Chapter 6

I’m Not a VTuber

“Deeeeng... please spare me, refu...”

“Are you going to keep saying weird things? Should I just ban you from the internet?”

“Eeeing...”

I ended up being practically forced to sit in front of the needlessly huge dining table.

Ms. Sejin sat across from me.

And between us, bags of snacks were lined up in a row.

Like evidence laid out on the table of an interrogation room.

Kgh. Is some horrific torture about to begin?

Just you wait, I won’t give up a single one of my comrades’ names! Long live Korean independence!

“Miss.”

“...Yes.”

“Where did these snacks come from?”

I firmly shut my mouth.

I cannot talk here.

This is a matter of loyalty.

I may have no money, ability, or honor, but loyalty was this noble body’s last shred of pride.

Of course, now I have lost my balls too... but if I lose my loyalty on top of that, would I not have lost everything?

In truth, the source of these snacks was obvious.

This noble body’s older cousin. Shin Woojin.

Seventeen years old, three years older than me. You could say he is the only relative I can somewhat communicate with.

About a month ago, Woojin came over to visit carrying a whole bundle of snacks.

How did he get past Ms. Sejin’s ironclad inspection? Simple. The guy is an excellent student who is extremely good at studying, so the ridiculous lie that he never lets go of his studies even when playing with me actually worked.

He stuffed his bag full of snacks and placed textbooks on top. The guy has not even served in the military yet, but he is clever.

He pities me for living shut away at home, so every time he visits, he smuggles in snacks from the outside world.

Not that I actually mind living like this.

Anyway, he was currently my one and only supply line and smuggler.

How could I possibly sell out such a benefactor?

“...I don’t know anything about it.”

“You don’t know.”

“Yes. Maybe someone put them there while I was asleep. A snail bride, perhaps? Ahaha.”

“...”

Ms. Sejin’s vicious gaze chilled my spine, but I desperately held out.

“Miss.”

“Yes.”

Ms. Sejin slowly stood up and began stroking the snack bags. What is this? That is scary.

“Miss. Do you remember getting caught eating snacks last time?”

“...Yesh.”

“I let it slide that time, didn’t I?”

“Uh... you did.”

She definitely just nagged me for a while and stopped back then.

I had wondered why she let me off so easily.

“Didn’t you find it strange? That I just let it go?”

“...Huh?”

Cold sweat ran down my back.

“I mean, getting snacks into the house at all was surprising, but if you went through the trouble of bringing them in, there was no way you would only bring one bag. With things like this, you always stockpile more somewhere.”

Ms. Sejin smiled.

“So I left you alone. So you would lower your guard.”

“Gasp.”

Th-That was a trap?

“Ms. Sejin. Were you a detective in your previous life or something?”

“There is no such thing. I have watched you for ten years, Miss. Did you think I wouldn’t be able to figure out something like that?”

“Kgh.”

“It is not as though many people come and go from this house. I already know perfectly well who brought them in. Are you really going to keep denying it?”

— — —

“Sniff sniff... so mean...”

“Pretending to cry won’t work. It’s not like I’ve only known you for a day or two, and I know perfectly well that you never cry.”

I will never forget today’s cruel and horrifying interrogation for the rest of my life.

To summarize it briefly, with a bit of fabrication mixed in, the conversation went roughly like this.

-Communist Party... no, are you going to eat snacks or not!

-I won’t! I-I’ll never eat them again! Nghhh!

-You damn pig!

-Gah! Aaaaaaaaagh! I! I’m impotent... I can’t eat snacks anymore! Nghhh!

Though I really am impotent now.

Well, it is not as though Ms. Sejin actually said anything this terrifying.

That was simply how it felt inside my mind.

For reference, I am very knowledgeable about memes like these.

Of course I am. I spend all day lying around staring at my phone.

Naturally, I only lurk.

If I accidentally posted even a single comment from my own account and somehow my identity got exposed, it would be a disaster.

Imagine the granddaughter of Shinil Group’s chairman getting caught shitposting all over online communities. Things could get needlessly huge.

Anyway, in the end, unable to withstand the brutal torture, I revealed the three syllables of my benefactor’s name.

“Woojin oppa brought them.”

“Young Master Shin Woojin?”

“Yeees...”

“Phew...”

Ms. Sejin let out a long sigh.

“I already knew that, but still. It was the obvious answer. Young Master Woojin is the only person who has visited recently.”

“I absolutely! Did not want to eat them, but Oppa forced me.”

“...”

“I swear! I tightly shut my mouth and refused the snacks, but Woojin oppa forcibly opened my mouth and shoved Chweetos inside! How horrifying is that?”

“Miss.”

“Yeeees?”

“You really are despicable.”

“Cough.”

Ms. Sejin stared at me for a long moment, then started gathering up the snack bags. What a waste.

“I’ll be confiscating these.”

“Nghhh.”

“...If it were up to me, I’d like to allow it, but your health is more important.”

“Eeeing...”

“Acting cute like that won’t help. Are you going to act cute while lying in a hospital bed after ruining your body? Once you go to the afterlife and stand before King Yama, acting cute won’t work at all.”

“Eek. Eating a few bags of snacks won’t go that far—”

“Ahem. You know the saying about not noticing your clothes getting soaked in a drizzle, right?”

“Kieeek.”

“I told you to stop making weird noises.”

As expected, Ms. Sejin was strong.

— — —

Yoon Dohyun, an ordinary little citizen who happened to share his name with a famous singer despite resembling him neither in looks nor ability.

Since he was not a smoker, he had no acquaintance with any girl from a tobacco shop, and to him, a butterfly was simply an insect.

Now in his third year at Starlight Media, Dohyun was spending yet another exhausting day at work.

Displayed on his monitor was the BC Inside VTuber Gallery.

What? Was he stealing wages? Honestly, half... no, about thirty percent of that was true. But the rest really was work.

Who in the world would call browsing a forum during work part of the job?

Well, that was because Yoon Dohyun was a cyber warrior of the Republic of Korea who had been ordered to scout rookie VTubers.

“Scouting rookies, huh.”

It sounded impressive, but in reality it was nothing special.

His job was to dig through various VTuber communities and clips and find promising sprouts that looked like they might become popular. Naturally, if someone looked decent, he then had to monitor their streams and decide whether to offer them a contract.

“...There’s really nothing worth picking up.”

Today, too, he found nothing worthwhile.

In truth, that was only natural. Any VTubers worth signing had already signed with someone, and all that remained were hopeless husks with no future.

“The gallery is boring too.”

Just from the titles, the contents of the posts were obvious.

Some corporate VTuber had caused another incident, someone else was about to graduate, some tiny streamer had mentally broken down and quit streaming.

A place with more insults than praise, more public ridicule than encouragement.

That was simply how this industry was.

Yoon Dohyun took a sip of cold coffee.

Then, without much thought, he clicked on a post—

[Tiny Streamer] What the hell is this vampire lol

“Hm?”

A clip was attached.

Judging from the title alone, he figured it was just another run-of-the-mill tiny streamer.

Still, given his job, Yoon Dohyun pressed play anyway.

“What is this?”

What entered his eyes was a vampire illustration of such miserable quality that there was no other way to describe it. On top of that, it did not even move—

“They call this a model—”

What cut him off was a moan that instinctively made him turn down the speakers and glance around.

‘Nghhh...! Ahaagh...!’

Startled, Yoon Dohyun checked that nobody nearby had heard before letting out a deep sigh.

“Fuck—.”

Swallowing the curse that rose in his throat, he replayed the clip. This time, he had earphones on.

‘Haaaangh...!’

Yoon Dohyun frowned.

“This again.”

Provocative moans.

It was an obvious setup.

A common trick used by tiny streamers these days to get a little attention.

A hopeless VTuber who cannot attract attention any other way makes erotic noises to bait viewers.

If the clip spreads, the viewer count might temporarily rise because of it, but that is where it ends.

Viewers gathered that way quickly leave.

Because it is not proper content, just stimulation.

After working in this industry for three years, he could size something like this up from the first three seconds.

“Hm?”

But when he scrolled down, the comments were a little strange.

-No, she’s like that because she has muscle pain from working out lol

-It’s seriously hilarious, just watch it once

-Don’t go in expecting anything erotic, people watch because it’s funny

-What even is this character, why do I keep watching

Yoon Dohyun’s hand stopped.

Do not watch expecting something erotic?

They watch because it is funny?

Those were not the kind of comments normally found under a moaning clip.

Usually, clips like this were filled with people practically drooling in the comments.

Yoon Dohyun checked the streamer’s name written beside the clip title.

“Lilith...?”

Lilith.

A name commonly used for female demons or vampires.

Even that had almost no individuality.

Then he made a note of the streaming time mentioned in the comments.

He was not expecting much.

It was simply professional habit.

That night.

After leaving work and returning home, Yoon Dohyun cracked open a beer and opened his laptop.

Lilith. Live.

“Hmm... just like I saw earlier, it’s a late-night stream. In that case, an erotic concept would make sense. But they say it isn’t? Huh?”

The first thing that caught his eye upon entering the stream was a different model from the one in the clip.

It still could not be called high quality, but it was far more lively than a static illustration.

Of course, the movement was awkward in places. Sometimes the eyes moved independently, and the mouth lagged a beat behind—

Which meant the tracking was not working properly.

A typical tiny streamer who could not afford good equipment.

‘Now then, today this princess shall evaluate the games you lot gifted me.’

Yoon Dohyun took a sip of beer.

“This is kind of strange. A kid...? No, definitely not a kid.”

Her actual voice clearly still had traces of the unique quality of a child’s voice.

But judging from the way she spoke and the atmosphere she gave off, that did not seem right either. She had a peculiar presence that could make one believe she was even older than Dohyun, who was in his late twenties.

That mismatch strangely caught his ear.

‘What is this? You clearly said it was a game.’

The vampire princess on-screen was cursing while playing a trash game Dohyun knew well too.

‘Aagh! I died again! Hey, is this supposed to be a game? You insolent scrap of code!’

-hahahahaha

-That’s just how that shit game is

-We carefully picked it out and gifted it to you haha

‘What? You deliberately presented this garbage to me? You utterly irreverent fools!’

But regardless of the game’s quality, Dohyun could not help but marvel at the gaming skill of the VTuber named Lilith.

In a slightly different sense.

“This girl is seriously terrible at games.”

Her controls were a mess, and her judgment was a mess.

And yet she shamelessly kept insisting that nothing was wrong with her.

‘The bastard who made this game must have drugs mixed into his blood. To release something this atrocious into the world. I shall have to be careful even when drinking blood from now on. If I drink just anyone’s blood, I might catch this sort of insanity.’

-Oh my

-Do you suck things other than blood too?

‘What? You fools are possessed by lewd demons again. Begone! This princess knows nothing of such vulgar things!’

Yoon Dohyun laughed again without realizing it.

This.

This was better than he expected.

Watching the actual stream, he could feel it.

Those moans from the clip earlier.

They were neither bait nor erotic content.

Apparently, she had started exercising recently, and whenever she made a big movement, the muscle pain made her groan. It just happened to sound erotic.

That was the key point.

Everything about this stream was genuine.

Her being bad at games was genuine.

Her anger was genuine.

Her flustered reactions were genuine.

She was pretending to be a vampire as part of her character, but aside from that, everything was completely unembellished.

If there was one thing Yoon Dohyun had learned from working in this industry for three years, it was that you could create any concept you wanted, but you could not manufacture sincerity.

You could practice a way of speaking over time. People could put their heads together and come up with an appealing character setting.

But those reactions—

Having a total meltdown over a single game, leaping into a rage over one remark from a viewer.

There was not the slightest sense of exaggeration. Her movements and words genuinely came from the heart.

Dohyun suddenly thought of his young niece. She acted and spoke like that child, who was still too young to control her emotions, yet somehow matched it one hundred percent with the concept of a vampire hundreds of years old.

There was something else unusual too.

This streamer could broadcast for hours while saying astonishingly little about herself.

Amateur VTubers without much experience usually let personal details slip while streaming. Something they did at school that day, how exhausting their part-time job was, things like that.

But this girl did none of that.

Whenever the conversation seemed about to turn toward herself, she slipped behind her character with uncanny precision.

-Sis, what’s your job?

‘Job? This princess has no such thing as a job.’

-Then are you unemployed?

‘Hmph. Foolish subject, this body is a princess. Why would a princess have a job? A princess is one who rules, not one who labors.’

-Come on, just tell us roughly, like what industry you’re in or something

-Why do you guys keep asking for her red pill

-Yeah, she’s doing her RP well

-She’s a VTuber, let her stay in character, dumbass lol

‘Begone! This princess is no such thing as a VTuber!’

-???

-What does that mean

-If you’re not a VTuber, are you a VaginaTuber?

-You little shit

‘This model is merely a disguise for concealing this princess’s noble true form. If you were to behold my real appearance, your eyes would go blind.’

-Now she’s claiming she’s a real vampire instead of a VTuber?

-The RP is insane

‘I am not merely claiming it. This princess truly exists. I am looking down upon you from a grand mansion so luxurious you could never even dream of it.’

She was remarkably stubborn.

“Hahaha.”

Lilith’s effort to conceal her identity bordered on obsession.

“She’s really serious about RP.”

Deep into the night, Yoon Dohyun watched the stream all the way to the end.

‘Then this princess shall go warm her coffin. My subjects. Let us meet again when the moon rises.’

“This one’s something special.”

Her voice was mysterious enough that he could not determine her age.

Her RP was thorough enough to rival a professional.

Her reactions were so full of sincerity that there was no sense of overacting.

Even the mystery of her fiercely concealed identity became excellent bait in itself.

“She even has donations disabled. Could this be part of the princess concept too?”

Why would someone stream consistently every day for nearly two months while deliberately disabling donations? In the end, people did this to make money.

Even Dohyun, who worked in the industry himself, could not make sense of her behavioral patterns at all, and his interest grew stronger.

“I should keep an eye on her from now on.”

Yoon Dohyun added Lilith’s channel to his favorites.

It was not as though he planned to do anything immediately.

He simply intended to watch.

A rough gem like this was bound to be picked up by someone eventually.

And it would be even better if that someone was his company.