The Fan Cafe (2)

Jjangjjangwang kicked off the stream the same way he always did.

The moment he went live, more than two thousand viewers poured in — the kind of numbers only a top-tier Twitch operation could pull.

Chat exploded into a feast of messages scrolling by too fast to actually read — living proof of the love and popularity he had earned with his own two hands.

"Heyyy~ hello, hello~"

There wasn't a trace of nerves in his voice. He sounded like a guy catching up with a best friend he'd known for over a decade — easy, unhurried, completely at home.

"What are we doing today? Hmm… haven't really decided. Let's poke around the cafe first and think about it."

If you had to name one signature quirk of Jjangjjangwang's stream, it was that he almost never used formal speech. Most streamers defaulted to polite language with their viewers, which made his style stand out. It came from being a veteran of the craft, and from a broadcast atmosphere that treated everyone like casual older-and-younger brothers — no empty ceremony, no stiff manners.

Plenty of people hated that about him. But the regulars who actually stuck around had clearly fallen for that exact quality.

He hopped into the fan cafe and started browsing the boards at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a leisurely pace. On stream he usually hung out in the Humor section. It had the same energy as the Free Board, except you needed Rank 3 — the elite tier — to post, and the managers regularly filtered it so that anything that went up could safely hit the broadcast without causing a problem.

The Humor posts were the usual fare. Think of a regular community board with the heat turned down a notch: funny clips, random trivia, game and stream news, or just throwaway nonsense.

He was still wandering through the cafe when a title snagged his interest.

For a second, Jjangjjangwang hesitated over whether to click it. The Free Board got a lot less moderation than Humor, which meant bait posts and chaos agents showed up all the time. From the title alone, he couldn't be sure this "roleplayer" tearing through the Free Board was safe enough for stream.

Then veteran streamer instinct kicked in and he had his answer in a heartbeat. If a Humor post relaying this person's antics hadn't been taken down, the managers had already signed off that it was fine to show on air.

The whole calculation took a few seconds. He clicked the title, scrolled, read the whole thing — and muttered before he even realized he'd opened his mouth.

"The hell is this kid?"

"Okay, no, this is…"

Even for someone who had been streaming as long as Jjangjjangwang, the parade of posts was enough to leave him visibly rattled. And the scariest part wasn't the writing — it was the scroll bar. He kept dragging it down and the page just would not end.

He didn't have the courage to read every last one, so he skimmed the first five or so and jumped to the bottom. The last screenshot made his jaw drop.

In absolute numbers, it wasn't that much. The problem was the join date. As you could already guess from the first post, the member called Hana-chan had signed up yesterday.

Meaning she had dumped all of that in a single day.

At first, the roleplayer's posts hadn't gotten much of a reaction. The Free Board didn't have that many active users to begin with. But as time went on, those posts started pulling eyes from the entire cafe. Once the bizarre writing leaked onto the other boards, people piled in, and the comment sections turned into a war zone in minutes.

The main controversy was whether Hana-chan was actually Japanese. Of course, everyone assumed she wasn't. The only person still fighting that lonely battle was Hana-chan herself.

Chat went nuclear. The persona was absurd, sure — but it wasn't the kind of nasty that made you grimace or crossed the line for broadcast. Watching the reactions roll in, Jjangjjangwang started thinking that if he played this right, he could squeeze a whole video out of the situation.

He made the call in seconds and headed straight for the Free Board. Sure enough, the roleplayer had been grinding away right up until now. The most recent post, though, was someone else writing about her.

Watching her deny it that stubbornly, he almost started to wonder. First things first, though — he needed the cafe to stop boiling over.

"Alright, guys. I can just ask her myself. So quit bringing it up in the cafe. Let's send a DM."

He fired off a short message.

The sheer volume of posts — basically spam at this point — plus that very particular persona had shaken the whole cafe. The catch was that none of it was actually against the rules, so the managers couldn't just shut it down on their own.

Just like that, he had his justification. Verify the bit, ban her if it was fake, clip it, done — a clean ending. And if it wasn't a bit, if she was dead serious? That was a win in its own way.

Chat was eating up the way he handled it.

Now the only question was how to verify her. A few methods came to mind, but one stood out as both the most airtight and the most likely to cook for YouTube.

A voice call.

She probably didn't have a Discord account ready. The reply came a few minutes later. Jjangjjangwang called the ID immediately.

The ringtone stretched for a moment. Then the call connected, and he spoke first.

"Hello?"

A girl's voice. And the first sentence out of her mouth was Japanese. The credibility that had been sitting on the floor shot through the roof. Chat flipping like a pancake was only a matter of time.

Jjangjjangwang was pretty stunned himself, but he kept his head and stayed in streamer mode.

"Uh, is this Hana-chan?"

"Wow. So it was real~ Chat. This is why you listen to people all the way through."

"Your Korean's really good, though? You're not just a Korean viewer, are you?"

The hint of doubt in his voice was all the opening a few holdouts in chat needed.

Jjangjjangwang had studied abroad in Japan, and he spoke the language well enough that "Jjangjjangwang is Japanese" had become a running meme.

"Alright. Could you introduce yourself in Japanese for me?"

"Wow. That pronunciation is one hundred percent native. She's Japanese, no contest."

Even a simple sentence gave away the difference between a local and a foreigner. Jjangjjangwang had lived there for years and still wouldn't have bet on sounding that clean. After he signed off on it, nobody in chat tried to argue.

"So you're Japanese, and you watch my stream?"

"Ah, well, thank you. Alright then — we've confirmed everything, so, yeah."

He was about to wrap the call and tidy up the situation when she cut in, blurting it out in a rush.

"Yes?"

"A wish? What is it?"