Conservative Regulations

"Wah! Fuck! You scared me!"

A piercing jingle exploded ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠through the speakers. A sound that had no business existing burst out of nowhere, and I jumped so hard a curse I never used came flying out of my mouth.

"Wh-what?"

I pressed a hand to my chest, waited for my heart to climb down out of my throat, and checked the system window. Something had clearly gone off, but I'd been too startled to actually read it.

"...Huh?"

Did I read that wrong?

"Holy. Insane."

I'd read it right. Three million won. Someone I didn't even know had just hurled a fortune at me.

Honestly, stacked against what I had, it wasn't that staggering a sum. That didn't mean my sense of money had gone missing. Three million won was five months of my living expenses — not a small amount, and far too much for a single donation. It had to be a mistake.

I wasn't even someone who'd been streaming regularly. I'd just flipped on a test broadcast. Who donates three million won to that? I should have gone private. I never even thought a viewer would show up. The stream title was a single period. Who would wander in and throw money at a dot?

Well. I'd have to refund it.

Tricky had a refund system. You couldn't get the ten-percent fee back, but that couldn't be helped. It was their mistake. No reason I should eat that cost. I looked at the nickname on the system window and opened my mouth.

"Nellka? This looks like it was sent by mistake, so I'll refund it. Since it was your mistake, I'm afraid I can't return the fee."

I clicked the refund button, and a window popped up confirming the request had gone through normally.

The fee alone was three hundred thousand won. One mistake, and three hundred thousand won gone. The only one laughing at this was the Tricky platform sitting in the middle. That Nellka person would be sick to their stomach, and I felt plenty uncomfortable myself.

Three hundred thousand won. With that money I could buy a month and a half of chicken breast. What a waste. I turn on a test stream for no reason and now I just feel weird.

I should shut it down. I'd checked everything I needed to, and who knew if something like this would happen ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠again if I kept going. It definitely wasn't a common occurrence. But now that it had happened to me, I didn't want to leave the stream running. Saying a word before I left wouldn't hurt.

"Um, Nellka? Don't feel too bad. When something bad happens, something good will come along too."

I had no idea if that was any comfort. Not being able to see the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠other person's face was frustrating. It would have been nice to know what this Nellka person was thinking.

Ah. There was a chat window. I'd forgotten the single most important part of a stream. How did you turn the chat on again? I fumbled for a moment, but I found it soon enough. The instant I hit chat ON, a long panel unfurled down one side of the screen.

"What the."

Why were there so many people? The chat was scrolling so fast I could barely keep up. I checked the viewer count, late to the party.

"Holy. What the hell."

I sat there bewildered, staring blankly at the number, and another donation detonated.

"Insane."

Another three-million-won donation. This time they'd even attached a note saying it wasn't a mistake. What kind of person was this? Throwing that kind of money at someone who had just turned a stream on and wasn't even doing anything. The sudden flood of viewers looked connected to them, too.

I clicked the nickname and stepped into their channel.

"Ah…. You're a streamer. This is my first time, so I didn't know…."

When the world changed, every YouTuber and streamer I'd ever known vanished. They probably existed somewhere, but they didn't seem to do internet broadcasting. I'd only ever known their broadcast names anyway, never their real ones. For all I knew they'd just swapped nicknames and I simply hadn't found them.

Nellka. I opened the personal channel, and the follower count was a whopping 175,000. Current viewers had already climbed past four thousand.

A major streamer. What business did a streamer this big have coming to a humble place like this? That was the real mystery. Why would anyone throw three million won at a person just playing around with a cam feed? What kind of content even was this?

As if answering the question, another donation came in.

A reaction. Doing some corresponding act as thanks for a donation. Naturally, I didn't have one. I'd even turned the test stream on on impulse — how would I have a reaction prepared? I hadn't even changed my nickname, so it was still set to my real name.

"Ah…. A reaction…."

What was I supposed to do? A three-million-won reaction. What could that even be? The pressure was heavier than I'd expected. It wasn't a small amount. It was three million. Three million. A three-million-won reaction with zero preparation. Of course my mind went blank.

Meanwhile the chat was thriving. I was still sitting there with no idea what to do when I spotted a message telling me to do something I was good at.

Something I was good at? What was I good at? My strengths. I'd thought about this earlier. The deliberation wasn't long.

My body. My physique itself was the advantage.

In this world, ideas about gender weren't all that different from the other side. Virgin men were common, and women treated sexual experience like a medal of honor. Women still covered their nipples and genitals the same way, but attitudes toward exposure had loosened. Male exposure, on the other hand, had gone conservative. Showing it wasn't a crime, exactly, but most people hid it. If I had to compare, a man's bare chest was perceived about the way a bikini had been in my original world — something you could only put on display in special places.

And a stream, technically, was inside a house. If you were fine with it yourself, you could show it.

"Then I'll… show you my muscles."

On camera I looked skinny. My shoulders were ordinary width, so I didn't look particularly big. But what if I took the clothes off?

I pulled the short-sleeved shirt over my head. The frame only showed from the chest up, but already the shoulders and traps were filling the shot like they had something to prove.

"Biceps."

I lifted both arms and put the biceps on display. Clean muscle lines locked onto the broadcast feed. This was where the cardio paid off. All that walking and running at the gym had burned off the extra fat, and the muscle stood out that much sharper for it — a healthy, solid kind of good-looking.

Chat froze for a beat, then shot upward. Muscle I'd only ever used as proof I was healthy, as something for myself, was being shown to other people — and they were cheering for it. A direct stare would have been too much. This kind of indirect attention made my chest thump.

The reaction was beyond anything I'd pictured. I'd figured they'd like it. I hadn't figured they'd like it this much. I think I got a little carried away. This kind of attention was a first.

To show off more of the body, I pushed the chair back. It slid smoothly away, and my entire upper half filled the frame. A chest with real volume. Abs with borders you could trace. Arms with veins standing out clean. Perfect balance. It was the same feeling I always got standing in front of the mirror, but damn — it was an incredible body.

The lower half was even better. Among the quadriceps, the muscle that showed most clearly from the outside — the rectus femoris. Put simply, the thighs were the part I was most proud of. If you're a man, it's the lower body, right?

The moment I stood up from the chair to put that manhood on display, the broadcast screen went black.

"Huh? What?"

Lag? Had the stream crashed because too many people piled in? I checked in a hurry. The first thing that caught my eye was the chat, still ripping upward. I stopped the scroll with the wheel and read.

"Ah…."

I'd gotten too excited. I'd momentarily forgotten that even a man's bare chest was dangerous over here. I looked at the broadcast screen, and the reason the stream had been shut off was sitting right there.

Pornography. Wasn't this a foreign company? A pornography strike for showing my chest. It was too harsh.

Looking at the chat, the streamer who'd donated to me seemed to have gotten banned right along with me. According to the messages, she'd been staring slack-jawed and missed the window to close her stream. The last thing anyone saw was Nellka frantically slamming the window shut — and then the banhammer came down.

I clasped my hands and offered a moment of silence.

But wait. This was because of me. The streamer they'd been watching had suddenly gotten banned. In a single stroke, a crowd of Tricky Viewers had lost their way. They were laughing now, but where was the anger of people who'd just lost their home base going to go?

"...Huh?"

This was no time to be offering condolences to someone else.