Episode 42: The Hour of the Promise
"......"
The instant the broadcast went live, the viewers hit like a storm. It wasn't that I had forgotten. Back when I was running stock-market streams, I had tossed them a few generous-sounding promises, purely to clear a special mission and win them over. I had been buried in those days, so I bought myself a month's reprieve — and they had not let it go. They kept demanding I honor my word, until at last I locked the date in out loud: a day or two after the Blame Game ended. And now that day had come.
The deal was this. Gather five candidates the viewers wanted, then run one of them at random. Already my hands were shaking, and my throat had gone bone-dry. Just what did these vicious viewers want from me?
"You demons! How is a person supposed to dance for a full hour without a single break? And you look at that and call it merely?"
These were viewers who could make Satan himself take one look, burst into tears, and flee. I kept watching, and the suggestions erupted into a chaotic free-for-all — too many mouths, and no stopping any of them.
"I am ending this broadcast. Do not come looking for me."
By putting on a thoroughly sulky act, I barely — barely — managed to drag down the intensity of the content they wanted.
"Then we lock these five in as the candidates, yes? Let me be perfectly clear. Once it's decided, there is no changing it."
Some thirty minutes of suggestions and a vote later, the field had narrowed to five. I loaded them into the ladder program and got ready to run it.
Ugh... this is genuinely the worst.
I wanted to reject every last one of them. But I had a YouTube promotion planned for the tail end of today's broadcast, and in front of the viewers I had no choice but to stand there as the one with no power. I let out a long sigh and started from the top.
"Number one: bungee jumping. Hoo... you really are demons."
"Number two: forty-eight hours without ending the stream."
"Are you people actually perverts? Number three: cam on for three hours or more, speaking entirely in cat-talk."
"Number four: a no-end clear attempt of Getting Over It or Jump King."
"Number five: busking on the streets of Hongdae, at least three songs."
Lined up side by side, they made my head spin. Number four was still the least terrible. Please. Let it be four. Praying with everything I had, I pressed start on the ladder.
Amid the split roar of opinions, the line that had started at the top drifted steadily to the right. It looked like four or five, and the viewers were already booing. I clung to that fifty-percent chance, heart in my throat.
"......!"
But at the very end, it hooked hard.
Four. Four! No — three!
"Uh, augh... do I have to start this right now?"
BOTTOM
ROCK
BOTTOM
"A-alright. I'll do it, okaaay... nya."
A nya tacked onto the end of every sentence. Just imagining it curled my fingers and toes and wrung my whole body out of shape. And I had to carry it out myself, right now. This was the kind of memory that would have me kicking the blankets in shame for a month, minimum.
"Uuugh..."
The viewers were wallpapering the chat with rock bottom. And the System Helper, without a single thought for how I felt, piled on in that smug little voice.
I have a pure heart too! Trample it like this, and that's when I turn into a monster!
I ended the broadcast in a flash. That was the end of that. I posted a notice that the Penalty Broadcast would begin at 7 p.m., then set about preparing my mind.
"First, a stop at the nearest shop. Buy that, and—"
"Shut up!"
If it had come to this, I was taking it all the way.
"I'll make you regret provoking me."
I, Lee Kangjun — a man. No. Twenty-four-year-old BJ Lee Hani. Today, and today only, I would give up on being human.
"Heheheh. Now we all die together."
"You're the ones who turned me into a monster!"
One minute to 7 p.m. I checked the cam, checked the outfit, and went over the song list I had prepared, one title at a time. Fifty seconds. Forty. Thirty. My heart trembled in step with the shrinking count. And then, at seven sharp, the broadcast began.
The chat was a war zone. For a solo stream rather than a collab, it was flexing nearly the greatest firepower I had ever pulled. The viewer count climbed like something unhinged. However I looked at it, this was not Shindaeryuk TV's strength alone.
And sure enough, they appeared.
Tweet TV people, drawn by a rumor on the gallery, come raiding. Thanks to them the count punched through 600 in a blink and was charging for 700.
"Y-you. Don't. Rush me. Nya."
Mind control. From this moment on, I abandon being human. Until this broadcast ends, I am nothing but a slave to missions and points. I set my heart to something mean and hit play on the opening track I had prepared in advance. From somewhere far off came a melody, and lyrics that curled every finger and toe.
All or nothing — you're extreme to the bone!
Don't be so nervous.
Hadn't Nietzsche said it? Gaze into the abyss, and the abyss gazes also into you.
Today, I would show those viewers that abyss.