Episode 104 — The Ad Email (Just Chatting)
After making do with a sandwich for dinner, I decided to take the plate back myself. Troubling the housekeeper over a single dish felt wrong.
Since I was heading to the kitchen anyway, a rather virtuous thought occurred to me: I might as well wash it properly while I was at it. I was just about to put that plan into action when I ran straight into her.
What happened next... well, what is there to say. She took it from me, of course.
"I could have done it..."
"Oh, hush. Things like this are for me to do. That's why I'm in this house."
The rest of the family sees her strictly as household staff. I don't. I think of her as someone quite close.
She calls my brother young master and my father Chairman, but with me it's just a warm, familiar Eunha.
Still, however the two of us feel about each other, a wall stands between us — the employer's daughter, and the servant. Washing a plate while she was standing right there was something that simply shouldn't happen.
Mother is home on weekdays now, too. If she had walked in on that, she might even have scolded the housekeeper for it.
I don't think Dad or Mom are that kind of people. I'm only saying it isn't impossible.
"So if you want something to eat, or if there's anything you need me for, you have to tell me. Understood?"
Not empty courtesy. Her eyes meant it.
It didn't look like the look you give an employer's daughter you're paid to look after. It looked like she held me dear — me, as a person.
"Yes. I will."
I'd held back from asking because I felt bad. If she was going to say it like that, then when I truly needed her, I ought to accept the help.
Coming to her when I needed her would put her mind at ease, too.
"Oh — is there any juice left?"
I meant to keep grinding ranked after I went upstairs, and I'd want something to drink on stream. The juice I'd had with the sandwich came back to me.
She'd pressed it herself, I'd heard, and it had been ridiculously good.
All it really is is fruit in a blender, poured into a cup. When she does even that simple job, it turns into a wicked little drink — the kind of thing so good that if two people sat down with it, one could die and the other wouldn't notice. My respect for her has no floor.
"Mm... do we still have fruit...? Ah, here it is. Mind waiting a moment? I'll blend it right away."
"Okaaay."
I didn't mind if it took a while. Time spent waiting on good food is always a pleasure.
I'd told them I was only dropping off a plate, and now it was dragging on. I was a little afraid of the viewers' complaints — but I could explain once I got back.
A manager was watching the chat. Even if I wasn't there, nothing serious ought to happen.
A chat with the streamer gone. As a rule, the moment the person who sets the tone steps away, the chat turns into a lawless zone.
Even with the streamer gone, a manager is still moderating, so the worst of the spam and the truly nasty stuff eats a banhammer.
That doesn't mean the chat goes back to normal. The broadcast itself has stalled, and the viewer count tends to thin out with it.
Which is exactly why streamers try, if they can help it, not to leave their seats mid-broadcast.
The time I'd expected to be gone came and went with no sign of me, and the chat began to dwindle.
Unable to endure a broadcast going slack, viewers were leaving one by one — and that was about when it happened.
Someone had tossed them one enormous piece of bait, something worth tearing into.
For a moment, I regretted ever having thought that nothing would happen.
I came up to my room on the second floor with a glass of juice poured even fuller than the last one, and the chat was plastered wall to wall with Great Eunha and Ultra-Great Eunha. Before anything else, I had to figure out what was going on.
Looking at the chat alone, nothing seemed particularly wrong. Still, something might have blown up while I was gone.
Those chants are usually pure praise. I couldn't entirely rule out the chance that, right now, they were being used to roast me in public.
"Um... did something happen?"
"Um... guys?"
The chat shot upward all at once. I'd been gone about five minutes, and there were still somewhere around nine thousand viewers left.
Not all nine thousand of them were typing, but the chat was coming in so fast that even my eyes — and I'd been a pro FPS player — couldn't read it with any ease.
I was wondering whether I ought to duck into the community boards for a second when a donation landed.
"Ah..."
Only then did the whole picture come clear.
To start with the conclusion: the chat hadn't gone feral because I'd caused some problem.
"I really thought I'd done something wrong..."
"That was because I went to get this juice, so I was a little late. So, to summarize..."
Rioat Korea had sent me an ad request by email, and when I didn't look at it, they decided to make the offer again through Kwitch.
Kwitch sent the ad request to my email as well, got no reply, and in the end a staffer came to my stream in person.
And of all the times to show up, I was away from my seat, so they turned right around and left.
"...that's the story?"
I said it in a tone of pure disbelief, as if there was no way any of that was real.
So it seemed I really had understood it correctly.
"Ugh... should I get into the habit of checking my email...?"
For me, email had only ever been something you verify when you make an account. I'd hardly ever used it like this.
Back when I was a pro, KZ would tell me separately whenever an ad like this came in, and the manager handled the inbox, so I'd never had to worry about it.
"I do feel bad for the staffer, though..."
But the me of now is not a pro gamer, and not Galaxy. I'm Eunha, the streamer.
So things like ad emails are something I have to check myself.
"The ad itself is probably confidential, right? I'll look after I end the stream."
According to the viewers, the Kwitch manager had only asked them to pass along that I should check my email once I got back, and then vanished. Looking later shouldn't be a problem.
What mattered to me right now was raising my score. To that end, I decided to keep queuing right up until I went to bed.
Today had been solo queue the moment I got home from school, a sandwich to kill dinner, and then solo queue again.
If I weren't a streamer, nobody would blink at writing me off as a problem kid addicted to games...
But I am, quite clearly, a Kwitch streamer. No particular reason anyone should be nagging me.
"Haaahm... I'm way too sleepy. I should stop here for today..."
I'd played ten games in all. Won seven, lost three, and my rating had climbed a total of forty-five points.
"Yeah, I have school tomorrow. That's why I'm ending now. Still, for winning seven games, the score didn't go up all that much."
Forty-five points felt a little thin for a win rate in the seventy percent range. Even in Immortal, a win had been giving me something like ten to twenty, and a loss only dropped me about nine.
Players who'd migrated from the Asia server were still fighting their way up through Immortal, so the word was that Chasers could watch their score fall straight into the pit after only a few losses...
"Still, maybe I should just be glad it went up at all? It's only the first day, anyway."
Whether the number had climbed a lot or a little, I needed sleep if I was going to school tomorrow, so I decided it was time to end.
"See you all tomorrow... Eun-bye..."
"Hnnn—! Haa..."
I ended the broadcast, did a light stretch, and dropped onto the bed.
I'd already said goodnight to my parents. There was no need to go back downstairs.
"Ah. Right."
I'd been about to open K-tube on my phone when I remembered the Kwitch manager who'd come by.
They'd asked me to check an email about an ad, hadn't they...
The Platform Exhibition had treated me pretty well, and I was worried I might have missed another good chance, so I opened my mail.
"...Huh?"
The ad I'd been sent was nothing I had expected.
"Did they send this to the wrong person...?"