Was It Intentional? (1)
I suppressed the urge to watch Arine’s stream and sat down in front of my computer. Today was her birthday. I wanted to see whether the birthday gift and congratulatory video I’d sent had arrived safely. Since she had mentioned turning the stream on early because it was her birthday, she was probably sitting at the top of Naty right now.
What are you going to do by watching? Hasn’t she already finished the congratulatory video and opened all the birthday gifts from her colleagues?
Still, a few hours had passed, so those segments were probably over. It was about the right time for her to be unboxing the packages fans had mailed in. Truthfully, I wasn’t hoping for much. I just wanted to know if she was happy with my gift or not.
But even that felt a little creepy, so I decided to stop. ……It would be better to just ask her directly if she liked it. We had exchanged Discord contacts even if we hadn’t swapped phone numbers. We could message each other anytime.
Well, if she liked it, she would reach out herself. I shook off the pointless lingering feelings and quickly started my stream. I didn’t want to keep thinking about the gift I had sent her. It made me feel like some pathetic braggart showing off just because he gave someone a present.
As soon as I turned on the broadcast and left the waiting screen up, people flooded in. When the count instantly hit two hundred, I simply thought, Oh, viewers are joining pretty fast today.
But the number kept climbing—three hundred, four hundred, five hundred—then shot straight past a thousand. I hadn’t even said a single word yet. What the hell was going on? Had I caused some kind of scandal overnight? Did the algorithm suddenly push me? Viewbots? A viewer-count error?
The sudden spike filled me with a faint sense of dread, but I took a deep breath and calmed myself. Whatever it was, I would find out once I started.
The moment I disabled streamer management mode, the chat exploded.
The chat was rising so fast I could barely read it. Most of the messages were demanding an explanation, and from the context, it was clearly about Arine.
To calm them down, I spoke up.
Shit. What kind of lightning bolt was this the second I turned the stream on? To calm the mood I needed information, so I slowly scanned the chat. That was when a donation popped up.
“Doyun, I just posted a summary of what happened in the fan cafe. Go read it.”
I glanced at the sub monitor and saw it was a long-time subscriber who had been with me since the early days. That meant the information was trustworthy. I headed over to the Do Doyun fan cafe, which had fewer than a hundred members. Since almost no posts were made except for my own broadcast notices, the new thread stood out immediately.
It wasn’t written by the subscriber himself. It was a screenshot of a popular post from a well-known community, captured and reposted.
1. Do Doyun is a hako male streamer who got extremely close to Arine after their joint broadcast of the ad game Dungeon Runners.
2. There wasn’t any obvious strange atmosphere between them, but their chemistry was so good that they often did group or individual collabs—roughly once every two weeks.
3. Today around 5 p.m., after Arine finished all the congratulatory videos on stream, she opened Do Doyun’s birthday gift first.
4. A high-end noise-canceling audio device worth a million won came out. At this point it was enough to make anyone suspicious. No matter how close you are, it’s not easy to give a streamer you’ve only known for a few months a gift worth that much. Besides, Do Doyun is still a hako with only about two hundred viewers, so he doesn’t have money.
[Photo of the post-it note Do Doyun sent. jpg]
5. And this is the problematic post-it. It was inside the package. Written in handwriting that looked like a doctor’s scrawl. To summarize: during collabs she has a habit of tapping her nails, so he noticed it might cause noise and sent the audio equipment as a birthday gift. If I had received it, I would have been moved too.
6. Naturally, the sweet, romance-drama-level thoughtful gift caused Arine’s virtual-marriage fans to lose their minds. About a week before this incident, Arine had used AI to check love compatibility and the result seemed to point directly at Do Doyun as a suitable partner, which had already shaken up her stream. This new event was like pouring oil onto a blazing fire.
Conclusion: Arine and Do Doyun haven’t actually done anything. It’s just the viewers getting excited and making a fuss. However, it is true that the relationship between the two of them is far from ordinary. I have only delivered objective facts.
Views 17,283 • Likes 230
The view count was seventeen thousand? That meant the post had hit real-time best. Which meant the same story was spreading like wildfire across the entire internet, not just this community. Clips were probably circulating inside Naty too.
Only then did I understand what everyone was demanding an explanation for and why the viewer count had exploded.
An explanation. What kind of explanation did they want to hear? It was just a birthday gift.
Ignoring the still-chaotic chat, I started explaining on my own. If I tried to read every single message, I would never get anywhere. I had to answer what needed answering and skip the weird questions.
I cleanly cut off any elements that could ruin the broadcast flow and began explaining the general situation.
Some viewers looked disappointed. They seemed let down once I said there was nothing more to it. I had no idea what they had been expecting.
“Then what about the nail-tapping story and that post-it?”
The chat surged again. The answer was obvious, so I replied without hesitation.
I couldn’t lie here. There had been no ulterior motive in the first place, and even if there had been, I could never let it show. Arine had warned me repeatedly. So I worked hard to change the subject until the rapidly moving chat finally calmed down.
The broadcast ended. My mind was completely fried from the nonstop Arine-related chats and donations all day. So this is what a popular streamer’s life is like. I laughed self-deprecatingly, ended the stream, and collapsed onto my bed.
Still, it’ll quiet down tomorrow.
The internet broadcasting scene had always been like this. Tomorrow a new topic would appear, and someone like me with no real recognition would be forgotten. The thousand viewers today were just people who had gathered out of curiosity.
Still, it felt good. Breaking four digits for the first time had been thrilling. My fingers had even trembled for a moment. It had been scary because I didn’t know what was happening, but still.
Getting involved with Arine brought experiences like this. I had thought such things would never happen in my streaming life. It felt like I was constantly discovering a new world.
While I was having these dopamine-addict thoughts, my Discord pinged. I sat up on the bed, turned my head, and checked the screen. I only had one Discord friend—her—so the only messages that ever arrived were from her.
It was already a while after she had ended her own stream. I walked over to the computer and saw her message waiting.
The moment I read those words, I understood. She was asking whether I had deliberately sent that birthday gift aiming for our virtual marriage content.