Is This Really Okay, South Korea?
The chat window glowed softly in the dim room. Talk | 19 viewers | 0:35:21. Thankfully, the unpaid slaves—no, the fan gallery mods’ little rebellion died down quickly. After all, someone had to do the job, and since the gallery was so small there wasn’t much to manage anyway, they eventually accepted it. Not that I’d said anything extra. They’d just talked themselves into it with some mental gymnastics.
“Anyway, I’m not planning to make any strict rules or anything. Just… please keep things within reasonable lines on your own…”
“If I say that, people usually start causing trouble… I probably shouldn’t say that out loud, right?”
Still, everything wrapped up without any real problems, so that was a relief.
“Then now…”
“I wasn’t about to ask what we should do next. I actually came prepared…”
It wasn’t a lie. I’d been getting ready for this ever since I decided I needed to make a fan cafe. And the name of today’s segment was…!
“One question, one answer! Ask Lene anything…! Wooooow…”
Clap clap clap. The sound of applause rang out.
“Umm…”
The reaction was colder than I expected. I thought everyone would like it…
“…Should we just skip it?”
The chat’s mood flipped in an instant. If I said I didn’t wonder which version of them to believe, I’d be lying. Still, I’d prepared so many answers already that I decided to just push forward. I opened my notepad, typed in “Question 1,” and waited for the chat to react.
The first one was about how far the questions could go.
“As long as it doesn’t obviously cross the line, I’ll answer as much as I can.”
The concept of a “line” was pretty vague, but I figured our viewers—er, the self-proclaimed Lene stans—would keep things reasonable on their own.
Starting with the basics seemed like a good idea. The chat began scrolling noticeably faster than usual.
“My real name is Selene. That’s why people around me call me Lene.”
I’d only said my name, but the chat was suddenly on fire. Was my age and name really that shocking? Foreign streamers aren’t exactly rare on the internet.
“I am… technically a foreigner, but my current nationality is Korean. And yes, it’s my real name…”
I think of myself as a native Korean, but the fact that I came from another world doesn’t change. Is it okay to call someone who lived in another dimension a foreigner…? I wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t exactly tell the whole truth.
“As for my family name… the girl who lives upstairs actually asked me once if my last name was ‘Sel.’ So I just went with that, hehe…”
The truth was I didn’t have parents, so I didn’t have a family name… but there was no need to bring that up. If you really wanted to split hairs, it wasn’t like I had no surname at all. The Church gave orphans family names too. But they didn’t really mean anything, so I never paid much attention to it.
“And my age… um. I’m twenty. My birthday’s coming up soon, so I’ll be twenty-one.”
“I’m not a college student. I only went to school up to middle school…”
The truth was I was sixteen, but… what could I do? The country decided to call me twenty. Why do they just randomly add years to someone’s age? Sure, there are a lot of convenient things that come with being an adult, but it still feels like I lost four years of my life. This was probably that shady bitch Iia’s fault too. What a horrible woman.
While I was talking, a question suddenly popped into my head.
“By the way, everyone. Doesn’t Korea not use the traditional age reckoning anymore…?”
Up until the moment I died in my previous life, Korea definitely used the traditional “Korean age” system. You were one the moment you were born, and everyone gained a year on New Year’s Day. So when I first returned to Earth and saw my ID, I naturally assumed I was twenty—nineteen in international age. But apparently not. Starting in 2023, the country began moving away from it. I didn’t bother looking up the exact reason because it was annoying, but that’s what happened. The moment I learned that, I actually wondered, Is this even Earth?
Of course, the other world used international age as a matter of course. The calendar was a little different, but the concepts of years and birthdays still existed. So when I first mentioned “Korean age,” Iia and the priests around her all laughed and said, “Does that mean you can turn two years older in a single day?” What jerks. There was no need to laugh at a clueless kid like that.
The chat was absolutely burning up. To think that just knowing about traditional age reckoning was enough to get you called an old person. South Korea. Is this really okay? I personally don’t think so…
“So anyway, we don’t use Korean age anymore…?”
It looked like even my previous-life self had reached the age where people would call me an old fart. My heart hurt…
“Then let’s wrap up this topic here. Any other questions…?”
I ignored the questions about my gender. I’d already said last time that I’d gloss over anything related to that. I didn’t want things to get complicated, and for my grand plan, this was the right move.
…That aside, these guys sure have a lot of questions about how I play New Dimension. Why do they think it’s just a concept? I really was an Inquisitor in that other world. Which means the Elun Church in New Dimension that I considered heretical really is heretical.
“I really am… um. No, I really am a priest. I know New Dimension is a game, but because I was a real priest, it kind of bothered me…”
“When someone says this much, isn’t it better to assume there’s a story behind it…? There must be a reason I can’t talk about it…. If I have to say something, I became a priest when I was extremely young due to special circumstances. Usually people are older than me…”
In the other world, you could be appointed a priest at fifteen, not twenty-four. Of course that was just the rule on paper. In practice you had to be over twenty. The youngest priest where I lived was twenty-five. In other words, at least a ten-year difference. Though if we’re talking about actual experience, I was their senior by far.
“And I’m not in a cult. If I were, I’d be trying to recruit you guys…. I’m not doing that, right? I don’t want to force my beliefs on anyone.”
If I were a cultist, then Christianity would be a cult too. No… well, from my perspective they kind of are. But Earth has its own way of looking at religion, so I don’t really care. What I truly hate are the ones who’ve gone even further off the path—actual heretics. Like the Elun Church in New Dimension, for example.
“No, those guys really are heretics, okay…? Listen, everyone. Do you actually believe in that god called Elun? No, right…? It’s just a game system, so you’re all self-proclaimed priests, self-proclaimed paladins, and self-proclaimed inquisitors, aren’t you…? I’m not forcing my beliefs on anyone, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for them to be heretics. You get it…?”
“…Is that so. Then ‘BabyWantsBoobaGimmeGimme’… I’ll be banning you for three minutes. Please repent and come back. …Though judging by your username, it looks like you need to repent on that first.”
No. But why were there so many people in chat trying to defend the heretics? I was sure there wasn’t a single heretic in my stream…. Hmm. I should check again later to see if any have slipped in. One of the things heretics were best at was infiltrating the Church and manipulating public opinion, after all.