Chapter 25

Ominous Flames

The two lines Seira threw out set a fire in the group chat that would not go out.

There were seven VTubers in the group chat, including Seira.

Their situations were all similar.

They had been streaming for as little as one year and as long as three, but their viewer counts refused to budge from double or triple digits.

No one bothered asking what she meant. Instead, as if they had been waiting for it, that name immediately came up.

-You mean Lilith, right?

Considering that name had practically covered the group chat over the past few days, it would have been troublesome if they had not realized. After all, you could not work with clueless idiots.

-Yep

-Knew it

The moment the target was confirmed, complaints came pouring out like a flood.

-Honestly I watched her stream and there was nothing special

-She has no content, no fucking content

-She barely plays games and just does unfunny chatting, how does that get 2,000 viewers

-That makes no fucking sense unless she’s viewbotting

-I had exactly 40 viewers yesterday

-I uploaded a cover song today and it has three-digit views lol

-What did we do so wrong

They were all things none of them could say anywhere else. In front of viewers, they had to smile no matter how miserable they felt, and if they whined on a community board, that would just get archived and spread around too.

After their unfiltered emotions poured into the group chat for a while, Seira began getting to the point.

-So here’s what I’m thinking

-I don’t think the way she got that big was coincidence

She brought up the summary post she had seen during the day. Of course, she did not forget to drop the link into the group chat.

-Wow she really grew insanely fast

-I’m telling you, it makes no sense

-It’s only been three months since she started???

-Fuck, that’s seriously unfair

Seira added her own interpretation.

The voice leak, the sleepy stream, the collaboration with a NewTuber with 1.5 million subscribers. Every single one happened at a perfectly convenient time for increasing viewers.

Each time, there happened to be some major topic making the rounds, and just around when people had finished chewing on it and were looking for something else to pay attention to, something would happen to Lilith.

Right after a baseball game went into and finished extra innings.

When the soccer communities that had been blazing after the Korean national team got demolished in the World Cup group stage temporarily cooled down.

And at other times when huge crowds happened to be gathered on community boards—.

Something happened to Lilith.

-Once or twice is coincidence

-If all of that was coincidence then she’s winning the lottery every week

From that point on, the atmosphere in the group chat subtly changed.

-Now that you say it, that is kinda weird

-Wow, I got chills

-There’s no way this wasn’t planned

-But I heard she’s fourteen? How would a kid do something like that

It was an obvious question, so Seira gave the answer she had prepared in advance.

-She’s not the one doing it

-She has two managers, right? Adults are running things from behind

-The kid is just the face of it

-Ah lol so she’s like an agency trainee

-Then there’s really no answer

-She’s corporate while pretending to be indie

Once the conversation had ripened, Seira began getting to the real point.

-So are we just going to sit here and watch this?

-I’m not saying we should do anything

-I’m saying people deserve to know the truth

A brief silence followed—.

-Okay, I’m good at this kind of thing

The profile with cat ears jumped in first.

Myonyang. Of all of them, she was the one most bitter about Lilith’s rapid rise.

-Which community do we start with?

-Wait

There was also someone who hesitated. Rine. Three years in, yet still averaging fewer than fifty viewers—.

The quietest of the seven, a VTuber who also worked an office job.

-But she’s a minor

-It’s not like she committed a crime

-If this goes wrong, couldn’t we be the ones who get hurt?

-That’s why we make rules

Seira pasted the rules she had written in a memo earlier directly into the group chat.

First, anonymity was everything. Posts, comments, recommendations, all of it only on communities where anonymity could be maintained.

Second, do not attack Lilith herself. Absolutely no personal attacks about her appearance or voice. Especially against a minor, that was a perfect way to get hit by backlash. The arrows were to be aimed only at the adults behind her.

Third, do not lie. Only list facts that actually happened. The people reading could interpret them however they wanted.

-If it isn’t a lie then it isn’t defamation either

-We’re just raising questions about suspicious things

-...That’s true

-But what if she really was just lucky?

When Rine asked again, this time Myonyang answered instead of Seira.

-Then so what

-It’s not like we made anything up

-If a misunderstanding happens because we only stated facts, then it’s her job to clear it up

-...

-If you don’t want to do it, you can drop out now. No one’s forcing you

Everyone knew what “you can drop out if you want” meant in this scene.

Being the only one to leave a tiny circle of peers meant—.

From then on, she would be completely alone, with no collaborations and no mutual support.

And so, in the early hours of that morning, seven pairs of hands began moving—.

A few hours later, posts with slightly different titles but nearly identical content began appearing across various internet communities.

[Summary of VTuber Lilith’s Growth Process (Long Post, Judge for Yourself)]

A long post that clearly had a great deal of effort poured into it, day and night.

It listed incidents by date, attached graphs showing changes in viewer count, and even organized links to clips.

There was not a single lie in it. Everything listed had actually happened.

The only thing they had done was string those facts together like this.

-Voice leak -> viewers spike. Sleepy stream -> viewers spike. The next day, two managers appear. Random meeting with a NewTuber with 1.5 million subscribers -> collab -> another voice leak -> identity speculation -> viewers spike.

-You really think a fourteen-year-old pulled all that off by coincidence?

-For reference, that collab happened not long after they met? A rookie who hadn’t even been streaming for three months and a huge NewTuber with 1.5 million subscribers? They’re not even in overlapping genres. Does that look natural to anyone?

-Again, everyone can judge for themselves. I’m just整理ing what happened.

The last line was the masterpiece. A clever phrase that raised all the suspicions it wanted, then pushed all responsibility onto the readers.

Of course, at first, the rebuttals were stronger.

-She has donations completely disabled, what kind of viral marketing is that

-She doesn’t even make money, this is some insane reach

-She’s a minor, you lunatics

-There isn’t a single piece of evidence

-For real, you’re just taking coincidences and forcing a conspiracy out of them

Counterarguments piled up beneath every comment—.

But if anything, that only drew even more attention to the post.

And that was when the work the seven of them had stayed up all night preparing truly began.

The seven divided up their roles and moved in perfect coordination.

One person subtly raised questions beneath rebuttal comments, another reposted differently flavored versions to other communities, another made the first comments under those posts. Each person operated several alternate accounts.

Myonyang in particular was like a fish in water. She knew exactly what style of speech each community used, what time to post so something would stay near the top the longest, everything.

-There really are way too many coincidences though

-I thought something felt weird starting yesterday too

-Isn’t having donations disabled actually more suspicious? It means she has backing strong enough that she doesn’t need money

-She’s 100% planning to monetize later

-Reading the post again, the facts are facts

By the time one day passed, the flow had already begun to shift.

The people arguing back had to repeat the same things they had already said.

Her donations are disabled. She’s a minor.

Again and again, a development that would exhaust anyone.

But the doubts kept appearing under fresh usernames every time. Then what are the two managers? How did she land that collaboration?

The people diligently rebutting the claims slowly grew tired. The people irresponsibly throwing out questions did not.

It was reminiscent of the old “Tajinyo” incident that once stirred up South Korea.

The reason agitation and fabrication can defeat facts.

And finally—.

-Huh? What the hell, I watch her stream and now that I think about it, that is actually true

-...Now that you say it, it sounds kind of plausible

-Does anyone actually know the truth?

-Did Paint Addiction know about this when she did the collab?

This time, they were not planted accounts.

After the questions kept being raised, ordinary people had begun tilting their heads one by one.

Seira sat in front of her monitor, repeatedly pressing F5, silently watching the fire spread from place to place.

It was a strange feeling. Did the trembling in her fingertips contain fear, or exhilaration?

We did not lie. We organized things that actually happened and asked questions we were curious about.

After repeating that to herself several times, her fingertips stopped trembling.

It was not a bad start.

— — —

“A bubble, huh.”

I lay on my stomach on the bed and swiped upward on my phone screen.

Several days had already passed since the Lili-chan commotion.

During that time, the stream had been running fine as usual. Well, maybe not exactly as usual, since the viewer count had gone up a lot?

Of course, not all 2,500 people who came in during that mess stayed as viewers, but now I had become a fairly major streamer who consistently had more than 1,000 viewers. The speed at which chat scrolled was completely different from before.

Maid and Stone Golem were also suffering under the enormous workload(?). On top of that, Stone Golem had baseball practice and games, so Maid was being worked to death.

Anyway, after spending a few peaceful days like that, today I was carrying out my usual lurking routine.

[I Think VTuber Lilith Is a Bubble]

[Looking at Lilith’s Growth Makes Me Suspicious]

[Questionable Things About Rookie VTuber Lilith]

Posts like these started showing up.

The gist was that my growth was not the result of skill, but a bubble created by luck and publicity.

“...Well, that isn’t exactly wrong?”

I was not just saying that. I genuinely meant it.

I do not know why I became popular. That is not modesty. It is a fact.

I turned on the exact same stream, yet one day there were twenty viewers and another day there were two thousand five hundred. All I did was play whatever games came to mind that day and spout nonsense.

You ever heard of the stream-of-consciousness technique?

“But isn’t this obvious?”

Isn’t this how this industry works in the first place?

Things everyone says will succeed fail, and things everyone says will fail succeed.

Even the legendary Bitels supposedly got rejected constantly before their debut. If the judgment of agencies packed with professionals is that unreliable, how would someone like me know anything?

To use sports as an example, scouts who spend all day counting even the hairs growing out of a prospect’s ass will draft what they swear are the greatest talents, only for those players to never accomplish anything, rot in the minors, and retire.

“So what if I’m a bubble. Hehehe.”

As I scrolled farther down, I saw a few more posts with a similar tone.

[Summary of Lilith’s Growth Process (Long Post, Judge for Yourself)]

“What’s this now? It’s fucking long.”

It would all be stuff I already knew anyway. Do I really need to read a summary post about myself?

Pass.

Knock knock knock.

“Miss.”

“Yup. Come in.”

Ms. Sejin entered the room holding her phone.

“Shinil Art Museum contacted us.”

“The museum? Why?”

“Ms. Hwang Ara says she urgently wants to speak with you.”