Celebrity? Who, Me?
So. A... celebrity?
He had gone to sleep and woken to find the world turned upside down. Not that he had crossed over into Murim, nor that anyone had come here from Murim — nothing so dramatic as that. It was simply that the way people treated him had changed, a thing difficult to put into words. To start with the small stuff:
"Why in the world have I received this many texts?"
Roughly thirty messages had come flying in from Aso, the girl he'd given his number to. For all the frantic buzzing they'd made, they were, honestly, nothing much.
Well, that was about the whole of it. But Sky? Wasn't Sky simply the English word for the heavens above? Was she mocking him? Even as the thought crossed his mind, he concluded that Aso wouldn't do such a thing. The fact that only the last message looked respectful had to be his imagination... though maybe it wasn't. Hmm.
Speaking of which, what time was it... one o'clock? Quite a while had passed since he'd drifted off, then. Now that he was conscious of the hour, a strange hunger crept up on him.
"A day for something spicy, it seems."
Digging through the kitchen cupboard, what he turned up was Hot Chicken Stir-Fried Ramen, Pepperoni Pizza flavor. He vaguely remembered buying it at the market and stashing it away. A flavor of instant noodles he'd never once heard of — and yet one that stirred his curiosity. He knew roughly what the classic Hot Chicken tasted like, having eaten it often in another life. But pepperoni pizza? Had he bought it for no reason? Well, one had to taste a thing before judging it.
The instructions looked identical to the ordinary version. Whatever fancy flavor they claimed, at its root it was still Hot Chicken, wasn't it? He boiled the noodles fully done, drained them, folded in the sauce, gave it a thorough toss, and carried it to the table. The smell was unmistakably that of a tomato-based pasta.
"Tsss..."
Not bad, actually. The kind of thing he could live on if it showed up now and then. Though — mm — it was quite spicy, wasn't it?
"Haaah...!"
Not quite spicy. Very. Very spicy indeed. Come to think of it, he'd once heard that when your mouth was on fire, you were better off eating something frozen than water or milk. But would the freezer — no, the freezer compartment — happen to hold anything of the sort...
"A stroke of fortune."
One melon bar still remained in the freezer. He hurriedly tore off the wrapper and popped it into his mouth, and the cold sweetness soothed his still-blazing tongue. And now — what to do with himself. Back in the Murim days, he'd been bored so often. Wandering alone, lonely, with nothing to enjoy — it had been stifling, truly. And the kid he'd picked up along the way was stubborn as a rock. Well. It was what it was.
But was he going to sit here bored, of all places? Hardly. He'd been enjoying himself ever since he returned. In that spirit, he pulled up Aso's stream. Strange way to arrive at a conclusion, but still...
"It's fun, isn't it."
"KYYYAAAAHH!"
The moment Aso's stream loaded, there she was, shrieking a sound that conjured the memory of that loathsome spider's cry and bolting off somewhere at a dead run.
"Teach? Is that... actually you, Teach?"
The child had grown dimmer in the short while he hadn't been watching. Ah — no, she'd always been dim. But now even the viewers seemed to have lost their minds.
"Whoa! A celebrity's here!"
A celebrity? Were they speaking of him? What in the world was this...
"Teach, you're finally awak— KYAAAAAAAHHH!!!"
BeEEEEEEEP...
"Your ears... you certainly do scream at quite a volume."
He'd left the volume at its usual setting, and caught completely off guard by the sudden shriek, a ringing took up residence in his ears.
Aso's foolish reaction he could forgive — he could simply treat it as a replay he'd already seen. But the word celebrity was not so easily dismissed. Curiosity stirred. Just what on earth had happened?
"And so, the broadcast was switched on."
He opened his stream and settled back against the great oak tree atop the grassy hill of his Profile House, the one that shaded half the sky — and there came his viewers, scrambling up the slope in a mad rush.
Had he made a mistake in coming? His head was starting to ache... though what was done was done.
"Hostage, indeed."
As if he could ever be threatened by anyone. And even if he were, where on this hill would they find a carrot? Ah — he'd let himself get dragged into their nonsense.
"Ahem. I require an explanation."
They were in even more of a frenzy than usual. With a reaction this loud, he grew all the more certain something had happened. Yesterday's stream was surely the cause. From their perspective, the shock was understandable — but the scale of it far exceeded anything he'd anticipated, enough to leave him genuinely nonplussed.
"Celebrity, this, celebrity, that — I wake up from a nap to nothing but nonsense I cannot begin to parse."
Sky? Ideal type? Network television? Enough information had reached him to work with, and yet he could not make sense of it.
"Now, who was this Sky person again?"
"Fine. That does sound best."
He called up Wetube on the virtual screen, and there it was, gleaming at the very top of the trending videos — its thumbnail positively lurid:
"Sky's Ideal Type Found? And where, precisely, has my right to my own image gone?"
The mosaic-blurred figure in the thumbnail was him. Mosaic or no, that outfit, that build — anyone could tell it was him.
"Let us skip the unnecessary portions, shall we."
Even if you said so. She was pretty, certainly — but well. That lay in the realm of taste, or the lack of it, and no further.
"Ah. So here is where the trouble began."
Why on earth did an interview get shoehorned into the middle of a broadcast segment? And who asked anyone about ideal types? He wanted to say as much — but he knew it would be a hollow complaint.
"'Ideal type,' you say..."
What followed, on the screen, was the interview itself.
"Oh, you know how it is! Like — if the person were THIS type, I'd actually consider dating them!"
"I'm not sure I should be saying this on air."
"It's fine, it's fine!"
"Then honestly — there is exactly one person I'd call my ideal type."
"It's not like I'm the one who has to deal with the fallout anyway."
"Huh?"
What an infuriating woman. Whether she'd crafted that persona deliberately or was simply like this by nature, he couldn't say, but the way she'd ambushed the poor girl from behind was masterful.
"Well, since you've already confessed you have an ideal type — just tell us what he's like. Just a teeny, tiny bit."
"Th-then... first off! A man who's good at games!"
"Games? Retro or VR — one, two, three!"
"VR!"
"A man who's good at VR games — okay! And? What else?"
He'd noticed it every time he browsed clips — men who were genuinely good at games were fewer than one might think. Not that they couldn't play; they simply didn't try.
"What else? Oh — a man who's good with a sword?"
"Good with a sword... okay! And? Anything more?"
"MORE? How much more do you want me to say?"
"Just one more! Even rock-paper-scissors goes three rounds!"
"Fine, then... mm... someone who suits the snow."
"Snow? Eyes? The falling kind?"
"The falling kind."
"Ah — pretty garbage, you mean?"
He watched on in silence — and then, from the screen, came a voice ringing out like a cry of eureka.
"Oh! Found it?"
"What?"
And there it was, broadcast for all to see: himself, rolling about in a snowfield — and this Sky person making not the slightest move to deny it.
"So that is how this whole affair came to be."
"What exactly do you all imagine I get up to inside your heads? Step out of your fantasies, I beg you."
All he had done was satisfy his curiosity about the commotion and the news — how had it come to this?
An answer? It wasn't as though this were some courtship — they'd merely asked after her ideal type, and now they demanded his answer?
"Since I don't know who the woman is, that topic ends here."
"What kind of lives have you people lived, exactly..."
It had simply slipped out. Absolutely, positively not on purpose.