Chapter 27

How a Vampire Avoids the Sun

Everyone must have suddenly taken some kind of drug, because the chat had gone completely insane. No, maybe it was because they hadn’t taken their meds?

“Now, now. Everyone, calm yourselves.”

These days, with the increase in viewers making chat scroll faster, it had gotten harder, but I was still pretty good at reading chat.

But this evening, forget reading it properly, it was moving so fast I could barely keep up, and there were far too many aggressive messages.

If I left things like this, I would have to look at this mess all night, so I had to calm the chat down first. One of the big reasons I stream in the first place is because talking with the people in chat is fun.

“What has caused such a commotion? Did some calamity occur while this body was briefly away?”

-Playing dumb is crazy

-I heard you’ve got people behind you

-Damn damn damn damn state-power-level vampire

-I heard this stream has an agency doing viral marketing

-I heard there are adults behind you, is that true?

“Behind me? What do you mean, behind me?”

-Your stream grew 100x in a short period and you’re saying nobody’s behind you???

-That summary post was insane lol

-I don’t need anyone behind you, I just wanna do you from behind

-OurHouseMaid has forcibly removed ***.

Hah, these foolish bastards. This is why idiots like them get swept around by manipulation like reeds in the wind.

“You ask what lies behind this body? Very well, I shall tell you specially. What lies behind this body is endless darkness itself.”

-Endless darkness itself lol

-Not that, the agency, the agency

-She’s dodging the question again

-Answer seriously, this isn’t a joke, huff huff

“This body has ruled alone over the darkness of this land for hundreds of years as the sovereign of the night. Who would dare presume to command this body?”

-Hundreds of years? Not 14 years?

-lol the concept is insane

-Look at her refusing to break character even now

To me, the concept is practically my life. At least the life of my stream really does depend on the concept.

If, through any route whatsoever, my actual identity—that I am the granddaughter of the chairman of Shinil Group—were to spread, employees of Shinil Group all across the country would report it to Grandfather—

And then my streaming life would end right there.

So if I slipped up here even once and switched into serious mode to explain things, that itself would become real ammunition.

The kind old maid said it too. Do nothing.

-But seriously how did you get this big

-Does it make sense to blow up this much in a month?

-Honestly it is kinda suspicious

-I can see why people say it’s staged lol

-How much did you pay Paint Addiction for that collab?

-The agency bastards are probably watching this right now too

-Fuck, stop hiding behind a little kid and come out

The moment Paint Addiction, meaning the kind old maid, got dragged into it too, I got a little irritated. Why are they pulling an innocent person into this?

“Begone! Will you not be silent!”

-Gasp

-Damn damn damn damn

-Is this the dignity of a 14-year-old?

-Nope~ she’s 314 years old~

“To waste such precious time on this meaningless nonsense. Unlike this body, your lives are exceedingly short, are they not? It matters little to this immortal body, but surely you do not have time to squander so carelessly.”

-Immortal lololololol

-lololololol

-To guys in their 30s, 14 really is immortality

-Stop hitting those forty-somethings where it hurts lololololol

-Think about your ages lol

Still, perhaps that line worked a little, because the mood eased slightly. But even in the gaps, people crossing the line kept crawling out.

Not guys genuinely asking because they were curious, but lunatics who got excited just because there was chaos.

What was that meme again?

Is there a festival going on?

It’s not a festival. It’s a funeral.

Of course, my stream was neither a festival nor a funeral.

What should I do with these bastards? I could slaughter them before they even opened their mouths—.

-OurHouseMaid has forcibly removed ***.

-OurHouseMaid has forcibly removed ***.

-OurHouseMaid has forcibly removed ***.

But before I could do anything, someone was already swinging the iron hammer mercilessly and smashing their heads.

It was none other than Ms. Sejin.

Woojin could not join today because he had practice, so Ms. Sejin was the only manager. Even so, she was holding the line without being pushed back by the army of lunatics.

-Wow look at that ban speed

-Maid is good at her job

-Trolls getting deleted instantly damn

-The maid is competent, very competent

-Looks like she deserves a raise damn damn damn damn

Indeed, our Ms. Sejin is pretty capable.

Housework, stream management, even suppressing chaebol grandchildren with nothing but her eyes. What can she not do?

As expected of a special forces operative serving an ultra-ultra-ultra VIP like me! A super elite who completed CIA, FBI, National Intelligence Service, and Mossad training courses all in a single week!

Anyway, thanks to Ms. Sejin’s performance, the chatroom was more or less cleaned up.

Meaning the heads of the trolls who came in clutching that ridiculous controversy were (almost) all smashed.

Thinking about it, this was not even funny.

Even if I really had done viral marketing by deliberately timing things the way those posts claimed, what exactly would be wrong with that?

The normal reaction should have been, “Oh, she marketed herself well,” and moving on. The reason so many trolls had latched onto this and started condemning me was actually simple.

Because the world is vast, and there are many idiots.

The academic-fraud witch hunt against the singer Tublow, the career-fraud allegations against Chef Gongreo, and so on.

They call it a witch hunt. Another word for it is collective madness.

It shows just how vicious those cyber-wrecker bastards can be.

There have been countless other incidents where people created controversies that never even existed and caused a complete shitstorm.

At least those two incidents were resolved well enough. Some cases actually ended with innocent victims taking their own lives despite doing nothing wrong.

If you do not believe me, search TriWiki. You can see a truly hopeless abyss. There really are a lot of people in the world who cannot stand seeing others succeed.

“Sigh...”

After catching my breath and looking over chat, something suddenly caught my eye.

-Princess, check TriWiki

-You have a page now lol

-I skimmed it and it’s hilarious lol

-You already have one? Wow, you made it

-You have over 2,000 viewers, of course you made it lololol

-But probably half those 2,000 are trolls

-Agreed lololol there are tons of actors here

“...TriWiki?”

How did they know I had just been thinking about TriWiki?

TriWiki is a place where people with way too much free time write down all sorts of useless speculation. You could call it the homeland of Asperger’s.

And this body has a page there?

“What insolent fools are whispering behind this princess’s back? Hmph. Since the opportunity has arisen, I shall personally examine it and perform this thing called a fact-check.”

-lololololol a vampire doing a fact-check lol

-How does this girl spit out lore every time she opens her mouth

-For real, it must be exhausting to phrase every single sentence in-character

-As expected of the greatest output of age 14

-You’re 314, dumbass

-Isn’t she 514?

-Damn, Joseon-era vampire

-How does someone from Joseon have a name like Lilith?

-Who? Knows?

-Guess she came in with missionaries, that roughly works

-The lore freaks are at it again...

I opened TriWiki and typed Lilith into the search bar, and several entries appeared. Lilith (Internet Broadcaster) must be the one about me.

“Oho. A holy scripture commemorating this body has been erected. Let us take a look.”

-Holy scripture lololol

-How does she even come up with this shit lol

-For real, not a single verbal slip

-Seriously amazing, since this is live there can’t even be a script

I started reading the page from the top. Overview, activity history, stream concept.

It roughly summarized when my stream began, what incidents made me a topic of discussion, and the things I had done in chronological order. The voice leak incident, the sleepy stream incident, and even the collaboration with Paint Addiction.

“Hmm. They know quite a bit about this body. Commendable effort.”

-There’s a Lili-chan section too

-The whole clone thing is整理ed there too lol

“Let us see... Lili-chan. Indeed.”

Something about a second persona, something about the clone setting.

“Ahem, Lili is not some setting. She is a true clone. How unfortunate that those who studied this body so diligently do not even know that.”

As I scrolled a little farther down—.

-Based on the fact that she was alone at an art museum during a weekday afternoon, there is speculation that she may not attend a regular school. Some believe she may be homeschooled. Lili-chan herself stated that she is homeschooled, but this is not 100% confirmed.

-Another notable point is that Lili-chan, who stated she is 14 in Korean age (estimated 13 internationally), had no guardian nearby. Some have suggested that a guardian had already arranged the filming with Paint Addiction and stepped away from the area.

“Ahem.”

These bastards are fucking smart.

How did they get that exactly right? Though I had never arranged a shoot with the kind old maid beforehand.

-Is that actually true?

-For real, what middle schooler goes alone to an art museum on a weekday

-Oh, she said Korean age 14? Then she’s seriously young

-Korean age has been abolished forever, why are people still saying Korean age

-Yeah, her parents weren’t there either

-Maybe they just stepped away so they wouldn’t appear on camera

-Now that I think about it, yeah, there were no parents

You bastards. My parents went to America!

Anyway, the real problem was that I could neither confirm nor deny it.

If I said the homeschooling part was true? Then nine times out of ten, the next question would be—.

Your family must be pretty well-off?

Something along those lines. Not exactly ideal when I was already in the middle of some whatever-whatever controversy.

And if I said I was not homeschooled?

They would start digging into what school I attended and what grade I was in. Of course, since I did not attend school, it did not matter that much, but there was still nothing good about it.

And the whole topic of my parents was practically the abyss itself.

...So the answer was to simply leave this alone.

“Laughable. To dare interpret this princess by forcing me into human systems. My subjects, you would do well to distance yourselves from the corrupt thoughts born from the fingertips of those who know nothing.”

-Wow, at this point this is genuinely impressive

-How does every single sentence never break character

-Is she actually 314? What middle schooler talks like that???

-Yeah, it makes no sense, and she doesn’t even take long to come up with it

-For real, this is why I watch her stream, I wanna know what she’ll say next lol

-I didn’t know what ‘corrupt thoughts’ meant so I searched it on Gogol, fuck, my vocabulary is worse than a middle schooler’s, what do I do

-I looked it up too, apparently it’s a Buddhist term, damn

Hoo. Somehow I got through it.

As expected, at times like this, the concept is the greatest shield.

Feeling relieved, I continued scrolling.

Then.

One sentence stabbed me directly in the eyes.

-She has also drawn during a broadcast, but her skill is generally considered extremely poor.

“What?”

-During the collaboration with Paint Addiction, she drew an apple, but viewers referred to it as a potato, plum, and so on—

“Y-You insolent wretches! Seize the one who wrote this and bring them before me at once! I shall personally suck their blood dry until they perish.”

-Huh? She suddenly got mad?

-But it’s true lol

-Princess being bad at drawing is fact

-It really was a potato, yeah

-Oh my, suck them dry... that’s kinda hot

-Nngh, suck mine too

-OurHouseMaid has forcibly removed ***.

-OurHouseMaid has forcibly removed ***.

Come on, would you not get mad if you read this?!

“Very well. Today, this body shall personally prove it.”

-Huh

-Prove what?

-Don’t tell me

“Witness with your own two eyes that this body’s artistic ability is by no means poor. Is no one there? Bring forth the drawing board at once!”

-She said bring forth the drawing board lololololol

-King Drawing Board lololol

-Poverty Princess lolololololol

-Just use Gimpra, it’s free

-She probably doesn’t know how to use Gimp

-This is content

-Clip guys, this is content, get ready

I said to bring it forth, but obviously I had to open the drawing program myself.

Right. What should I draw? I already did an apple once, so this time something that looks a bit more impressive.

Since I am going with the vampire princess concept, a bat should be good. Something dignified.

-What is that?

-A bat? A moth?

-Princess, what are you drawing?

-lolololololol

What do you mean, what is it? This is clearly a bat. It has wings like this, and here are the ears... huh. Now that I drew ears, it suddenly looks like a rabbit.

“S-Silence! It is not yet complete!”

I moved the mouse frantically while sweating coldly, but the more lines I added, the more it became some unidentified something.

Neither a bat, moth, nor rabbit, but a new life-form that did not exist in this world.

-Princess created a new species

-Is this the skill of the sovereign of the night?

-After the potato apple, now she’s creating a new life-form lololol

-Seriously fucking hilarious lolololololol

The chat had gone completely insane for an entirely different reason than before.

The vicious atmosphere about mysterious backers and agencies had vanished without a trace. Everyone was too distracted by my single bat(?) drawing and was rolling around laughing.

...Well, this is not bad either.

I had not intended it, but in the end, the chatroom regained peace.

This is how the sovereign of the night rules her subjects. Hahaha.

Suddenly, I remembered the TriWiki window I had left open earlier.

That page that fabricated the claim that I was bad at drawing. Now that I had properly proven myself like this, perhaps they had fixed it.

I pressed refresh.

And immediately regretted it.

-The individual conducted a stream reading her own TriWiki page, and notably avoided giving clear answers regarding the section discussing her education.

-She also objected to the description of her drawing ability and attempted to draw a bat on the spot, but viewers described it as an unidentified life-form, resulting in the attempt instead reinforcing the original description.

“Y-You insolent bastaaards—!”

— — —

Seira watched Lilith’s stream from beginning to end.

She had even canceled her own stream to do it.

But it had been for nothing.

“What the hell is with that bitch.”

By today, she should have been shaken. The communities were already covered in suspicious posts created by Seira and the others, and just as expected, the chatroom was packed with trolls.

Even a fully grown adult would have difficulty enduring that kind of public opinion.

As proof—.

Countless celebrities had suffered from malicious comments and hostile articles before making extreme choices, and these days it was not particularly hard to find similar cases among internet streamers and NewTubers.

Even if things did not go that far, plenty of people quit streaming or took breaks for a while—.

Yet that child who had openly stated she was fourteen—.

Was grinning while drawing some unidentified bat.

As if that were not enough, clips of that bat drawing had already started taking over the communities. Most people had already forgotten about the suspicions entirely and were simply laughing at the picture.

The attack they had painstakingly created had turned into content for their enemy.

“...That makes no sense.”

Seira tightened her grip on her phone.

She could not back down now.

They had come this far. She had gathered everyone and set the whole thing in motion. If it ended without accomplishing anything, she would only make herself look ridiculous.

With trembling hands, Seira opened KkoTalk and entered the group chat.

-Hey, did you see that? She’s just brushing everything off as part of her concept

-She’s using the stuff we dug up as drawing content, unbelievable

-This won’t work

Seira hesitated for a moment, then finally typed it.

-I think our approach was too mild

-We can’t break through that concept by just listing circumstantial evidence

-Then what do you want to do?

-Let’s throw out one definite claim

-Pretend we’re industry insiders and say we know there’s an agency behind Lilith

-Say it was all planned marketing

-Say Lilith is young, so they locked her into a slave contract and are forcing her to stream

-If we post it like an insider tip, it carries different weight

A brief silence followed.

-That’s... a lie

It was Rine.

-We said this at the beginning. No lies. Only things that actually happened

-Isn’t making something up out of nothing different?

-Is this really the time to worry about that?

Myonyang immediately shot back.

-If something doesn’t work, you give it up and switch to something that does

-Didn’t you watch the stream? She’s sitting there that relaxed

-If we don’t do this, we lose

-Still, this is—

-I told you

-If you don’t like it, you can leave

Rine is typing a message—.

That indicator remained there for a long time, then disappeared without producing anything.

And so, that night, a story that had never existed began to be created at the fingertips of Seira and her companions.