Chapter 11
Chapter 11
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: Viewer's Perspective
-----------------------------------------------------------------
From yesterday, there was one person setting the entire community ablaze.
Her name was Ida Yeon, and her petite frame was so small you could believe she was an elementary schooler, but she herself said she was 15.
The reason that girl became famous in the community wasn't just because of some simple takedown post.
It was about a certain fixed-nickname user in the general gaming community who turned on their stream for broadcasting purposes during a tournament. They were someone who'd always rubbed people the wrong way.
Plus, before the tournament, they'd even posted a begging thread in the community.
Someone harboring resentment posted a malicious takedown thread about it, which rose to popularity and started spreading everywhere.
A small community tournament with barely a few dozen participants.
Just a simple beg in the community.
Something that should've been buried without much attention originally gained interest not because people empathized with the takedown post,
but because of the photo attached to it.
It was a picture uploaded with the claim that the stream cam was showing her hand instead of her face.
She was pretty. And cute.
With my limited vocabulary, I couldn't describe it any better than that.
Though she looked too young for me to feel any romantic attraction, that overwhelming appearance naturally came with strong likability.
Drawn by that powerful impression, interested people headed to the stream the takedown post mentioned.
I was one of them.
And the stream I witnessed firsthand was more shocking than I expected.
Not her looks, though.
I'd already been shocked by her appearance enough to seek out the stream—what more was there to be surprised about?
What truly stunned me was her speech and behavior.
"Whoa, seriously, whoa..."
Sweat had built up in my hands before I knew it, and only then did I realize I'd unconsciously clenched my fists.
She was really cute. If only she'd keep her mouth shut, she'd be prettier and more lovable than anything in the world.
That damn mouth of hers—that top-tier beauty was utterly wasted on the things it said.
I had no intention of denying it, but every time she opened her mouth, it viciously provoked sadistic urges.
A voice forced low.
Speech that didn't suit her.
A gaze that looked down on everything.
And yet her actions were exaggerated like in an anime.
Plus, that song she just sang...
"She could just smile prettily with that face and rake in the donations."
It was baffling how she needlessly did weird stuff that diminished her own charm.
And even though I'd only been watching the stream for an hour, there was something I could definitely tell.
That wasn't a concept. No matter how you looked at it.
"The kid really does seem a bit off in the head."
A twinge of pity stirred in me.
There was another popular post that rose alongside the takedown: a promo post for the stream, seemingly written by her older sister.
It mentioned there that the girl had a lot of headaches.
But,
"How bad does a headache have to be to turn a kid into that?"
Legion Commander this, Legion Commander that—she'd sunk into her own incomprehensible backstory and become something truly bizarre.
Come to think of it, that Legion Commander stuff.
"She's talking about her family, right?"
I'd already checked the VOD from yesterday's stream. Before ending it, I'd heard her call her sister the 2nd Legion Commander.
And now she was describing someone called the 3rd Legion Commander as her mother.
"Poor kid."
From what she said, the 3rd Legion Commander was gone now, so I could roughly piece together the situation.
Pure speculation built on wild guesses, but if she'd lost her mother—no, the 3rd Legion Commander—and gone off the deep end like that?
Moreover, the streaming setup was a total mess.
The state of the walls, drinking rusty water straight from the tap.
You could tell at a glance it wasn't a normal situation.
Pity welled up in me.
Of course, that didn't make the sadistic urge to smack her upside the head disappear.
It just created this bizarre state where sadism and pity coexisted.
But in that delicate mix of emotions, her otherworldly appearance lent more weight to the pity than the sadism.
I pulled out my phone and checked my bank balance.
I'd just paid rent recently, so there wasn't much left, but I could afford a small donation.
I topped up 10,000 won and sent a donation. A notice appeared on screen that I'd donated,
and seeing it, Dayeon smiled brightly.
There wasn't any special donation reaction, but that alone was satisfying enough.
"Damn, if she just shut up and smiled like that, she'd be so pretty."
It was lamentable how all her antics kept her from even half her potential charm.
I even had delusions like, If I had that face...!
"...No, even then, a guy turning into a girl is a bit much."
I came back to my senses and refocused on the stream.
What should I call this feeling?
If she were next to me, I'd want to smack the top of her head hard, then cherish her,
then smack it again—these repetitive urges were a sensation I'd never felt in my 25 years of life.
I glanced at the viewer count.
A viewer like me checking the viewer count might seem odd, but the number right now was astonishing.
A stream that started recklessly without proper promo had hit 130 viewers on day two.
And that number.
If she hadn't cut about 20 viewers by singing that song midway, it would've been even higher.
I was certain.
If Dayeon didn't quit streaming out of disgust or stir up controversy, she could definitely make it big.
And if she could just fix that speech pattern and the forced low voice, I'd boldly predict she'd rank in the top three among girl cams.
"...Huh?"
The sound of a door lock from the stream.
With it, the front door opened, and in came Dayeon's sister from last time.
She was a bit far away and the cam was low quality, so it wasn't clear, but she looked utterly exhausted.
And then I heard,
-You look tired, Sister?
"Listen to that tone."
I'd already confirmed it in the previous VOD, but her speech made it seem like she looked down on everything in the world.
-There were especially troublesome customers today. Oh, were you streaming?
-Behold, Sister! The earnings this body made today!
Bragging earnings to her sister—what the hell?—but the words that followed were surprisingly heartwarming.
-If these donations keep coming, you won't have to endure all those insults and hardships anymore! I will make you happy, no matter what!
"Whoa, damn..."
Her tone was still bitchy as ever, but the content was purely kind.
Dayeon's sister seemed lost in thought upon hearing that, pondered for a moment, then approached the cam.
Her clothes were worn but cleanly laundered. She bowed politely toward the cam, greeting us.
-My little sister has caused you so much trouble. If you could just view her kindly, we'd be overjoyed. If she's made anyone uncomfortable, I'll make it up to you, so please be forgiving...
-Wh-what, Sister? No need to grovel like that...
-Abyss... no. Little sis. In this world, it's only proper common sense to be humble to those who give money.
"...Uh, you don't have to go that far."
This time, Dayeon and I agreed. If anything, her extreme humility was making things awkward.
I worried about how shattered her self-esteem must be.
That aside,
"The sister's seriously gorgeous too."
This whole family was out of spec.
If asked which one I preferred, it'd be the sister.
Not that Dayeon was lacking, but considering Dayeon's build, anyone who said she was their type deserved the death penalty—no words to say there.
"Anyway..."
It was about time for me to head to my part-time job, so I had to close the stream. I summed up today's impressions in one line.
It was definitely nowhere near "fun."
There wasn't any special content unique to Dayeon,
and she'd even abandoned midway the prison escape game she started to "prove her intelligence" because it wasn't fun.
She'd even directly begged for donations and massacred viewers with some inexplicable funeral dirge in return.
In other words, as a stream, it was so disastrous I couldn't even give it 2 out of 10.
But looking purely at the result.
"Guess I'll watch whenever I have time..."
Partly because of her beauty, but even setting that aside, there was an inexplicable charm.
Her actions were infuriating and made me want to whack her head, but they were attractive.
"...Hmm."
I moved my hand to the mouse to close the stream but ended up turning away while leaving it on.
Over a hundred viewers in just two days of streaming was impressive, but still.
Every single viewer counted right now.
Even if I wasn't actively watching, leaving the stream open would at least provide a tiny bit of support as totem viewer number one.
I put on my coat, left the house, and checked the community on my phone.
It had pulled so much aggro, and since I'd watched the stream because of it,
I figured there might still be talk about Dayeon's stream.
But the community was even more obsessed with her stream than I'd thought.
Especially since,
the inexplicable funeral dirge she'd sung midway had been clipped into a video and hit the popular posts.
The popular post had nearly 30,000 views, and the clip alone had 24,000 plays.
The reactions in the comments were refreshingly positive, considering the community was full of profanity.
"Oh..."
With reactions like this, the community would pay even more attention to Dayeon going forward.
I wasn't sure if community attention was good for streaming,
but she'd started in a way that inevitably drew it.
An unavoidable inevitability.
All I could do was hope she handled it well.
As Dayeon's day-one fan, I cheered her on.