Episode 170: The Streamer with the World's Best Follow-Through (Just Chatting)

The day after I watched SC's PCK promotion series in person.

I woke at nine the way I always did, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, enjoyed breakfast with my family, and headed straight for my room.

On an ordinary day I would have flipped the stream on at once. Today, though, there was something I had to do first.

And if you asked what on earth could come before a broadcast I loved that much...

"Yeah. That's more like it. Mhm."

...Right. Close-reading the community.

Someone out there is probably asking why reading the forums cover to cover counts as a daily obligation. I'll have you know this is important work.

Community addicts like me have a condition. Skip the recommended posts for a single day and our heads go boom.

Of course no such condition exists.

Normally I saved the deep read for before bed, but last night I'd been getting ready for today's special broadcast and never found the time.

Hm? What's the special broadcast?

Telling you now would spoil it. Some things have to stay an event for later.

Anyway, on yesterday's stream I had passed along a request edged with a scolding: please stop pairing me with Han Seongun.

I needed to check the community to see whether it had landed, and a quick skim said the effect was obvious.

By the time I had read the boards through, the clock was already pushing noon.

"Hup. Time to get to work."

Recommended posts, done. Yesterday's request, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠confirmed effective.

Now it was time to actually work.

The broadcast was live, but that didn't mean I started talking right away.

My usual audience sat around twenty to thirty thousand, yet in the minutes after I went on, not even half of them showed — barely ten thousand. Viewers needed time to see the notification and wander in. Broadcasters have a name for it. Warming the stream up.

I watched them trickle in through chat, put on a song that wouldn't trip a copyright claim, and left my room for the kitchen on the first floor.

The first thing I saw downstairs was the housekeeper, washing up after breakfast. I went over to her.

"Auntie, is what I asked about yesterday ready?"

"Hm? Oh, that? Of course it's ready."

She finished the dishes in a hurry and rummaged through the refrigerator.

"Here. I bagged it so you won't spill ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anything. Carry it carefully."

And what she handed me was...

"Thank you!"

Thick slices of pork, onion, green onion, chili peppers and the rest of the vegetables, and the seasonings to go with them.

A cook stream.

Nobody can say exactly when the word caught on, but on network TV and internet broadcasts alike it means a show where someone cooks. Take cook, take the first piece of broadcast, and you get a cook stream.

In short, a cooking broadcast.

If you want to know what business a girl who has never cooked a single thing in her life has running one of those...

I don't know. I just wanted to try. Don't ask me anything else.

If I had to give a reason, there was that donation from yesterday's broadcast asking whether I'd ever try cooking on stream, and there was my own curiosity about a field I had never once touched. It also seemed like it would make decent content.

"You want to try cooking?"

"Yes. I thought it would be nice to do it on stream."

"Perfect timing. There's quite a lot of spicy pork stir-fry left over. Keep it any longer and I'd have to throw the whole lot out."

Mom had bought a heap of ingredients for spicy stir-fried pork while she was practicing her cooking, and from the housekeeper's side of it — she made every meal from whatever she'd bought at the market that day — all of it was destined for the trash. Two birds, one stone.

"Besides, spicy pork stir-fry is easy to make, and it's a dish you love."

They said the difficulty was easy, too, which made it the best possible choice for someone cooking for the first time.

So the ingredients were ready. The camera was set.

That was warmup enough. I switched the mic back on, turned the camera on with it, and offered the chat a bright morning hello.

"Hello, everyone!"

"Yes. Your guess is correct."

I lifted the pan with a little flourish, struck the pose of a protagonist out of a cooking manga, and went on.

"Today, right now... it is Eunha's very first cook stream!"

Oh. Saying it like that actually sounds like something.

The moment I announced that today's content was a cook stream, the viewers piled on with expectation.

A few of them doubted my cooking and took the chance to tease me. I didn't particularly mind.

"Not only is this my first cook stream — cooking itself is a first for me. So if anything is hard to watch, please bear with me."

Truth was, even I had no idea how good I was.

"Oh, and if I start cooking in a way that looks dangerous, feel free to call it out anytime. Safety comes first, no matter what."

Then again, since this was my first time, maybe assuming the worst was the correct approach.

...Still, I'm pretty confident I can do better than Mom.

"All right, first I'll introduce the ingredients~"

Pork that had already been seasoned, the sauce the housekeeper had prepared, finely sliced green onion and onion, sour aged kimchi, and perilla oil. I held each one up to the camera and walked them through it.

Sure enough, it was the dish people call a Korean soul food. They took one look at the ingredients and guessed it outright.

"Ding-ding-ding~ Correct!"

"Ah, about that. My dad absolutely refuses to let me handle anything sharp, so I asked Auntie to take care of the parts that need a knife."

"Anyway, enough preamble — let's start. I'm getting hungry myself."

First...

"I'll coat the pan with perilla oil and stir-fry the kimchi."

A sharp tssss leapt off the metal.

"See how the outside turned brown? Now I'll put the meat right in."

"I'm just doing it the way our housekeeper taught me."

"Heat to high... once the surface of the meat is cooked enough, mix it with the kimchi and keep stir-frying..."

"It's cooked enough, so I'll add the sauce."

So I added the sauce and stir-fried, added the vegetables and stir-fried, and at the last moment scattered a snowfall of toasted sesame over the top.

"I-it's done."

A spicy pork stir-fry that actually looked the part sat finished in the pan.

Looks alone didn't prove anything. Mom's cooking looked plausible too, right up until you tasted it.

I moved the finished stir-fry onto a plate and, with a small knot of nerves, picked up a piece of pork in the solemn spirit of a royal taster sampling the king's own meal.

"Mm... huh?"

It wasn't the housekeeper's hand, but the spicy pork I had cooked myself was perfectly good to eat.

"This is actually pretty good?"

Cooking. The first time in my life I had ever tried it.

Am I more talented than I thought?

"Mmm~ Delicious."

People seemed to find it no fun at all that my skill was better than average.

What was I supposed to do? It was talent.

Eunha, thinking that, would go on like this — no, she would probably go her whole life — without ever noticing.

The sauce she had used was a special sauce prepared by the housekeeper's own hands, and the housekeeper was a master of Korean home cooking. Unless you set out on purpose to ruin the dish, it was incapable of tasting worse than above average. Even if Yoon Hayeon made it — a woman so hopeless in a kitchen that you couldn't tell whether she was cooking or performing alchemy — it still could not have tasted bad.

A small kindness, quietly arranged in advance, so that Eunha, meeting a kitchen for the first time, would not be disappointed in her own cooking.