058. Calm Chat Stream on the Terrace
058. Calm Chat Stream on the Terrace
At last, the final question arrived.
【Drift AI】─I speak. I ask if you were an ordinary human in the parallel world.
【Hottie Licker】─lol the bitch seriously believed it. can't tell if she's naive or just stupid. lick.
【Se-hun Defense Force】─That's a question I wanted to ask too.
【BigGirl】─Didn't you say you don't believe it anymore, Defense Force?
【Se-hun Defense Force】─Honestly I don't buy the part about blinking and crossing over. But it also doesn't feel like Se-hun's lying.
【Yoho】─haha of course! the streamer's so honest he couldn't lie if he tried!
【Qkrnfl892】─Yoho you little shit chats so fucking irritatingly. lol
【Bubblegum Collector】─Wakyapya! wanna bash Yoho's head in!
【Gyejipsa】─Wakyapya! head!
Drift's question was whether I'd been an "ordinary human."
Before I answered that.
What even was ordinary.
I had to define that clearly first.
Because the standard for ordinary differed from person to person.
"Drift. What's your standard for ordinary, anyway?"
【Drift AI】─I speak. I reply that I have no particular standard of my own. I say that I will follow your standard.
"Hm..."
【Reformed Guburi】─Revived! answer already you piece of shit! why are you agonizing over this question?
【Min-ji】─I'm revived too... but why was I chat muted. T_T
【Dick Lover】─why are those bastards' mutes so short?
【Plum Tree】─right? should've fed them at least 10 minutes.
"Let me think for a bit first, then I'll answer."
【Drift AI】─I speak. I say that you may answer at your leisure.
I had no intention of giving a half-assed answer and calling it a night just because I was tired.
Drift was a viewer who had believed in me from start to finish, so I meant to answer with as much sincerity as I could muster.
‘An ordinary human, huh...’
I decided to follow this world's standard for ordinary.
The world I used to live in and this world had quite a lot of differences, after all.
The reversal of men's and women's roles.
The extremely low male-to-female ratio.
Even beyond those two things.
Because the social atmosphere, the systems, and so on were so markedly different that you couldn't simply dismiss it as a parallel world.
Especially, there were countless cases of people who existed in my previous world not existing in this one.
‘Well, that was probably because the gender ratio got wrecked.’
At any rate.
I began to retrace my memories, slowly comparing the two worlds.
For reference, I excluded elements that were hard for an ordinary person to encounter or that weren't visible on the surface of society.
Things like yokai, exorcists, and people from other worlds.
It was possible I simply hadn't noticed them.
Perhaps they could have existed in my previous world too.
*
*
*
I finished the comparison.
‘...Comparing them like this, it looked like the world I originally lived in was relatively less ordinary. In this world, students didn't break into brawls in broad daylight.’
A place where gangsters strutted brazenly through the city center at noon.
Where half the nation's male students were mad for fighting.
Where hot-blooded middle schoolers and high schoolers broke into street brawls.
And as long as no one died.
As long as lines weren't crossed, the cops would never, ever respond.
That was the world I had lived in.
In that world stained with violence.
I had once, for a time, been called the strongest fighter among all the nation's high school students.
‘Though more than half of those fights weren't because I wanted them, but because some crazy bastards kept ambushing me with bricks.’
As an aside.
After I got beaten by that weird transfer student.
No more bastards came to pick a fight with me.
After that, I graduated high school normally, made money with crypto normally, and went to the army and came back faster than most people.
Well, anyway.
Since I was once the best fighter among all the students in South Korea, I figured I could say I strayed slightly from ordinary.
"I don't think I was ordinary. Just a little."
【Drift AI】─I speak. I ask in what aspect you were not ordinary.
【Reformed Guburi】─Obviously you wouldn't be ordinary. how could you be ordinary with that face, fuck. lol
【Min-ji】─Drift, don't sneak in a second question now~ lol
"What aspect wasn't ordinary? It was just that my fighting ability was leaps and bounds above other people. Even as a middle schooler, I could beat multiple grown adults by myself."
【Reformed Guburi】─were you the main character in a delinquent fighting manhwa or something? lmao you really wanna die? lololol
【Hottie Licker】─Se-hun, just stop now. quit tacking on weird backstories to a parallel world that doesn't even exist. lol
【Drift AI】─I speak. I ask if you did not use something like psychic powers.
"What psychic powers, for fuck's sake. I didn't have anything else besides being good in a fight."
【Drift AI】─I speak. I say that then you were an ordinary human.
【Min-ji】─?? you keep answering Drift's questions, though. why? how come?
【Hottie Licker】─what was that bastard Drift expecting? lol lick!
【Reformed Guburi】─psychic powers lmaooo
【Se-hun Defense Force】─So Se-hun was just an ordinary human.
"No, Drift. Didn't you say I get to set the standard for ordinary? you wanna die? isn't this crazy little shit something else."
【Drift AI】─I ^^.
【Min-ji】─Don't you smile at me.
【Dick Lover】─Min-ji blew a fuse? lol
【Yoho】─I guess they're feeling deflated since there are no question chances left. ha
【Bubblegum Collector】─Wakyapya! how pathetic!
【Gyejipsa】─Wakyapya! tits!
"Anyway, that's the last of the questions. I should turn off the stream and go to sleep soon."
And with that, I resolved every single one of the viewers' curiosities.
Without missing a single person.
Having answered everything with sincerity, I felt oddly proud of myself.
【Min-ji】─I wanted to ask a question too...
【Qkrnfl892】─fuck, me too.
【Bubblegum Collector】─Wabakyabakpya!
That was it for today's stream.
***
I grabbed the camera and came up to the second floor.
I hadn't ended the broadcast yet.
Before ending it.
Guburi had suddenly said she was curious about what I looked like in my school days, so I'd agreed to show her my graduation album real quick.
I just planned to show this and then end it.
"Ah. Here it is."
I pulled the graduation album off the bookshelf.
It was the album from the place my counterpart in this world had attended, "Pink Dream Boys' High School."
I should add that it was a different school from my previous world.
Because the world was different, so my alma mater was different too.
But the scruffy long hair I'd stubbornly kept throughout my school days was exactly the same.
In my previous world, I'd shed this hair when I went to the army; in this one, I'd just shaved it for no reason as soon as I became an adult.
Anyway.
I immediately showed the viewers my graduation photo.
【Reformed Guburi】─?? what? that's Gye Bastard-hun?
【Yoho】─Gasp. you were wearing a mop on your head!
【Hottie Licker】─lol I can't even see your eyes through the hair? lick! still handsome though! slurp! lick! slobber! smack smack!!!
【Reformed Guburi】─cut it out you fucking filthy bitch.
【Min-ji】─wow. how does he still look handsome with half his face covered?
【Plum Tree】─A handsome man stays handsome even when covered up, that's the law.
【Se-hun Defense Force】─for real, you can't even see his eyes but he's handsome. lol
【Qkrnfl892】─kinda like those gloomy guy types you see in manga. lol
【Drift AI】─I speak. I ask if you, Qkrnfl892, look at things like that.
【Qkrnfl892】─nope I don't look at Hentai.
【Dick Lover】─he's definitely handsome but the image is so different. I see men are heavily affected by hairstyle too.
【BigGirl】─Se-hun can even pull off a hairstyle like that. whoa
【Bubblegum Collector】─Wakyapya! his hair got carried by his face!
【Gyejipsa】─slurp! lick!
【Bubblegum Collector】─?
The viewers' reviews weren't bad.
Though now that I looked at it again, to my eyes it seemed pretty shabby.
‘When I looked in the mirror back then, I thought it was okay. Did my eye for things change a little as I got older?’
Well, it didn't matter.
I had no intention of ever growing my hair out that long again anyway.
"That do it? I'm going to sleep now?"
【Bubblegum Collector】─Wakyapya! you turning the stream on tomorrow too?
【Reformed Guburi】─feels like a shame to end. let's do a sleep stream just once.
『The broadcast has ended.』
I'd shown what I needed to show, so I ended the broadcast.
I put the graduation album back on the bookshelf.
And after just brushing my teeth and washing my face, I moved to the main bedroom on the second floor and let my body fall onto the bed.
Closing my eyes, I thought about my upcoming schedule.
‘Tomorrow, I'd do a casual chat stream like today... and I needed to deal with all the overdue promises either this week or next week.’
There were three overdue promises in total.
The Neotuber Cheerful Namsu and his little sister Nam Hyeon-ji.
Eight-Nine-Two and her mother, the police chief.
The mother and daughter next door I'd gotten connected with during the hiking stream.
I'd made meal plans with all those people, but I'd been putting them off with all sorts of excuses.
Because I'd thought they were just empty words, promises in name only.
But perhaps I was the only one who thought that, because they'd been steadily messaging me asking when I was free.
So I planned to get them all done in one go, as soon as possible.
Partly to also develop a bit of social skills by meeting a variety of people.
‘The next-door neighbor was closest, so should I start by making plans with them?’
Right then,
while I was debating whether to roughly decide the order now, or just sleep and decide properly tomorrow.
BAM!
［I'm here!］
Gomdori came barging in, noisily flinging the bedroom door open.
"What? Why'd you come?"
［You said earlier we'd talk separately? so I came!］
"Ah. Did I? Never mind, just go."
［...］
"What are you doing? I said go to your room."
［I want to sleep together today.］
"Get the hell out."
［...I will sleep together!］
Gomdori launched its body onto the bed beside me.
And slipped right under the covers.
"...Haah."
［It's warm!］
I was tired, so I decided to just ignore her and sleep.
Since even if I kicked her out, she'd probably sneak back in anyway.
So another day peacefully drew to a close.
***
The next day, at noon.
Around the time Gye Se-hun was doing a chat stream at home.
Not far away downtown, a young man had snatched a middle-aged woman's phone and was rifling through her photo gallery.
His brow was furrowed in anger.
"I, I really didn't take any..."
The middle-aged woman was on the verge of tears, protesting her innocence.
She was precisely the woman who lived next door to Gye Se-hun.
"I really didn't take any..."
The man hesitated for a moment at the sight.
Because the middle-aged woman didn't look like she was acting.
"...We'll know once I check."
The man, with a sour expression, started checking the photo gallery again.
The sequence of events was as follows.
While the man was walking along the street.
He heard the sound of a photo being taken right behind him and turned around.
There he saw a middle-aged woman holding her phone and fidgeting anxiously.
The phone had been aimed exactly at the man.
Concluding that he'd been surreptitiously photographed, the man had snatched the middle-aged woman's phone.
"What... you really didn't take any. The recent photos are all just stones..."
"I told you... I really didn't take any. I was just taking a picture of a stone lying on the ground because it had a curious shape."
Just as the woman had said.
No matter how hard he searched, he couldn't find a single photo of himself taken by her.
"No, well, that's why you shouldn't take pictures right behind someone, making them misunderstand. And the phone was pointed at me, and you were fidgeting there for no reason, so I couldn't help but be suspicious. Anyway, um, I'm sorry about that..."
The man returned the phone to the middle-aged woman and apologized.
Just then.
From far off, a young woman came running up, gasping for breath, and shouted in a sharp, ringing voice.
"Mom! What's going on!?"
It was the middle-aged woman's daughter.
***
"Oh dear, I'm so sorry... My daughter has such a fiery temper... Yuna, you apologize more properly too!"
"I'm sorry..."
The middle-aged woman, along with her daughter, offered another apology to the man.
Because the daughter had, without warning, grabbed the man by the collar and cursed at him.
But the middle-aged woman had instead scolded her own daughter, saying it was a situation where the man had no choice but to misunderstand.
"...Mom. But is your arm okay?"
"It's fine, don't worry."
The middle-aged woman had a bruise on her arm.
The spot where the man had grabbed her when he snatched the phone.
‘No way. That was a bruise from being grabbed so lightly... She had seemed abnormally weak for a woman, but it was not only her strength. Her entire body was as frail as paper.’
The more he looked at the bruise.
The man felt increasingly guilty toward the woman.
That was when the middle-aged woman spoke.
She said she wanted to apologize more properly for her daughter’s mistake and invite him to her home for a meal sometime.
It was an offer the man couldn't refuse.
Under normal circumstances.
He would have firmly declined, saying he would gratefully accept the sentiment, but the man himself was also in the wrong toward the middle-aged woman.
Feeling guilty himself, he couldn't bring himself to reject her coldly.
‘One meal should not be a problem. They did not seem dangerous or malicious, and strangely, both were even weaker than me, a man.’
In the end, the man accepted the dinner invitation.
‘But... they were supposed to be mother and daughter, yet they did not seem to share a single thing, whether in personality or appearance.’
The man looked back and forth between the mother and daughter with suspicious eyes.
But that only lasted a moment.
‘Maybe she was not the biological daughter? It was not that important, so I'd just ignore it. As long as she was pretty, that was all that mattered.’
Without thinking much of it, he swiftly dismissed his suspicion.
*
*
*
After exchanging contact information with the man.
The mother and daughter turned around and started talking as they walked away.
Deliberately loud enough for the man to overhear.
"Yuna. When we treat that young man to a meal later, you apologize properly again. Got it?"
"Yeah..."
"And if you get the chance, try to make a good impression. Did you see how he admitted his mistake right away, so un-manly? He really seemed like a decent person."
"Forget it..."
"What do you mean forget it! Don't you know how hard it is to find a man like that these days?"
"..."
The daughter was hanging her head, face pale.
And the middle-aged woman had torn the corners of her lips up abnormally wide, wearing a grotesque and chilling smile.