52. Million Won Punch! Million Won Punch!
52. Million Won Punch! Million Won Punch!
***
—Sleeps a lot.
—Weak in the mornings.
She'd thought both descriptions were far removed from herself.
She'd suddenly found herself living in the world of Black Ark as a character called "Rin" without ever understanding why.
To survive in that place, which she'd come to regard as another world entirely, there were conditions forcibly demanded of her whether she liked it or not.
—Cut down on sleep.
—Wake at the slightest sound.
People she'd considered comrades betrayed her at every turn.
An NPC who professed to be on the side of good, someone she'd let her guard down around, would suddenly change and pull some unprecedented, erratic stunt.
People she was supposed to protect died.
Beings that should have died survived.
In that world where the main story line seemed on the verge of collapse yet never quite broke, she'd developed something close to an obsessive distrust of people and found it hard to trust anyone easily.
Her personality had never readily let others get close, but it was fair to say the world of Black Ark had influenced her into becoming even more guarded around people.
Beep-beep-beep.
Beep-beep-beep.
She turned off the alarm blaring loudly enough to grate on her nerves and moved her body in a daze.
In the end, all of that was to say she found it hard to believe she was now weak to sleep.
Smack!
"People really do snap awake when you hit them..."
She'd slapped her own cheek fairly hard, and it did jolt her awake.
Rubbing my stinging cheek for no good reason, I pushed aside the blanket wrapped softly around my body and sat up in bed.
The time was 11 a.m., when I'd set the alarm.
Considering I'd gone to sleep around 1 a.m. after messing around with this and that last night, I'd slept for ten hours.
I really could close my eyes and wake up the next day. It struck me as funny all over again that I could sink into such an astonishingly long sleep.
In that world, I hadn't been able to fall into long sleep at all—to the point of insomnia.
Now that I was living in a weakened body again, I wondered if I'd adapted this quickly.
Crack.
Crack.
I laced my fingers together and stretched my arms high overhead, and the sound of my bones popping rang eerily in my ears.
Because I'd exercised a bit before bed last night to build stamina, my body was complaining to me with all its might.
I stretched out my heavy body to loosen up, then muttered absently.
"...Two months."
I figured if I repeated this routine for about two months, this trash body would change a little.
My current physical condition couldn't withstand overdoing the exercise. And now that I'd officially become a streamer by starting my broadcast just two days ago, I couldn't focus only on my body either.
They say if you try to catch two rabbits, you usually lose both.
I had no intention of losing both rabbits.
I figured I could manage juggling exercise and the streamer life.
On top of that, objectively speaking, I could safely say I was already well on my way to success as a streamer.
Coincidence or not, the actions I'd taken had come back like a boomerang and raised my profile, and among those results, I'd built connections with Sua, giving me an absurdly good start from my very first broadcast.
Furthermore, in the communities I'd briefly checked before bed, there were plenty of people promoting me even when I did nothing.
And with plans to pick a NewTube editor tomorrow and start running a NewTube channel as well, just thinking about it made my day busy.
......
After getting myself ready, turning on the PC, and checking the news, communities, and other streamers, it was already time for me to go live.
What I found truly fickle about people was that when there's no set task or goal, time passing doesn't feel all that important no matter what you do.
You rest and think, "Well, I'm resting," and let your body drift along with the flow of time.
But conversely, when there's something to do,
or a set schedule, you start to feel the preciousness of the remaining free time.
Five minutes before going live.
3:55 p.m.
"...Why don't I want to stream?"
Even as I sat at the PC preparing for the broadcast, I'd muttered that without realizing it.
It wasn't that streaming was boring, or that it felt particularly hard.
Nor was I feeling anything grand enough to call pressure from the larger-than-expected viewer count.
After streaming, this trash body did complain that it was tired just from that. But that didn't mean it was actually hard for me.
If I were going to whine about that being hard, I wouldn't have survived the world of Black Ark, and my mind hadn't yet grown as frail as this trash body.
If anything, communicating with viewers and having meaning attached to my every action was even fun.
I was bad at interpersonal relationships, but dealing with viewers had a lower barrier than that, and it felt like we treated each other a bit more lightly.
While I was lost in thought, 4 o'clock arrived.
I naturally pressed the broadcast ON button.
Usually, those idle thoughts vanished the moment I actually moved my body or took action, proving to be nothing but pointless musings.
I opened my mouth toward the mic, speaking a little louder than usual.
"Monday, August 2nd stream starts now."
I wondered what the point of saying that the moment the broadcast started was, but I said it anyway.
I'd heard the standard practice was to play recently trending songs for about five minutes as a warm-up until viewers arrived, so today, like yesterday, I put on music.
Something a bit noisy rather than calm.
[Hi, Rin!!!]
[On?]
[lol it’s hilarious that Rin already has core viewers]
[you’re a core viewer too lol]
[Your voice is so good again today...]
[Fr I might just come to listen to Rin's voice]
[Rin, please read my username]
[Using the greatsword again today?]
I'd meant to play noisy music. I just switched to calm music instead.
Seeing the chat messages flying up in the already-active chat window the moment I started, I wondered if a warm-up was even necessary.
"Today, I think I'll check communities and do Just Chatting for about an hour? Maybe an hour and a half."
As I spoke, I began writing out the organized broadcast schedule in white text on the black background screen.
—Part 1: Check community sites and Just Chatting for about an hour.
—Part 2: Another World Arena, time undecided.
On the default black screen provided by tweetie, I wrote white text in the upper right corner.
Ah. And donations too.
—Please don’t donate. No reactions.
I wrote that line right below it.
I'd considered blocking donations entirely.
But thinking about it, I figured people who donated 50,000 won or more were probably fairly well-off.
So I didn't feel the need to block donations.
I had no intention of making money, but if wealthy viewers wanted to donate, did I really need to block that too?
[Lol writing "don't donate" again is seriously hardcore]
[What kind of streamer tells people not to donate fr lol]
[But why are donations only possible from 50,000 won?]
[Part 1 Just Chatting, Part 2 Another World sounds good, but which site are you checking for communities??]
[There are people who’ll donate even with that written there]
[Why are you so clueless? It means if you want to donate, drop at least 50,000 won lol]
[Ah, I want to see the Arena already, Rin]
"Please only donate if you can afford it. I don't really have any desire to make big money as a streamer. It's because I don't think I can give you a reaction you'd be satisfied with."
On top of that, in most other streamers' broadcasts, I'd seen a lot of donations called "thousand-won punches"—so-called "thousand-won donations"—used to mess with the streamer. The streamer would play along and take the money.
It all added up: for big-name streamers getting hit with thousand-won punches every second, those donations alone could amount to hundreds of thousands of won an hour, so there was definitely money in it.
But I had no intention of playing along with thousand-won punches.
I had no intention of becoming a clown for the viewers just because I was streaming.
My desire to just do a broadcast I enjoyed was several times stronger.
I figured that was better than broadcasting however I pleased without considering the viewers at all. That was why I kept my broadcast times and was currently aiming to stream every day.
Unlike other streamers, I had financial breathing room right now. So I figured it'd be fine if there was at least one streamer doing this kind of broadcast.
Ding-a-ling!!
『Chawoobeo donated 50,000 won!』
<You said don't donate so now I want to lol 50,000-won punch!!>
"Chawoobeo, thank you for the 50,000-won donation. 50,000-won... punch!"
I tried to react to the sudden 50,000-won donation by emphasizing the words. But once I actually did it, I got embarrassed. My voice went quiet at the end.
Actually, while doing the collab-that-wasn't-a-collab with Sua yesterday, I'd unconsciously been watching Sua closely.
Sua reacted so diligently, so shouldn't I do a little too?
I'd felt a small pang of guilt.
Sua was living her life so earnestly like that.
It was true I'd wondered if I wasn't just half-assing my broadcast while receiving huge donations.
And honestly, I'd thought maybe I should play along if it was a "50,000-won punch"...
50,000 won wasn't objectively a small amount of money.
[Lol is it real that someone dropped a 50,000-won donation the moment the stream went on]
[Life goals: be like Rin...]
[But didn't Rin just react? Lol]
[What's with her voice changing when she reads donations lol]
[Why is she so cute getting embarrassed while doing a 50,000-won punch lol]
[Baby Rin isn’t a baby... she’s a money-crazed demon... she only reacts once donations hit 50,000 won]
[How do bastards who drop 50,000-won donations like that even live their lives?]
[But Rin's voice was so fucking cute just now that donating seems worth it lol]
[That's just you...]
[wait, when I dropped 50,000 won yesterday Rin didn’t react like that, what gives?]
[50,000-won punch lol]
"Ah. Ahem. Anyway, please don't donate with big expectations."
Looking at the chat reactions, my face felt hot.
I opened the community site, opened a hot topic post I'd seen yesterday, and was about to put the community on the broadcast screen.
Ding-a-ling-a-ling!!!!
Suddenly, a donation alert rang out loud enough to make my ears go numb.
『Yoo Eunha donated 1,000,000 won!!』
<This is my first donation, is this how you do it?>
[?????????]
[?? What]
[Whoa insane...]
[Username Yoo Eunha? Is it a female viewer?]
[Who's this sudden big spender fr]
[Reaction! Reaction! Reaction! Reaction!]
[You have to react to a million won, come on lol]
[No matter how much you don't react, it's a million won, you can't just swallow that lol]
"Um... Yoo Eunha? A sudden million-won donation—did you maybe enter an extra digit by mistake, or did you mean to donate to another streamer and sent it to the wrong place?"
Rather than expressing thanks, I was so taken aback by the out-of-nowhere million-won donation that I asked back.
'I haven't even done anything yet.'
It had only been about five minutes since the broadcast started, and I was baffled.
A million won wasn't money I could just brush off.
Not that it was a lot of money to me, but it probably wasn't a small amount to that viewer—was it really okay to send it so casually?
'No, more than that... I don't even know how to refund donations.'
In the end, I sent a whisper first to the viewer named Yoo Eunha who'd donated.
[Rin : Yoo Eunha? Did you really donate a million won?]
[Yoo Eunha : I donated a million won to you, Rin, because I wanted to. So please just accept it.]
"Yoo Eunha has donated a truly enormous sum of a million won... thank you so much. No, I really don't know how to do reactions. I don't have anything prepared either. Honestly, I don't know... how to react."
In the end, I stammered.
Even as I rambled, I genuinely had no idea how to react to this.
'No, I wrote right there on the screen in big letters not to donate and that there'd be no reaction, so why on earth...'
I'd received a million-won donation, but expressing thanks with simple words felt like deceiving the viewer.
[What's with her breaking after getting hit with a million-won punch lol]
[First time seeing Rin stammer lol]
[Baby Rin is a baby... a baby who can’t get a grip after a 1,000,000-won donation]
[Hourly rate of 1,050,000 won... what kind of life does Rin even live]
[that “baby” joke went out of style ages ago]
[Ah I'm so excited for the reaction]
[Fr so excited to see what reaction she'll do lol]
[Rin can't turn on a cam, right?]
[She's firmly said she won't turn one on at all, so she won't do it]
[Look at these toxic bastards raising expectations lol]
Even as I stared at the chat window, I'd ended up in a situation where I had no choice but to react.