Chemistry (3)
The chat exploded the moment the first round ended.
It was my victory in the first game. Since I already knew the keyword, pretending not to be the spy was easy. Arine immediately jumped in with her complaint.
“Ugh, Jirasoni, you’re such a troll. How could you give an explanation like that?”
“Why on earth would you turn on an electric blanket during the rainy season? Seriously. You did that on purpose to stir up trouble, didn’t you?”
“Is an electric blanket the same as a boiler? Ugh. Idiot.”
Thanks to Jirasoni describing something only he would do, I was naturally removed from suspicion as the spy. On the very first day, we pinned him as the spy and executed him. Then I correctly guessed the keyword, and the first round ended in an easy win for me.
Jerry’s question drew agreement from everyone else. Whispers of “Yeah, seriously” rippled through the call. The chat was just as curious.
The chat was full of people wondering how I’d caught the keyword. While basking in the sweet dopamine of victory, I decided to clear up their confusion.
“I kind of pieced it together from both hints, but the decisive one was Arine’s. Convenience store jackpot. When it rains, convenience stores get packed, right? Everyone rushing in to buy umbrellas.”
That was exactly why I’d been so sure it was the rainy season. …But wouldn’t this shift the target from Jirasoni to Arine? I was worried my words might make everyone gang up on her instead.
Instead, the reaction from everyone was completely different from what I expected.
From my own chat to the other streamers, everyone seemed baffled that I’d figured it out from that hint. Naturally, the cast reacted the same way.
Arine looked genuinely puzzled too.
Everyone wore the same confused expression. What was so strange about it? I genuinely didn’t understand. I’d simply combined the convenience store jackpot, the season, and the mold to picture people rushing into a store to buy umbrellas when the rain poured down.
Then Jirasoni, who had been quiet, suddenly chimed in.
Hearing the same word and imagining the same image. Of course, that wasn’t an easy thing to do. Even in those “same question, different dreams” games, people often get it wrong. For two people to hear one broad word and conjure up nearly identical imagery… it probably meant Arine and I thought along pretty similar lines.
I’d had the same thought myself.
“What are you talking about? It’s probably just a coincidence. The theme was set, so it’s natural our thoughts overlapped. Anyway, let’s move on to the next round. I’m definitely winning this one.”
Arine quickly wrapped things up, and we moved straight into the next game. But the same thing happened when Arine became the spy. She figured out the keyword and won the round immediately.
Then came the interrogation phase.
“Honestly, I had no idea until then. I thought I was screwed. But the moment I heard Doyun speak, it just clicked.”
Even I was a little surprised by that. From my perspective, I’d twisted my words as much as possible. I figured if I described it like something out of a fairy tale, no one who didn’t already know the keyword would catch on. I’d only remembered seeing a cat blankly staring at the spinning washers through the laundromat window. That was all. Yet Arine had heard it and instantly known the answer.
On one hand, I couldn’t quite understand it myself. Logically, wasn’t it hard to make that connection from a laundromat?
“Don’t people usually think of scents or that fresh, fluffy feeling?”
When I muttered the question half to myself, Arine answered with a proud little “Hehe.”
“I’ve seen it before. A cat staring blankly at the spinning washing machines in front of a laundromat.”
Her casual explanation left me speechless. How could our minds conjure up the exact same image?
The chat was losing its mind, and the streamers were starting to get suspicious too.
Arine burst out in frustration.
“What are you even saying! It’s not like that! Why would I bring Doyun just to win a spy game? Stop framing me!”
“What am I supposed to explain? We just happen to think similarly, I guess. Right, Doyun?”
When Arine turned to me with that pleading look in her eyes, I could only nod blankly.
“Ah… yeah… I guess so. Must’ve been good luck?”
This had never happened with my ex, Seoyeon. We’d even fought over what to eat because our tastes were so different. The fact that I could think so similarly to Arine, whom I’d only met twice, felt strangely moving.
If I’d thought this similarly with Seoyeon, maybe we wouldn’t have fought so much.
…Then again, two times could still just be coincidence. It was only two rounds. Like guessing two questions right on a test by luck. Maybe today just happened to be a day when Arine and I were on the same wavelength.
I tried to shake the thought from my head, but somehow… even after that, Arine and I kept winning the spy game together over and over until the collab ended.
At first I thought it was just coincidence. But as the spy games continued round after round, even Arine couldn’t dismiss it as mere luck anymore. The images they associated with the same words were far too similar. Especially when it came to winning as the spy and deducing the answer from explanations—almost every single time it had been Doyun’s hint that led her there. She hadn’t figured it out from anyone else’s hint even once, except for that single exception.
The viewers who had brushed it off with “No way” at first were now so stunned they were starting to get a little scared.
She was starting to feel like the two of them must be hearing the same voice at the same time. If you asked what that voice was, she’d say it was probably the god of broadcasting. At the very least, the content was definitely popping off. They’d become a streamer duo that read each other’s minds like psychometry.
The viewers who watched this bizarre spectacle were, at any rate, thoroughly entertained.
After the spy game collab ended, there was a short break before moving on to the next segment.
The two of them left for the bathroom first. Then, with a “Bathroom break?” from the others, Jerry and Yoonss followed suit. That left just the two of them.
Arine, true to her large streamer instincts, had a compulsion to fill any silence. Unable to stand the quiet, she asked the question she’d been wanting to ask him for a while.
“Hey, Doyun.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have some kind of superpower? Like mind reading?”
It was meant to be a silly joke. But there was a sliver of sincerity in it. Otherwise, how could this man guess what she was thinking so perfectly?
“What kind of nonsense is that? If I had something like that, I would’ve swept every spy game ever.”
That was the strange part too. For some reason, his sharp intuition only seemed to activate toward her.
“Then how can you think so similarly to me? It’s like you’re reading my mind.”
At Arine’s question, Doyun paused for a moment. Then, as if it were no big deal, he answered.
“I don’t know. It is pretty amazing, isn’t it? Guess our chemistry is just that good.”
Chemistry. She wasn’t sure if that was the right word for it, but she definitely felt like they clicked. It wasn’t just during the spy game— even in normal conversation, they could read each other’s thoughts easily. Maybe it was just that Doyun was quick-witted and good with words. But if this was what good chemistry looked like…
…then Doyun was getting closer and closer to the ideal partner she pictured for a virtual marriage.
That was what she thought.