In the Talkode where Parallel members gathered, conversations usually flew back and forth busily whenever there were no streams on.
You could pretty much think of it as the company group chat.
There was all sorts of chatter—collabs, content, which games were fun, dinner recommendations for tonight, and such.
But on days like today, when it was a group collab, everyone was too busy focusing on their streams, so it was mostly just Dohee watching the broadcast or piping up once in a while when something important happened.
“Oh, hell, yeah. Woongdeongs! Drop the rain from the sky. I’ve come to soak the dry land shi-won again today!”
But when Majia’s absurd voice impression—bolstered by a voice changer—flowed through the stream, Talkode instantly erupted.
[Komari: what]
[Komari: is that jia unni]
[Komari: is rainy unni doing both roles]
[Maru: ?]
[Maru: wow i thought rainy unni was talking]
[Maru: is that really jia???]
[Maru: jia wtf!!!]
When Rain was so shocked she lost her words, Cheon Dohee immediately sent feedback.
[Momo: Rain, get a grip and run the stream]
Only then did Rain, realizing her mistake, scan the chat and start to ad-lib.
“Whew~ Surprised, right? My, uh? Bijan’s—no, my secret trump card. I prepared a copy of myself. So you can look forward to it!”
But even though she’d responded immediately, the fluster was unavoidable.
Cheon Dohee had given her a heads-up before the stream started, but she hadn’t expected her to follow along identically, as if she’d brought in a doppelgänger.
It was thanks to a voice modulation program. In other words, aside from the corrected tone, everything from intonation to filler words was almost exactly the same.
Apparently the viewers felt the same way, as joking comments quickly filled the screen.
— no but they said the last actor is unidentified ㅋㅋㅋ who is it ㅋㅋㅋ
— where’d you scout a freak like this again, Momo… no, Rain
— A-Rain is the fake, right?
— obviously A is the fake lol
— the bastards in the room are all deaf;
— isn’t D the real one? idk for real
— it’s A
— no, A is the one hosting from the start!!!!!!
But Rain was now an eight-month veteran streamer.
She didn’t let herself be swayed by the chat opinions split between both sides.
Rather, it was amazing that Jia had imitated her so well.
If she packaged Jia as the “real” one from now on, wouldn’t the twist when the answer was revealed be even more delicious?
The content could go from a hit to a mega-hit.
The segment’s appeal came not just from the actors making mistakes while trying to imitate Rain, but also from the attendees’ exclamations as they were completely fooled by the actor.
Rain moved her mouth and hands simultaneously.
“Hey, hey. Everyone, shh. Calm down. Come down. You can obviously tell I’m the real one. A-Rain is the real one. Why don’t you know? I’m so disappointed.”
[Rain: jia]
[Rain: pretend to be real gogogo]
But Jia, who needed to play her important part, didn’t react.
In the end, Momo, who’d been watching the situation, jabbed in a remark,
[Momo: Jia, play along with Rain]
Jia reacted as if she’d been waiting.
[Wat da. im going crazy. A, cut it out. even if you try that hard the Eondeongs wont fall for it. its me. D is real.]
Hearing that, Rain was dumbfounded.
It was familiar—always seeing her obey the boss while cherry-picking which of their own words to listen to.
What got her was that she never expected Jia to have memorized even the old pronunciation mistake of “Eondeong.”
Since the fan name Woongdeong had been difficult for her, a Korean-American, to pronounce, she’d only done it for about a week early on.
And when she spoke just now, she’d even moved her hands to make gestures.
She was so overflowing with swag that she seemed just like a hometown friend Rain had known for years.
‘This is at the level of imitation. No, it’s not. It’s a perfect copy.’
*
[Momo: Jia, play along with Rain]
I’d stayed quiet, wondering if it was right for me—someone who’d never done this kind of stream and wasn’t even a VTuber—to butt in, only for the boss’s killer one-liner to come flying.
But I don’t think I was wrong.
Because as a Parallel employee, it was the mindset I ought to have, and it was my conviction.
If you recalled the precedents from the mainland’s Wachu Wachu or Yoruasa, where staff often revealed their egos and got beaten down before slinking away, an employee must always exist like an employee.
— Direct Message —
[Momo: Rain seems to be trying to go in a similar direction to you]
[Momo: so if Rain picks a fight]
[Momo: no saying fight is weird]
[Momo: if Rain seems to be asking you to do something react right away got it?]
[Parallel Operations Team Majia: Yes]
[Momo: no i was gonna use you as a gag character why are you so good at it ㅋㅋ]
[Momo: Rain was seriously flustered lololol]
[Parallel Operations Team Majia: It must be thanks to the modulator]
However, when the stream-genius boss tells you to do something, it’s right to do it.
Was it for nothing that among the 1st gen, they say if you listen to the boss well, subscribers pour in even while you sleep?
So, like a good employee who listens well, I needed to do as I was told and increase Rain’s subscribers and fans.
She’d been entering a slight plateau lately as it was.
Perhaps today might become that turning point.
‘This means I’m doing well. They want me to deceive them even harder, right?’
Bring it on, Woongdeongs.
This is a showdown of who cherishes Rain more.
I’d even diligently practiced songs and raps for this.
* * *
The first Woongdeong appeared in Talkode.
[Ah, hello.]
The Woongdeongs murmured as soon as they saw his nickname.
He was none other than Chairman Re-yuksu, who had never once let go of the #1 donation spot in Rain’s stream, and a big spender who roamed all of Parallel’s streams, always carving his name into the donation rankings.
Rain was surprised he’d shown up first and was expecting quite a lot.
[Woongdeong. Are you confident? Starting right off?]
But the Chairman, bearing everyone’s expectations on his shoulders, was quite nervous right now.
Because he hadn’t been able to sense the difference between the real Rain and Jia during the actors’ introductions earlier.
[I don’t know who it is, but there’s a grandmaster of voice impressions… I’m a bit worried, but I have to guess.]
[Okay, let’s go!]
Anyway, the Find Rain game began.
A-Rain sortied first.
[A-Rain: Yay! Hello! It’s A-Rain.]
The Chairman pondered briefly, then spoke right away.
[It’s a fake. Get out.]
[No, no! It’s me! I’m Rain!]
[These days, Rainie doesn’t use that much English. Komari, eliminated.]
— lololol
— A, get out
— Mariya, you reek of grass lol
Her true identity was 1st gen Midori Komari.
When she was shot down, B-Rain was up next.
[B-Rain: Yay. B-Rain. I missed you, Woongdeong! Have you been well? Is your body okay?]
[Your pronunciation is way too Korean. Leave.]
[No no! It’s Vrain! You don’t believe me right now?!]
[Getting B and V confused means you’re not Rain. And you don’t roll your tongue like that either. Eliminated. Maru-nim, please moderate your screaming, it hurts my ears.]
[Yaaack!!]
— out
— I turned it down because the volume was too loud but it got muted
— but it really does seem too easy for the Chairman?
— Easy pizza~
First-gen Nezumi Maru was eliminated in succession.
It hadn’t even taken two minutes to weed out two people.
Cheon Dohee, the boss watching, was so dumbfounded that laughter escaped her.
“I thought both of them were pretty good….”
Because of the comet Majia who’d appeared out of nowhere, her 1st-gen peers—whom she’d considered to be in the “good at this” camp—had been reduced to comedians.
She’d expected Majia to play the openly bad, funny role.
But this flow wasn’t bad either.
Since voice impressions are relative by nature, if someone is overwhelmingly good, someone else is bound to induce laughter.
In other words, only the roles had changed; the flow was perfect.
The viewers were anticipating it, weren’t they?
The Woongdeong who guesses the answer is chosen randomly, but the very first one to get picked happened to be Rain’s Chairman, raising the hype even more.
If even he, who easily filters out clumsy impressions, can’t figure it out?
That’s what you call a megahit.
— but from here is the real deal
— rlly lol
— honestly up to here it was easy lololol
— let’s goooo
Up next was Majia, switching roles to C-Rain.
Would the Chairman manage to guess correctly and take the pizza?
Everyone participating in the stream was waiting for C-Rain to speak…….
[C-Rain: Woongdeong, I can’t remember the game name. What was it? Squirrel Gun Shooting? Can you tell me? You promised on stream before, Mi.]
A brief silence fell over the stream.
Just like during the introductions earlier.
— this is rlly her i swear
— fr?
— this can’t be a voice impression
— is the voice changer just that good or is the impression insane lol
Then D-Rain spoke, and the stream became a crucible of chaos.
[D-Rain: Woongdeong, C-Rain is obviously fake. Don’t be fooled. I’m the real one here. So tell Mi the name.]
— this one sounds real too?
— ??
— the voice is so even
— wow… Domain Expansion
Normally, no matter how much you imitate, the more you talk, the more the difference from the original is felt.
Maybe it was because she’d collected so much data while watching streams and had organized it well through practice.
Her mistakes were remarkably few.
To someone who didn’t know better, it just looked like there were two Rains.
Even Dohee, who’d been watching the stream as just another viewer without knowing which Rain was real, took quite a while to figure it out.
Despite having done so many collabs that Rain’s unique intonation and filler words were familiar to her ears.
[C-Rain: Hey D! Stop with the baby talk. Even if you do that, Woongdeong won’t pick you.]
[D-Rain: You’re the one who should stop saying that? Why so obsessed, C? Cut it out.]
The situation being what it was, Rain’s Chairman could only watch the two Rains bickering claiming to be the real one, repeating “Good grief!” for a while.
Just where had they brought such a person from?
He could only admire the scouting prowess of the boss, Cheon Dohee.
Eventually, deciding it was impossible, he raised a hand first.
[This won’t do. I’ll use my song chance.]
:: An anonymous donor has donated 5,000 Clouds! ::
:: You’re giving up the pizza for this? ::
[No, I really don’t know.]
— If the Kingdeong gives up, how are we supposed to guess lol
— no but I really don’t know either lololol
— just count both as correct?
— Pizza bungswe, right?
Using a chance meant singing a short snippet of a desired song in exchange for downgrading one pizza to a Mama Burger set.
But was the prize even the issue right now?
The #1 in donation rankings, the Chairman who loved Rain the most, looked like he couldn’t find the real one.
Well, even if he failed, it’d make for YouTube video material.
A self-proclaimed Rain superfan couldn’t afford to fail at something like this.
[Please sing a short bit of the rap part from the original song. I’ll judge after listening.]
— oh
— sharp order, nice lol
— the Chairman’s class
— right once you hear the rap it’s obvious lolol
— let’s go~
The original song released two months after Rain’s debut was an extremely K-pop track, as if dusted with seasoning and cheese, combining powerful belting with her specialty English rap.
Naturally, not just anyone could follow it easily.
Especially the rap part was so fast, rife with slang and abbreviations, that mistakes were inevitable unless you had the lyrics memorized perfectly.
Even Rain had apparently made quite a few mistakes during recording, so everyone thought a fake would definitely slip up.
[Ahem. Let’s get it. One, two, three, four.]
But the Woongdeongs were greatly mistaken.
Because the VTuber streams that Majia—the one currently acting as C-Rain—watched weren’t solely Korean-language streams.
This villainess, so fixated on Momo that she’d even use a VPN to snipe the days she streamed in Japanese or English once a month for global fans.
How much pronunciation practice had she done to avoid being caught as not a foreign fan?
Majia hadn’t dreamed that those efforts would help her now.
[Voices in the shadows, we’re risin’ loud,
No more silence, we’re standin’ proud.]
A rapid-fire rap exploding outward.
The viewers soon mistook it for Rain’s rap and waved their glow sticks.
Their ears and minds arbitrarily judged that this could only be Rain’s rap.
— kyaaaaaaa
— waaaa crazy
— (glow stick con)(glow stick con)(glow stick con)(glow stick con)
— shall we go with C?
— (booty con)(booty con)(booty con)(booty con)
— kyaaaa
— Korea’s hip-hop one-top, the Goddess of Rain. Shook.
— Korean hip hop should just dieee
It lasted a mere four seconds, but the lingering feeling remained long after it ended.
Dohee, who’d been watching, already had her mouth hanging wide open.
“Hey, Majia. What the heck are you…?!”