147. Business Is Business
147. Business Is Business
***
Click.
Serin had casually offered her a bonus and asked if she could manage the business emails, and Soyul had accepted on the spot. After checking RinTube, Soyul immediately entered the email address and logged in.
And there it was—the notification number.
—126.
She had definitely gone through all the accumulated emails yesterday, but in just one day, the new emails had already piled up past three digits.
"I think there are seriously way too many emails..."
Soyul muttered in a half-exhausted voice and shook her head slightly, but she pulled herself together and quickly started going through them.
She was checking the business emails for the extra bonus, but honestly, Soyul felt a considerable amount of pressure about checking emails. It couldn't be helped—lately, she had been spending about two hours every single day just on email.
On top of her original video editing work, the added time spent on email meant she couldn't even enjoy her small hobby of watching movies anymore.
But even so... working that much wasn't entirely unpleasant.
"Right, now Rin and I are... partners in fate, or whatever."
She had coldly sent Big Cat one last message before blocking him, and she strongly suspected it would be even harder to get hired as another NewTuber's editor from now on. In practical terms, RinTube was like her last chance.
And RinTube doing well wasn't someone else's business—she figured the bigger RinTube grew, the better she would be treated too.
"Anyway... how many of these are just ad emails, seriously."
As she went through the mail, Soyul was once again feeling firsthand just how fast the name Rin was getting famous, just from the sheer flood of advertising emails.
...
"They're really lowballing the ad rates."
Soyul kept shaking her head at the ad amounts as she worked through the emails quickly.
Considering RinTube's current growth, ads offering a fair price were rarer than rain in a drought, and most of them were throwing out absurdly low numbers as if they were just poking around to see what stuck.
Having managed Big Cat's business emails before, Soyul had a rough sense of what reasonable ad rates looked like.
"I get that she's just starting out, but do these people seriously have no conscience?"
She was mostly skimming past ad inquiries by just checking the amount and brand, but it was still baffling.
Serin had made it clear she had no intention of taking ads for the time being, so Soyul was just checking and moving on, but this was beyond ridiculous.
About half of the emails she'd checked were ad-related inquiries, and the rest were overflowing with prank emails and other weird messages that were hard to even categorize.
"Why are there so many actual lunatics?"
Soyul was getting a very clear sense of why so many streamers and NewTubers hired someone to manage their business emails. The inbox was overflowing with messages that felt like they contaminated your mind just by looking at them, and simply checking them was exhausting.
There were, of course, some long letters from people claiming to be fans, but then there were emails making absurd demands for one-on-one Another World coaching, or people begging her to send them money because they were going through hard times.
And beyond that, there were countless emails not even worth responding to.
"......"
She was sorting out the genuine fan mail separately to show Rin later, but the endless messages about people's personal situations, asking for even a little help, were enough to make her laugh in disbelief just reading them.
"Ha, even Big Cat's inbox wasn't this bad."
Even a million-subscriber NewTuber didn't get this many emails, but the amount Rin received was weirdly enormous.
Was this the difference between male and female NewTubers? Soyul let out a sigh.
Rin hadn't even revealed her real face, but there were still countless people sending creepy messages like viewers clinging to a female streamer.
Pictures of their own bodies, dick pics, and all sorts of other garbage about wanting to meet in person.
Even as she blocked them without mercy, Soyul felt like she was developing a genuine hatred for humanity.
After checking most of the emails in a half-checked-out state, the only ones left were from well-known streamers and NewTubers.
She was making a list of the ones she thought she should ask Rin about when she suddenly flinched at one particular email.
— [Hello. This is Big Cat from BigCatTube.]
Her hand hesitated on the mouse, but in the end, she had no choice but to click.
Click.
*
————
(Two images verifying Big Cat Tube channel management and identity.)
— Hello! This is Big Cat, who runs BigCatTube!
RinTube is so hot right now! And I really enjoyed watching your personal streams on tweetie too. And recently, that huge issue with the scrim against the famous pro team G1!!
The reason I'm reaching out is that I understand you've started on NewTube as well.
I thought that if we did a collaboration stream together, we might create some pretty good synergy, so I wanted to get in touch......
————
*
After reading Big Cat's entire email, Soyul thought it over briefly and ultimately added Big Cat to the list.
"Fine... business is business."
Business was business.
No matter how much I disliked him personally, I still had to separate work from personal feelings. On NewTube, his comment section had blown up with hundreds of replies and controversy, so I could have blocked him on the grounds that he'd hurt RinTube.
But business was different.
With that, Soyul reluctantly picked up her phone.
"Yeah... as if Rin would even be interested."
Out of all these people on the list, would Serin really care about Big Cat? She started typing up the summary.
Soyul then sent Serin a BaTalk message saying there were things she needed to confirm.
***
"Hana, Nyangachi, StopDyingSoMuch, Isrilda, Brang, Cecil..."
Serin read through the names of streamers and NewTubers that Soyul had sent over for confirmation, one by one, feeling a strange sensation.
'This many?'
Among the names were people I already knew, like Hana. When I searched the others, they turned out to be reasonably well-known NewTubers and streamers too. It was surprising that every single one of them had emailed asking to collaborate with me.
And under each name, Soyul had neatly organized the purpose of the proposed collab and the content ideas, so despite the number of names, it didn't take long to read through.
Then, suddenly, she spotted a familiar name.
"Big Cat."
Was it a coincidence?
She couldn't shake the feeling that she'd been seeing this name a lot lately.
He was the NewTuber she'd happened to see at the PC bang last night, and she'd also confirmed he'd left a comment on RinTube. Now he'd even sent an email, which was kind of funny.
"Purpose of collab: building friendly relations. Content: Another World personal coaching, with a teacher-and-student concept, asking to be taught..."
Serin muttered the collab purpose and content summary written under Big Cat's name, tilting her head with a subtle expression before quietly lifting the glass on her desk.
Then she glanced at the time displayed on the PC screen—1 p.m. She still had nearly three hours before she needed to start her personal stream.
She sank deep into the soft chair and fell into thought for a moment.
"Do I need some new stimulation?"
Preparing for a stream after a long break had her thinking all sorts of random thoughts.
Including last weekend, she'd skipped streaming Monday and Tuesday entirely because of the scrims. That meant four straight days without a personal stream.
Maybe that was why preparing for a stream today felt unfamiliar.
For today's stream, she had no worries about content since she'd be talking about the scrim with G1, but now she was debating whether to do a collab afterward.
It felt like she hadn't streamed in a while, and she wanted to give her viewers something new and fun.
A collab seemed like it could fit the bill, but at the same time, she didn't really want to do one that badly.
She hesitated for a moment.
Tap.
She opened BaTalk for no real reason and checked Soyul's message again.
Park Soyul.
[If there's anyone from the list I sent that you think you'd like to collab with, please let me know.]
'I've never actually collabed with anyone before.'
It hit her anew—aside from Sua, she'd never streamed with anyone else.
She had appeared on Hana's stream once before becoming a streamer herself, but that wasn't a collab—it was closer to just... messing around.
From the list, the people who caught her interest were Hana, Isrilda, StopDyingSoMuch, and Big Cat—four in total.
All of them had proposed Another World-related collabs. The biggest among them was Big Cat, with over a million NewTube subscribers.
A collab inside Another World required no special restrictions or preparation, and there was no need to show her offline appearance.
So even if she collabed with someone, the burden would be small.
For a moment, I wondered whether I'd have good synergy with them.
"...Would it work out like it does with Sua?"
With Sua, they knew each other in person and were close, so collabing was low-pressure. But these people were practically strangers...
"...I have their contact info."
Before deciding whether to collab, she decided to first find out what kind of people they were.
If she talked with them, she'd get at least a rough sense of who they were. She made up her mind to decide on the collab after talking.
***
As the coin chart turned red and kept climbing in an upward curve for several minutes, a man shot up from his chair.
"Yes, this is it, this is it!!"
Cha Dohyeon shouted loudly, beaming brighter than ever.
From a brutal loss of over -70%, he had somehow recovered to -52%.
Even recovering that much still meant he was taking a massive loss, but a sense of relief washed over Dohyeon all the same.
BaTalk!
He casually picked up his smartphone at the sound of the BaTalk notification while still staring at the chart, and then his eyes suddenly went wide.
*
————
Private profile.
[RinTube channel manager screenshot.JPG]
[Are you available for a call right now?]
————
*
He'd left that comment and sent that email half out of desperation.
"It's really Rin...?"
Because the big fish had actually taken the bait.
Even if the sky falls, there's always a hole to climb out of—was this what that meant? Dohyeon hurriedly made the call.