My Friend Has Internet Friends

"I'm telling you, it's real? Do you have any idea how vicious that girl was back in school? I honestly thought after graduation she'd end up somewhere other than college. Kim Yi-seon's father really dodged a bullet there."

"Really? I haven't had many chances to see my mother-in-law, but I always thought she seemed so gentle..."

"Her? Ha! Where do you think Yi-seon got that personality of his, the way he throws himself headfirst into anything once he gets that look in his eyes?"

Something... something is happening.

The three mothers-in-law, who until a moment ago had been cranking up the tension like bombs of unknown detonation time, had vanished somewhere — and after a brief silence and a quiet round of hushed whispering among themselves, the room had suddenly transformed into this warm, cozy space ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of cheerful chitchat.

"Raising daughters turned out to be completely useless. Today, too, the moment I said I'd drop by for a quick visit, she dug in her heels and insisted I absolutely must not come. When on earth did she grow up like this?"

"You too? Honestly, once a man gets in their eyes, they stop seeing anything else."

"Our Min-ah used to be such a sweet, well-behaved child, but the moment Yi-seon is involved..."

On top of that, the very women who'd been subtly one-upping each other by praising their own daughters were now huddled together, cozy as could be, gossiping about them?

Unable to follow this rapid-fire development, I turned my head toward my girlfriends.

"...No idea."

Ye-eun had spoken for the group, but the other two wore much the same expression. Just like me, they were staring blankly at the scene with faces that said they understood absolutely nothing.

Look, I could understand Ye-eun's mother. It's not like Ye-eun's political savvy and social skills fell from the sky, and her mother is an social butterfly herself.

But the normally rigid career woman who was Min-ah's mother, and the cold-blooded businesswoman who was Seo-hee's mother too — them, melting down all soft and gooey like neighborhood aunties and making small talk?

That's a level of intimacy you'd struggle to find even between people who'd spent years building a friendship.

"Yi-seon, are you still standing? You can't do that when you're sick."

"That's right. A son-in-law needs his rest. Just wait a little — I only need to finish cleaning the room."

"I checked the medicine I brought with his agent, and it seems fine. Eat your porridge first, then take it. Dr. Jung, our family physician, is coming by shortly, so you'll get a proper examination too."

The three of them had apparently rushed through my get-well visit and bedside care — the whole original reason they'd gathered — just so they could get on with their conversation.

Not that they seemed annoyed about it, or trying to brush it off... but hold on. Weren't you three just competing over who got to nurse me? Why are you suddenly splitting up the work like a well-oiled machine?

I wanted to ask something, anything, but the mothers-in-law's relentless prodding to go lie down and rest left me no room to protest, and I obediently climbed back into bed.

Director Choi Hee-jung believed she understood modern public opinion and the currents of the internet quite well. In other words, she was much like the majority of middle-aged women who still privately insist, I haven't gotten old yet.

You can feel that old-fashioned streak right away in the fact that when she set out to gather information on Kim Yi-seon, her starting point wasn't just any online community — it was a fan cafe.

Anyway, she'd believed it then, too — the moment she first set foot in the cafe as an ordinary member under the username DaheeMom. (She may have thought she was being anonymous, but it's the worst possible username for anyone with even passing knowledge of Director Choi Hee-jung. She had used that exact handle on every site she joined since the birth of her first daughter, Han Da-hee.)

But the internet world she had engaged with until now — dispatching viral marketing teams, wrangling with site administrators over legal action — and the internet environment she now had to experience firsthand as one lone user were two entirely different animals.

Confusion, hatred, divide-and-conquer, conflict, vulgar language, and crude insults on top of it all.

She'd always known the internet was full of unpleasant people, but she'd never imagined there were so many humans with the intelligence and disposition of monkeys — no intellect to speak of, purely venting rage.

And it wasn't confined to the small confines of the cafe, either.

From the way they talked and what they wrote, they were nothing but wet-behind-the-ears little brats. And the outside communities these brats flocked to treated the fan cafes as retirement homes — gathering spots for the elderly, short on information and short on brains.

Worse, the very communities run by the brats making those remarks were full of people she'd considered serious cases even within the cafe — yet here they were, churning out filthy, base, malicious gossip and rumors toxic enough to reduce grown adults to that state.

Blood rushed to her head. How dare the likes of you insult 'us'?

At first she'd tried to brush it off — they were anonymous nobodies, after all — but after enough exposure, the fury kept boiling up no matter what. It had reached the point where she was ready to throw dignity to the wind and was seriously plotting how to deal with the trash littering both inside and outside these communities.

But there was a problem.

"Director. Fundamentally, that site operates on complete anonymity — many users don't even register an account before posting, which makes lawsuits and formal complaints difficult. Outright malicious rumors we could pursue, but simple insults of a milder degree..."

People who truly crossed the line, the Seoul Group's power could crack their skulls open on the spot. But the ones who danced just this side of the line — the ones who'd clearly done nothing else with their lives but this, toeing the edge of what was actionable while grinding her patience to dust — there was no way to touch them.

And even if she muzzled them with lawsuits, she doubted those vicious harridans would repent in their hearts. From her brief life online she had already learned that they would simply detour through VPNs and overseas sites.

It was a sense of defeat Choi Hee-jung hadn't felt in a long time. Must I, of all people, be insulted by these clownish imbeciles as a senile low-IQ fossil?

And then, at that moment, a hero of the troubled times appeared.

The member known as Yiseon's Aunt, who had appeared out of nowhere like a comet.

It was the era of COVID now. With offline events impossible, most club marketing and player-fan communication happened online.

As a result, in the various online activities so far — live streams, SNS events, and the like — the fan cafe had consistently lagged behind the outside communities in information, since those drew their strength from the younger fans who formed their core.

The cafe's sad lot was to always have to infiltrate the communities they despised just to scrape up information. And it was member Yiseon's Aunt who turned that situation on its head.

From then on, the insolent little brats of the outside communities had no choice but to quietly join the fan cafe and grind their member rank upward if they wanted to get their hands on cute Kim Yi-seon photos.

And then there was GeniusPitcherKimYiseon, a member who surfaced around the same time.

With impressive ingenuity, this member unraveled the tangled threads of overseas investigations — the kind that were near impossible to pursue without the victim's direct request, or that fell under offenses prosecutable only by complaint — and brought a whole crowd of malicious commenters and rumor-mongers to justice.

Not just the rumors about Kim Yi-seon himself, but the slander against ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Kim Yi-seon's girlfriend and his teammates too (for some reason, especially the smears against Kang Min-hyuk) were handled flawlessly — a contribution so decisive that the factional infighting inside the fan cafe vanished practically overnight.

And Director Choi Hee-jung, having watched all of this unfold...

What more was there to say? She threw money at it, just as she always did.

She held tournaments with prize pools. She had Kim Yi-seon merchandise produced — top quality at dirt-cheap prices, even at a loss — and sold it. She encouraged fan creation within the cafe and paid outside contractors to improve the site itself.

To any observer, she began spending money on the site as if she were the club's owner.

Though she would deny it, of course, her affection and fandom for Kim Yi-seon was certainly mixed in there — but that wasn't all of it.

"Hmph. At this point, even those bratty little whelps should have learned their lesson."

The other crucial source was a sense of belonging to the community. For Director Choi Hee-jung, who had started her internet life so late in it, the community's factionalism and camaraderie had... well, an addictiveness not unlike a drug.

It was only natural. In her real life she was used to those around her fawning over how remarkable she was — but never quite like this.

Not the complicated emotions of adult hypocrisy and flattery, of some vaguely healthy competitiveness and respect — but simple, raw envy, deference, and admiration.

It was a pleasure nearly impossible to escape.

And when these name-brand members rose one after another into the cafe's staff, and began building internet friendships with one another under the banner of managing the cafe together — that was the final, decisive blow. The community had become another world to them now.

Lee Ye-eun couldn't understand this situation, but she roughly grasped the flow of it.

That wasn't the surface-level smiling-and-getting-along of people pretending to be close. They were actually close. But how?

She — and Kang Min-ah, and Han Seo-hee besides — had worked so hard to keep those three from ever crossing paths. Forget meeting face to face; they'd barely even heard each other's voices.

Confusion dominated her mind, and she suppressed it as much as she could. Fine. Who cares about the reason, or how close they are. What mattered was that the mothers, who by all rights should have been at each other's throats, weren't fighting at all ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— they were having a pleasant chat.

If the atmosphere had softened up this nicely, that was a good thing.

"Good grief, Seo-hee — your boyfriend's running a fever and you didn't even buy the boy pajamas? What have you been doing? I wanted to at least have him change out of his sweat-soaked clothes, and there wasn't a single set of sleepwear to be found."

"...I'm sorry?"

"I came prepared, knowing this would happen. You can only rest properly if you're comfortable in what you sleep in."

"Uh... Mom? Will they even fit Yi-seon? He's enormous — most clothes don't fit him..."

"You think I'd have bought them without checking? They'll fit. Dress him."

"...How do you know Yi-seon's size, Mom? Even I don't really know it."

"Yiseon's Aunt from the fan cafe... No, never mind. There are ways of knowing everything."

Right. A good thing.

"And our daughter — are your studies going well?"

"Yes. I got a perfect score on the last mock exam, so the college entrance exam shouldn't be much trouble either."

"Good. Yi-seon will be moving to XX-dong soon, so you should aim for a university in southern Seoul to make the commute easy. You understand, don't you?"

"Yes. I'm planning on Seoul National University. With my current scores, comfortably so—

...Mom. How do you know where he's moving? He hasn't even told me or Ye-eun unnie yet?"

"DaheeMom told... no, never mind. I'm your fiancé's legal representative, after all. Of course I'd know."

Is this a good thing?

"And our daughter — how's the morning sickness treating you?"

"Not great. Honestly, I still have no appetite at all."

"Goodness, it must be bad because it's your first. Here — they say this works wonders for morning sickness. Take it regularly."

"Okay. ...Mom? Isn't this that drug that was only approved in the US and never made it into the country? How on earth did you get it?"

"DaheeMom got... I mean, a friend of Mom's got it for you. Someone you don't know."

"...You have friends I don't know about?"

"I might. Do you know everything about my life?"

Maybe not a good thing, then.

Why was it that all three of them kept offering pointed advice about nursing Kim Yi-seon and running the household, while a strange, nagging sense of wrongness kept creeping in? It was deeply suspicious.

And her mother had somehow gotten hold of that miraculous morning sickness medication — the one never officially released in Korea, blocked even from overseas shipping, nearly impossible to get unless a traveler smuggled it in — and claimed she received it from a friend Ye-eun didn't even know existed.

If she couldn't sense something off about all this, then she wouldn't be Lee Ye-eun. She'd be Kim Yi-seon.

"What's wrong? Are you feeling ill?"

But there wasn't much she could actually do about it. Whatever the reason, the three mothers were getting along beautifully without a single quarrel. For now, letting it slide was the best move.

"Um... Mother-in-law?"

"Yes?"

"Is something the matter, son-in-law?"

"Well... if you'd rather I not call you that, I won't."

"No, it's... I can change my own clothes, at least..."

"Oh, come on, Yi-seon. I bathed you yourself when you were little — what's a little thing like this? Sit still."

"That's right. If you're going to rest, delegate the small things and rest properly. You have three days left until training resumes, don't you?"

"If it's about recovering your condition, there are plenty of people who have their clothes, their baths, even their massages handled entirely by other hands. For someone who generates that kind of value, it's not luxury or indulgence — it's a sound investment. Kim Yi-seon, you need to shed that penny-pinching mindset and develop an executive's mentality."

"Uh... yes, ma'am."

Minor grievance as it was, Kim Yi-seon seemed to be treated even more like a baby than back when he and Kang Min-ah had locked themselves in a room together — but that was his cross to bear, not hers.

And so Lee Ye-eun resolved to understand nothing about this affair and simply swallow it whole.

"Thirty-six degrees... looks like the fever's completely broken now."

The voice of a mother-in-law, holding up a thermometer.

Ah — Ye-eun's mother, as of now.

I had no idea what exchanges and negotiations had taken place that day, but the three mothers-in-law, having reached a complete meeting of the minds, had carved time out of their busy schedules to devote themselves to my care.

Thanks to them, Ye-eun, the expectant mother, had been able to rest her body (though her mind looked thoroughly uncomfortable), and Min-ah, the exam student, could focus entirely on her studies. Seo-hee's work ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠efficiency had even improved, since she no longer dropped by to fuss over me and act spoiled at the expense of her job.

Since none of them could stay on standby forever, they took turns — at least one of them always remaining in this little studio apartment to nurse me — and it was a level of kindness that went past gratitude, past humble thanks, straight into guilt.

"Now then, shall our Yi-seon have something to eat?"

No, forget guilt — maybe pressure is the right word.

I was getting a very hands-on education in why newlywed couples find visits from the in-laws so uncomfortable. This is hell.

Even when I suggested, out of guilt at imposing so much on the three of them, that perhaps I shouldn't be left alone, they only ever said it was no trouble at all.

"And it's hardly a burden, is it? With all this, the cafe's gained new photos and stories... ahem, I mean, new memories to cherish."

When the mothers-in-law say things like that to put my mind at ease, it somehow makes me feel even worse.

Thankfully, this patient life of mine was nearly over. Honestly, with only three days, I'd worried I'd return to training in wrecked condition, but the cold broke far faster than expected. That family physician of Seo-hee's must really know his business — with the supplements and cold medicine he prescribed, I recovered like magic.

And with the guilt-inducing sickbed vigil over, and my long-yet-brief rest coming to an end, that meant it was time for me to prepare for the final stretch of the year.

The postseason. The most important games of all were waiting.