I had to spend a while in front of the mirror.
After muttering to myself for about thirty minutes, I got somewhat used to the cute, childlike voice.
At first, it felt like I was hearing someone else’s voice from outside, but gradually, I could clearly feel it being transmitted through my skull.
My face?
My hands hadn’t stopped kneading and poking at it like it was a glutinous rice cake since earlier.
The texture was just too nice.
How many chances would I ever have in life to touch a face like this?
After staring blankly into the mirror for an hour, feeling around my cheeks and various parts of my body, I was finally able to turn my thoughts elsewhere.
How had I become a woman?
Maybe I’d come down with some illness and turned into a woman while my identity stayed the same.
Maybe I’d moved to a world line where the entire world recognized me as a woman.
Maybe it turned out I’d reincarnated and was living a new life, only to recall memories of my past….
There were all kinds of possibilities, but the way to check was surprisingly simple.
“My wallet is… the same.”
The card wallet I’d used to pay for my taxi yesterday was sitting in front of the keyboard just as it had been.
Inside were the credit card I’d opened after becoming an office worker and my resident registration card.
So if I checked my ID, I’d know.
Who I was, and by what circumstances I’d become a woman.
Thump, thump.
[Ma Jia(魔蜘鴉)]
[001122 - 40XXXXX]
My age was the same. My birthday was the same.
Only one syllable of my name and the latter half of my resident registration number had changed.
For a while, I couldn’t take my eyes off the face that managed to appeal with cuteness even in an ID photo. Then I shook my head vigorously and picked up my phone.
The model, the color, and even the jelly case I’d slapped on carelessly were the same.
When I opened the phone app and checked my contacts…
“Boss, the first-gen girls, Mom, Dad…….”
This was all the same too.
It seemed I had fallen into a world line where I alone had become a woman.
Only then did I look at the clothing rack set up in one corner of the studio, and wouldn’t you know it, instead of the white shirt I usually wore to work, there was a small women’s blouse hanging there, and instead of my gray pants, a women’s H-line skirt.
Thinking there was no need to search any further, I went back in front of the mirror and pulled my eyelids up and down.
Because the strangest things were these eyes and my greatly diminished height.
“Eyes can be this clear, huh.”
The eyes had startled me at first, but the moment I remembered that my great-grandfather was an American who’d come to Korea during the Korean War and ended up settling here, I accepted it immediately.
Apparently, he’d been a soldier with black hair and blue eyes. And in fact, a very small number of my relatives had blue eyes like mine now.
If you asked whether I simply looked foreign, that wasn’t quite it either. Probably because my features didn’t have much depth, and because of my black hair.
“But… isn’t my height way too short…?”
I felt like I’d become at least a handspan shorter than I used to be.
Among the first-gen members, there was an elf girl named Midori Komari, and I felt even shorter than her canon height of 148 centimeters.
As I fiddled with my thin arms, which looked like they might snap if someone so much as flicked them, I even wondered whether I could properly lift anything.
At work, I spent my time sitting in an office chair until it was time to go home, but that didn’t mean there were no occasions at all where I needed strength.
So I tried lifting an unopened box of instant rice that had been set off to one side.
Up it went.
“… Maybe this much is fine?”
On the outside, I looked like I might break at any moment, but surprisingly, my muscles and bones were solid.
It did feel like physical tasks had become a bit harder than before.
But since I hadn’t exactly been athletic to begin with, aside from my reduced range of motion, I didn’t feel that much of a difference.
In the end, my identity was intact.
There were no major hindrances to daily life.
And if my connections and company were the same…
Then there wouldn’t be any particular problem with going to work normally.
Everyone at the company knew me as a woman anyway.
In the end, I just had to adapt, right?
Sure, I’d suddenly become a woman, but as long as the broadcasts I watched with my boss and the VTubers I took care of at the company were the same, what I had to do wouldn’t change.
“I should leave a little early today.”
Even if there hadn’t been a big change mentally, my body had changed drastically, so if I didn’t get used to it, I was bound to make a mistake someday.
Given the nature of my work, I already went in seven hours later than most people, starting work at 3 p.m.
If I walked the way I usually did and ended up late because my legs were short, I’d feel pointlessly sorry toward all our Parallel staff members working hard at their own posts.
After all, it wasn’t like I could say, “I was late because my legs are stubby and I couldn’t get as far as I wanted.”
So I immediately sent a TtingTalk to my boss and asked.
Since I was heading out early anyway, I was thinking of stopping by the thousand-won mart if there was anything we needed.
[Me: Boss.]
[Me: Is there anything the office is running low on?]
Since it would take at least ten minutes for a reply to come back, I was just about to put my phone down, thinking I’d check after washing up.
Bzzzt.
It was an absurdly fast instant reply.
[Boss-nim: Not really?]
[Boss-nim: I did run out of Post-its.]
[Boss-nim: But you can just buy those later when you go out for lunch.]
[Boss-nim: Rest well and see you later.]
She was even speaking casually.
The boss, who had never once spoken casually to me in the five years I’d worked with her, was talking to me as if she were dealing with a close younger sister.
[Me: Oh, I need to stop by the thousand-won mart anyway.]
[Me: I was going to buy them on the way.]
[Me: Don’t bother stopping by while you’re eating. I’ll buy them and bring them.]
[Boss-nim: Ooh, okay.]
[Boss-nim: Anything you want for dinner today?]
Dinner?
Why was she asking about dinner?
[Me: Why dinner?]
[Boss-nim: What’s with you all of a sudden?]
[Boss-nim: You don’t want to eat with me anymore?]
What was she talking about?
Since when did I eat with the boss?
Hadn’t the last time we’d eaten together been early this year, the week after the first-gen members debuted?
And even then, it hadn’t been just the two of us. It was a celebration with the four first-gen members included, six people total who knew each other’s real faces.
With about ten thousand question marks floating over my head, I replied.
[Me: Did we perhaps eat dinner together yesterday too?]
I tried to slide past it with the common amnesia-style way of talking, and the boss’s replies came pouring in.
[Boss-nim: Jia.]
[Boss-nim: Are you sick?]
[Boss-nim: Did you get indigestion from eating late-night snacks after going to check Dora’s sound issue yesterday?]
[Boss-nim: Or are you suddenly dizzy or something?]
That was enough of an answer.
The female me apparently ate dinner with the boss every night.
[Me: No no no.]
[Me: I was just messing with you lol.]
[Boss-nim: ㅡㅡ]
[Boss-nim: You’re trying to let your old toxic-viewer habits sneak back out, aren’t you?]
[Boss-nim: Anyway, just the Post-its, please.]
[Boss-nim: See you later.]
[Boss-nim: Be careful on your way to work.]
The fact was interesting, but at the same time, strange.
As the boss said, I was her toxic viewer, and a stream sniper at that.
In the battle royale game she liked best—though her skill level never escaped bronze, silver, and gold—I appeared as a random teammate and dragged every bit of aggro around with me, earning the nickname Flare.
Whenever that happened, the boss would end up isolated by swarming enemies and be forcibly turned into Zhang Fei at Changban Bridge. More than once, unable to hold it in, she had roared, “Flare, you son of a bitch!”
She was someone rich in emotional shifts, but maybe because the number of times she’d cursed that hard could be counted on one hand, clips from those moments were still circulating as part of the Mega-Rage Momo series.
But didn’t one famous saying go like this?
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
So the boss made the extreme move of appointing me as her manager.
She told me not to cause chaos by acting toxic, and that since she’d pay me, I should catch toxic viewers like myself instead.
And she hadn’t even proposed it online; she had outright challenged me to meet in person and talk it out.
That was how we’d met through a bad connection, and although we somehow ended up seeing eye to eye and working at the same company, we’d maintained a strange distance the whole time.
Yet now, all of a sudden, she was acting like we were the closest of friends, so of course I couldn’t help being bewildered.
The only difference was that I had become a cute girl.
“… Don’t tell me it’s because of that.”
If she’d been keeping an eye on me and holding me in check because I’d come from being a toxic viewer, I could understand.
But what if even that wariness had disappeared because I was cute?
Even when I stream-sniped the boss and pulled my eccentric stunts, I still carried the game. So if the boss hated losing, maybe playing with me hadn’t been that unpleasant for her.
Maybe after playing together a few times, laughing and chatting, we’d become this close.
“That means we can play games together….”
Back when Momo only had thirty thousand subscribers, I could fill a slot and join in, but after she passed a hundred thousand, there was no room for me to get involved.
But there were two reasons I’d become toxic.
I liked that Momo played with me, and at the same time, I enjoyed helping her win.
That was why even after Momo became a big-name streamer, I had continued constantly borrowing alt accounts and friends’ IDs to attempt stream sniping. She just didn’t know it, but I’d kept acting toxic all along.
The problem was that it was getting harder and harder to snipe her, since I had to break through viewer-participation slots as narrow as a needle’s eye and diversify my patterns so she wouldn’t realize it was me.
But if we were friends who even ate dinner together, was there any need to snipe her?
I could just openly ask her to play with me.
* * *
… ─ Momo (VTuber) Gallery ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ …
[Come to think of it, what’s Flare been up to lately?]
They’re still playing games these days
But weirdly, they’re not sniping Momo anymore
It was genuinely hilarious when that bastard sniped Momo every day for a whole week
[Comments]
— Mongmongi001: Didn’t they switch over?
ㄴ Mongmongi050: Flare’s a hardcore Momo simp, no way they switch lol
— Mongmongi091: There was that rumor before, remember? That they became her manager
ㄴ Mongmongi005: Was that real?
ㄴ Mongmongi005: I thought it was just the usual bullshit from some anon
ㄴ Mongmongi122: Manager makes no sense
ㄴ Mongmongi122: If that were true, they would’ve shown up during the Modongbu content ages ago
ㄴ Mongmongi801: Maybe they participated but just weren’t introduced?
ㄴ Mongmongi801: Could you proudly introduce yourself as a former toxic viewer? lol
ㄴ Mongmongi801: I couldn’t
ㄴ Mongmongi122: Why not?
ㄴ Mongmongi122: Don’t toxic viewers actually like it when attention gets focused on them?
ㄴ Mongmongi369: You can’t stream-snipe forever lol
… ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ …
Dinner time.
While waiting on the first floor of the building where the office was located for Momo to come down, I browsed the gallery and found people wondering about what had happened to me.
I left them a comment.
That I planned to graduate from being a stream sniper.
If the boss and I were friends, we could play games together anytime, and then I could tease and mess with her without having to snipe.
Thus, filled with expectation, the moment the boss walked out of the elevator, I ran over and asked.
“Boss. After today’s content, Baecol?”
The boss answered indifferently.
Wearing the face of a weary member of society.
“Sorry. My schedule’s completely packed until two months from now.”
Aren’t we friends?
Or is work more important than your friend?
My expectations shattered all at once, and the shock was no small thing.
In the end, for a brief moment, instinct outran reason, and the toxic viewer inside me burst out on its own.
“Boss. I want to resign.”