017. Strategic Temporary Break
017. Strategic Temporary Break
The mouse-gray woman knew my name.
However, I did not know her.
Was she someone connected to me in this world?
I tried to dredge up the memory.
But once again, my head only prickled and nothing surfaced.
As the woman and I stared at each other for several seconds, the examiner wedged herself between us and spoke.
"Were you two acquainted?"
Both of us were silent.
Then, abruptly, I remembered the fact that I had appeared on Cheerful Namsu's broadcast.
‘Ah. Maybe she was just a viewer who saw the broadcast.’
I was about to ask carefully, so as not to embarrass her, just then.
The woman spoke first.
"Uh-uh... Ah...! Y-you're the streamer, right...? I'm a fan!"
"...Thank you."
My guess was right.
She had simply seen the broadcast and knew my name.
The examiner, having heard the woman's words, stared right at me and asked.
"A stream? You're a streamer?"
"Ah, yes. I just do it as a hobby."
"Really? I thought so! I could tell just by looking you weren't an ordinary person, you were a celebrity!"
The examiner's eyes shone with admiration.
It felt a little burdensome.
I wasn't a celebrity, I really was an ordinary person...
A high-profile Male Cam Streamer might get treated like a semi-celebrity, but I was a small-time streamer among small-time streamers with a viewer count of three.
‘More than that, it was fascinating. How did I run into someone who saw that video here?’
Come to think of it.
It was surprising, but not impossible.
‘...Well, since so many people saw the video, I guessed it was plausible to encounter at least one of them like this?’
When I checked the video briefly that morning.
I saw the view count was pushing close to a whopping 500,000.
A population of 500,000 was by no means small.
Especially in a tiny patch of land like the Republic of Korea.
Running into one of them by chance was a perfectly plausible occurrence.
‘But her reaction was a bit off.’
I glanced sideways at the mouse-gray woman.
Did she have something she wanted to say?
She just fidgeted and kept pursing her lips.
All while gauging my reaction.
‘I understood being surprised after meeting someone you saw in a video in real life... but she seemed more anxious than happy.’
I was curious, but I decided not to ask.
She must have her personal reasons.
***
The road test was Course B.
I drove on the way there, and the mouse-gray woman would drive on the way back.
The test went smoothly.
Thanks to my service as a driver back in my previous world.
Of course, Course B being the easiest course also played a part.
It was less than five minutes after the drive began.
The examiner, who had been sitting stiffly and constantly monitoring the road ahead and me, let out a deep sigh of relief and relaxed her body comfortably.
"You're an amazing driver. You're the best among all the men I've ever supervised!"
The examiner grinned as she spoke.
She had apparently been tense.
With good reason.
Most test-takers were probably bad drivers.
Since you never knew when or how an accident would happen, the profession of an examiner rightly required constantly holding onto a thread of tension.
"To be honest, when I evaluate male candidates, I'm usually about five times more nervous than usual... but I think I can relax my guard a little with you, Mr. Se-hun."
"Yeah... Thank you."
"Honestly, you know? It's true that men are horrendous at driving, right? It's funny for me to say this as a female examiner, but doing this job, you can't help but develop that kind of prejudice. A man who came in for his test yesterday even confused the brake and the pedal, can you imagine?"
"..."
The examiner sitting in the passenger seat kept prattling on.
I responded with occasional agreement or an awkward laugh.
I didn't really sympathize.
It was because I hadn't yet perfectly adapted to this side of the world.
‘But a bastard who mixed up the brake and the pedal was just a moron regardless of gender, wasn't he?’
Now that I heard it.
Thankfully, she said he was failed on the spot.
That was a relief.
Putting a license in the hands of a guy like that was the same as cultivating a killer on the road.
"And also! The other man last time, you see..."
The examiner's chatter continued until we arrived at the destination.
She seemed to have a lot pent up.
***
I finished the test safely.
I moved to the back seat, and now the mouse-gray woman was taking the road test.
For reference, the woman's name was 'Ju So-yeon'.
I learned it from listening to the conversation between the examiner and the woman.
"Ms. So-yeon, what do you do for a living?"
"Ah. I teach kids at a school."
"Oh, really? You're a teacher! It's not easy to become a public servant these days, you're remarkable at such a young age!"
"Haha... I'm not that young."
"What subject are you in charge of?"
"...Moral education."
"Moral education! I thought so! I thought your impression looked very kind!"
The examiner still talked a lot.
The thread of tension had apparently snapped a long while ago.
Of course, it could also be that Ju So-yeon was a woman and a skilled driver.
‘But the more I looked at her, the more impressive she was. How did her mouth not get a single rest...’
The examiner's chatter only came to an end after we returned to the test center.
I thought my ears were going to burst and kill me.
The test result was a pass, naturally.
Ju So-yeon, who took the test with me, probably passed too.
Now that the test was over, I was about to head home, just then.
"Excuse me..."
Ju So-yeon called out to me with a trembling voice.
Her expression was full of tension.
"Yes? What is it?"
"Ah. I'm not trying to get your number, so you don't have to be on guard! I know my place too, I wouldn't cross the line!"
I didn't know what she was talking about.
I wasn't particularly on guard...
She seemed to have fallen into a persecution complex by herself.
Ju So-yeon spoke again in a voice that was practically crawling away.
"...Would it be okay if I asked you just one thing?"
"What is it?"
"That... You didn't quit streaming, did you...?"
"Excuse me?"
Was this person also someone who searched for my streams?
That thought flashed through my mind for a moment.
There was no way that kind of question would come up otherwise.
She must have thought I quit because nothing came up no matter how much she searched for two days.
I decided to answer her for now.
"No. I didn't quit."
"Really?"
Ju So-yeon's face brightened.
She had worn a sullen expression from the moment we met, and she finally looked like a person now.
"Th-then when are you turning on the stream?"
"I'm planning to start again from tomorrow."
"What a relief... You took a day off yesterday and the day before without any notice, so I just thought you had quit for good..."
Ju So-yeon hastily clamped a hand over her mouth.
And after gauging my reaction, she suddenly started sprinting away at full speed.
"P-please make sure to turn it on tomorrow!"
Leaving those words behind.
***
The next day, afternoon.
I ended my break and turned on the stream.
【Yoho】─Gasp! You're finally here! I believed the streamer would return T_T
The moment it started, Yoho came in.
I got goosebumps for a second.
What, was she just on standby all the time or something?
...Well, common sense said there was no way that was the case.
She must have been looking at her phone by coincidence when the notification went out.
Ten minutes after Yoho came in.
【Reformed Guburi】─Gye Taesun is back!!! You motherfucker, if you're going to take a break, at least give us a notice!!!
Guburi came in,
【Hottie Licker】─[Lick emoticon]
And following that, Hottie Licker came in too.
With that, all the existing viewers were gathered.
‘Hottie wasn't a Fixed Viewer but the first time she came in, though I had a feeling she'd keep coming.’
I concisely explained to the viewers the reason I had taken a break.
And then I fell into a moment of silent musing.
While carefully looking at the viewer list.
‘...No matter how much I thought about it, I thought I was right.’
From last evening until this morning.
I kept thinking about Ju So-yeon.
She knew about the fact that I had taken a break.
At first, I thought it was simply a guess.
But Ju So-yeon...
「You took a day off yesterday and the day before without any notice, so I just thought you had quit for good...」
That was definitely what she had said.
That meant it wasn't a guess.
She knew precisely that I had been on a two-day break.
‘How would a viewer who saw the Neotube video know how many days I had taken a break? That made no sense.’
If even that had been a guess.
She would have asked something like.
Did you happen to take a break yesterday and the day before?
That kind of question. So what I could deduce here was that Ju So-yeon was not someone who found out about me through Neotube.
Then how did Ju So-yeon know about me?
The conclusion was easily reached with a bit of thought.
‘What I was thinking right then made even less sense in terms of probability... but this was the only answer.’
Ju So-yeon fled in a hurry, displaying a suspicious reaction as if she had made a slip of the tongue and gotten something found out.
It felt as if she was reluctant to have her identity revealed.
Why? The reason was simple.
Because she was embarrassed.
In reality, she was a moral education teacher, but on the internet, she went around doing things that violated morality.
With that much thought, it wasn't hard to guess who Ju So-yeon was.
Someone who wasn't a Neotube viewer, but knew my stream.
Someone who committed shameful acts on the internet.
Because those kinds of people were gathered right then in one place, right there.
【Reformed Guburi】─Why did you suddenly go quiet again, you fucking son-of-a-bitch sex man!
【Yoho】─Streamer. Do you have some kind of worry? Is it because of that Male Supremacy Group? Shall I resolve it for you?
【Hottie Licker】─Lol dick supremacy group. Ptooey.
It was certain.
Among these three viewers of my stream, there was a moral teacher.