Chapter 17

A Sleepy Stream More Dangerous Than Drowsy Driving

“I’m home!”

“Okay, how was school today?”

“Well... same as always, I guess.”

From Monday to Friday, it was the question his mother always asked on weekdays.

—but it was always difficult to come up with an answer. There could not be something special happening every single day, and on most days, the reality was that he could only say it had been the same as usual.

‘Can’t she just stop asking that kind of thing?’

Thinking such stereotypically adolescent thoughts, Woojin hurried to his room. Though in truth, he really was an adolescent.

First, he tossed his bag into the corner of the room and immediately headed for the shower.

“Ugh...”

Batting practice had gone unusually long today, so his hands and arms were still aching. Still, if he wanted to get better at baseball, which he loved, he had to train hard.

What else could he do? Woojin knew very well that he was not as much of a genius as the people around him claimed, so he always gave his all to his daily practice.

“Hmm. It’s almost ten already. She must’ve started streaming by now.”

It was only natural, since by the time baseball practice ended and he got home, it was already past nine at night. He had probably missed the beginning of the stream again, but that was part of his usual routine.

The moment Woojin lay down on his bed, he picked up his phone and opened the streaming app.

[Todayyy tooo vampir gammm]

“...What’s with the stream title?”

It seemed to roughly mean she was going to play the vampire game again today...

The owner of the stream was, of course, Lilith.

A VTuber with a vampire princess concept, whose main appeal was being atrociously bad at games while insisting that none of it was her fault.

After stumbling onto her through a clip not long ago, Woojin had begun ending each day here.

Strictly speaking, she did not have any particularly noteworthy content, and the quality of the so-called ‘model,’ which was extremely important for a VTuber, was not especially high either—.

But thanks to the stubbornly maintained concept and her unique airheadedness, she had gathered quite a few viewers.

“This airheadedness thing is actually really important for entertainers.”

Had there not been plenty of television celebrities who became popular because they showed unexpectedly stupid or clumsy sides in bizarre situations?

Even a forty-something man acting like an airhead could be cute, so how cute would it be when a beautiful girl with a bright voice did it? (Not that anyone knew what the person inside actually looked like.)

His cousin Yua had hurled insults at him, calling him a pervert for watching this kind of thing... sigh, the brat was just too young to understand the appeal.

“I can still watch for about two hours.”

Since he was in a sports club that burned through a lot of stamina, he could not stay up too late if he wanted to function the next day. Still, watching the vampire princess curse out scraps of code before going to sleep somehow made the day’s exhaustion fade a little.

But today was strange.

For one thing, Lilith on-screen had her eyes closed. At first, he thought it was a tracking error, but everything was far too quiet for that.

And—.

-Sis, are you sleeping?

-Hey, wake up

-Open your eyes

Those reasonable messages were one thing—.

But vulgar comments that normally would have been cut down immediately were appearing without any moderation.

Lilith was a streamer merciless toward anything that crossed the line. If the level rose even slightly—.

‘Begone! You have been possessed by a lewd demon! Do you know your sin!’

She would say something like that and slap the offender with a chat restriction.

But today, there was none of that. It was not that chat had suddenly become filthier either. It was the same level of teasing as always, except the sharp rebuke that normally came flying instantly was nowhere to be seen.

The chatroom had been completely abandoned.

Unless Lilith had suddenly awakened to the joys of neglect play, the cause was—.

‘Mm... mmm...’

A voice so quiet it was hard to hear without concentrating. Woojin hurriedly raised the volume.

‘My subjects... mm... I...’

Not only was her speech extremely slow, but her pronunciation was slurred and the ends of her words dragged out. Depending on how one heard it, she almost sounded like a little child whining to her mother.

“...This sounds familiar somehow.”

Woojin brought the phone closer to his face. Not that doing so would make it easier to hear.

This voice, this way of speaking.

He felt like he had heard it somewhere before. He could not pinpoint it, but it definitely did not feel completely new.

“I can’t tell.”

In any case, Lilith was a streamer who never leaked any personal information whatsoever. Even if her voice sounded similar to someone’s, there was no way to know who that person was.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere of the stream became even more ridiculous.

‘Mmm... mmnya... yaaawn...’

This vampire princess was clearly nodding off with the stream still running.

Come to think of it, he vaguely remembered chat mentioning that she had started exercising a few days ago or something. If her usual lifestyle pattern had changed, it made sense that she would be tired.

“Wait, didn’t Yua say she started exercising recently too?”

But there were countless people in the world who exercised. It had to be a coincidence.

‘This princess... you lot... handle it... mm... I’ll play the game...’

After muttering something incomprehensible, she started moving the mouse.

The stream title said she was playing the vampire game, so she would probably launch that.

It was a game Lilith had started playing often after receiving it as a gift from a viewer. She seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, even while cursing it every time she said it was difficult.

But—.

“She must be seriously sleepy.”

The mouse pointer wandered around in random places, unable to find the icon. She would click once when she needed to double-click, then simply stop.

After finally managing to launch the game, she slept soundly at the menu screen for a long time even after loading finished.

Woojin was at the point where he wanted to reach through the screen and click things for her.

By the time she repeatedly dozed off and woke up enough to barely enter the game, he checked the time and realized fifteen minutes had already passed.

‘Ah! Mm... mm... resources... gather...’

But Lilith’s character simply stood blankly in an empty field before stopping again.

And—.

The inescapable fate finally arrived.

Normally, Lilith would already have been throwing a fit about why morning had come so quickly and how unfair it was, but today she had awakened to neglect play.

Even after her character turned into gray ash... no, ash is gray to begin with. Anyway, even after dying and becoming a pile of ashes, Lilith never pressed the revive button.

Instead, another sound began to emerge.

Soft breathing.

Snore—.

“...She fell asleep.”

No, why was the streamer herself sleeping on a stream he had turned on as a lullaby(?) or sleep aid(?) before bed? This was absurd.

Still, Woojin thought Lilith was very cute. Was this what people called being blinded by affection?

The problem came afterward.

What would happen if word spread that a streamer had fallen asleep while leaving the stream on?

Especially when she had already gained some recognition here and there because of the previous scout-ban incident.

And on top of that, if the stream did not even have a manager?

Correct! Every troll in the world would inevitably swarm in.

The viewer count had been around two hundred fifty when Woojin entered, but soon passed four hundred, and not long afterward reached five hundred.

The problem was the newcomers.

-Wow, she really is asleep lol

-Is this actually real

-Look at that tempting way she’s got her mouth open

-Wanna put something in sis’s mouth

-Oh my

-There are actually psychos getting turned on by that cheap-ass model

-Enough

-Sis is sleeping, don’t cross the line

-What the hell is with these guys all of a sudden

The regulars who normally guarded Lilith’s stream tried to stop them—.

But the newcomers had no brakes. This was not a stream they normally watched, and they had nothing to lose even if they got banned.

It was a stream they would not watch again anyway, so getting kicked out after freely making sexual jokes was no loss.

And if the stream had no manager, with the streamer herself asleep and the whole thing completely abandoned?

Woojin frowned without realizing it as he watched the chatroom descend into chaos in an instant.

This can’t just be left alone—.

But with no way to do anything, all he could do was watch, when something happened.

Knock knock knock.

‘Miss? Are you asleep?’

Knock knock knock.

‘The light is on... Miss, are you sleeping with the light on?’

Woojin recognized the voice from the very first sentence.

The owner of that voice was unmistakably Ms. Sejin.

The attendant who had stayed by Yua’s side for ten years. Woojin visited often to look after Yua, so there was no way he could fail to recognize her voice.

Click—.

In an instant, the puzzle pieces came together in his head.

Lilith’s true identity was—.

‘Miss, I’m coming in—.’

The sound of the door opening.

‘I thought something was strange. Miss, if you’re going to sleep, you should sleep in bed.’

After Lilith’s model made strange movements and then stopped completely, rustling sounds continued for a while, and the chatroom was exploding more violently than ever—.

But none of that mattered anymore.

‘Oh my, what is this? Bzzzt...? What is this? I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere before—.’

Woojin shot upright from his bed.

— — —

“Yaaaawn... huh?”

My body feels lighter than usual. My head is clear too.

How long has it been since I felt this refreshed? It was the first time since I started streaming.

It was true that I had been tired from streaming until dawn every day. But I definitely streamed yesterday too...

“I remember turning the stream on, but I don’t remember turning it off.”

What is this? Youth... no, girlhood dementia?

“Gah! I didn’t even drink, so why is my memory gone?”

No matter how much I thought about it, I could not remember anything from last night. I should register this as Mystery File Number Two of Shin Yua’s Life. Number One, of course, is reincarnation.

Still, there was no way feeling physically light could be a bad thing. For once, I could start the day feeling refreshed.

“Kiyoooooot!”

“...Miss, your battle cry is strange.”

“This is what gives me strength! Uraaaaaah!”

As PT trainer Ms. Kim Jeonga instructed, I worked the pink dumbbells hard and ran on the treadmill too.

After showering, I ate breakfast, and for once, I completed both my morning and afternoon lessons with bright, wide-open eyes.

Everything was the same as usual, except for one thing—.

“Ms. Sejin, why are you looking at me like that?”

“It’s nothing.”

Every time we crossed paths, Ms. Sejin looked at me strangely. It was like she had something she wanted to say but was holding it back.

“Unnie, you don’t like me, do you?”

“...Should I ban you from the internet? No matter how I look at it, it seems bad for your education—.”

“Sumimasen!”

Naturally, she denied it, but I had seen her every day for ten years, so I could read that much from her expression. But nothing particularly different from usual had happened.

“Ah, is it because I’m in such good condition?”

Normally, I felt slightly drowsy even during the day, so maybe seeing me in FULL condition today felt a little unnatural from Ms. Sejin’s perspective.

There was no outdoor schedule today, so after finishing my afternoon lessons, I had free time. There was a gap until the stream started.

This used to be my everyday life, but these days, free time like this had become unbelievably precious.

“La-la-la-la—. Freeedoooom!”

I flopped onto the bed and turned on my phone.

I thought I might browse the communities for the first time in a while—.

“Huh?”

[Vampire VTuber Falls Asleep While Streaming.avi]

[Lilith Fell Asleep During Her Stream lol]

“...Huh?”

Thinking there was no way, I clicked the post, only to find it really was about me.

There were posts everywhere saying I had fallen asleep during yesterday’s stream. There were even archived clips of my soft breathing being passed around like some kind of pseudo-ASMR.

“Wait, when did I...? Did I really fall asleep?”

I vaguely remembered coming home completely exhausted after looking at all sorts of things with the rainbow-haired old maid at the art museum, then sitting down because I thought I should at least turn on the stream.

But everything after that was completely blank.

So according to these clips—.

I had passed out asleep with the stream still running, and the whole thing had been broadcast live.

“Whoa. This is bad.”

But the real problem was something else.

[Is it true Lilith has a maid]

[Someone came in while she was asleep, you can hear a voice]

‘Miss? Are you asleep?’

It was unmistakably Ms. Sejin’s voice.

“Huuuuuh?”

My mind went completely blank.

Did she find out? Did Ms. Sejin realize that I stream?

...No, no. Calm down.

Han Sejin, the thirty-nine-year-old old hag, is computer illiterate.

There is no way she knows what a VTuber is or what streaming is.

But she definitely realized I had been staying awake doing something strange.

“Ahem, is that why she’s been looking at me weird since morning?”

Then why did she not interrogate me? Shiver shiver. That is even scarier. Is she saving it up to explode later like the snack incident—.

“Oh, right. But the computer... no, who turned off the stream?”

When I woke up in the morning, the computer had definitely been turned off.

There is no way Ms. Sejin knows how to end a stream.

Did she just shut off the computer’s power?

I should register this as Mystery Number Three of Shin Yua’s Life.

I tried to steady myself by joking like that, but the cold sweat running down my spine would not stop.

“What happens now? Am I not going to be able to stream anymore?”

Just as my thoughts were becoming more and more tangled.

Ding-dong—.

“W-Who could that be?”

There should not be anyone coming at this hour.