Chapter 13: A Meeting Beyond the Screen.

The restaurant was booked for 1 PM.

I arrived 30 minutes early, and Yu Sieun arrived about 10 minutes early.

Both of us ended up in front of the restaurant before the scheduled time.

But because of the ambiguous time, the unfortunate situation of standing outside for a few minutes didn’t happen.

To be exact, Yu Sieun eliminated what would have happened if the people meeting had consisted of two Ha Eunsols.

It seemed that keeping reservation times exactly to the minute wasn’t included in the rules to be followed.

I had hardly ever made a reservation at a restaurant and gone inside, and even in those few experiences, I had always entered right on time, so I didn’t know that.

In my case, I feel uncomfortable not keeping time appointments even a little. Even when going to a part-time job interview, I would think that going in early might interfere with the busy schedule of the person who called me.

But it seemed the restaurant didn’t care about a few minutes here and there.

The effect brought about by that trivial thing was quite large.

From when I said that there was still time until the reservation after greeting her and suggesting that we go into the restaurant, Yu Sieun had been smiling.

Even now, after coming in and being guided to our seats.

I felt a gaze that seemed to be looking at something cute, so I turned my body and briefly put my gaze somewhere else.

I felt the throbbing in my heart, which had been intensifying since I first met Yu Sieun a little while ago, grow a little stronger.

The place that the employee guided us to was a unique room that was small enough to seem like it would be full if about 3-4 people sat down, but it had a door.

It seemed to be a restaurant that operated a few of these small spaces. Perhaps that was why a reservation was needed.

Perhaps she saw me sitting in the chair and looking around the room, Yu Sieun began to open the conversation in a gentle tone.

“It’s not an expensive place, but I thought it would be nice because it has a room that can be used by a small number of people.”

“…Yes. I think it was a good choice. After all, an open space has a little bit of that feeling, you know.”

After exchanging those words, Yu Sieun pressed the bell to call the employee.

Yu Sieun briefly looked at the menu that the employee brought and chose one.

I was about to choose the same thing too, but I ended the order by turning a page and choosing what caught my eye.

After the employee finished setting the table and confirming the order, only Yu Sieun and I were left in the small space again.

To express my state in the simplest way, I’m nervous.

If you threw a 20-year-old otaku who stays in their room in front of their favorite idol and told them to eat a meal, would they really only have a happy smile?

No.

They’d be so nervous and awkward they’d die.

I wasn’t quite to that extent, but I was in a similar state. The state of a fan meeting an idol right in front of them in reality.

It was someone I had always encountered online, but they had a different aspect when they crossed over the boundary of reality.

The person sitting in front of me couldn’t possibly not know that I was giving off that kind of air, so I tried to calm down, but it didn’t work.

To me in that state, Yu Sieun began to use her skills.

Icebreaking.

A technique to break the awkward atmosphere when meeting new people and open up the flow of conversation.

The first step was an introduction about herself.

“First, let me introduce myself, I’m Yu Sieun. I’m a streamer broadcasting on Treech, and I use EunSiyu as my broadcast name. I haven’t revealed it before, but… I’m twenty-two years old.”

“I’m Ha Eunsol. I’m twenty years old. I’m the prospective editor of the official EunSiyu channel….”

EunSiyu smiled broadly after hearing my words.

“You’re twenty years old…. I felt like I knew it from when I saw the picture you sent me yesterday.”

“You had a slightly high school student feeling, but you also seemed to be watching the late-night broadcasts consistently, so I thought you were around 20 years old, and I guessed right!”

Words to narrow the distance.

But I found a part in those words that I couldn’t just pass over.

“…You know my account?”

“Yes?”

“Um, I was wondering how you knew I was watching the broadcast.”

“Ah. I usually have the chat window open on the monitor next to me when I broadcast. When someone with manager privileges is connected to the broadcast, it keeps showing up at the top, so I knew. You told me your account before, right? SolEun.”

“Ah, is that so… I didn’t know that.”

For a moment, my heart sank, thinking that she was talking about the account that I used to type a lot in the chat.

I hadn’t done anything basic like having the ID be the same as the email address, so I was wondering how she knew.

“……You use another account, too, I see?”

“Ah, no.”

“Hehe. It’s okay. It’s not like the editor-nim will say anything weird.”

Fortunately, the story about my account was cut off as the food we ordered came out.

After that, the topic of the conversation flowed to the area that was common to both of us and the fundamental reason for making the appointment today.

EunSiyu’s internet broadcasts.

Recent, trivial stories came first.

We shared stories about recent broadcast content, such as the 10-person streamer internal war and the subsequent participation in the LoL four-person queue.

It was a time close to small talk, but the time it took to empty about half the bowl was enough for Yu Sieun’s audience control to reach me in reality.

The story reached the fan channel when I began to feel that talking to Yu Sieun was becoming more and more comfortable.

The people Yu Sieun and Ha Eunsol were meeting now in the positions of streamer and video editor.

Since that relationship had arisen through the unusual process of the fan channel becoming official, it seemed that Yu Sieun had quite a few things she was curious about regarding me, from her perspective.

“But I’ve been wondering all along, how did you come to know about me?”

Yu Sieun was asking about the first moment I had met the broadcaster EunSiyu.

“You started editing videos from pretty early on, even though it’s hard to call it the early days since I haven’t been broadcasting for long.”

I recalled the time when I first started watching EunSiyu’s broadcasts in my memories.

It was Parallel World EunSiyu, but in a way that was connected, so it would become the truth even if I told it to the person in front of me now.

“…As for the broadcast, the very first time was a coincidence. I think running the fan channel is probably the same as other fan channel creators.”

I groped through my memory and recalled the thoughts I had in the past.

“Finding an interesting broadcast. Getting joy from it when there are some bad things in reality. Gradually liking someone more and more….”

“I think it’s a natural thing, even though it’s difficult to put that whole process into words sentence by sentence.”

Yu Sieun stopped speaking for a moment after hearing my words, and then smiled softly and parted her lips.

“It feels kind of ticklish. Hehe.”

“If you say it like that, I’m going to get pretty embarrassed…”

“In exchange, I’ll tell you my story. I have quite a lot to tell, too, since it’s the first time.”

Yu Sieun seemed to choose her words a little carefully before starting to speak.

“The first time I checked the fan channel was about a week after you started uploading videos.”

“One viewer sent a chat saying they came to the live broadcast after seeing the YouTube channel, and that the live broadcast was also fun, but I don’t run a YouTube channel.”

“But after thinking about it a little later, I remembered that I had received an email related to it.”

“So I looked it up after the broadcast that day… I was really surprised. I was even more surprised while watching the videos, and I was even more surprised when I woke up the next day to go to work and there was another video.”

“The more that was repeated, the more I felt like I was dreaming… I had that kind of feeling.”

As a loyal viewer of EunSiyu, I was able to infer one fact while listening to Yu Sieun’s story.

That after the fan channel came out, that amount of time overlapped with the time when broadcaster EunSiyu drastically increased the number and length of broadcasts.

“I was sure this person was a pro, but I wondered why they were paying me so much attention…”

“It’s a little hard to say everything, but this came to mind even more when I couldn’t do the work I had been doing anymore.

That’s why I decided to start broadcasting in earnest. I’m really enjoying it now.”

“But actually, I’m the only one enjoying myself. When I think about it from the editor’s perspective, I’m a bit of a strange person, I guess. It’s like only I’m constantly receiving incredibly thankful things….”

“I was really stupid, but the fact that you weren’t reading the email I sent for a long time made me realize that more and more. I was sorry that I only found out later that you had circumstances.”

Yu Sieun paused for a moment before speaking the last words.

“It’s a little long even though I summarized a lot. Hehe. That’s the reason why I kept offering you a revenue split.”

“Revenue might not be everything for a channel… But the beginning and the confidence started from your hands, editor-nim.”

“I don’t want to take away your share of the distribution. That’s why it’s 50/50.”

“Of course, it will continue to be like that in the future, too.”

Yu Sieun was smiling and watching my reaction.

“Was that a little too much of a burden? Hehe. But please forgive me since we met to talk in detail. You’ll consider what I said in the negotiations, right?”

The end of a story that had continued for a while.

I slowly spoke my answer.

“…Yes. I understand. Thank you….”

I erased the content about employment conditions that I had prepared in my head.

It was along with the lingering worry that had stemmed from knowing the future and current EunSiyu, but not knowing Yu Sieun from all times.

And, I corrected a thought that Yu Sieun had that wasn’t a misunderstanding, but was incorrect.

It was also because I thought that was why she had asked what the circumstances were when we contacted each other by message before.

“Those circumstances weren’t anything big. It’s just that the timing overlapped a little, and I had a bit of a cold, so that’s what happened.”

“A cold?”

“Yes. I’m completely better now.”