Getting drunk on alcohol was like entering a room and taking off just one layer of your coat.
The awkward words that I couldn’t bring myself to say became honest expressions of my emotions without hesitation.
Yoon-seul, who figured it out too early, clung to Na-me and cried for a long time.
“Whaaaa…”
“Don’t cry. I’m not crying either.”
“Whaaaa… It’s not too late now, so please tell me it’s all made-up… Hu-huh…”
Na-me wore a troubled expression.
Since I had already shared it with Professor Cheon once, explaining it a second time wasn’t so difficult.
However, Yoon-seul couldn’t maintain her composure while listening to her tragic life story with a blank expression from start to finish. Perhaps it was also the fault of the strong alcohol.
“You can’t cry. You can’t cry. Santa Grandpa doesn’t give presents to crying kids.”
“…?”
“Are you still going to cry? Huh? Huh, huh, huh?”
“Ugh.”
“Are you really going to keep crying? If you cry, you really won’t get any gifts, you know? Huh?”
After a short stanza of a tune, Na-me’s relentless aegyo assault followed.
Yoon-seul, in a defenseless state, stared at this scene with bewildered eyes and couldn’t help but burst into laughter.
When she saw that little face with sparkling eyes blinking, who wouldn’t smile?
Moreover, as Na-me kindly wiped away her tears, she kept her mouth tightly shut and nodded her head.
“Huh-huh… Aren’t you just too cute, Na-me?”
“You can say I’m cute a lot today. Somehow, I don’t feel bad about it today.”
“You’re cute, cute, cute, cute, cute…!”
“Ugh… The smell of alcohol.”
“Hey, NoName…! You’re no slouch either…! This is just a one-time pass from me today, okay? Never drink something like this again…!”
Recently, Na-me’s schedule could easily be described as murderous.
She was preparing for two competitions, spending ten hours a day for problem-solving practice, and even watching other people’s screams to analyze enemy strategies.
Finally having a little time recently, Yoon-seul rationalized that it wouldn’t be bad to give the busy child a little break.
‘How could I ever think of being jealous of a kid like this…’
Yoon-seul couldn’t hide her sorrowful heart.
Thinking that it was better to show through actions rather than words for this pitiful child, she kept hugging Na-me.
“So, that means you too.”
Na-me slowly opened her mouth and started her thoughts.
“I think you don’t need to hide how tough it is for you.”
Her eyes were calmer now than before.
The cute, playful demeanor that had popped out due to the alcohol turned serious again.
“You almost died yesterday, you can’t go home for a while, so why are you always pretending to be fine, acting like nothing’s wrong?”
Her past actions could never be considered normal.
She responded as if it didn’t matter who the criminal was, and Yoon-seul kept smiling while helping with household chores alongside Na-me.
The anxiety, restlessness, and fear of almost dying couldn’t be found in her.
“It’s really nothing.”
Yoon-seul replied as if she were boiling over.
“It doesn’t matter if I fall from the 13th floor… People… People don’t know about that. They just remember me as the one who made Che-na and her sister suffer.”
The public only sees what they want to see.
That’s what Kariri felt all along during her time as a streamer.
No matter how loudly she shouted, her voice never reached everyone.
Yoon-seul hesitantly opened her phone and showed her DM account.
Thousands of unread messages.
She shoved one in front of Na-me.
“People say I’m ugly… telling me to go die… I get hundreds and thousands of messages like this from around the world every day… I know I’m shorter and uglier than Che-na, but I thought I had my own charm. But when I keep getting these…”
Yoon-seul burst into tears again.
“I… I feel like I’m such a bad person…”
Each one of them deepened her self-hatred and depression.
*
Just as I had shared my path with her, Yoon-seul recounted how she started as a Virtual YouTuber.
The reason she quit her trainee life four years ago.
The agency didn’t even give them time to practice dance or singing.
“It was really tough back then. There was an idol group above us. Their older sisters were too busy with schedules to care about us… Anyway, we were dragged around to meetings like that. So when strangers told us to dance right there without giving us any time to practice, of course, it didn’t work out… I got scolded a lot by the director and my manager. Anyway, I left because I hated that.”
She explained that Kariri’s success was purely a series of lucky breaks.
She had appeared on the famous streamer’s broadcast by chance, which made it known that she was a girl and garnered popularity.
Afterward, numerous videos in the clippers’ realm were created through behaviors that didn’t match her age or gender.
The fact that she met celebrity Kim Woo-joo in an online game by chance and even collaborated with him caused her followers to soar exponentially.
“I want to do well, too. I want to be good at games like Na-me… I want to be good at talking like Yong-cheol… I want to excel at everything, but there’s nothing I’m really good at.”
“But you sing well.”
“Hech… If I were good at it, I’d be a singer…!”
The words of a person with ambiguous talent.
Yoon-seul revealed her efforts to maintain Kariri’s popularity and keep the viewers engaged.
During the initial broadcasts, she memorized lines by typing out every word of Adella’s dialogues, like rehearsing a script.
She even did a 40-hour continuous broadcast because of the once-popular no-sleep challenge and ended up collapsing and getting IV fluids. It was distressing to hear that she had been diagnosed with high blood pressure due to lack of sleep.
In particular, she stated that her lack of talent in gaming was her biggest source of stress.
“To be honest, I still don’t get it. I don’t know what people find fun about watching my broadcast and why everyone is laughing. Is it that they’re really laughing because it’s funny? Or are some of them just forcing themselves to laugh along, even if it’s not that funny? In the community, they say I only show irritation during the broadcast, and my efforts don’t show, and I lack politeness. When I think about it, that seems like all accurate things…”
“Stop.”
“…”
“To be honest, don’t you feel like your words aren’t making sense either?”
Her words were soaked in negative emotions.
But if you scrutinized them carefully, she deserved to succeed.
Yet if I contradicted her objectively, would it make her feel better?
In the end, Yoon-seul merely created more reasons to repeat these gloomy thoughts.
“Yoon-seul unnie, can I borrow your hand for a second?”
“Uh…?”
I brought her hand to my chest, inside my clothes.
Fortunately, she seemed to have some kind of circulation problem; her icy cold hand transmitted chills. I reflexively scrunched my face, but I quickly adjusted to the temperature.
“Hey… what are you doing…!”
“I just want to check; you’re not the type to feel sexual desire towards children, right?”
“Of course not! What do you take me for…!”
“Then that’s fine.”
I slowly closed my eyes and began to draw up my aura.
I pulled mana through the concave part of my sternum and converted it into aura.
Mana and aura are all probability overlapping materials, but aura is still a little-known substance with very few discoveries.
To make a robot climb stairs and jump up and down, you need to know complex control engineering, but for humans, it just happens naturally according to the commands of the brain.
Therefore, the only solution to learn the various uses of aura was through inductive inquiry methods.
Apparently, some ethnic minorities can accurately predict tomorrow’s weather with aura, so its applications are truly limitless.
“Na-me, your eyes… have turned golden.”
“If you know how, unnie, you can use it too. Aura can be utilized in this way.”
“Was that what treated me back then…?”
“That’s right; in a way, you could say it’s a kind of aura.”
When I urgently treated Yoon-seul’s burn, I also used aura instead of mana.
However, unlike mana, if you absorb too much of someone else’s aura, there is the downside of passing out.
“I think your heart is sick right now. To be precise, your brain’s neurotransmitter management system has some abnormalities. But anyway, it’s not that you did anything particularly wrong to be in pain.”
Depression doesn’t simply mean feeling sad, despite what the word implies.
Simple reassurances like “It’ll be okay” or “It will pass soon” can backfire, preventing someone from emerging from their sadness.
It’s less about feeling sadness and more about emptiness and lethargy. In other words, many can’t figure out exactly what their feelings are due to the complexity of their emotions.
Because the neurotransmitters that convey feelings aren’t functioning properly, signals are decreased and passed on to the next neurons, causing confusion.
“Yoon-seul, how do you feel right now?”
The yellow light swirled gently like fog.
The brightest shine was where my chest and her hand overlapped.
By doing this, if someone is close to another person’s aura heart, it’s possible to resonate the aura and convey emotions.
I, fueled by the effects of alcohol, recalled the happiest times I had during a picnic on the hill behind Yvonne Castle.
Not losing that memory forever meant I could still harness the feelings I felt back then.
“Umm… How should I put it… I feel like something is welling up. And it’s warm.”
Yoon-seul’s breathing had quickened, but the heaviness from before was gone. Rather, feelings of anticipation and joy washed over me.
“Isn’t it nice? I’m transmitting what I’m feeling right now directly to you.”
“Ah, yeah. It’s nice. Hehe, by the way, Na-me, your stomach is so soft.”
“Waaah! Don’t rub it; focus on your feelings!”
Suddenly, Yoon-seul began to wiggle her fingers inside my clothes.
She kept stroking my abdomen and even started to squeeze it.
“Oh my goodness, how cute! Tickly-tickly-tickle!”
“Eek…!”
I quickly yanked her hand out from my clothes.
She looked disappointed and pouted again.
What’s with this person all of a sudden?
Reluctantly, I decided to replace it with my pajamas, sending her a few more auras.
Though the efficiency might be slightly lower, I figured I had the right to protect my body at least a bit.
“I fell for you when you sang in front of everyone back then. I think Kariri is charming.”
“Really…?”
“And surprisingly, people don’t find perfect people approachable. Even someone like you with a slightly clumsy side, they like someone who makes steady efforts. And above all, you have the charm of being poked fun at.”
Her viewers neither idolized nor belittled Kariri.
It was an equal relationship, a concept she would struggle to grasp the significance of.
“Anyway, whenever you find it hard or think gloomy thoughts, I’ll always hold your hand and listen to you. The belly rubbing might be… a little tough, but as long as we keep doing aura therapy like today, won’t things get better?”
Physical recovery and emotional resonance need to happen simultaneously.
Simply taking medication won’t solve things, nor will listening to worries eliminate despair.
“Should I keep touching like today?”
“Yeah.”
“Woohoo…!”
Yoon-seul raised both arms towards the ceiling.
I’ll let it slide. The other person isn’t even an adult yet.
“Ha… But can I go back to broadcasting again?”
Yoon-seul smiled bitterly. The fact that she was still thinking about broadcasting in the middle of all this made her a true pro among pros.
“Just take a break. When was the last time you took a break?”
“Umm… Was it last year? Or the year before? I can’t really remember.”
“What…? So that means you’ve been broadcasting without a day off?”
“I mean, kind of?”
“Is that even possible? What about when you were sick? You must have had unavoidable circumstances at some point.”
“I had to do it. It’s obvious that if a king doesn’t take care of the country for even a day, it’ll fall into ruin. Ah, thinking of Che-na’s obituary… On second thought, I broadcasted that day too…”
“One who practices one kick a thousand times is scarier than someone who practices a thousand different kicks once, right?”
“I’ve changed my mind a bit. You would’ve succeeded no matter what broadcast you did.”
Yoon-seul’s eyes, which seemed slightly loosened, almost shone with madness.
“How come Na-me feels so much like an adult? It’s amazing the more I see you.”
“If you’re going to say that, can you at least be consistent in your words? Who pinches an adult’s cheek?”
“Eheh. You said I could touch anytime, right?”
“Don’t twist my words!”
“I’ll only hear what I want to hear! Aww, so you’ve recovered from your drunken state? What a shame; I wanted you to act cute a bit more.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Hehe… From what you said earlier, it didn’t sound that way. But okay! How about we take a selfie as a keepsake?”
While lying side by side, Yoon-seul took out her phone.
“Drunken 7-year-old and 18-year-old ultimate beauty combo! This is seriously rare!”
“Ha… Do as you please.”
“Oh, what’s this?”
While taking consecutive shots, her gaze darted to a notification.
“7-year-old genius girl… Solving the 7 great problems… Hey, Na-me, don’t tell me you’ve been exposed?”
“What?”
“Already?”
“This can’t be happening!”
