YouTube (1)
The moment the stream ended, Sea was already on her way out.
"I already promised I'd have dinner with my friends tonight."
"So you were just going to stream and bounce?"
"I didn't think we'd go this long."
Hard to argue with that. I hadn't exactly planned on a horror-game all-clear run today either.
"Alright. You told Mom and Dad, though, right?"
Asking in my capacity as her older brother, I expected a quick yes. Instead Sea scratched her cheek and hesitated. Something was off. I fixed her with a long, steady stare until she finally cracked.
"I, uh... told Mom I was eating at your place..."
"You just said you were eating with your tomodachi."
"If I said I was eating with friends, she'd lecture me for sure."
So she'd sold me out for an alibi. Not a capital crime, but she clearly felt guilty enough that she hadn't volunteered it on her own. Unable to withstand my glare, Sea forced a smile, trying to paper the whole thing over.
"...Heh. Hehe. You get how I feel, right, oppa?"
Weekend dinner with friends wasn't the end of the world. Sea wasn't a little kid anymore—she was a proper high schooler. Clamping down too hard in the name of protecting her wouldn't do anyone any good. And unlike me, Sea was the extrovert of extroverts.
I didn't even have a friend to eat dinner with...
A sudden wave of self-loathing hit me. Sea must have mistaken it for anger, because she started flailing—and then did something genuinely shocking.
"...O-oppa~ Just let it slide for today, pleeease~!"
She pressed her hands to her cheeks, her tongue going baby-soft. Sea was doing aegyo. Extremely, painfully cringeworthy aegyo.
Good lord. A display that embarrassing should have earned her a fist to the head. If the caster hadn't been Sea, that is.
Let's be honest. With a face like hers, the aegyo just looked adorable. So this was why so many guys would give up sexy entirely and make cute their type.
I folded. Sea's aegyo had defeated me completely.
"Fine. I won't say anything."
"Yesss! Onii-chan, arigato!"
She thanked me in Japanese she'd never used in her life, mimicking my speech—the kind of hardcore weeb-anime delivery you'd never actually hear in Japan.
Anyway, Sea left, and I finally had time to myself.
I checked my phone. A KakaoTalk message had come in the moment the stream ended. Naturally, it was from my manager.
The reply came the instant I sent mine. It was almost enough to make me wonder if she'd been sitting there waiting for my message.
Technically, that wasn't quite right. My little sister didn't have a talent for streaming. She had a talent for streaming too. The girl simply had so much charm it spilled over onto a broadcast whether she meant it to or not.
This wasn't me being a doting idiot or a siscon. It was just facts.
The topic shifted from today's stream to YouTube.
Naturally, I hadn't built the channel on my old account. I'd created a brand-new one. Not because I'd posted anything incriminating or left comments that could come back to haunt me—because personal information could leak. Even the email on the old account had my original name in it. Too risky. So I'd made a fresh account just for YouTube.
Oh. Ohhh. So this was it—the glorious first video that would go up on my YouTube channel!!
I stabbed the file open and watched it immediately. Ten minutes, trimmed clean. When it ended, the first thing I felt was this:
So this was the class of a major-league editor?
As far as the edit itself went, there was nothing to fix. I couldn't have found a nit to pick if I'd tried. It was as close to perfect as a video got. The piece was a highlight reel from the live stream—though she'd left out the horror game entirely and kept only the League of Legends and talk segments.
After that, my manager gave me a short briefing on our YouTube channel.
YouTube, just like live streaming, had a set concept for every channel. You could divide those by topic—gaming, beauty, daily life—but even inside the same topic, the concept could split in completely different directions.
What did that actually mean?
Take Jjangjjangwang, or Mirua, who'd been Lucia's old boss. Both of them ran a variety-gaming concept. And rather than cracking games with elite mechanical skill, their real goal was to play at a level close to the viewers' and just enjoy the experience together.
Jjangjjangwang treated his chat like buddies, bantering back and forth and even trading insults. Mirua, on the other hand, didn't allow swearing on stream—didn't even allow casual speech. She drew a hard line and put manners first.
That kind of concept, that kind of direction, showed up in every YouTube video too. More precisely, it had to show up. That was how viewers who found you through YouTube could settle into a streamer's atmosphere fast.
Which meant even that little ten-minute edit I'd just watched needed my stream's concept and direction baked into it.
It was complicated, but not beyond understanding. What really surprised me was that if you actually wanted to succeed, you had to sweat even the parts that felt this small.
After listening to my manager's explanation, I watched the video again from the top.
Honestly, I wasn't even sure what my own stream's concept and direction were. I had a vague feel for it, but I couldn't have put it into words. So what direction had Lucia seen in my broadcasts?
Watching it a second time, a few things I'd missed the first time around started to stand out. Lucia questioned me like a strict teacher checking homework.
Putting it into words was still hard, but I was starting to get a handle on it.
The thought that had followed me through the whole video was this: she'd deliberately emphasized how mild I was, and how spicy the viewers were, as a contrast.
Was I supposed to be happy about that?
Something about it sat weird in my chest.
People said you could roughly split a woman streamer's concept into two styles.
The first was the queen. You used every bit of your appeal—looks, figure, voice—to grab the viewers by the throat.
The second was the loser. Didn't matter if you actually were one or were just playing the part. What mattered was using that awkward, pathetic energy to close the distance and make people feel comfortable.
Coldly speaking, I was closer to the latter. Not exactly the same, though. The real hook, apparently, was that viewers got to treat an idealized Japanese girl like a loser.
...That's not a good thing.
The more I listened, the worse I felt. In other words, she was calling me a loser, wasn't she?
I mean, she wasn't wrong, but...
Sometimes the facts hurt more than slander and fabrication. And in a country that criminalized defamation even when it was true, you weren't supposed to just say it like that...
"Is watashi never going to escape being a loser...?"
Anyway, thanks to all that, most of my appearances in Lucia's edit were meek and spacey. The bit where I whined while inting my brains out on Teemo made me want to give myself a noogie, even knowing it was me.
And the viewers beat me up for it in chat. They never got tired of it, either—fresh material, a whole rotating repertoire of ways to roast me.
That was when the truth finally dawned on me.
This was not a fun game YouTuber's highlight reel.
It was a scene of cruel, tragic violence.
I felt so sorry for myself I could have cried.
No. Please don't.
My wishes counted for nothing. Even my manager betrayed me.
Damn this world.
I curse it all!