Consultation (Real Life)
After I wrapped today's Just Chatting stream—not the usual game broadcast, but one given over to talking with viewers—I dragged my worn-out body to the bed and dove in.
Once a stream ended, flopping onto the mattress to savor how soft it was, then killing time on my phone with K-Tube or lurking the forums until I fell asleep, had become routine. Today's broadcast must have taken more out of me than usual. I'd barely lain down before a yawn spilled out.
"Haaah..."
Fair enough. Most days I did nothing but grind Project A, but today I hadn't played a single match. I'd spent the whole day just talking with viewers.
Someone else might ask whether a few hours of conversation really drains you more than a few hours of gaming. For a former pro, though, gaming all day was hardly different from ordinary life.
I was tired enough to drop off the moment I shut my eyes. Even so, I absolutely could not fall asleep like this.
"Ugh... no... I have to get up..."
Saying good night to one's elders before bed was one of the courtesies Father took seriously. I didn't want to shake off this drowsy haze, but I had no choice. No matter how much he doted on me, rules were rules. I couldn't be entirely sure anymore, but even a daughter-obsessed father like mine would probably tear into me if I did something that broke etiquette.
"Nnngh...!"
I hauled my body up by force—it was all but shouting at me to just stay down and sleep—opened the door, and went downstairs.
On the first floor I found Father on the living-room sofa, reading. This was usually the hour he spent in his study. Why was he out here? Not that I minded. I wanted to say good night and get back to bed as fast as possible, and finding him in the living room was easier than finding him shut away in the study. If he was in there I'd have to knock, and the door was so thick I'd have to raise my voice quite a bit. Do that, and I was usually wide awake again.
I went up to him where he sat quietly with his book and bowed my head.
"Father, sleep well."
"Eunha."
Eunha. Those two syllables snapped my tired mind wide awake. He'd only said my name, but the voice was nothing like a moment ago.
"...Yes?"
It was the voice I'd heard often in middle school—more precisely, back when I was a boy.
"Let's talk for a moment."
Cold. Flat. And there was only ever one situation in which I heard that voice.
I'm fucked.
I'd heard those words from Father now and then since I was little, and I usually heard them when I'd done something wrong. What followed, with a very high probability, was a thorough scolding. Getting lectured for two or three hours until Mother came in and barely managed to stop him—that had been daily life in my middle-school years. Father had always been uniquely weak to Mother, so on the days she was home I could at least slip free of his lectures.
Which meant that hearing those words now...
"Did I... do something wrong?"
...meant I'd done something wrong. And judging by the look of him, something pretty big.
"..."
Instead of answering, he lifted a glass of red liquid to his mouth. Oh. He was drinking. I'd been too sleepy a moment ago to notice, but it was definitely alcohol. On the small round table in front of the sofa sat his phone, a book about the size of a hand, an old-fashioned wine glass, and a bottle of wine. He savored a sip, then set the glass down.
"Eunha. What do you think family is?"
Ah. Here it comes. Phase one of Father's lecture...!
He always opened a scolding with some incomprehensible question. Long experience had established that no matter what you answered, you got chewed out. So at times like this...
"Um... I don't really know..."
Saying you don't know was the best move. Fortunately, the strategy hadn't changed much from when I was a boy. Father said nothing further and gave a small nod.
"The family I have in mind—"
The only people you could truly trust in a world where you shouldn't easily trust anyone. The people you could lay even your deepest worries in front of without a second thought.
"—that is what your dad means by family."
"..."
I kept my silence. If he was truly angry, nothing I said would help much. Silence is golden and speech is poison—the maxim that had saved me more than anything when I faced an angry father. But the mouth I'd been holding shut threw the gates open at his next line.
"Internet broadcasting. So that's what you've been up to."
"What?!"
Huh? How does he know?? Brother wouldn't have told him, and I hadn't let anything show in front of Father...
Ah.
One fact flashed through my head. The company legal team. Thinking about it, it was strange to assume the chairman wouldn't know about something his own people had handled. Still, I'd thought something that minor wouldn't get reported all the way up to him. As if anything about me could be minor to this daughter-obsessed father!
"Don't tell me you thought your dad wouldn't find out."
I'm fucked. For real this time.
"Ah... that's..."
The sudden turn left me too rattled to produce a proper excuse. Of course it did. I'd never dreamed he would know.
"I-I'm sorry!"
I bowed at once, a full ninety degrees. Better to ask forgiveness immediately than to fumble through a half-baked excuse—
"Hmm. And what, exactly, did you do wrong?"
"Uh... well... broadcasting without telling you... and... filing that lawsuit without saying anything...?"
On stream I'd said things that would make a father's blood boil—that I wasn't going to study, that I had a talent for games so I'd become a streamer. Surely he hadn't gone and watched my broadcasts too.
"Eunha."
Clink.
"If you want to do it, your dad has no intention of stopping you."
"What...? What do you..."
He isn't angry that I'm streaming...?
"Of course, it does sting a little that you didn't say a word to me."
"I didn't... do it on purpose..."
"It's all right. But, Eunha..."
He drained the wine in one swallow. No savoring, no nosing the bouquet—a literal one-shot.
"Even so. Worries you'll pour out to complete strangers, and you won't tell your own father... doesn't that seem a bit much?"
I'd half suspected it. He'd watched today's stream too.
"Ack."
Maybe it was the alcohol, but a trace of hurt colored his voice. Maybe he wasn't angry that I'd been streaming in secret. Maybe he was hurt that I'd shared my worries with viewers and not with him.
"Are you... talking about the high school thing?"
Two months ago I would have called that insane and refused to believe it. But after living as Choi Eunha—a girl, a daughter—and seeing how much he loved that daughter, it was a perfectly credible thought.
"...Yes."
Now there was even a wetness in his voice. He was someone who rarely showed his feelings, and yet. Had it really hurt him that much that I never brought it up? He was drunk enough that he could barely hold himself upright, and I was frozen there, unsure what to do and unable to leave, when—thankfully—a savior appeared.
"Father, you're drunk."
"Hy— Oppa!"
"Go on up and sleep. I'll see to Father."
"I'm fine. I still have things to say to Eunha..."
"Father, you've had a lot to drink. What if Eunha so much as smells the alcohol?"
"...That won't do. Eunha, we'll finish the rest tomorrow."
Apparently a minor like me wasn't even allowed to catch the smell of liquor.
"Ah... okay..."
Brother supported our drunken father out of the living room, and I was left standing there alone in the sudden emptiness. On the table right in front of the sofa were the book he'd been reading, an empty wine bottle, and the glass. I considered cleaning up, then figured the housekeeper would take care of it in the morning and left it as it was.
"...What book is this?"
The one he'd been reading while he drank. All at once I wanted to know what was in it. He'd always enjoyed reading, but the cover felt different in atmosphere from the books he usually chose. I reached for it, checked the title, set it back down, and turned around to go up to the second floor.
I'd said it before, but Father... his daughter complex was seriously advanced.
...I'm just going to sleep.
The next evening Father came home from the company and called me to the study. He clearly meant to pick up the conversation the alcohol had cut short. I had no intention of avoiding it either. I'd already settled on streaming as my path.
Knock, knock.
"Dad, I'm here!"
"Come in."
A room so packed with books and documents that just looking at it gave me a headache—a space that didn't suit someone who'd spent a whole life on computers and games. At the long table in the center I left the head seat for Father and took the next one.
"Would you like some cocoa?"
"No, I'm fi— ah, yes, please."
It absolutely wasn't that I wanted something sweet. I was merely observing the rule that you don't refuse what an adult offers. Father gave a soft laugh, took out a small cylindrical tin of powder, poured milk into the kettle and warmed it, then spooned in a few measures of cocoa and, with practiced hands, mixed me a cup.
"Stir it well before you drink."
"Ah, thank you..."
A man who didn't particularly like sweets kept a tin of cocoa powder in his study and mixed it without a trace of awkwardness. Brother didn't care for sweets either, so this had to have been prepared for me. Mother liked sweet things too, but work kept her away from home so often. Father set the tin and the carton of milk aside and took the head of the table.
"Well. I made quite a spectacle of myself yesterday. I'm sorry."
"N-no, you didn't!"
The truth was I'd been flustered enough yesterday that I hadn't had the presence of mind to worry about that. He cleared his throat a few times, then spoke in a cold, emotionless voice—the opposite of the hurt, emotional one from the night before.
"I'll be direct. If you enjoy broadcasting, your dad has no intention of stopping you."
That meant...
"You're giving me permission?"
He'd said the same thing last night, but he'd been drunk then. Now he was sober. And given how much he hated saying one thing and then another, this had to count as permission.
"There is a condition."
"A condition?"
"High school. Earn your high school diploma."
His condition was simpler than I'd expected. Graduate high school.
"I won't tell you to go to college. If you have no mind for studying, I won't force it either. But get the diploma."
I'd planned to finish high school anyway, so there was nothing to object to.
"Yes!"
At my ringing answer, he smiled.
"Good. Go on in and sleep. Oh—right. Eunha."
"Yes?"
Was I imagining it? His voice had gone cold all at once. Even so, thinking of the drunken father from the night before and the title of the book on the table, I took a gamble.
"Then, Dad... would it be all right if it showed up to my neck?"
I stared straight into his eyes, the look of someone asking whether it really wasn't allowed. I had no actual intention of doing a so-called Durahan cam, the kind that shows you all the way to the neck. It was a long shot, thrown out to find how much of this body I was allowed to put on camera. At my question he let out a small groan, sighed, and answered.
"...Fine. I'll allow that much."
Huh. That worked.
Note to self: Father is weak to his daughter's requests.
Twenty-one years in this family, and I'd found his weakness for the first time.