Episode 130: Accident (Just Chatting)

Eunha had just finished the broadcast of the SC–JG match.

She usually stayed live until ten at night, but today's stream had wrapped up early. The SC she was cheering for had shown a face nothing like the one they usually wore, and they had lost in miserable fashion. Moody as she was, she pleaded exhaustion the moment the match ended and killed the broadcast.

A little under two hundred people were still lingering on a stream that had already ended. Most of them were so-called totem viewers, the kind who left a broadcast running and walked away from the screen. Now and then someone typed, but those were a truly tiny minority. The streamer they had come to see was already gone, and there was no reason to stay parked on a dead broadcast.

Even now the count was falling by the second. That this many were left at all was the surprising part, and it was only possible because Eunha was a major-platform streamer whose average concurrent sat around thirty thousand.

They kept chatting while they waited for an Eunha who was not coming back. No matter how much they typed, the streamer who might have read it was obviously already buried in bed, resting.

Time passed. One viewer, then two, and from there dozens and hundreds peeled away.

All that remained were the viewers who had dozed off with the stream still open, and the ones leaving it on while they went to bed.

And then, for them—

An alert no one could have expected had arrived. Eunha's stream was on.

The settings were nothing like usual, and the viewers were immediately suspicious. There was no way to tell whether this was a Kwitch glitch or whether Eunha had really turned the stream back on.

"Heh-heh-huuum~"

The question answered itself. Through the broadcast that had come back to life, Eunha's humming came through clear as anything. This was not a Kwitch error switching the stream on by itself. Eunha had turned it on with her own hands.

Or, if you were strict about it, the stream coming on was purely an error, and the fact that her voice could be heard now meant her private life was leaking out. The whole situation might itself be a kind of accident.

The viewers decided to believe whatever was easiest. Today's short stream had been that much of a letdown.

"Dun-dun, da-ra-ra-ra, dun-dun~"

She had moved past humming into the rhythm of some song, but the broadcast screen was still nothing but black. Not a single image.

Whenever Eunha went live she usually warmed the stream for three to five minutes, and every time she did, she left up the character art the fan-club president had drawn for her.

Only then did they grasp how serious it was. They understood, too, that this stream had absolutely not been turned on by Eunha's will.

Mistake or platform error, the situation was plainly an accident, and if it ran on it could become a full-blown disaster. They tried to tell her the broadcast was live. If she said something on stream that she never should, or if something sensitive from her private life leaked, she might fold the channel for good.

Her face was already widely known from the Newbie Guide video, but the viewers were still afraid she would quit. For Eunha, streaming was nothing more than a hobby. Her family kept a legal team they could call up in-house, and the furniture in that room was alone worth well over a hundred million won. Money and power both. She had no reason to hang her life on a broadcast.

Which meant that if she quit, the ones left wanting would be her viewers and no one else. Skill at the very top of the amateur scene, the identity of a seventeen-year-old high school girl, and a face so perfect you could search Kwitch and all four major platforms and never find another like it.

All ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of it was more than enough to make her irreplaceable. Worried for her, the viewers kept wallpapering chat with warnings that the stream was on, that she needed to be careful.

On a normal day a manager would have deleted those messages with surgical speed. There was no manager on the chat now, and long walls of spam began to bloom across it.

And the owner of the broadcast—

"La la la la~ la-la-la-la-la~♪"

—didn't spare the chat a glance. She only hummed a song she listened to all the time.

Half resigned, they could only pray she wouldn't cause an accident.

Maybe that desperate wish reached her. She didn't cause any particular accident. She only focused on whatever it was she was doing.

"Is this it?"

"God, how do you even do this..."

"It's not working..."

She fussed like that, and still no one could tell what the task actually was.

Five minutes or so went by, and then the broadcast screen changed. Color began to surface across a picture that had been dyed solid black, without a shade to it. Not only color. Objects started taking shape one by one, and the viewers knew them at a glance.

A bed and a vanity. A wardrobe, a picture frame, and a desk. The same furniture that showed up whenever Eunha did one of her occasional half-cam streams.

Right. The cam had turned on.

Was the cam an error too? The sudden image left them uneasy. A moment ago they had thought the odds of a real accident were fairly low. With the cam on, it was a different story. The cam turning on might be the accident itself.

Before they could even get a hold of the situation, Eunha—

"Oh. It worked."

—leaned her face into the cam that had just come on.

Hair pulled into a rough single tie, and pajamas cut like a dress. It was nothing like the fully done-up look from the Newbie Guide video, and still more than enough to drag a gasp out of them. The Eunha in that video had only put on light makeup and tidied her clothes. Heavy makeup only cut her charm in half.

"If I do this, like this, here..."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

She didn't stop there. She worked the lighting rig mounted beside the camera and threw a light on herself.

The reaction only burned hotter.

People say a female cam streamer uses something like fifteen to twenty lights. A civilian might wonder whether you really need that many, but there had been a time one of them showed the before-and-after by light count, and everyone was convinced on the spot. Lighting mattered that much if you wanted to look pretty on a screen. Put it on Eunha, and the effect didn't need explaining.

Word must already have gotten around. In a blink, more than ten thousand viewers had piled in.

Even standing still, the broadcast looked like a painting. Eunha didn't leave it at that. As if to prove the person on the screen was not simply a picture, she struck pose after pose like a model at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a shoot, checking how she came across on camera.

"Mm... this isn't bad at all!"

Of course, Eunha had no idea the stream was on.

The text from her older brother telling her the broadcast was live, the thin scream, the frantic shutdown — all of that was still a little more than three minutes away.