Strange Premonition (3)
Time moves fast.
And internet streaming time moves even faster.
Ten years ago, Nari had blown up with her review content on Blood Garden, and from that point on she had stepped fully onto the path of a professional internet broadcaster.
A decade was no short stretch of years.
She had left Netstpot, the platform where she first debuted, and nestled into Metube instead. Her nickname, too, had been swapped out — from the simple "Nari" to Movie Nari, something that actually sounded like a specialist movie-and-drama reviewer.
Channel subscribers past one hundred thousand. Then past three hundred thousand. All the way past five hundred thousand.
There had been a time when just the fact of having climbed into the ranks of big-corp Metubers was enough to make her chest swell with pride.
But her glory had not lasted forever.
Watching the Metube live chat climb noisily up the right side of the screen, Nari fixed a commercial smile at the corners of her mouth.
"Hello, everyone~! This is Movie Nari! Did you all eat well this evening? Bang-on, bang-on~!"
The familiar greeting, pitched high in her broadcast tone, came tumbling out through her lips without a hitch.
Going live without missing a single day had taught her how to force the tension up even when her soul had already clocked out.
"Alright, everyone! You've all heard the news, right? The content we're watching together today is — the early-release making-of film for the brand-new one-act drama project that OTT platform COOKI has been ambitiously putting together! Waaaah—!"
She clapped for herself in celebration, but the chat's reaction was ice-cold.
Watching the not-quite-hate comments skim past, Nari clicked her tongue quietly to herself.
…They're not wrong.
She might have climbed into big-corp territory, but recently Movie Nari's channel views had been drawing a gentle curve into a plateau.
To get chosen by the algorithm, she needed some massive, breakout content that could seize the public's attention in a single stroke.
Sadly, nothing like that existed.
The most promising thing she could pin her hopes on was a giant blockbuster film starring Gang Si-woo — the same Gang Si-woo who had once brought her fortune — but even that hadn't started its proper promotional push yet.
Lately the movie-and-drama scene had been barren of anything worth watching. Painfully so.
Even today she was wringing out forced hype, gushing that she was "so excited," just to keep the stream from dying — but the truth was, Nari herself felt no anticipation for this one-act drama project at all.
Just hit a hundred thousand views. Please.
COOKI had parked a star-tier actor like Gang Si-woo in the judge's seat and even early-released a making-of film, throwing real weight behind the thing — but to someone who had spent years grinding as a movie-specialist Metuber, the odds of this project succeeding looked vanishingly low.
A minor genre. Short episode count. Casting weighted toward newcomers. The perfect three-piece set for getting ignored by the public.
"Aww, come on, everyone — Gang Si-woo is personally sitting as a judge for this audition! It's Gang Si-woo. Basic entertainment value is guaranteed, right?"
Nari played dumb toward the broadcast screen and fanned the chat's embers.
"Alright! Everyone's reactions are a little bland~, but let's see what COOKI's ambitious making-of film is actually like! Watching it together right now! Clicking!"
Inside, Nari resigned herself with a quiet today's video angle is also dead — but she never dropped the industrial-grade smile as she hovered the mouse cursor over the play button and pressed it without hesitation.
The moment the video started, the full monitor filled with a wide shot of the audition hall — and right with it, a tight close-up of Gang Si-woo's face, seated in the judges' section.
"Whew, that's Gang Si-woo for you. That face alone is national-treasure tier, right?"
While Nari and her viewers chewed, tore, and savored Gang Si-woo's visuals, the screen moved on to the performances of the newcomer contestants entering the audition hall.
But as expected, the audition content itself was… middling.
It wasn't that they couldn't act. It just didn't have the kind of dramatic impact that could seize a viewer's eyes in a single beat.
As boredom set in and the chat's scroll speed slowed to a crawl, Nari broke into a cold sweat and scrambled to haul her energy back up.
"Ah, everyone! By the way, you all know, right? Actor Gang Si-woo has been absolutely killing it lately! He's shooting a giant blockbuster film right now, and whew~ isn't that something to look forward to?"
Nari pivoted hard into Gang Si-woo gossip, trying somehow to paper over the video's dull stretch.
But Metube viewers with sharp instincts were never going to miss that.
Ah, for real…
Crying on the inside, Nari clawed at her hair.
At this quality, even if she uploaded an edited version to Metube, hitting a hundred thousand views was a fantasy — she wasn't even sure she'd clear fifty thousand.
She was deep in regret, thinking she should have just taken the day off instead of streaming, when it happened.
The dull performances of the applicants finally passed, the screen cut, and a staff member in the audition hall called the next contestant's name.
Waiting Number 14 — [BEEP—!]
The contestant's name was muted out with a beep — and at the same instant, Gang Si-woo's eyes on the monitor went round and wide.
His whole upper body snapped upright. That dazed expression on Gang Si-woo's face. And then, captured by the camera: the face of the woman with contestant number fourteen.
In that moment, Movie Nari's Metube live chat began flooding with hooks and question marks.
"…Huh? No way…. For real?"
Nari froze solid for a beat. Then, just like Gang Si-woo, her eyes went round as coins and her upper body shot up out of her chair.
When a few viewers who hadn't recognized Kim Chae-eun started firing questions, Nari rubbed the goosebumps rising on her forearms and opened her mouth in a trembling voice.
How could she ever forget?
This was one of the clear number-one contributors who had put Nari in the seat she occupied now.
And someone she had thought, ever since that day ten years ago, she would never see again….
"E-everyone… that person… is Kim Chae-eun!! Kim Chae-eun!!"
Still, this was a channel about movies and dramas — roughly half the viewers seemed to have recognized her.
For the ones who still didn't get it, Nari explained again who Kim Chae-eun was.
"She's the child actress who played Yoo Da-hye in Blood Garden ten years ago… that Kim Chae-eun!"
For a beat the chat froze as if it had lagged out.
And then, the very next second, the chat window detonated.
Looking at Kim Chae-eun standing under the camera lights, Nari couldn't close her mouth.
The woman on screen was nothing like the seven-year-old child in her memory.
That little girl she had only ever remembered as a pale, fragile scrap of a kid ten years ago — now fully grown into an adult.
The baby fat, the cute roundness, all of it gone. Dark blue-black hair, skin white as jade, a cool beauty with a haughty air.
Ten years had been enough time for a green broadcaster on Netstpot to climb into big-corp Metuber status with half a million subscribers — and enough time for the child actress from the work that had made her a full-time streamer to come back as a goddess.
It was the kind of insane visual that made you almost resentful, wondering where she had been and what she had been doing all this time before finally showing up.
"Insane, this is insane! Everyone — Kim Chae-eun coming back after ten years is already huge, but the judge just happens to be Gang Si-woo?! Both of them are child-actor alumni from the Blood Garden generation!"
"I actually remember that, you know? At the child-actor awards ten years ago, Kim Chae-eun and Seo Da-young both announced their retirement and disappeared — and I was the one who covered it live! I was so young, and the shock hit me so hard…. And now — of all things — she just pops out after ten years?! At an audition where Gang Si-woo is sitting as a judge?!"
Nari was so worked up she had completely forgotten they were supposed to be watching a making-of film.
She was still riding that high, trying to keep talking as she stared at the screen — and right then, on the monitor, Kim Chae-eun's performance began.
"Huh…?"
The moment the Kim Chae-eun on screen let out a deep breath, she seized not only the air in the audition hall but the breath of every single viewer watching Nari's stream.
No exaggerated lines. No wailing high volume. Just a shallow breath and a single look of resignation — and the entire audition space transformed into a perfect hospital window-side. Overwhelming acting.
Silence.
The Metube chat that had been screaming with spam stopped dead, as if someone had flipped a switch.
Nari herself forgot even to breathe, staring blankly into Kim Chae-eun's eyes on the monitor.
"…That's all."
The second Kim Chae-eun's performance ended, Nari gasped out the breath she had been holding and clutched at her own chest.
"Wow…. That was actually insane…. I have chills…."
The reaction was explosive. Nari steadied the pounding in her chest and moved her mouse cursor up over the video progress bar.
It wasn't a conscious decision so much as pure ten-year movie-reviewer instinct.
Pausing the screen and tearing apart the facial acting and breath control Kim Chae-eun had just shown, analyzing the performance beat by beat — that was Movie Nari's channel's biggest trademark and greatest strength.
But.
Nari's finger, resting on the progress bar, stopped cold.
"…Huh?"
She doubted her own eyes.
"What is this?"
"No. Everyone. It's not that…."
Just now, Kim Chae-eun's entrance had been the beginning and the end of this making-of film — the ultimate highlight, the climax.
It had to be.
There was no bigger talking point than the card of a legendary child actress returning after ten years.
"Why is half the video still left?"
And yet the video progress bar glowing red along the bottom of the screen had only just reached somewhere near the halfway mark.