Chapter 133: Expectation and Disappointment (Just Chatting)
"Anyway, it just... happened, all right? Ha. Seriously. I had the whole thing ready to surprise you guys, and it all went to waste."
"The gear? I ordered that thing girl streamers are always using. Did it come out all right?"
"How much... I'm not really sure. I just asked the housekeeper to order it... Where's the price tag? Ah, I can't find it..."
"Yes, that's right. Both my parents are so busy I'm home by myself a lot. So there's someone who takes care of the house for me."
I was letting the time pass like that, trading this and that with the viewers, when a donation came in.
Something about it seemed to be bracing, already, for the chance I might take it badly.
"Uh... sure. Go ahead."
Someone this careful of the listener's mood didn't seem likely to ask anything strange, so I decided to allow it.
Pics leaked onto the community boards... They meant those, didn't they?
"The ones that spread when I turned the broadcast on by accident?"
I already knew that after the camera came on by mistake, my photos had quietly spread through the communities. Of course I did. I'd been digging through those boards all night myself.
"I was going to take legal action, but..."
My brother had told me to say the word and he'd help with whatever he could. I decided to leave them as they were.
If the verdict on my real face in those shots had been unkind, I would have had them seized on the spot. But... everyone seemed to be taking them kindly.
"They said I came out fine, so I'm just going to leave them. Going after every single one would be a hassle, too."
The hassle, of course, wasn't mine. It was the legal team's. From what I'd heard, the people over there were already resenting me quite a bit...
When I didn't react all that sharply about the photos, the viewers poured questions on me about the real face caught yesterday.
"Hey now, share them? If you're going to, do it quietly in the back. Was it really no makeup? Yes. I'd only turned it on for a quick test before bed."
They must have been dying to know, and had been holding the questions back for my sake.
I didn't dislike that consideration, so I answered every one of them properly.
"I'd meant to get more ready before I turned it on... you know, an outfit, makeup, that sort of thing. I don't know how to do makeup at all, so even then, my mother helped me."
"Yeah. That really was my first time?"
Having lived to twenty-one as a man, I'd had almost no chance to learn makeup.
I'd had makeup done before matches, of course, but I wasn't sure that even counted.
Wh-why were they suddenly saying things that made my face burn... Did these people think that if they built me up like that, I'd get excited and turn the camera on? I-I had wavered a little...! But I wanted the cam stream so many people were waiting for to be as close to perfect as I could make it.
"I-I'm not turning the cam on just because you say that, you know? Everybody stop glazing me."
So no. Just wait a little.
Viewers who wouldn't easily show what they really wanted. I wasn't about to be fooled by that.
"I said I'm not turning it on, didn't I?"
Of course I wanted to flip the camera on this very second and give something back to the people who'd been waiting for my stream. But I still wasn't ready. I hadn't done my makeup. I hadn't prepared any clothes. What else was there—anyway. Not now.
"R-really?"
To me, makeup was armor.
If I was going to do a thing, my nature was to do it perfectly. My rule had always been to do everything I could.
Makeup sat in that same line. I knew perfectly well that my looks stood out, but just in case. Enough that no one could dislike me. Hide the flaws as far as they would go, and show only the strengths. That was the feeling.
That feeling was why I'd bought top-of-the-line camera gear, why I'd tested how my face came across, why I'd planned to ask my mother to finish the makeup before I ever showed it on stream...
"It really doesn't lose, even next to the Newbie Guide...?"
Were these people looking kindly even at a flaw like that?
"I hadn't even washed my hair then. I wasn't wearing makeup... and the clothes were pajamas, I'm telling you. Even so?"
"..."
I had always tried to live up to what people expected of me. Fail that expectation, and they turned their backs. Before long they were throwing stones—the very people who, until a moment ago, had been holding the shields that kept those stones off me. So I was more afraid of the ones with the shields than of the ones who threw.
Whenever I failed to meet what they expected, they would betray me in an instant and leave my side.
Turning the camera on wasn't hard. All it took was moving the mouse and clicking a few times. But if these people showed me their disappointment—could I endure it?
If I wasn't that near-perfect self from the Newbie Guide shoot, if I was only what I was right now, wouldn't that be enough for them to be disappointed? Hadn't I already lived through this until I was sick of it, in my past life?
Through StarCraft, through League of Legends, Korea had become a global gaming power, and I had been its best Project A pro. Galaxy. Choi Eunha. The moment Korea was no longer the best—the moment Choi Eunha was no longer the best—countless people let me see their disappointment, and then they left my side. Hadn't I retired because I never wanted to feel that way again?
Against everything I actually felt, my mouth said the opposite.
Most people in the world want the person they love to be without a single flaw. No defect of any kind, no shortcoming of any kind—perfection itself, and nothing short of it. They decide that all on their own, and the moment that person shows an imperfect side, they get disappointed all on their own. What a selfish kind of love.
Who in the world is perfect?
I was the same, right now. There was no way I could call my present self perfect. No makeup, and my hair a little mussed. My clothes were the pajama dress I always wore. I was dressed for bed.
But even so...
If these people told me that even the version of me that wasn't perfectly made up was beautiful—if they told me I was pretty—then maybe that sickening obsession with perfection, the one that had hounded me for years, from long before now, might finally let go.
So I pressed the button. Knowing full well it might be the thing that called their disappointment down.
Click.
The moment the camera came on, I squeezed both eyes shut. Right now, I was afraid to face their reaction. Wouldn't it be better to look as pretty as I could, even now? Didn't I look ugly like this?
Thinking that, I slowly let the strength out of my eyes.
"Ah..."
What met me wasn't people showing their disappointment. It was people cheering at the sight of me on the screen.