Broadcast Genius?
Hair loss.
Taken literally, the words mean nothing more than hair falling out. To a modern person, though, hair loss refers to one thing and one thing only: the hair on your head.
The longer I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Every other kind of hair—starting with the legs, then the armpits, the beard, even the hair growing in places polite company doesn't mention—we pay good money to have removed. So how had things ended up like this? I couldn't help wondering whether the ecosystem of hair itself had fallen into a rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer spiral.
The broadcast had been rolling along in high spirits. The turn came in what could only be called an instant.
"Huh? Why Baidi Pharmaceuticals?"
In today's session, Baidi Pharmaceuticals had looked like it was merely taking a breather, off about 1.2 percent. Then I heard the viewers, checked my brokerage account, and found that the minus 1.2 had become a minus 10 in a single instant.
"Wh-what is this?"
A downward VI—a volatility halt on the way down. For a moment I forgot I was even live, dropped into the chair at my desk, and pulled up Baidi Pharmaceuticals' chart.
"You've got to be kidding me!"
I hadn't misread it. On a two-minute candle, the chart had shown a plunge so violent I could hardly believe it. Volume had exploded as well. Something was clearly happening.
Messages kept stacking up in the chat, but I didn't have the presence of mind to look at them. I frantically opened a search window—the familiar green one—and looked up Baidi Pharmaceuticals.
"Ah..."
"Th-this can't be... how could this happen!"
I left the delighted viewers behind and hammered the left mouse button as fast as I could. I had to get out, no matter how. I laid orders in advance across the lower rungs of the book, but there were no buyers—only an endless wave of selling.
A short while later the VI lifted, and the chart poured downward again like a waterfall.
"Aaagh!"
In a flash the loss swelled from a hundred and fifty thousand won to two hundred thousand... and then all the way to three hundred thousand. My hands shook, and I thought I might cry. Another downward VI triggered. The day's drop was already at twenty percent. It was a stock I'd picked up on a tip and treasured since the start of the year, and now it had been smashed to pieces in a single moment.
I was sitting there blank, sunk in the shock, when the viewers' chat pulled my eyes off the chart and onto my list of holdings. Astonishingly, Ecopia was sprinting. The same Ecopia that had been dozing at plus 0.23 percent a moment ago had shot to plus 4.7 percent in a flash, and the climb showed no sign of stopping.
"Wh-what in the world is going on..."
I checked the details. It was true. A real disclosure had been filed, and the size of the contract was considerable. While I was looking, the second downward VI on Baidi released, and the price kept falling without end. Around twenty-three percent down, a wave of buying seemed as if it might hold the line, only to be punched through a moment later with no strength left in it. Twenty-five percent. Twenty-seven. And at last, limit-down.
Teslon really was Teslon. Ecopia wasn't even a penny stock, and a single contract had sent the price up like this. After hesitating for a moment around plus thirteen percent, Ecopia saw its volume explode all at once, tacked on another seven percent, and tripped a VI all over again.
"...... Death sentence."
"Huh?"
The chat hadn't been seeing things. I hadn't noticed, but the stock situation had gotten so entertaining that one of the operators at Shindaeryuk TV, while monitoring the platform, had pushed my broadcast up toward the main page—and viewers had poured in because of it. The count now stood at a full five hundred and sixty. For a solo stream, not a collaboration, it was a personal best.
Seriously?
Talk of a special reward dragged part of my mind back from the shock the market had dealt me. Even so, Ecopia's climb was terrifying. A second VI hit, and the chat went up in flames.
I still needed to add more than a hundred viewers. To manage that, I had to get the house rabbits in line first—the regulars already watching. Only if they stayed put instead of leaving could they combine with the newcomers and give me a real shot at seven hundred.
"Um... I hereby make a pledge."
Questions poured in from every direction. I watched the chat and gave a small nod. At that sign of agreement, the viewers caught fire. From this moment on, their interest in my broadcast was at its peak. The house rabbits were secured. Now it was time to catch the wild ones still running around outside.
First, I changed the title of the broadcast.
Then I changed my outfit. An intellectual look? Please. Quick as I could, I threw on the clothes from my first cam broadcast—the ones that leaned hard into a mid laner's carry power.
In truth, the chest I'd grown through the ability was a 75D, and among female BJs there were quite a few bigger than me. Most of them, though, had enlarged theirs through surgery, so the result didn't look natural, or they hadn't kept the rest of their figure in check and the balance was off—minus after minus. I, by contrast, was a perfect natural(?) and had flawless proportions on top of it thanks to the Balanced Figure III ability, which only made me stand out more by comparison.
At any rate, I wasn't sparing any effort to snare those wild rabbits, and the viewer count began to climb fast. A glance at the market showed that Ecopia had already reached plus twenty-seven percent.
Right. Just stop there. Twenty-seven percent is enough.
Even if I took a loss on the money, it would still be better than broadcasting whatever the viewers ordered me to do. That was the hope I was holding. A moment later, Ecopia betrayed it and printed a limit-up anyway.
"......"
Public opinion was far too fierce for me to take any of it back. The moment I reluctantly nodded, the chat filled with cries of manse, as if everyone in it had just won independence from colonial rule.
I could only hope they wouldn't force some bizarre concept on me. Regretting a decision already made would be useless anyway. I would have to soothe my spinning head with the clearing of the mission to break seven hundred viewers.
I was comforting myself with that when the rowdy mood among the viewers shifted into something that felt very wrong.
"Don't tell me..."
Thirty minutes still remained before the market closed. With uneasy eyes, I checked Typhoon Construction's price.
The number—a stark blue, the Korean market's color for a fall—was growing in real time.
"Ah, please!"
I made a resolution. From this day on, I would never again run anything to do with stocks on a live broadcast.