Hani's Dance Skills Have Improved to a Suspicious Degree
I lost the vote. Which meant that, just as I'd promised, I was on the hook to make Pepero sticks for fifty people. I can't believe I slipped up like that. I'd been far too naive. Trusting the viewers' consciences enough to run a bet like this had been the mistake from the very start.
Even so, today's broadcast had been an enormous hit, and the viewers—stung by guilt—had sent in twice the usual Water Balloons, so the haul was sweet enough. This was financial therapy!
I swallowed the disappointment and moved on. This Penalty Broadcast had a follow-up ready, after all. I invited the three people we'd arranged beforehand into Discord, then—without so much as a hello—fired off the video of today's stage.
"Hey, not even a greeting? What's with you?"
"Oh! So this is the stage from Hani, the god of robot dance? Now I'm excited."
"Hello. I'm Soldier, twenty-eight, a streamer on Tweet TV."
"Uh, uhh... Hello. I'm BJ Clemoomoo, thirty-one."
"BJ Lac, twenty-four."
Soldier's dead-serious introduction sucked the air out of the room in an instant. Classic Soldier—take away his mechanics and he had nothing else to his name. He had been getting a little better lately, though.
Anyway, I used the multi feature to hop into all three of their broadcasts at once. I resized the windows so every one of them would fit, and set the video of me dancing as the main feed.
"Everyone ready?"
"What? Just like that? Shouldn't we banter a little more first?"
"I'm not ready either. This is way too fast."
"I'm all set."
Lac was flustered, and Clemoomoo followed up by saying he still wasn't ready, so I decided to give them a little more time. A brief bit of stalling. I figured I'd ask, simply enough, what they'd been up to.
"I'm getting ready to enlist."
"Ah..."
"Ahem!"
"Come back safe."
I teared up, Clemoomoo teared up, and the viewers teared up too. Still, people said the military had gotten a lot better these days. The food was supposedly tastier than it used to be, and you could even use your phone once the workday was over.
"I went on a family trip recently, and it was really nice. Nothing beats travel."
Come to think of it, Clemoomoo had missed my housewarming on moving day because of that family-trip schedule. Soldier had missed it too. Well—Soldier. Between his social skills and everything else, I understood.
"I've just been streaming."
"That's... it?"
"Yes."
"'Measly Grandmaster'? Isn't that crossing the line? Hani's Master."
"By that logic, Clemoomoo oppa is Diamond."
"Uh, uhh? Don't tell me I'm the weakest one here?"
While we laughed and carried on, everyone reported that they were ready. We agreed that the moment I gave the signal, all of us would start together.
"Before that, I'm gonna check the mood in each room real quick."
I stepped into Lac's room first. The chat was lively. None of it, however, was looking forward to my dance.
After the vote I'd given the viewers a firm warning and sworn them to secrecy, so word of my now-legendary rolling dance still hadn't spread. Clemoomoo's room, which I checked next, was more of the same. Last came Soldier's broadcast, over on the other platform, Tweet TV.
Yeah... this was making me a little dizzy. Anyway, preparations were done, so I signaled everyone to start the video.
"Oh, what? This actually feels like a start."
"Is this even the same person? Don't tell me you used a body double."
"..."
The rolling video kicked off on each of their broadcasts, and the eye-tracking came alive with it. Gray circles marked the gaze of Lac and the others. The first one to walk into the trap was Lac.
"Mm..."
"Where exactly are you looking?"
On the video, I was sitting in a chair, waiting for the song to begin. And the gray circle on Lac's broadcast refused to peel itself off my chest.
"No, this is a misunderstanding! The program glitched. I was looking at the whole frame."
Clemoomoo, on the other hand, was different.
"Hup—!"
Whatever Magic Eye trick he thought he was pulling, the gray circle was whipping around me in a dizzy scramble. It was a genuinely impressive skill. And then there was Soldier.
"Uh, um, uhhh..."
The reaction of a twenty-eight-year-old lifelong single was truly something to behold.
At first, everyone was fixated on where those gray circles were aimed. Chest, legs, face—every time a gaze stuck in one place, the viewers came flying in with mean little jeers and heavy jokes. But that lasted only until the song itself was about to begin.
Eye-tracking? They couldn't even remember what they'd been doing. Up on the chair, both arms flung wide, a waist snapping through a dazzling sway. The feeling of a heart pierced clean through by an indifferent gaze.
It wasn't simply a matter of dancing well. There's a line you always hear if you watch audition programs. Someone seems to be doing perfectly fine, and still a judge will say it. Not enough star power. How are you even supposed to define that? Perfect dancing? Singing? A shining face? The moment you try to unpack it, you stall. It isn't a problem language can simply pin down. That's what makes it harder.
And yet everyone watching the broadcast now felt as if they were finding the answer to that impossible question. A simple motion of the hand, the act of folding the body, even a trivial shift of expression across the face. Charm poured out until it filled the screen, and the dazzle of it left no room to keep talking. They lost whatever they'd meant to say and just watched, blank.
At last the video ended.
"So? What did you think?"
When I'd first come up with the eye-tracking bit, the plan had been to roast the three of them for failing to beat a man's instincts. A married man like Clemoomoo would have made an especially fine target. Instead, against every expectation, the mood had drifted into something like sitting through a concert. So I asked for their thoughts, carefully.
"This is insane."
"Huh?"
"I said insane. How are you this good?!"
Lac was the one who started it.
"Hani, were you a trainee or something...? Or did you quit halfway through prepping an idol debut?"
That was Clemoomoo. Back when I'd done voice impressions, he'd asked if I used to be a voice actor. And last of all, Soldier.
"You were really good. It was cool."
"..."
Those reactions didn't stop with the three of them. Viewers from each room turned into refugees and came pouring in.
All at once the viewers lost their bearings and started brawling with pure, brain-off energy. I soothed them, then thanked—one by one—everyone who had donated Water Balloons on today's broadcast.
More than I'd expected... no. Beyond anything I had even imagined. Stunned by my dancing, Lac and the others asked whether they could upload the video to their YouTube channels. Soldier doesn't do YouTube, so he didn't have much to say.
"Sure. I got plenty of Water Balloons out of it anyway."
The balloons sent by the viewers who had come over from Lac's and Clemoomoo's rooms bought them a generous yes. I'd danced well, sure, but it was only a dance cover—how far could something like that really spread? That thought had been in there too.
Correcting that misconception took all of a single day.