I May Be a Virtual Youtuber, but I Still Go to Work

After lending her voice to Kurokumo Loro, the final boss of Blue Coral Part 1—
Magia returned to the office the very next day as if nothing had happened.
So when Magia suddenly appeared at the office—despite having said it might take her two weeks—Cheon Do-hee, who was in the middle of a busy meeting, walked out of the main conference room and asked:
“You—what about the recording?”
“It’s done. Yesterday.”
“You finished it yesterday?”
Considering how long it took the other members—several weeks, in fact—Magia had completed her task and returned at an impressively fast pace.
Just as Cheon Do-hee was about to ask if something had gone wrong during the recording process—
“I did it properly, so no need to worry.”
“Did someone say something? It’s not like you’re the type to slack off when entrusted with a job. Why are you acting all guilty?”
“It’s just… your expression looks like you were about to ask, ‘Did you mess something up?’”
“I wasn’t…”
Cheon Do-hee glanced around inside the conference room. Then gave a quick look over at the streaming division.
She pulled out her phone, scrolled through her notes and Dingtalk message history, and gave Magia a directive.
“Then go check on Darami.”
“Okay.”
It wouldn’t have been strange for someone to ask, “Why?” in response to a direct order like that.
But Magia just nodded casually and immediately reached out to Darami.
Judging by how she didn’t even ask what she was supposed to do, it seemed she already had a pretty good idea.
If a village dog learns poetry after three years, then a VTuber company manager of five years knows what’s up without being told.
Soon, Darami responded:
[Gia?! Gia! Where are you?]
The voice that came through sounded oddly frantic, and hearing that, Magia glanced at Cheon Do-hee with a questioning look.
There hadn’t been any problems up until last week.
So what was going on now?
Cheon Do-hee shrugged.
“I really didn’t expect this, but… Darami’s surprisingly shy around strangers.”
“Huh?”
Magia shot her a look like, Are you kidding me right now?
Do-hee nodded a few more times and muttered,
“I’m serious. Just go talk to her. You’ll get the gist of what’s going on.”
***
And so, Magia left the office and headed to where the members were gathered.
Darami’s house.
The four had gathered there after finishing stage rehearsals for the Manae Festival, taking the chance to bond a little.
So why was it that the moment Darami picked up the phone, she practically screamed for help?
“Please save me…”
“Save you from what.”
“They won’t leave me alone!”
Apparently, Darami was having a hard time dealing with the other three.
It had already been a week since they met.
Still?
Yeah, there was definitely something off about her social skills.
“I only managed to sneak out by saying I’d go get Gia… If I go back in there—ugh.”
Strangely enough, Magia found herself relating to Darami’s reaction.
When she herself had first been surrounded by the first-gen members, she hadn’t screamed, but she had been too busy running away to function.
That was because Magia was someone with a “previous life.” Being around girls—especially company idols—had never been easy for her.
But Darami?
She was the one who’d been acting all bold and playful among a crowd of streamers during Blitzlight City. Could she really have social anxiety?
Magia needed to know the reason to figure out how to handle it.
So, while she was at it, she sent a message to Ena. Saying she’d met up with Darami and was grabbing coffee, so she might be a little late.
But even with that, she ended up getting no conversation out of Darami.
After dragging her to a coffee shop, Darami locked herself in the bathroom and didn’t come out for ages—leaving no time to talk at all.
“Darami, by any chance—”

“Ah, my stomach. One sec…!”
“Again?”
“I’ve been holding it in since earlier…!”
“Come on.”
Just as Magia was about to carry the coffee in a cup holder back, Darami bolted for the restroom again.
Magia clicked her tongue and stared at the back of Darami’s head.
“This girl seriously surprises me every time.”
Even on the way back, Darami kept clutching her stomach.
In the end, they returned home without any proper conversation.
Magia handed out the drinks she had brought to the members and asked,
“Did you guys mess with Darami too much or something?”
Ena raised an eyebrow and tilted her head skeptically.
“Messed with her? We took care of her if anything. Right?”
Miho nodded with a bright smile.
“Darami was super fun! I thought I’d already collected every type of personality out there, but she’s a whole new category I’ve never seen before.”
Magia agreed completely with that take.
Still, since Darami’s reactions were good, the others probably came at her way too hard with zero breaks.
“It’s only been a week since you all met.”
“A week’s plenty of time to become besties.”
“Totally.”
“We lived together for months, remember? We even did that boot camp training back then. You should approach her a little more slowly.”
“Hmm, maybe.”
“Well, if Gia-unnie says so…”
Maybe because Cheon Do-hee always included sociability, teamwork, and friendliness as selection criteria, but the other members’ idea of how long it takes to “get close” was way different from Magia’s.
Even Miho—who acted like an extrovert but was actually an introvert—had adapted easily and now mixed naturally with new people, thanks to the “Ena buff.”
Magia had expected Orca, being more reserved, to be less aggressive.
But judging from how she avoided Magia’s gaze, it was clear even she had gotten swept up by the group energy and charged at Darami just like the rest.
 
Darami spent the rest of the day living in the bathroom, and only timidly crept out when it was finally time for the others to head home.
As a bonus, she even changed clothes and sprayed deodorizer all over herself, worried she might smell.
“B-bye. See you tomorrow.”
“See you.”
“Bye~!”
“See you again.”
After sending off the three second-gen members, Darami let out a deep sigh and collapsed onto the floor.
“I can breathe again…”
Now that they finally had a chance to talk, Magia crouched down beside her and asked cautiously,
“Why is it so hard for you? They all seem to be treating you well.”
“I just… I find it harder when people are nice to me.”
“?”
Magia thought back to the interview.
Are you okay living in a group? No problem. There might be dorm stays—would that be okay? Totally fine. Can you cooperate and build rapport with staff who support you? Of course.
…So all of that was bluff?
A bluff she sold so well that both Magia and Cheon Do-hee were completely fooled?
That would explain why even Cheon Do-hee looked caught off guard. The girl who’d said she was fine during the interview had been thrown into the second-gen team and just floundered helplessly.
Magia asked, dumbfounded,
“Are you the type who’s fine with meeting people online but struggles offline?”
“Yes. Especially with people who are nice for no reason…”
From the outside, she looked like a classic Rain-type. But inside? Turns out she was more of a Bajubi.
And she’s even more scared of kind people?
Every time, it’s something new. Too new, honestly—it’s exhausting.
Should I have noticed sooner, when she didn’t seem interested in getting close to people…?
Still, this was the first time Magia had encountered a case like this, and she was just as stunned.
Now that she understood the situation, she needed to respond. To do that, she’d need the backstory—what kind of trauma from childhood made her so anxious around others?
“Would you be willing to tell me why you find people difficult?”
Darami didn’t answer right away. Instead, she headed for the kitchen and started brewing coffee.
Not just any coffee either—it was practically espresso concentrate.
And even then, she seemed to be stalling.
Magia gently pressed with a firmer tone.
“I feel like I can only help if I know the reason. If it’s too hard to talk about, you don’t have to force it.”
Darami took a sip of what was clearly extremely bitter espresso, held it in her mouth with a twisted expression, and after a long pause, finally began to speak.
“I think… it all started with acting school.”
She had inherited her parents’ love of performance, and from a young age, she loved expressing emotions and showing them through acting.
People around her would say, “She’s definitely her parents’ daughter.” They praised her endlessly, saying she was destined to be a great actress.
But when her parents enrolled her in acting school, where she was suddenly surrounded by other kids—
Her world began to unravel.
They say a crane stands out among chickens, but in a world where everyone is a crane, Darami—who had been hyped up so much by her parents and others—was just a scruffy, tailless bird.
Once she realized that, going to acting school became terrifying.
“That’s when things started to get twisted, I think. But I couldn’t stop going because my parents had high hopes…”
“And then?”
“I can’t remember exactly when it was. It was really late at night. After a monthly evaluation, I stayed behind to practice, and stepped out the back door to take ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) out some trash. That’s when I accidentally overheard some of the teachers talking about me.”
Apparently, some teachers had made nasty comments, like, How can she be the daughter of a top actor and still suck this much at acting?
Darami never tattled, so Cha Seong-gyeong never found out.
But from that day on, Darami had a hard time even standing next to her mother.
Of course she did.
She feared her own existence would tarnish her mother’s name. Imagine how deeply that fear would take root in the heart of a child.
Fortunately, her desire to perform and be on stage never fully died.
Even though the experience left scars, Darami still longed for chances to stand in front of people.
Then, as she grew older—
She discovered her opportunity during high school: streaming.
She realized that the last two syllables of her name, Baek Daram, sounded similar to daramji—the Korean word for “squirrel.”
So she picked a squirrel-like bishoujo avatar and started streaming as a personality on Pazijik Gallery.
“A lot of why I ignored chat came from that, too…”
“You really developed an aversion to hearing people’s evaluations, huh.”
“Exactly.”
Magia sighed deeply and muttered,
“You should’ve told me all this before the toxic chat training.”
“Huh? Why?”
“I was totally triggering your trauma. Without even knowing it.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I mean, it was kind of shocking at the time… But I figured, it was bound to happen eventually, so it might as well happen early.”
“Hm?”
Darami chuckled and rubbed her arm.
“I mean, yeah—I’ve still got trauma from when I was little. But I’ve gotten better at handling people’s evaluations. Now I try to think of it like, ‘If someone says I’m bad at something, I just need to practice and get better.’”
“That’s good to hear.”
“But people… I still have a hard time with. Those teachers used to say stuff like, ‘You’re doing great’ and ‘You’re trying so hard’ right in front of me—and then talk behind my back…”
“Ah.”
So because of a wound from childhood, she became wary of people who smile and approach her from the start.
Is that why she was able to get close to me? Kind of ironic…
Tia from Blitzlight City had gone out of her way to treat Darami like crap from the start.
Ironically, that kind of raw cruelty seemed more pure to Darami, and won her trust.
Meanwhile, our members are all genuinely kind.
They probably couldn’t just stand by while Darami sat alone.
And since Magia had stepped out of the main group, Darami, the superstar of Blitzlight City, was the perfect fit to fill the missing fourth seat—which must’ve made the three of them genuinely happy.
But emotional scars don’t heal so easily.
Magia figured the best course might be to help Darami hear the second-gens’ real thoughts—help her climb that staircase, little by little, so she could let go of that paranoia and start connecting with people more naturally.
Magia already had one simple solution in mind.
Because even if Darami couldn’t trust anyone else yet, she trusted Magia completely—and Magia could use that.
“Anyway, you do want to get closer with the second-gen, right?”
“Of course! I’d hate to be the reason cracks start forming…”
It wasn’t that Darami didn’t want to overcome it.
This was clearly something that could be gradually resolved with the right relationships and environment.
Her debut was about two months away.
So the goal was to at least make her feel comfortable with the second-gens before then.
“Then… tomorrow, I want you to tail me. I have an idea.”