The Direction of the Broadcast
Hot. Miserably hot. The heat that had been creeping in since mid-June was finally throwing its full weight around now that the month was running out.
There was an air conditioner, yes, but I was already sick over the five hundred thousand won in rent that had walked out the door this month. The stocks I held were trapped in a dead sideways box, and every Water Balloon that came in had to be set aside for points. With no real income to speak of, the worry was no joke.
Still, points over money. Look at that. Look at me. I actually managed to hoard this much.
Last week's little revolt by the trolls had dropped an unexpected windfall in my lap. The System Helper was delighted, crowing that those who defied the Goddess had been made an example of—punish one to warn a hundred—and that her majesty had been magnificently displayed. The "reward" for that merit came to a full two hundred points. Unearned income I never saw coming, and it didn't stop there.
The thirty-seven trolls who had barged into the broadcast and raised hell, along with the people who had posted nasty threads on the Internet Broadcast Gallery, joined the fan club on top of everything else just to dodge a lawsuit. A week later, the fan-club count had hit 1,700. A result pulled off roughly a month after I started streaming. Two fan-club missions cleared because of it, and the points stacked up fat.
What I held now was a full 1,000 points. I hadn't spent a single one since the Miracle joint broadcast, pinching every last point like a miser, and this was the magnificent result.
"When you hit a thousand, aren't you supposed to get a ding! 'You have achieved a great feat,' and some kind of perk?"
"...Let's not. Let's just not talk."
A thousand points, anyway. Just thinking about it made me so happy I could barely keep the corners of my mouth from climbing.
Pour this into game abilities and I might break out of this Yeti stretch and really take off. Maybe I could even hit Master.
It had started as a joke of a daydream, but maybe it was actually possible. I had already smashed the cursed wall between Platinum and Diamond with a level-2 ability. A thousand points was enough to push Nimble Control 2 nearly to level 5—enough, perhaps, to set my sights on Master and beyond.
"Why not? A level-5 skill costs how many points? That much ought to be enough, shouldn't it?"
"Are you insane? What is this?"
Lac was a Grandmaster, sure, but these game abilities were beyond anything I could imagine. And me? What did that make someone who had started with not a single ability related to games?
"You've got to be kidding me!"
Suddenly it all made sense—why I had been grinding three accounts at full throttle since Season 4, and my peak tier was still only Platinum. Born without a single innate gift for games. Damn it. And yet another suspicion rose right behind that one.
"So you're telling me I was born with nothing at all?"
"Huh? Then why haven't I seen any of them until now?"
"..."
Apparently it had remembered, word for word, something I had spat out while I was angry. Petty little Helper.
I went carefully through everything besides the chat window where I traded words with the Helper, and found a button that let me check the abilities I already had, not just the new ones.
"Hm? More than I thought."
The categories ran all over the place. Appearance, Academics, Work—plenty of them. Scroll far enough down and there was even a Military category.
"Appearance first."
Lush Hair 2
"...That's it?"
"Ha."
I had hoped, just in case, but what was there to expect from looks that were ordinary to the bone? I moved on to Academics.
Come to think of it, I had liked reading since I was little, and I remembered my grades in anything to do with Korean always being strangely good. Still too thin to satisfy me, but the spread made a certain kind of sense.
"Work abilities... a handful of computer things, and that's the lot. Social skills... you've got to be kidding me. What am I, some shut-in rotting in my room? I'll have you know I hold my own just fine with people I've only just met."
I kept going. The one real find turned up later, under singing: Vocalization 2 and Sense of Rhythm 3. Polish those a little, and I could show a serious edge in singing content too.
"..."
Laid out in a row like that, the whole list left me feeling faintly pathetic. Lac's abilities might have been limited to games, but they were that dazzling, and the best I could claim was Sense of Rhythm 3. I had stood under such a brilliant spotlight at the joint broadcast, and yet it felt as if I had been stamped from birth as someone who could never rise above a supporting role.
No. I have the System now. There's no need to envy what other people were born with.
Coveting someone else's silver while ignoring the gold already in your hands is a fool's game.
"...I really want to hit you."
Games were a no, anyway. In truth I had never meant to invest in game abilities to begin with. Reaching Master wouldn't change much from where I stood. If anything, my image as a gaming BJ would harden too far, and I might only pull in viewers who cared about that side of things.
For a female BJ, Diamond is more than enough. I'm not trying to become a pro. If I want to grow as a broadcaster, I have to bet somewhere else.
I had said it before: games alone had a clear ceiling. To get bigger, I had to widen the field.
It might sound blatant and cheap, but a female BJ's most powerful weapon is her looks. Deny that and you're either a hypocrite or someone tending a flower garden inside their skull.
As children, we're taught that a kind heart matters more than a pretty face.
Bullshit.
Step out into the world and everyone learns what actually matters.
I have to change the looks first. Only then can I hold this momentum and grow even faster.
Even without the cam, steady streaming would keep the growth from stopping. The speed, though, would definitely fall off compared to before. That was why I needed a new engine.
I've turned it over and over. This is the moment to start cam broadcasts.
The decision was made. Going through with it as I was, though, had a problem. A thousand points was a great deal, but appearance abilities carried so much weight that they burned points at a brutal rate. I borrowed the Helper's power and mocked it up the way you preview a new character, and a thousand points came up badly short. Forget a celebrity—it wouldn't even reach upper-tier looks. I would need at least five thousand points invested before my face could win people over anywhere I went; seven thousand would put me at celebrity grade... and only ten thousand or more would buy top-star looks.
Which is why I agonized so much. Or maybe this is actually better. Flip the cam on all at once and show my whole face, and the sudden shift in the broadcast's mood might rattle the viewers I already have.
The worrying had been long, but the conclusion was surprisingly simple. Upgrade the looks in stages. And don't turn the cam all the way on. That, too, would advance step by step, just like the appearance.
"First up has to be Half-Cam. Let's tease them a little."
Half-Cam means a cam broadcast that shows the upper body while leaving the face hidden. And here, obviously, figure was what mattered most.
"No! For a man, there's one thing that matters most."
The single most important point a mere system could never understand. I smiled, just faintly, at the figure in the mirror.
Around three in the afternoon, I sent the broadcast notice out early. On Shindaeryuk TV, a notice goes as a live alert to anyone who has favorited the stream, and if they have also allowed phone notifications, it reaches them there as well. The message itself was short and simple. Today's broadcast would start at five, and for the first time, I would be doing a cam stream.
After that I ran a private broadcast for about thirty minutes, tuning how I read on camera—the framing, the brightness—and then, to kill what time was left, I opened the Internet Broadcast Gallery.
Reactions. Let's see the reactions.
It wasn't as hot a topic as the one-on-one with Mia or the Miracle joint broadcast, but posts about my first cam stream were still trickling up.
"Cheerful bunch."
The reaction wasn't bad. Play this right, and the viewer count might actually come out decent.
"Hoo..."
I backed out of the gallery. I had pushed the whole thing forward as if it were nothing, but turning the cam on is, in truth, intensely nerve-racking. Even if this appearance isn't the real me, viewers look at what they see now and judge me by it. They define me by it. So sometimes I agonize, sometimes I regret, and I drive myself harder.
I will make this broadcast a success.
"All right. Let's go!"
Five p.m.
The broadcast begins.