Don't Send the Eight Million
"……You there. The one with the handle Lilac_03."
The chat froze for a beat.
"Yeah. You."
The waterfall of messages cut off cold. On the far side of the screen, more than a thousand viewers seemed to hold their breath all at once.
Lee Un had seen Lilac_03 from the start. No matter how many lines of chat poured past, that one alone had stayed sunk to the bottom—like a piece of wood left underwater far too long. Even after it was hauled up, the damp had soaked all the way through.
"You've got money you're supposed to send somewhere this week."
"Eight million."
The chat stirred.
Lilac_03's reply took a long time to climb the chat.
"Want me to say where you're sending it, too?"
"Prayer fee. Cost of a cheondojae. Some fortune house told you, right? That your mother couldn't find the road and is wandering the nine heavens. That your bad dreams are because of that."
Lee Un didn't read the chat. His sight sank slowly, until only the place beyond the handle Lilac_03 remained.
It was empty.
Cleanly empty. When someone has stayed and then gone, they leave a trace—warmth, or a shadow—but that place looked like a courtyard swept immaculate. It meant the one who left had not looked back.
"Listen carefully. Your mother isn't wandering. She left in peace. She isn't behind you. What shows up in your dreams isn't your mother—it's your guilt."
"You didn't make it in time for the end. The deathbed."
The entire chat went quiet.
"She went before you arrived, and it wasn't because you were late. She knew that if she waited, you'd carry that face for the rest of your life—so she left first. That was how she lived, right? Never saying she was sick until she was already better."
"She went well. Cleanly. So don't send the eight million. If a fortune house is offering to send off someone who isn't even wandering, it's one of two things: a fraud who can't see and pretends he can, or one who can see and is lying anyway. Either way, they're selling your mother. Cut them off."
And a moment later:
The chat exploded.
That was when it happened.
A donation alert popped up.
The chat hesitated.
Lee Un looked at that handle.
And for a moment he was still—like someone fishing for solids in a bowl of soup who has just stopped mid-reach with the chopsticks.
One line of text beyond the screen. That was all, and yet it was too sharp. Whatever she had spent a lifetime pressing down and shutting away was so large it was leaking out regardless of the chat window.
Like light through a closed door. Only she didn't know. How brightly she was shining through the cracks.
The chat began to split.
Lee Un stayed quiet. He didn't push back. That only made Vera more confident.
"……."
Lee Un opened his mouth.
"Took forty thousand in bokchae."
"You paid the fee. So I'll read you."
The chat stirred. Vera's next donation came a little late, but easy and unhurried.
Lee Un slowly bowed his head.
The screen and the chat both fell away, until only a black surface remained before his eyes. His shoulders were heavy.
The deeper he went, the colder the water under the surface. But more than a thousand gazes braced his back. You're there. We're watching.
Un went deep.
"……The wooden floor."
"Your maternal grandparents' floorboards. You grew up smelling incense there. Bright pictures on the walls. Five-colored cloth on the ceiling."
The chat stalled for a moment.
The formal edge of her speech had shortened. Lee Un didn't stop.
"Common, sure. But a house where people come every day to bow in front of those pictures—that isn't common. Your maternal grandmother was a Manshin. The biggest one in that neighborhood."
"And the one she loved most was you. But the way she looked at you was strange sometimes. Not the eyes of a grandmother looking at her granddaughter—eyes that were checking something. Those eyes scared you so much that once you started elementary school, you stopped going to that house."
The chat had gone completely still. Fifteen hundred people watching, and not a single line rose.
"Don't type and delete."
"You picked up tarot three years ago. Half a year after your grandmother died."
"Shinki is inherited. It doesn't go anywhere. You know that. You've been able to see since you were little. But you didn't want to serve it, and you couldn't stop seeing. So you took up the cards. Cards make an excuse. It isn't me looking—it's the cards speaking. For three years you haven't been reading fortunes. You've been building an alibi."
"You've moved four times."
"But there's one bundle you never once managed to throw away. It's still in the deepest part of your wardrobe. Bells and a Myeongdu. What your grandmother pressed into your hands at the end."
Someone in the chat finally managed a single line.
Lee Un paused for a moment.
Because the next words were not Vera's. They had come across from a place beyond her shoulder—a place that had waited for decades. Without scolding, without resentment, simply standing there looking at her granddaughter's back. Un carried it over exactly as it was. He did not add a single character.
"……And there's one thing you've got wrong."
"Your grandmother isn't angry."
"That's what you've been most afraid of your whole life, running away. That someday she'd show up in a dream and ask why you wouldn't serve, why you ran. So you couldn't even go on memorial days. Couldn't go to the grave."
"But that woman never once wanted to pass it on to you. Not a single time. Those strange eyes looking at you—yes, they were checking. But do you know what she was checking for? Whether you'd inherit it. Whether her fate would land on her granddaughter. That was the only thing she was afraid of her whole life."
The chat was still frozen.
A long while later, a single donation alert rose. A donation with no message.
A blank. And that blank said more than any line that had climbed the chat that night.
And Madame Vera's handle did not rise in the chat again that night.
"……That's enough for today."
Lee Un cut the stream.
The broadcast went dark, leaving only the frozen still of a blank avatar. His shoulders were heavier than they had ever been. And yet, strangely, he didn't feel bad.
His phone buzzed once, short. Saet-byeol.
Instead of answering, Un huffed a quiet laugh and collapsed onto the bed just like that.
That night, the subscriber count on the Unryong Daepalsik channel quietly crossed five thousand.
And all of this was still only the beginning.