Confession: Zero. Timing: One (Real Life)
What am I even doing right now?
"Seop~! Table thirteen, two more orders of galbi."
"Yes..."
A golden weekend, and a whole party had blown in out of nowhere. Because of them I couldn't go anywhere. I'd come in to lend a hand at my father's place. His restaurant was a premium house, set apart from the others, and a group this size almost never walked through the door.
"Two orders of beef rib. Enjoy."
"Yep."
Who were all these people, anyway? From what I'd heard, some security company had come for a staff dinner, and this at a place that charged a hundred thousand won a serving, which was honestly insane. Worse, the customers were terrifying. Hard faces, and muscle a suit couldn't begin to hide. Dozens of them packed in at once, and for a second I thought I'd walked onto a movie set. Noir, obviously.
"Seop, go take the order for room seven."
"Okay..."
I let the endless wave of orders swallow me, emptied my head, and headed for room seven, taking the order while I recited it to myself. I am a machine. I am a working machine.
"Boss, six orders of Seolhwa fresh galbi over here."
"Yes—huh?!"
What? Was I dreaming? Had the grind finally snapped something in my head? If not, there was no explaining the scene in front of me. KZ, the best Project A pro team in Korea, and Spax, KZ's leader. He was right there.
Now that I thought about it, hadn't Kwitch, fresh off winning the exhibition, said they were having their dinner at Wall-X Galbi? I'd taken it for a joke. Looking at this, it was real. Then maybe I could see Eunha in person, too?
Spax wasn't alone in the room. A young man and a young woman sat with him, and if this really was the afterparty, then that person had to be Eun—
Whoa.
Pretty.
I'd been so thrown by a celebrity like Spax appearing out of nowhere that I hadn't looked at anyone else. Across the table, a woman rested her chin on her hand and studied the menu, and she looked like she'd stepped out of a photoshoot. She glanced up and turned toward me. Our eyes only met for a moment, but it felt like my heart stopped.
Have I ever seen anyone this beautiful? A face that lovely, and a cold air that only made it sharper.
"Hey, everyone's drinking, right?"
That bright, youthful voice. The moment I heard it, I was sure. This was Eunha. It was exactly the voice of the streamer I listened to all the time.
"Um, boss? Three soju and three beers over here, too, please."
She looked my way and smiled as she said it, and I understood at once why her nickname was the Fox. Anyone who saw her like that would be caught. And at the same time I thought the nickname only existed because people had never had anything but her voice. The second you saw her in person, Fox stopped being big enough to hold all of her.
"Eunha."
"...Yes."
"Do you drink often?"
"Ah, no..."
"That order didn't sound like something you've only done once or twice."
"..."
I am an idiot. A spectacular idiot. It had already been three or four months since I became a girl, long past time to have adjusted, and I still kept acting the way I used to. Casual speech slipped out toward old ties that didn't even exist anymore.
"If Seungtaek-hyung hadn't said something, they really would've brought it."
"Yeah. I didn't think they wouldn't even check IDs."
Or, like just now, I ordered alcohol without thinking. A small excuse, if I was allowed one: this was my first dinner like this since I'd become a woman, and back when I was a man I had always been the one calling for drinks.
"Aigoo, Eunha, it happens. I drank plenty when I was a student, too."
I knew that better than anyone. My first drink had been in middle school, with this very guy. Spax, who had no way of knowing, teased me like he'd caught me red-handed, and Han Seongun just sat there and watched it happen.
Jerk. Help me out a little.
The door rattled open.
"Oh, are the others here?"
I'd been hoping a teammate would walk in and flip this awful mood.
"Six orders of fresh galbi. Please enjoy—"
Unfortunately, the one who came through the door was the server who had taken the order. Our eyes met, and he flushed and turned his head. Yeah. Fair enough. He had nearly sold alcohol to a minor, and the person responsible was sitting right in front of him.
"Ah, I—I'm sorry."
I'd been too flustered to apologize earlier, so I did it now. They were the ones who hadn't checked IDs, sure, but without Spax they absolutely would have served us. And if I remembered that the bodyguards outside were my father's people, that would not have ended well for anyone.
Instead of answering, the server held out a sheet of paper and a pen.
"Um... could I maybe get an autograph?"
"...What?"
"I... I'm a fan. Of you, Eunha..."
It wasn't as big a shock as running into Han Seongun outside the restaurant, but it was a shock of its own. I streamed without showing my face, a so-called Durahan, and yet this server knew I was Eunha.
"The exhibition afterparty... you said you were coming... and Spax..."
He must have caught how flustered I was. He stumbled through how he'd figured it out, and the explanation was enough to get through even to an idiot like me.
"Ah..."
Right. I was the one who had suggested Wall-X Galbi to Spax, and Spax was a pro whose face everyone already knew. The server had just heard my voice, too. For a viewer of my stream, realizing the person sitting here was Eunha wouldn't be hard at all.
"You're one of my viewers?"
"...Yes."
"I'll sign it."
Meeting a viewer offline was a first, and the feeling was new. In my past life the people I met at every fan meeting were fans, too, but the me from then and the me from now were very different. Getting my face seen didn't particularly snag on anything, either. The only reason I kept it hidden was a promise to my father. This was the first fan I'd met in real life. A little fan service was the right thing to do.
"Uh... what's your name?"
"I—I'm Kim... Junseop."
"Mr. Kim Junseop... here you go."
The signature was the one I'd used back when I was a pro: a scribbled Galaxy, and one heart. The heart was a bonus. A little mark for streamer Eunha's first autograph.
Maybe the extra touch got to him. He stared a hole through the paper, and I smiled as I spoke.
"Ah, no photos, okay?"
No-cam streamer, after all. It would be a problem if my face got around.
"Yes! Yes!"
He took the signed sheet and left. The moment he was gone, Han Seongun looked rattled.
"Eunha, weren't you a no-cam streamer?"
"Yeah. I am."
"And it's okay to show them like that?"
I didn't need to ask what he meant. My face, obviously.
"What's the harm? It's not like anyone took a picture."
The first reason I insisted on no-cam was the promise to my father. The second was not wanting attention in this life. Short of going fully public, a few people seeing my face didn't matter much.
"You think so...?"
"If she's fine with it, what's the problem? I'm hungry. Let's start grilling instead of waiting."
Smart. That's why he was my old best friend.
I'd worried we might be running too late, but the rest of them showed up before long, and watching every arrival stare at my face was its own kind of fun. Soon all six of the exhibition roster were gathered, everyone except Extra, and we spent the afterparty grilling top-grade Korean beef at a hundred thousand won a serving. The look on Spax's face every time another piece finished cooking was a delicacy all by itself.
Perfectly done beef, with one drink on top, would have been perfect. That part was a shame. Even so, it had been worth coming despite my father's objections. Not simply because someone else was paying for the meat, but because I could finally see, in person, the people I'd newly tied myself to.
"No way. That's actually true?"
Zzangdol was, how to put it, a wholesome country boy. Almost the only one whose face on stream and face in real life had no gap at all.
"Come on, Eunha. A lighter isn't about to come out of your pocket, is it?"
"Hyung, girls carry lighters for makeup."
"...For real?"
Hearing only Oldboy's voice, you pictured a man in his thirties or forties. In person he didn't look that old. The voice, and the ahjussi nickname, were what aged him. For a man in his thirties, he looked closer to his late twenties.
"Eunha, drinking before you're an adult isn't good."
After Nebula, the most shocking face in the room was Pola's. That thick, low voice had made me picture a man built like Driver Kwon. Reality was nothing like it. The opposite of Oldboy: a thoroughly ordinary face, an average build for a man in his twenties, average in every way. He had just turned twenty, barely an adult. By my past life's count, he was a younger brother.
"...I don't drink. I don't smoke, either."
"Then why'd you order alcohol?"
This brat. I swear.
"...Enough."
I was still too awkward to know how I was supposed to treat him, but Han Seongun looked like he had already finished adapting. He was talking to me the same way he did back on the Discord channel.
"Haha. Got it."
I wanted to plant one straight punch in that annoying face. Given our builds, though, my hand was the one likely to hurt, so I let it go. Just endure it and eat. This was good. A little sorry for Spax, but the meat tasted like what it cost.
"Ahh. That was great."
"Seungtaek-hyung, thanks for the meal."
"Seungtaek, thanks. That was good."
"Yeah, yeah. If you enjoyed it, that's enough."
The afterparty was winding down. We'd more or less finished eating, and people were starting to think about getting up.
"Old-hyung, step out for a smoke?"
"Ah, okay. Seungtaek, you coming?"
It hadn't been a long time of talking face to face, but most of them had already dropped the formal speech.
"Sure, why not. Pola, you smoke too?"
"Yes. I do."
"Then we'll leave the two kids and go."
Oldboy, Zzangdol, Pola, and Spax stepped out for a post-meal cigarette, and the room was left to me and Han Seongun.
I didn't know about him, but even after learning he was Nebula, I was still awkward around him. I was about to look at my phone in peace when he called me.
"Eunha."
His voice was dead serious.
"What?"
I was still awkward, but if he was working up to something that serious, I figured I ought to meet him halfway.
"This isn't a joke. I mean it... would you, maybe, with me—"
He couldn't even meet my eyes. He stammered, which wasn't like him at all. Dense as I am, even I could tell. I'd been a guy once, after all.
"Stop."
I'd meant to hear him out, but this was as far as it went. Even alone in a room, this wasn't right.
I put the weight on friend on purpose. I was drawing a line. Then and now, I had never made one. Not as the pro gamer Choi Eunha, and not as the streamer Choi Eunha.
"So. If you've got those kinds of feelings for me, you'd better give them up."
Han Seongun stared at me, blank. Saying it was a little cruel, but Nebula was the first tie I had made as the girl Choi Eunha, and I didn't want to lose him easily. If he couldn't let go of feelings like that, though, there was nothing I could do.
Mm. What was I supposed to do with this?
The room had gone far more awkward than before, and if I stayed any longer the others might walk back in and hear it.
"Then I'll head out. See you next time...!"
He would need time to think, too. I looked at him still sitting there in a daze, and hoped, quietly, that he wouldn't cross the line. That he would just stay a friend.
"No—why won't you let a person finish..."
Han Seongun couldn't believe it. What he had been about to say was not some brave confession from a seventeen-year-old in the middle of a puppy crush. It was a proposal, one prospect to another. Let's challenge the pro world together.
"I should tell her, shouldn't I?"
Before the misunderstanding could sink any deeper, he laid out the whole story in a private message. Eunha read it and spent the night beating her blanket. Of course, the blanket-kick was something only Eunha herself would ever know.