The Stuff of a Broadcast
Nearly a month and a half had passed since I started broadcasting.
Summer's opening was already behind me, and the true monsoon season was drawing near. I still remembered the thrill and the trembling of that first stream — the hours I'd spent fretting over what I would do if not a single viewer came in, practicing this greeting and that on test broadcasts with my heart in my throat.
What followed was the joint broadcast. Those electric moments when I laid out every talent I had in front of an audience nearing ten thousand. Every spotlight had turned fully on me, and it was a catharsis I had never once felt in all my life.
Would I ever taste a moment like that again? All of those memories ran on into anticipation for what lay ahead. And yet, even so, one corner of my mind never stopped worrying.
"Ha…… What am I even doing on stream today."
"You're teasing me right now, aren't you?"
Material for the broadcast. The material had run dry. In truth, this could hardly be a problem for solo broadcasters alone. In a modern society that prized creativity above everything else, devising something new — or even merely fresh — was no easy task. I did have a few ideas set aside already, but putting them into practice required points. So, tears swallowed, they were on hold for the moment……. What I was gnawing on now was content that could slake today's thirst right away.
"Ugh…… Isn't there something that would blow up, hard? Hmm?"
The mutter to myself felt as if it had snagged on a hint. I turned it over for a moment. Serviceable enough, as material went. Now if I could just stick some flesh on the bones—!
"……Ignored."
I turned my back on the wicked Helper's mind-scattering remarks and gave myself over to preparing today's broadcast. The time was seven in the morning. Today promised to be a considerably busy one.
Lunch hour. A short rest meant to soothe office workers worn down by the job. I aimed for that exact window and went live. An hour earlier, I'd even put up a notice: today's stream would begin at lunch.
"Yeah, no. You're the only one who thinks that."
To drag in as much aggro as I could, I'd also tucked a short line into the notice: cam stream, round two. I was anxious. I couldn't help it. I always went live at five in the afternoon, and if the viewers fell off a cliff just because I'd opened at lunch, I'd be in trouble.
Today, too, the only thing greeting the viewers the moment the stream began was a chair sitting there all by itself. Viewers screaming that we'd hit rock bottom.
"Ah, ah, everyone calm down. My chest was feeling a little tight, so I was getting things in order."
"You know you get kicked on the spot if you take that somewhere weird, right?"
I neatly crushed the viewers' early blaze of momentum, then stole a glance at the count. Fortunately, five minutes after going live, we'd already passed two hundred. Even at an unusual hour, the bait of a cam stream was as strong as ever. I checked the camera's angle and took one careful step after another. Click, click—!
To roast their poor hearts a little longer, I slipped a high-heeled foot into frame. For today, I'd raised the Balanced Figure ability to 3. It was an ability I'd have to grow steadily over the long term anyway, so the choice had come easily.
"I told you not to post weird chat."
Pointed high heels, built to poke at a man's fantasy. Above them, legs drawing a dizzy curve, sheathed in coffee-colored stockings, proceeded to assault the viewers' hearts. Water Balloons burst like firecrackers, and when the chat hit its peak I took one more step and showed everything but my face.
"Well? Don't I look like a career woman on the rise?"
A black H-line dress that laid an S-line figure utterly bare. Thanks to Balanced Figure, my waist snatched in and my hips fell into place — a top-tier body where anyone looking could see both what I'd been born with and what I'd kept up. Lift your eyes even a little higher and there was the mid lane, so overwhelming it was hard to know where to put them.
"No. My family's strict…… I still haven't been able to date."
I shamelessly outlasted the viewers' boos and sat down in the chair. Today, too, it was a Half-Cam. The moment I announced it, the chat plastered itself in rock-bottom despair — but I mixed in a voice impression, laid on the aegyo, and public sentiment shot straight up.
Anyway, that was the end of the warmup. I split the screen in two: the cam stream on one side, and the content I'd prepared for today on the other. Red bars and blue bars, and the numbers with them, climbed and fell in a frenzy. Impenetrable jargon, the figures attached to it, and percentages. Lines in every color rode two-toned columns up and down, and along the lower edge a bar graph jutted up in spikes. The sort of screen that could dizzy you just by looking at it. The viewers stirred. Watching them, I declared it with full confidence.
"Today's broadcast content is stocks. I, your number-one lecturer, will help even the stock rookies among you learn this easily and actually turn a profit."
The viewers' reactions split several ways. From the crowd that found it completely out of nowhere, to the sort who thought different content was refreshing, all the way to the "uncles" who traded stocks on the regular, cared a great deal about this field, and were thoroughly worked up. Of course, with the stock craze what it was these days, plenty of young people were in it too — but among those who actually traded, the thirties and forties still outnumbered the rest. There was no helping that.
"All right, all right, our dear uncles are getting excited. Calm down a little and focus!"
Ta-da-da-dan~! The BGM from Love House, that once-trendy TV makeover show, began to play. I let the viewers' laughter — look at her, up to everything — pass lightly and gestured toward the screen.
"I will now reveal my stock account!"
The viewers' reaction was like wildfire. But even after about ten seconds, the screen was still drowned in black. The chat was being plastered in question marks.
"……It goes public in thirty seconds! Do not change the channel!"
"Ah, I'm kidding. Ta-da! Here it is."
There were about two more tickers, but their presence was so faint I left them out. Anyway, over the last two weeks there'd been no shortage of issues around rechargeable batteries, and an export disclosure had even dropped, so Ecopia had surged. Thanks to that, for once I could stream without fretting over living expenses.
"As expected, the elders who trade stocks are the most excited. All right, I'll explain them one by one."
First up was Samseon Electronics, sitting at the very top. Everyone already knew it as the most famous company representing the country's KOSPI, so I passed over it quickly. Next was Baidi Pharmaceuticals.
"Everyone, you are walking away with some truly excellent information today."
"I know your worries all too well. You all keep losing it, don't you? Every time you look in the mirror, a sigh comes out."
"No. Not the fat — your precious hair. A lot of you are losing it, aren't you."
"Now, don't cry. Just listen. Since early last year, a new compound Baidi Pharmaceuticals has been developing was found to have a powerful effect on hair-loss symptoms, and the entire world's attention is locked on it. They're in phase two right now, and if that alone succeeds, it's an immediate jackpot. Two times, minimum!"
"Which is why all of you have to pray."
"Oh, come on. If phase two succeeds, the share price rises, so I make money, and your odds of protecting your hair go up by exactly that much. This is what they call good for the sister and good for the brother-in-law. The day is coming when you won't have to count fallen hairs every time you wash."
The chat was a crucible of chaos. The lol-spam of the still-young, full-headed swarm and the tear-soaked emoticons of the elders looking toward their late twenties and beyond — hair just beginning to thin — crossed paths again and again.
Right. This is it. Every so often you have to attempt an image change like this, or they'll stop feeling the freshness.
Today's outfit had been prepared from that same concept, so I might look like an office worker, or at least a little intellectual. I wanted the viewers to feel a different charm in this version of me, showing off economic knowledge they had never once seen.
But perhaps it was because I'd focused too hard on those reactions. I truly had no idea. That a tragedy like that was waiting…….