Translator: SourKimchi
Half a month's worth of accumulated earnings popped up on the screen.
Park Ji-hun refreshed the admin page one more time.
But the numbers stayed the same.
[Total Earnings: 27,095,800 won (270,958 Water Drops)]
[Platform Fee (40%) and Tax Deduction]
[Projected Settlement: 15,721,000 won]
"......Insane."
Woo-sik clicked his tongue after hearing Ji-hun's settlement amount.
"Dude, fifteen million actually came up? Ha. This is absurd. For real."
Park Ji-hun didn't answer.
No, there was no room to answer.
His eyes were nailed to the number.
Fifteen million won.
Seeing it as Water Drops, it hadn't felt real, but the moment the number showed up on the admin page like this, it finally hit him.
He wondered if this was really his money.
Park Ji-hun dragged a hand down his face.
A hot breath spilled out from under his palm.
Woo-sik spoke again.
"Dude, you really hit the jackpot. You made fifteen million in half a month. Now you can finally breathe a little, right?"
Park Ji-hun gathered his thoughts.
Looking at fifteen million won, the things he wanted to do came to him one by one.
He could move out of the Rooftop Room he was living in now into a better place, swap out his old computer, buy clean new clothes.
And then the most important thing, the one that had to come before all of that, came to mind.
'Mom.'
The image of her standing all day at the restaurant, working. The way she always said she was fine even when he asked if it was hard, the way she'd just slap on a pain patch instead of going to the hospital even when her joints ached.
He thought of his mom.
Park Ji-hun parted his lips.
"......I should take care of Mom first."
"What?"
"A health checkup, I mean."
Woo-sik swallowed a short breath.
"Ah."
"She's done the free health checkups, but she's never once had a proper, thorough exam. This time, even if it costs money, I'm going to get her a real one."
Woo-sik, who'd been hyped up and chattering away just a moment ago, nodded right away.
"Yeah. That's the right call."
Park Ji-hun checked the projected settlement amount again.
[Projected Settlement: 15,721,000 won]
It felt like he could finally do something.
"Tomorrow I'll make it an Off-Broadcast Day and go see Mom."
"Yeah, go and buy her something good to eat too."
"Come with me."
"Me? Why?"
"You're the one who talked me into streaming."
"Ah."
"I'll treat you."
Woo-sik immediately grinned and added,
"Then I'm definitely coming."
Park Ji-hun laughed along with him.
The number on the monitor still felt unfamiliar.
It was a good kind of unfamiliar.
He'd been a Perpetual Job-Seeker who only ever caused her worry, and now, for the first time, he could give his parents a gift.
***
As it happened, it was a day his mom had off work.
Around lunchtime, Ji-hun headed to her place with Woo-sik.
His mom, who opened the door, lit up the moment she saw Ji-hun and Woo-sik.
"My boy! Oh my, Woo-sik came too?"
"Hello, Mrs. Park! You've been well?"
"Of course. Neither of you has had lunch yet, right? Come in, come in. I'll have something ready in a minute."
Ji-hun suggested they eat out, but his mom, saying it had been ages since Woo-sik visited too, wanted to feed them a home-cooked meal. Eating out got pushed to another time.
Stepping inside, his eyes caught the worn floor covering, the old furniture, and a dishcloth hung out to dry on the small veranda.
It wasn't spacious, but his mom's touch was left in every corner, and strangely, that put him at ease.
The three of them sat down together and ate lunch.
It was right as the meal was winding down.
Ji-hun took out the envelope he'd prepared in advance and set it on the table.
"Mom, take this."
His mom's eyes went to the envelope.
"What's this, you giving your mom some pocket money? Like you've got money to spare. I'm fine. You spend it on yourself."
"Just look first."
"Honestly, I told you I'm fine, well, just how much could it even......"
His mom, playfully checking inside the envelope, went wide-eyed.
"......Ji-hun? This amount?"
"I put five million won in there."
"......What?"
Her face said she couldn't believe it.
"Where did you get this money?"
Seeing his mom turn suddenly serious, Ji-hun caught his breath for a moment and answered.
"I earned it broadcasting."
"Broadcasting? What broadcasting?"
"I do a Spirit Reading broadcast. It's a personal internet broadcast."
In that instant, his mom's gaze wavered.
Her fingertips tightened around the envelope.
「Such, such Divine Power!」
「In the end, the child will take up the work of a Shaman.」
「A high one, a most exalted one...... do not try to stop it, do not even think to stop it. That one...... knows everything.」
Words she'd long forgotten suddenly surfaced.
His mom looked at Ji-hun for a while, then gave a weak smile.
"......So it comes to this after all."
Park Ji-hun said nothing.
"Guess it wasn't a Fate that would just pass by because I pretended not to see it. So, you've become a Shaman?"
"No."
"......Hm?"
"I've never had a Spirit Descent, and it's not like anyone speaks to me. The Divine Power just opens up only when I'm broadcasting."
The room went quiet.
"What do you mean by that......?"
Park Ji-hun didn't miss the opening and spoke.
"I don't know either. Anyway, I'm going to do a Spirit Reading for you too, Mom."
"A Spirit Reading for me?"
"Yeah. It'll only take a moment."
Park Ji-hun added calmly,
"What your future holds, whether your health is okay, whether anything bad's coming. Because I worry."
His mom was silent for a long while.
Then she slowly nodded.
***
Park Ji-hun pulled out his phone.
His mom watched it and narrowed her eyes.
"Really...... no Gut or anything, you just turn on the broadcast and that's it?" [TL Note: a gut is a traditional Korean shamanic ritual involving music, dance, and offerings.]
"Yeah, that's what I told you. I'm not that kind of Shaman."
Park Ji-hun opened the broadcast app with practiced hands.
He set it to private and entered a password.
Woo-sik, sitting beside her, quickly stepped in and handled how to sign up and get into the broadcast.
"Mrs. Park, I'll do it for you. It'll be over in a sec."
And so the Private Broadcast began.
The moment his mom's nickname appeared in the viewer list, a familiar sensation seeped up the back of his neck.
Another field of vision overlaid itself before his eyes.
The first thing he saw wasn't an apron.
A window where sunlight fell softly.
A worn but tidy desk.
A hand moving slowly across an open notebook.
It was a space like a university lecture hall.
His mom sat among the young people.
She was eagerly writing something down.
No stooped shoulders, no tired face.
With an expression far more at ease than now, she was smiling more brightly than ever.
Park Ji-hun's gaze wavered, ever so slightly.
"Mom...... did you want to study?"
His mom's face flushed red in an instant.
She waved her hand and said,
"No."
The answer came right away, but her voice shook a little.
"Study, at my age?"
Park Ji-hun said nothing.
Instead, he quietly looked at his mom.
The mom he'd just seen in his head wasn't moving around busily clearing tables.
Instead of an apron she wore neat clothes, and instead of jotting down orders, she was writing something in a notebook.
Above all, she was smiling brightly.
He couldn't get that image out of his mind.
His mom's abandoned dream.
Even if it was late, he wanted to give her the chance to do what she wanted again.
Park Ji-hun pressed the button to end the broadcast.
"Your health's fine, nothing wrong. Still, get the checkup for sure. I'll lock in a date for it."
His mom hesitated.
"Oh, honestly, you didn't have to......"
"Don't put it off this time."
His mom was quiet for a while, then gave a small smile.
"All right."
Fifteen million won was certainly a lot of money.
But he had no intention of stopping at just getting his mom a health checkup.
He wanted to move her to a better neighborhood than the one she lived in now, and if she wanted it, he wanted to help her study again.
For that, it still wasn't enough.
But he knew the direction.
He just had to climb higher.
***
It was Saturday evening.
A huge banner hung at the top of the Ocean homepage.
[4-Streamer Spirit Reading Special – Tonight at 8 PM]
Park Ji-hun looked at the monitor and let out a snort of a laugh.
"They went and did all this."
He'd heard the gist of it through Woo-sik.
But he hadn't expected it to be this grand.
Ocean had put up its own banner, tacked on a payment discount event and a Water Drop giveaway event, and blown the whole thing up.
But Ji-hun, without much of a reaction, pressed the start broadcast button.
The instant the screen came on, the viewer count began shooting up steeply.
Thousands.
Ten thousand.
Twenty thousand.
From the start, the chat window moved too fast to read.
Rather than scrolling up, the chat surged in like a tsunami.
-SilentRoom : he's here!
-BongcheonFireFist : they really put up a banner lmaooo
-FrogKing : the lineup is insane
-SquishyCheese : is chae-rin first?
-NeonSign : when's akasha on!
-SsomyeonMaster : can't miss this one
-Ertel : so many people pouring in
Park Ji-hun checked the number up in the top-right corner.
[Viewers: 37,211]
And the number showed no sign of stopping.
Park Ji-hun pulled up the others' screen.
The four people getting Spirit Readings today were gathered in Ocean's headquarters studio.
Only Park Ji-hun had his broadcast running from his usual spot, as always.
Park Ji-hun's eyes swept over the screen.
Do-yun.
Croco.
Chae-rin.
And Akasha.
Faces that on any normal day would each be broadcasting on their own were gathered into one screen today.
With no one leading the charge, the chat window flared up even more fiercely.
-BongcheonFireFist : they really all gathered at the ocean studio?
-NeonSign : i can see a keyboard behind akasha is she gonna play piano today??
-ChewyButterChip : come to think of it she hasn't played at all lately
-MoonOrb : ocean really hyped this up
-LegendDrumBarrel : so who's up first today?
Park Ji-hun spoke evenly.
"I'll start with Chae-rin-nim."
Chae-rin asked back with a light laugh.
"I'm first?"
Her tone was playful, but her expression still carried an easy confidence.
She had the air of someone used to a stage like this.
There was hardly a trace of nerves in front of the camera.
Chae-rin spoke with a smile still on her lips.
"There's probably nothing to me. But do you really get it all right even if I don't say a word?"
A cold sensation was already crawling up the back of his neck.
After a brief dizziness, a Vision flickered past.
And then Ji-hun tossed it out flatly.
"You still haven't let go of that guy."
Chae-rin's smile stopped.
"You call him whenever you drink, don't you?"
Chae-rin's face hardened.
"What do you mean by that?"
Park Ji-hun didn't change his expression in the slightest.
"When he doesn't pick up, you send a long message, delete it, send another. He blocks you, so you call from a different number too."
Chae-rin's gaze wavered.
"I, I've never done anything like that?"
Park Ji-hun shot back, short:
"Really?"
Chae-rin couldn't answer.
Her lips went stiff.
Ji-hun drove the nail home.
"You go check every single day, don't you. Whether anything's changed on his Insta, whether he's followed someone new, whether he posted a story."
The color drained from Chae-rin's face in an instant.
"......"
Park Ji-hun added indifferently,
"But he knows that too."
Chae-rin's eyes shook hard.
"That you still haven't let go."
"......"
"That's why he answers you sometimes."
Chae-rin's lips trembled.
"Stop......"
Park Ji-hun didn't stop.
"This time too, he's going to bring up money."
Every trace of color vanished from Chae-rin's face.
"......What did you say?"
"He'll say something urgent came up, and he'll ask you to help him out just this once."
"......"
"He'll say it's for hospital bills too."
Chae-rin froze on the spot.
Only her eyes shook wildly.
"Th-that's......"
Park Ji-hun cut in coldly,
"You feel it too. That it's not true."
"......"
"There's no one sick in that house right now."
Chae-rin's lips trembled.
"You're planning to give it to him again, aren't you. Because it doesn't matter to you whether it's real or not. Whatever the excuse is, just getting to see him is enough for you."
In that instant, the chat window exploded.
-BongcheonFireFist : what the fk is this for real?
-Ertel : whoa this is way too brutal
-NeonSign : wait chae-rin got money taken from her too??
-SsomyeonMaster : that ex is just total garbage
-ChickenBox : oh my god
-SquishyCheese : look at chae-rin-nim's face
Chae-rin's lips moved faintly.
The face that hadn't been able to say anything for a while crumpled in an instant.
"No, that's, I mean......"
Park Ji-hun cut her off coldly,
"Don't give it to him."
"......"
"He doesn't see you. He only sees your money."
Chae-rin couldn't say a word.
Park Ji-hun added one last thing,
"It's already over. You're the only one who can't end it."
In that instant, the rims of Chae-rin's eyes trembled hard.
Her lips parted, but in the end, no sound came out.
***
The studio fell silent for a moment.
The mood that had been all laughter and chatter just moments ago had cooled as if it had never been.
Chae-rin sat with a stiff face, biting her lip, while Croco had narrowed his eyes as if intrigued.
Do-yun sat perfectly still, his eyes dropped to the floor entirely.
In that brief gap, Akasha checked her phone screen.
[Re: joining the project, give me an answer by next week.]
With a complicated expression, Akasha turned off her phone screen.
Park Ji-hun said with an unbothered expression,
"Next."
Chat scrolled up.
-SilentRoom : who's next again?
-JadeStoneS : do-yun's up next
-NeonSign : damn he must be terrified
-BongcheonFireFist : do-yun's about to get exposed too lol
Park Ji-hun's eyes turned to Do-yun.
"Do-yun. You're...."
"W-wait a second."
Do-yun's shoulders flinched noticeably.
His lips moved a few times.
After a long pause, he finally managed to speak.
"......I'll pass on mine."