Virtual Marriage Announcement (6)
I couldn't lift my head after her answer. Even though the camera wasn't on, I instinctively hid my face, which had flushed bright red.
“......”
No words came out. Maybe Arine felt embarrassed too after saying something like that. She was fidgeting with her hair between her fingers, unable to look straight at the cam.
It was a relief that the PPT was up. If it had been her usual setup with my cam blown up large, my face would've been way too visible.
She must have been thirsty because she took a sip from her tumbler right then.
[Cough cough!]
She drank too fast and ended up choking. When was the last time I'd heard someone call me cute? Excluding my early childhood, this might be the first time ever. Maybe around five or six years old? I probably only heard it back when I was in kindergarten. After starting elementary school, I don't think even my parents ever said it to me.
“You okay?”
“...If you're going to get that embarrassed, why say something like that? You could've just been shameless about it.”
“No. I didn't hate it, but it's been so long. I think this is the first time I've heard someone call me cute since kindergarten. And from a girl, too.”
“Hey hey hey. Wait a second. That's not it. That's dangerous. We're in the middle of our virtual marriage, aren't we? You want to hand your husband over to some guy?”
Her reddened face appeared on the cam screen. She had been giggling at my joke like usual, but now she spoke to me in a demure voice.
“......Oh, really?”
There was no breathing room at all. The moment one of us stopped, the other would attack. I'd started it first, but the burning atmosphere, that awkwardness mixed with subtle excitement, refused to die down.
“Your laugh just now was seriously shady. You know that?”
“It was more like a forty-year-old uncle smirking creepily while watching a girl group.”
“This uncle's self-love is off the charts.”
“You weren't laughing that creepily back then.”
Thinking the topic was wrapped up, she turned the question back on me.
“It's pretty similar for me too.”
“At first, like I said earlier, I thought you were from a completely different dimension. Just someone I only saw on a monitor. It felt so weird that I was on the same stage as you.”
“Now...”
I hadn't seen her that many times. But after a few joint streams, and especially that moment when she gave me a birthday present and I thanked her—the warm, gentle words she'd said still hadn't left my head. Maybe that's when it started.
“Your way of talking is more playful than I expected, and you laugh a lot. How should I put it... you feel really human? Even when I tell a funny story, you burst out laughing with me, and when things get serious, you listen with genuine sincerity.”
The moment Arine the streamer started to feel like a real person named Yoo Harin. The moment that distant, unreachable girl began to feel close and familiar.
“So now I don't think of you as someone from another world anymore. You just feel like... someone who fits perfectly beside me. Someone comfortable to be around.”
Another silence filled with embarrassment passed. She let out a sigh mixed with a groan and clutched her head.
“What kind of baseless accusation is that?”
“You literally just said it yourself. That even if you're embarrassed, you have to say what you want to say.”
Now Arine couldn't even show her face anymore. She covered it with both hands, only peeking her eyes out toward the cam. But there was no hiding the red flush on her face, even through the light makeup visible between her fingers.
It wasn't just the viewers who'd been injected with more sugar than a lethal dose. Arine and I had taken the same hit. We paused for a moment until the embarrassment faded enough for us to regain our senses, then continued the broadcast.
“Feeling better now?”
“Ah, sorry about that. We got a little too embarrassed for a second.”
It hadn't been that long, so most of the viewers seemed willing to let it slide. If anything, they looked like they were enjoying the situation. Of course it would be fun for them. I was the one actually experiencing it. If I'd been watching this from the outside, I would've been huffing and completely immersed too. Ugh. So embarrassing. No matter how much it was for the content, exchanging sweet lines in front of people wasn't easy at all. Especially when the other person was someone like Arine.
“Alright, this is the final chapter of the content we prepared for today. It's about our ideal types.”
“I do. But it's a bit different from when I was younger.”
“I liked the cold type. Someone rational, analytical, and cool-headed. Since I'm pretty impulsive, I thought having someone like that next to me would be good. We'd balance each other out.”
Maybe that's why I ended up dating someone like Seoyeon. Both her appearance and personality matched the ideal type I'd had as a kid. But after dating her for a long time and then breaking up, my ideal type changed. You could call it trauma. At the very least, I didn't want to meet another girl like Seoyeon again.
“Yeah. Right? The wording sounds super otaku, but yeah, that's about right.”
“Yeah. Someone bright and cute?”
“Someone with good reactions who laughs a lot?”
“Someone whose energy is so bright when they're close that it lifts my mood too, and just being together is fun.”
“Someone warm and human who knows how to be grateful for the little things?”
“Hm?”
Arine glanced over the chat window after saying that. She must have seen something because her face turned slightly red. But she couldn't stop the broadcast, so she continued.
“Then what about you, Arine? What kind of guy is your type?”
“Yeah.”
As she spoke, her subtle gaze turned toward the cam. She was just looking at the camera, but for some reason it felt like she was staring intently at me, somewhere beyond it, and I felt a strange emotion.
“...Are you talking about me by any chance?”
Arine answered with a smile.
Everyone knew we had both pointed to each other as our ideal types. In fact, maybe both she and I had already known that too. And then a huge donation exploded in Arine's room.