Second Life
My second life.
A corporate streamer.
The position every internet broadcaster dreams of.
But as with all things the world envies, only a chosen handful are ever allowed to claim that seat.
Most streamers thrash and claw for all they're worth, only to bounce from one tiny channel to the next until, one day, they vanish without a sound. That is simply the way of the streaming world.
And I, too, was nothing more than a no-name VTuber twisting myself into knots so the great current of that world wouldn't sweep me away.
Sob sob. Being a small fry is so unfair.
"—So today's content is a classic masterpiece of a side-scrolling action game: Caveman's Rock: No-Miss Clear."
"Whoa whoa, everyone, calm down. Caveman's Rock is a famous masterpiece. Please don't trash it."
"Everyone, I brought this for a reason. Trust me and stick around, okay?"
In an instant, the viewer count I had sweat blood to gather began to bleed away.
125.
116.
97.
Sob sob. Being a small fry is so unfair.
Still, once a woman of her word has spoken, how could she possibly take it back?
In the end I finished the content I had prepared for the day through sheer superhuman focus.
Total playtime: 17 hours and 52 minutes.
The original plan, Caveman's Rock, I had cleared in no time at all. The problem was that I had cleared it so fast I went and declared a no-miss clear challenge on the spot.
Unlike a regular clear, a no-miss run turned out to be far harder than expected, and I ended up burning nearly eighteen hours on it.
At least today was an off-day for the agency. Small mercies.
"Oh my, look at the time already."
I glanced at my phone.
Missed Calls 99+
Coconuttalk 99+
"Oh my my."
I had no idea what was going on, but it looked like something had gone terribly wrong.
I forced my heart—pounding hard enough to give me cardiac failure—to calm down and dialed the most recent missed call.
"Hey. Seo Da-young! You didn't forget that the celebration party is today at seven, did you!?"
"...Oh crap."
"You absolute lunatic! This is the party celebrating your first-ever lead role breaking ten million viewers, and you forgot!?"
Are you even conscious right now!!
Listening to the voice on the other end of the line, I calmly checked the time.
6:45 p.m.
Yeah.
I was screwed.
"Congratulations. She's a beautiful little princess who looks just like her mother."
That was the first thing I heard after I reincarnated.
Looking back on it now, it was an almost comically straightforward world-building dump.
With that single sentence I learned I had been born in Korea again, that I had reincarnated, and that this time I had been born a girl.
Honestly, it was the kind of opening line you could drop straight into a web novel and no one would bat an eye.
And so Seo Da-young was born.
Seo Da-young was a quiet child who never needed much looking after.
Well, when you're already on your second life, being a high-maintenance kid would have been the strange part.
On top of that, the guilt of knowing that the first daughter my parents had been blessed with was actually some foreign soul closer to a mother, father, or older sibling than a real child made me grow up as the good kid who always listened to Mom and Dad.
Whatever my parents wanted, I learned to say yes. A yes-man—no, a yes-woman. And the result of living that way was this:
"Tada! Da-young! Mommy got you an audition for a child actress role! You're happy too, right?"
"...Yeah! Mom's the best!"
Seo Da-young, age six.
And that was how I began walking the path of a child actress.