The Luxury Watch Clarification
I was a bit flustered the moment I turned on the stream and saw the chat completely lose its mind, but figuring out the situation itself wasn't all that difficult. It looked like the watch that had briefly appeared on the table during the live broadcast had blown up into a whole thing in the community....
To me, it felt a little unfair. When I had asked Angelina about it before, she told me it was one of the many sponsored watches that had come in. Our house basically has a watch showroom at this point. I just grab whichever one catches my eye that day and wear it. The one I happened to wear on the last business trip was an expensive sponsored piece. I hadn't realized the exact price.
Watches all look roughly the same to me, so how was I supposed to tell them apart? Anyway, because of that, a weird meme had attached itself to my stream.
The combination of me mentioning I had a regular job, the irregular hours of that job, and the watch had created the meme that I was a parachute hire from a chaebol family who only showed up at the company whenever I felt like it.
Of course...
“No, I am not a chaebol third-generation.”
I was actively denying this ridiculous misunderstanding. Were they crazy? Who was calling me a chaebol heiress? I was a self-made woman from the middle class. Have any of you been working since you were six years old?
“I’m part of the YOLO generation, so I bought it on credit. It’s my one and only watch, so I treasure it...”
Still, there was one saving grace. While it was an expensive watch, it wasn’t ultra high-end. I might not be able to tell watches apart, but I could at least tell which ones I absolutely could not scratch. This one sat right at the border of expensive without crossing into “never damage” territory. It was pricey enough to turn heads, but something an ordinary person could buy if they stretched themselves.
And honestly, it’s not like it’s illegal to own an expensive watch. I hadn’t committed any crime. If anything, I was a patriot who paid an insane amount in taxes. Once I thought about it that way, I started wondering if I even needed to explain myself. A meme was just a meme. No one actually believed I was a chaebol heiress, right?
“Sigh. Everyone quiet down before I call Attorney Kim.”
“Yes, you could get sued by the knight order consisting of five judges and thirty-five chief prosecutors.”
A little side note, but Attorney Kim does actually exist. He has to review contracts and such, right? Not that he would actually sue anyone.
“So~ the game for today is—”
Anyway, it was time to wrap up the chaebol talk. If the stream was on, we had to play something.
“You sons of bitches...”
I had been happy that the community raid had pushed us up to four hundred viewers, but one-fifty of them vanished in an instant.
If I had a manager, I would have asked them to take notes. Most of them were probably gallery users.
“Anyway... let’s get the game started.”
With that, I launched the game. It was a hardcore domestic battle royale masterpiece where a hundred players are randomly dropped into one of nine maps to fight for survival...
“There wasn’t any chat like that, you bastard.”
“You say that, but you all like LoL and Battlegrounds too. What’s fun about watching shit games?”
“What are you going to do if I bring a genuinely terrible shit game?”
“This damn self-employed life...”
They complain no matter what I do. It’s not like I’m playing LoL and Battlegrounds because I want to... though that feeling isn’t completely absent. But the moment I bring a game, they judge the hell out of it. I’ve brought what I thought were hidden gems after careful consideration, only to get called shit and flamed multiple times. After getting burned so often, I started sticking to proven games. And if I’m going to play proven games, isn’t it better to just play LoL? That’s why the number of times I open LoL keeps increasing.
“Don’t call me lady, damn it. I’m not joining any tournaments.”
Platform tournaments and streamer-only events. Just participating would massively boost your recognition and help you build connections with other streamers. As a super rookie VTuber, I had received several invitations but turned them all down. There were a few reasons I didn’t join tournaments.
First of all...
That reaction. For some reason, my stream had strangely divided opinions on this. My guess was that they felt a weird sense of pride in the fact that I had grown without any corporate collabs.
Anyway, if that was the first reason, the second was that tying up my schedule felt burdensome. Tournaments meant team practice and scrims, right? Getting five streamers to sync their schedules for LoL was a hassle I didn’t want. Plus, I wasn’t that interested in making new broadcasting connections. At this level of growth with its current ups and downs, I was already satisfied.
“Alright, since you all have opinions, I’ll bring a different game tomorrow.”
“Viewer participation is on cooldown, so... should I just open the cyber racetrack with LoL instead?”
The chat lit up at the mention of gambling with stream points. These dopamine addicts... getting excited over betting points that weren’t even real money.
“We’re right before Diamond, so it should be good for betting on wins.”
“Well... I’ll get there soon, won’t I?”
The viewers were misunderstanding. It wasn’t just Emerald 3. It was Emerald 3 with 80 LP. So it could be called true Emerald 2. Rounding up, it was basically Diamond, so I had already decided my tier was Diamond.
“Alright, let’s go.”
With that cheerful atmosphere, we opened the doors to the cyber racetrack. Since I hadn’t been able to play LoL for the past few days because of the overseas business trip, I queued with some expectations.
“What should I play?”
I confidently hovered over fifth pick and was deep in thought about which champion to choose when—
Bang!
The door to the streaming room burst open without warning.
“!!”
I whipped around in surprise. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone in our house who would open the door like that without knocking.
Before I could even turn off the mic in my panic, a deep male voice filled the room.
“Noona! Didn’t you bring any souvenirs?”
It carried straight through the broadcast microphone.
“Ah.”
I couldn’t see the chat, but I could imagine the reaction.
“W-what are you doing?”
“Just shut up for a second....”
...I had just finished explaining everything. Looked like the game would have to wait a bit longer.