try to put in the legwork somehow, but the countless replies and hate comments made even that feel pointless.
"First, I should at least send an email."
Dohyeon let out a small sigh at the end and copied Serin's business email listed under the video.
Tap-tap-tap.
While Dohyeon typed away to send an email about a collab, his gaze kept drifting to the coin chart positioned off to one side.
It was like an addiction.
Earlier this year, Big Cat had poured all the money he'd earned over several years into cryptocurrency, and he checked the coin chart dozens—no, easily hundreds—of times a day.
The coin chart constantly fluctuated up and down.
Unlike the stock market, cryptocurrency had no set trading hours, so prices swung wildly in real time within minutes. With that much money on the line, it had naturally taken hold of Cha Dohyeon to the point of disrupting his daily life.
Then, when the chart suddenly turned solid blue as if plunging vertically, his face twisted viciously.
"Ah, fuck. Seriously..."
Bang!
He slammed the table hard, then stared at the screen with bloodshot eyes, as if he'd even forgotten the pain in his arm.
***
Soyul had been absorbed in editing the scrim video Serin sent her.
She ended up staying up nearly all night and only managed to fall asleep as morning broke.
After sleeping for only about four hours, she woke up. Blinking for a moment, Soyul naturally checked the time and sat up.
It was now past 10 a.m.
After smoothing down her disheveled hair, Soyul quickly washed up to wake herself. Then she booted up her PC and sank into her chair.
The site Soyul opened after booting up her PC was none other than a NewTube channel.
—RinTube.
It was the channel Soyul had personally decorated, even doing the icon work.
And Soyul immediately checked the subscriber count.
—RinTube.
316K subscribers
"Seriously, whose channel is this? Is this growth insane or what?"
Soyul muttered to herself and smiled with a loose, beaming face.
RinTube had clearly only been open for a short time, yet it had already passed 300,000 subscribers.
The NewTube subscriber count grew day by day, and the video views surged by huge margins every single day. Just checking them each morning filled Soyul's heart with bright emotion.
"To think I even hesitated over RinTube for a moment... I was such an idiot. Seriously."
Muttering that, she felt anew that she'd made the right decision yesterday.
No matter how important money was, she was embarrassed that she'd briefly been tempted by another NewTuber's editor offer when she had such a lovely channel right here.
'Anyway, later on, she'll pay me that much more.'
She'd thought it was impossible for a channel that had just started to show this kind of growth in only a week unless the person was a famous celebrity with real name recognition.
Now she was thrilled to be growing a channel together with someone firsthand.
A sense of accomplishment, pride, happiness, and so on. It always felt good when the results of your hard work were recognized and thriving.
On top of that, she felt extra affection for RinTube because she'd been there from the very beginning, when the channel was first created. So checking RinTube first thing every morning had become a completely natural, ingrained habit for Soyul.
And the video Soyul had edited—[You're only looking at me.]—had gained even more views overnight.
—2.93 million.
"It went up by over 200,000 just since the early morning hours."
Feeling proud, Soyul clicked on the video as naturally as could be. She'd already watched this video dozens of times, but she never got tired of it.
—Everyone... just look at me.
Listening to Serin's voice from the playing video like a radio, Soyul went through the comments one by one for a change.
The recent comments were overwhelmingly friendly, to a degree you could call dominant.
Normally, when views spiked like this, bad comments and hate would increase in proportion, but right now that ratio was extremely low.
Then, after switching the sorting to top comments, Soyul's brow furrowed at a comment she saw.
The nickname BigCatTube and the distinctive cat icon representing him.
To her, it felt like he was testing the waters, and sure enough, when she clicked the replies, every single one was negative. After confirming that, Soyul moved her mouse without hesitation.
Click.
—Block user BigCatTube.
"How grimy. Seriously."
Soyul twisted her lips into a cold smile and made Big Cat's comment disappear from the video.
Soyul very much wanted Rin and Big Cat to have no connection whatsoever.