Problem (1)
After I finished talking, I headed home.
I'd been worried, but things had gone better than I'd expected. What a relief.
Now that I'd successfully found a thumbnail artist, I could finally get YouTube off the ground for real.
Yeah. At a hundred thousand won a pop, of course she had to take the job.
Seven hundred thousand won a week. Three million a month. Thirty million a year.
Who in their right mind would turn down money like that?
She even made more than I did.
...Wait.
She made more than I did?
Hold on a second.
"...Eh."
Let's think this through calmly.
If someone draws YouTube thumbnails, who pays them?
The channel owner, obviously.
So if Yewon unnie draws them, who pays her?
...I do. Obviously I do.
A hundred thousand won a piece. Seven hundred thousand a week. Three million a month. And in a year...
I was the one who had to pay thirty million won.
It was so far removed from reality that no emotion even welled up. It felt like hearing about something happening in another country — something that had nothing whatsoever to do with me.
Was this even possible?
I pulled out my phone and checked my bank balance.
Current funds remaining: 170,000 won
I had to stretch that until my allowance came in — about ten days from now.
Take out the hundred thousand for a thumbnail, and I'd have seventy thousand left.
"Yabai."
This was bad.
This was an emergency!
I needed to make money. But how?
I had my doubts that streaming alone would cut it. And the real problem wasn't a one-time expense — this was money that was going to keep draining out of me, steadily, from here on. A hundred thousand won a day, no less.
"......"
I'd start the stream first. As for the money problem...
I'd think about that later.
There was no answer right now, after all. Haha.
Hahaha. Hahahaha.
Sniff.
I started the stream the way you flee from reality.
I wanted to forget everything, go to some fantastical Neverland, and stay a child forever.
Peter Pan! Come take me away!
Anyway, I went live, and viewers started filing in.
"...Huh? Why are there so many?"
The number tucked in the corner of the screen was all wrong. Right where the viewer count was supposed to sit, a frankly astronomical 180 had planted itself like it belonged there.
Sure, I'd broken a hundred by the time I ended yesterday's stream — but right after you go live, the numbers are supposed to be low. So why was it already this high?
Was this Kongming's empty fort?!
The reason became obvious the moment the chat started rolling in. Broadly speaking, there were two.
The first was the hot clip from the horror-game challenge stream. It had even gotten posted to another streamer's fan cafe — Jjangjjangwang's, no less — so it had kicked up a modest little fuss. Viewers who'd gotten curious from that clip were flowing in.
The second was the guest spot on Jjangjjangwang's blind-date stream. That one was definitely the bigger deal. The bit of name recognition I'd been quietly stacking on his channel had exploded with yesterday's appearance. Thanks to that, viewers from Jjangjjangwang's stream who'd taken an interest in me yesterday had personally climbed down into this tiny backwater of a channel.
The count kept climbing as time passed, and eventually it pulled off the feat of breaking two hundred.
I wasn't about to waste the moment. I launched into the opening at the highest tension I could muster.
"Minna! Irasshaimase!!!Domo arigato for coming to watch watashi's stream!!"
I found myself marveling at my manager's foresight all over again.
Of course the manager had a plan for everything, huh?
All I'd done was follow instructions, and already — how long had I even been streaming? — more than two hundred people were watching!
And then came the donation rush.
"86885-sama! Donation arigato!! Anata daisuki♡"
"eCubed-sama too, thank you for the donation! Anata daisuki♡"
Of course I was cringing too. Of course my own tolerance was running out.
Wasn't that obvious? The person saying it is always more embarrassed than the people hearing it.
And I wasn't just introverted — I'd been a shut-in hikikomori who never left her room.
But that didn't mean I could phone in the reactions.
I had to make money like this. If I didn't, how many lifetimes would it take to earn thirty million won?
Honestly, I wasn't even confident I could make thirty million doing worse than this.
"Seoba-sama!! Thank you so much for enjoying the stream!! Anata daisuki♡"
Swallowing my pride had earned me fifteen thousand won within minutes of going live.
At this rate, maybe thirty million wasn't out of reach!
Oh. Right. I also had to pay the manager who was working as my editor.
And an editor's rate would be higher than a thumbnail artist's, if anything — not lower.
...So that made it sixty million won, minimum?
No. No matter how I looked at it, that was a bit much.
Realizing I was getting sucked deeper and deeper into the dark, clinging swamp of capitalism, I hurriedly slapped my own cheeks a few times to snap myself out of it.
Get it together!
I had to escape this hellish reality, at least a little. Look away. Just focus on the stream.
The Promised Neverland! Peter Pan, hurry up and come get me... please.
Anyway, following my manager's advice, I started with a short banter segment.
"Some of you already know this, but yesterday I actually ended the stream early and appeared on Jjangjjangwang-sama's broadcast?"
"Cheating?! Be honest — if it were you, and you could get on Jjangjjangwang's stream, you'd ditch watashi in a heartbeat."
Even a mega-streamer wasn't for everyone. Taste was taste. No matter how popular someone was, there would always be more people who didn't watch than people who did.
Our room was the same. Even with a lot of the influx coming from there, quite a few people here didn't watch Jjangjjangwang at all.
"I learned so much from sitting in on yesterday's stream, and it was really fun. If I get the chance, I want to apply to join again."
"Mochiron, our stream comes first!"
After that I kept the banter going a little longer, chatting about yesterday's guest spot.
But the further the story went, the more the mood in chat started to turn strange.
"So in that moment, watashi..."
"Ah... should I?"
The tone was aggressive, but it was hard to say the point itself was wrong. People had come to watch my stream — not to sit through a recap of Jjangjjangwang's collab.
So I opened my mouth to start the game.
"Hai. Then the game hajimaru yo! Today's game is..."
"Everyone, please don't fight in chat~"
A chat message has been deleted.
saklf has been permanently banned.
The message that had crossed the line completely was deleted in a flash, and the user banned — but the spark had already caught.
"Stop! Please stop!"
Chat had long since stopped functioning as chat. The handful of people who'd been watching me from the start and the majority who'd flooded in from the collab had split clean down the middle, and the window had become a fighting pit.
You do not have permission to chat.
The fight only died down once the manager froze chat entirely.
But the problem hadn't gone anywhere. Unlock the window and the brawl would start right back up — that much was obvious.
So what was I supposed to do now?
...I had no idea.
I'd never been through anything like this. I honestly hadn't seen it coming at all — that something would blow up this suddenly, this badly, until I could barely even keep the stream going.
I was panicking. I knew I had to do something, but it felt like whatever I tried would only make it worse.
Ka-tok!
A cheerful notification chime, wildly out of place. A KakaoTalk from the manager.
"......"
Was that the right call?
If I just killed the stream here, wouldn't that be running away instead of facing the problem head-on?
"...Everyone. I'm sorry. Please wait just a little. I'll be right back."
Even so, I followed Lucia's advice and ended the stream.
Listening to my manager had never once gone badly for me.
This time, too, she would help like it was nothing.
Right?
Please say yes.