155. No Matter How Fast, Regret Always Comes Too Late
155. No Matter How Fast, Regret Always Comes Too Late
***
Friday, August 20th.
The Monday when the scrims with G1 began felt like only a few hours ago, yet time had strode right up to Serin's ear as if working magic and whispered that it was Friday.
3 p.m.
While briefly browsing NewTube and the community before starting her stream, Serin found her gaze drawn to one controversy.
"Things are blowing up left and right these days."
Serin muttered in a tone that sounded almost hollow, staring at the controversy.
And that was because one person she had been keeping an eye on for days was now at the center of it.
'Big Cat.'
He was someone I'd planned to deal with slowly, over time, but before I could even start anything, he was already as good as finished.
A NewTube video posted that morning had spread like wildfire and was now causing controversy across multiple communities. And it was a pretty serious one at that.
Along with controversy over Big Cat's character, suspicions that he had abused his power over numerous editors were piling on top.
Click. Click.
When I clicked on posts related to Big Cat and briefly checked their contents, there was a lot I hadn't known—conflicts with various editors, heavy losses from years of earnings in coin investments, and more.
As people claiming to be Big Cat's former editors came forward to expose his true nature, even anonymous posts appeared across multiple sites, and the already blazing controversy seemed to spread endlessly into an even bigger fire.
"Well, with that personality, I guess Soyul wasn't the only one he treated that way."
Thinking about Big Cat's true nature again, she felt it wasn't the least bit surprising that things had blown up.
Slurp.
She sipped her coffee and continued reading posts about Big Cat with interest.
The contents of the posts were mostly the same: Big Cat's nice-guy image was a complete lie, and the revelation of his hidden true nature was causing major shock.
The original video that started the controversy had already been taken down, so she couldn't check it, but that alone was enough for Serin to understand the situation.
"Still, I didn't expect him to self-destruct like this."
She muttered offhandedly, feeling that human affairs really were strange things.
Until a few days ago, before she had spoken directly with Big Cat on the phone, the image she'd had of him hadn't been all that bad.
The entertainment value of his NewTube videos had visibly declined, but he was still a NewTuber with a good-guy image.
So much so that she had briefly considered doing a collaboration stream with him, even taking his downward trend into account.
But all of that had vanished like a bubble the moment she actually spoke with Big Cat on the phone...
Tap tap tap.
After browsing through the posts like that, Serin searched for Big Cat on NewTube and let out a sudden hollow laugh.
*
————
BigCatTube.
1.03 million subscribers. 383 videos.
————
*
It hadn't been that long since the controversy broke that morning, but the subscriber count had visibly dropped.
"...1.03 million."
She clearly remembered it being over 1.15 million subscribers, but the number had dropped by more than 100,000.
I did NewTube alongside streaming, but Big Cat had focused solely on NewTube and must have built his channel over several years at the very least.
'I wonder how he's feeling right now.'
She felt anew what it meant for an image to be destroyed in an instant.
Click.
Setting aside the deleted video, she clicked on a video with the most recent date, and the dislike count stood out more than anything else.
824 likes, 8.2K dislikes.
Dislikes ten times the number of likes.
And when she scrolled down, the comments were all severe in tone.
Comments saying they were disappointed looked mild by comparison—the rest were so vicious that even just reading them made me frown.
"It's worse than I thought, seriously."
I shook my head and had no choice but to close NewTube.
Honestly, she had scrolled down expecting to see comments cursing Big Cat, and she had wanted to see them. But each actual comment was written with content nasty enough to upset even a bystander, so it was hard to keep reading.
Just reading the comments felt like her mind was being contaminated.
"I should just make sure Soyul's doing okay."
As for me stepping in to do something about Big Cat... with how I felt right now, I couldn't even bring myself to think about it.
***
Inside a heavily cluttered officetel.
Trash strewn everywhere—no matter how expensive the officetel, it couldn't hide the sight.
And in one corner of that messy officetel, a man sat blankly in front of a monitor screen.
"......"
The man looked like a wreck, yet his expression was surprisingly neither extreme nor especially grim.
But his eyes, filled with resignation and emptiness, held not a trace of life.
In a way, it seemed as if he had lost even the strength to make any expression at all.
Big Cat of BigCatTube, Cha Dohyeon.
He was now staring at the controversial community posts and the BigCatTube channel, completely out of it.
In a reality where the tower he had painstakingly built over years was crumbling in an instant, even just pulling himself together was too difficult for him.
To Dohyeon, this whole situation felt like a dream.
A horribly vicious nightmare, at that.
A nightmare he couldn't wake from no matter how hard he tried.
Smack.
Dohyeon raised his hand and slapped his own cheek hard. Even at the stinging pain from his now red and swollen cheek, he just laughed blankly.
"Th... this is all real."
Everything had ended overnight.
His head felt like it was floating, and even his thoughts wouldn't connect properly.
Tap tap tap.
He kept trying to make calls with trembling hands, but the editor wouldn't pick up.
Then, suddenly, Dohyeon checked BaTalk again—something he had already done countless times.
The last BaTalk message the editor had sent before going silent.
Jang Junhyeok.
[This is genuinely fucking unbearable. Do whatever you want.]
Dohyeon, who had woken up in the afternoon, had belatedly deleted the video that caused the controversy himself, but by then everything was already too late.
Everything that could spread had already spread, and his own voice full of abuse, circulating along with various audio files, could be heard everywhere.
The image he had built over years—of a good person, someone considerate and caring toward others—had been utterly shattered.
How did it come to this?
Why did this happen?
All sorts of questions kept swirling chaotically through Dohyeon's head.
Then his eyes drifted to the coin chart filling one of his three monitors. The curve that had surged sharply until last night was now drawing a downward line, showing blue.
Dohyeon's gaze fell on the numbers below the graph.
—Total Assets: 185,021,306 won
Return Rate: -62.24%
"...300 million."
The losses alone exceeded 300 million won of his invested amount.
"Why the hell... why did I do it."
Why had Dohyeon, who hadn't even touched stocks, stepped into cryptocurrency, where he couldn't see even an inch ahead? He repeated the thought for what felt like the thousandth time, then finally let out a hollow laugh.
I'll be fine.
I can make a profit.
He had stepped in with that complacent mindset.
The enormous profitability, earning several times his investment with ease, and the fact that someone around him had actually profited—Dohyeon had been tempted.
"..."
And when the controversy broke today, Dohyeon had spent hours venting his anger, bitterly resenting the editor who had quit and resenting the other editors who had quit before, and only now was he resigning himself.
Belated regret came flooding in like a tide.
The messages and sharp-toned conversations he'd had with his editors for no reason right after suffering massive losses from coins.
It felt as if all of it was coming back to him like karma.
Dohyeon, recalling the past one piece at a time and laughing hollowly, suddenly raised his hand and gripped the mouse.
Slide.
A button he had thought hundreds of times over the past few months that he should press now, but had never been able to.
—Sell.
Dohyeon placed his hand on that button and, with resigned eyes, finally moved his finger.
Click.
But regret, no matter how fast, was always too late.
***
Serin streamed until evening and managed to climb quite a bit in tier.
Satisfied with reaching Diamond Tier 2, 90 points in Another World Solo Queue, she was slowly preparing to wrap up the stream.
"Oh, and viewers! I'm not taking tomorrow—Saturday—off."
Then, as if remembering something she needed to tell them, Serin, who had been dismissing her Crescent-Moon Weight, spoke as if she had almost forgotten.
[Oh?]
[What, Rin, you're streaming tomorrow too?]
[Nice]
[You skipped streams Mon/Tue for scrims, if you'd taken the whole weekend off too I'd have been seriously bummed lololol]
[Streaming only 3 days a week is really crossing the line lololol Rin knows what's up, as expected]
[So is it a regular stream?]
[I agree~~~~]
[Lol]
"It's not a regular stream, but I said a few days ago that I'd be having a collaboration stream, right? That collab is scheduled for tomorrow. And it's a bit awkward for me to say this myself, but... it's really someone so amazing that all of you viewers will be shocked. You can look forward to tomorrow's stream."
She had no hesitation about hyping up her viewers' expectations.
I'd talked it up to the point of maybe being a little excessive, but the person I'd be meeting tomorrow was truly worth that much.
Enough to satisfy her viewers even if they expected more than what she had just said.
[???]
[No but who the hell is it for Rin to talk them up this much?]
[For real, at least tell us who it is]
[Rin has never talked anyone up like this before, who the hell is it??]
[At least give us a hint!!]
Watching the chat scroll by rapidly, I smiled.
"Tomorrow at 4 p.m. If you come then, you'll find out."
With those words, Serin ended the stream without hesitation.