Chapter 11

What’s It Like Streaming for a Long Time?

Her real name is Yoo Ha-eun.

Her streaming name is Amane Neruna.

A VTuber who actually used “Heavenly Sound” as her surname.

The name means you shouldn’t fall asleep while listening to a good voice.

She said she chose it to mean they should stay up all night and have fun together.

Apparently, when she first started streaming, she had a good voice.

Back then, she mostly played PVP games like Rel, Galaxy War, and Hyper Shot.

That’s what the wiki told me.

The reason she quit being a VTuber was vocal cord nodules.

Because PVP games involved fighting with viewers and fighting with people, she apparently wrecked her throat.

She rested and rehabilitated for about half a year, occasionally streaming with a partial cam.

She recovered, but after her voice became a little rougher, she dropped the surname ‘Amane.’

When she dropped the surname, she also gave up virtual streaming.

The avatar became something she only turned on occasionally when she was sick or didn’t feel like doing makeup.

‘I shouldn’t joke about this.’

If the time when she was fully a VTuber ever comes up, I should be careful.

Anyway, after her VTuber days ended, it says she did female-cam streaming for about two and a half years.

And apparently she continued it for about half a year even after starting Neo Chronicle.

Then she announced that the female-cam streams were closing down.

After spending about a year and a half grinding money and time into Neo Chronicle streams, she escaped.

It’s been about two years since she settled into variety gaming.

After thoroughly reading the wiki, my impression was simple.

‘I’m already agonizing over changing my stream time. She’s impressive.’

They called her one of Neo Chronicle’s Four Goddesses, so I thought she was just a pretty older girl who used to play Neo Chronicle.

But it seems she went through a lot.

The incidents/controversies tab made that obvious.

I memorized the things I should be careful about saying and got off the subway.

At the station, I looked at the map and found Exit 6.

She said it was hard to find even with a map the first time, so she’d come out to meet me.

- I’ll wait in front of Duncan right outside Exit 6

When I came up the stairs, I spotted her immediately.

I noticed Neruna before I noticed the pink Duncan Donuts sign.

She was standing there looking at her smartphone, expressionless.

Even though passersby glanced at her, she remained unconcerned.

Then she suddenly raised her head, and our eyes met.

She smiled, raised one hand high, and called out.

“River!”

Her eyes widened as though she had surprised herself with what she’d said, and she immediately corrected herself.

“No, Se-ha! Over here!”

I was flustered, but I smiled and walked over.

Maybe my streaming name was more familiar to her than my real name.

Men and women alike looked back and forth between Neruna and me.

“Ugh, sorry. Causing trouble from the moment we meet.”

“It’s fine. I don’t care.”

“Usually, when someone says that, they care a lot.”

“Like saying you don’t care about money?”

She must have remembered a famous meme, because she burst out laughing through her nose.

Seeing her smile up close, she really was incredibly pretty.

Long, straight black hair and elegant facial features.

When she smiled, her eyes curved like crescent moons and naturally drew your gaze.

I could understand why people often called her cute despite her being tall enough to look around the upper 160s.

Maybe it was also because she was wearing an oversized hoodie and short shorts.

We talked about how the other looked much better or prettier than on stream, and then the topic turned to snacks.

“Do you like donuts? I was thinking of buying some as snacks.”

“Sure. Is that why you waited here?”

Neruna paid for the donuts, and I paid for the coffee.

“...They look too good. Want to eat one each here before we go?”

“Sure.”

I’d been controlling how much I ate because I was worried I might need the bathroom.

No matter how little I cared about other people’s eyes, using the bathroom at a woman’s house when I’d just met her wasn’t easy.

I had coffee and one donut.

“One more?”

I ate another one and stood up, but something felt strange.

Should I say it felt a little like a date?

‘...You’re just excited because it’s been a while since you ate something with a woman. You’re excited. Don’t do this, Jeong Se-ha. You’re here to stream.’

It really must have been my imagination.

Starting with, ‘What do you do on days off?’ we went through favorite foods, movies, and travel destinations in no time.

Whether I watched anime, things she thought I seemed to like from watching my stream, and so on.

We talked enough that forty minutes passed while eating just two donuts.

Sometimes the ball came back to me with, ‘Don’t you have anything you want to ask me?’

But I firmly resolved not to think of it that way.

‘Be careful, or Neruna’s simps will come after you.’

Thinking that, I headed toward Neruna’s house.

The route was less complicated than I expected, which made the feeling even stranger.

Did I look like someone with no sense of direction on stream?

“That wasn’t too far, right? We’re here now!”

I laughed along with her joking tone as she opened the door, and we went inside.

I thought the good atmosphere would continue all the way until the stream started.

The joke about Neo Chronicle’s Four Goddesses?

That apparently changed to Two Goddesses with time, and now nobody used the term at all.

One got married, and one disappeared after starting to play Neo Chronicle casually.

“I’m the one who plays casually. I only casually do Hero difficulty instead of Hell.”

She said her pattern now was to focus only when a new dungeon or raid came out.

The atmosphere was fine while I complimented her house and looked around the streaming room.

Even while I looked around the charmingly decorated room.

And even when I asked what living alone was like.

But I think the next question was a mistake.

“Streaming RPGs is a whirlpool of hell.”

“...What?”

“If you stream for a long time without spending money, your viewers gradually drop off. So you upgrade your gear even if you have to go into debt. Then you somehow make the money back with donations and videos. You repeat that. Over and over!”

A beautiful woman with long straight hair and a gentle-looking face.

Someone like that was muttering words like an incantation with a dark expression.

“And your income goes up and down regardless of your achievements or willpower. It’s like some garbage KOSPI penny stock. If the game company screws up, my income drops and I get cursed in their place. When that happens, I seriously question my whole life and feel like I’m going insane.”

She kept pouring out words after that.

She was going on at length about why you shouldn’t stream RPGs.

I listened with a serious expression on my face, but there was only one thought in my head.

‘I didn’t ask that...’

I had asked something else.

= What’s it like streaming for a long time?

I was trying to ask what daily life was like if you made streaming your profession.

That was roughly what I’d meant, and somehow we ended up here.

The gentle-looking beauty had suddenly developed the expression of an evil spirit.

“Do you understand? I’ve been watching your streams lately, and it looks like people are starting to pressure you to upgrade your gear, so I’m telling you this. Think carefully.”

“Ah, yes. I will.”

I wanted to hear the experience of a senior streamer, so technically I did hear what I wanted.

But why did it feel like I had suddenly stared into the abyss?

“You’re still in the early days of streaming, and your viewers haven’t completely stagnated yet, right? Just think of it as unsolicited advice from someone who meddles too much.”

Even the way she backed off at the end, apparently realizing she’d gone too far by herself.

She was more entertaining than I expected.

“No, really. Thank you for the advice. I’ll think carefully about streaming RPG games.”

“Ahaha, what do we do about this atmosphere? The stream is ruined before we’ve even turned it on.”

Ruined?

If anything, I suddenly feel much closer to her.

“Should we talk about the stream?”

“Shall we?”

“Ah! You can speak casually with me.”

“Should I...? No. Once we turn the stream on, people will say things about it. Let’s do it again then.”

“Even that becomes stream content. Wow, professionals really are different.”

Hehe.

Neruna laughed happily through her nose and moved the conversation along.

The things we would talk about on today’s stream and the things we needed to be careful about while talking.

“We can’t use this image because it was used during the refund-demand relay.”

“This expression came from the probability manipulation controversy. If you use it, you’ll seriously be in trouble!”

“Where did you even find this video? It was used during the truck protest, so people hate it.”

And just like that, she removed every land mine hidden in my materials.

“I haven’t really been playing Neo Chronicle seriously lately, so I don’t know what else there might be....But what’s wrong?”

There were empty holes scattered throughout my materials now.

I really worked hard on these.

“You didn’t suddenly get disillusioned, did you? Neo Chronicle is a decent game.”

“...If it’s decent, why did you quit?”

“I didn’t quit. I’m still playing it. All right! Shall we start getting ready for the stream?”

Neruna answered firmly and began adjusting the setup.

A professional’s equipment setup was extremely diverse.

Lights, microphones, and chroma key weren’t the only equipment.

The streaming setup itself was the accumulated know-how she had refined over many years.

From audio to lighting to camera angles.

It seemed she even had preset values for how to arrange things when two people streamed together.

Watching her adjust everything efficiently with an expressionless face was pretty cool too.

I nearly said how impressed I was right away, then stopped myself once.

If I said it after the stream started, that could probably become stream content too.

“All right, go rest outside now. About fifteen minutes? I’ll call you after that.”

She told me to go outside, eat some snacks, and rest, so I left.

______________

About three hours later.

After finishing our discussion about the story, we chatted for a while, and before eating, we took a short break.

Neruna stayed in front of the camera while I came out alone, saying I needed the bathroom for a moment.

I opened my smartphone while drinking water and found that Lee Ha-na had sent me a pile of messages.

- Hey hey, this is dangerous now

- If you decided to call her noona, you should’ve stopped there

- Even saying “I like older women” there is fine because it’s a stream

- But what the hell was that joke about “I see women six years older than me as women” you bastard hahahahaha

- Did you discuss this with Neruna beforehand?

- Once you went that far, you could see some of them starting to turn dark hahahaha

- This guy is underestimating darkened simps

- I don’t know anymore, seriously, what is this

- The atmosphere is seriously strange, really strange

- It feels like the two of you are sucking all the color out of the surroundings

- The stream screen is practically exploding pink

As I read through them, the excitement I’d been feeling gradually cooled.

Did I get too carried away because the viewer count was so high?