Chapter 12: fan page

Honestly, I never imagined that Cosmo Live would send me a request.

It’s because Jinha was an unknown freelancer.

On the other hand, Cosmo Live is a group with a stable fandom centered around popular virtual YouTubers Cherry and Mary.

Although they weren’t a major group with tens of thousands of viewers when they broadcast, they still had a considerable presence in the domestic VTuber industry.

There were plenty of people who wanted to get a job from Cosmo Live.

“But why me…?”

Thinking it was an opportunity, he sent an acceptance email without even properly reading the email.

He even wrote it casually on his phone while walking with Hyoin.

But when he returned to his studio apartment and thought about it carefully, there were many strange things.

The surprisingly high pay for a novice freelancer with no experience was one thing.

But even more strange was that the outsourcing inquiry came through his school email account.

“What’s going on here?”

Jinha frowned and muttered.

Although it hadn’t been long since Jinha quit graduate school, the people he used to contact for assignments or business knew that this email address was deactivated.

“Ugh… Is this a scam?”

But it was too elaborate and thorough to be a scam.

The email address that came to Jinha matched the one on the official website.

The email that came back in response to Jinha’s impulsive acceptance of the request was very professional.

The request itself was simple. In short, they wanted him to revamp Astra’s official fan page.

A detailed document was attached below.

The document neatly summarized the current status of the website, the poorly secured HTML code, desired improvements, and the design concept.

This was an email that could only be sent by an internal staff member.

‘Well, maybe someone I used to work on projects with got a job at Cosmo Live.’

Jinha erased the doubts from his mind, thinking that they must have crossed paths somehow.

Anyway, the freelance site was empty.

If things continued like this, he would starve to death.

Cosmo Live saved a person’s life.

“This is pretty serious.”

The quality of the existing fan page was very poor.

It was at the level of a simple portal blog, with a poor design and a messy image layout.

On top of that, the hosting server was also poor, so the speed was very slow.

He understood why they abandoned the ambitiously created fan page and were active on a large portal site’s cafe.

“It would be faster to just create a new one.”

The request Jinha received was simply to improve the quality of the fan page.

If this were a lab website, if the person who requested it was a professor, he might have just tidied up the layout and called it a day.

But this time, he felt a little ambitious.

“If I’m going to do it, it would be fun to make it a proper 3D page.”

He wasn’t satisfied with just changing the design.

It was more of a desire than a sense of professionalism.

No, it was a fan’s heart.

Cherry and Mary.

On days when Minari was off, Jinha would often turn on these two’s broadcasts.

He laughed a lot at Cherry’s high-tension gaming broadcasts and was deeply moved by Mary’s singing broadcasts.

He wanted their charms to reach the fans more clearly.

“It would be fun to include a metaverse space if I push it a little more.”

There was a web 3D engine and a simple metaverse space that he had been developing in his spare time. He was developing it with the thought that it would be nice if an avatar he created could play around in it someday.

It seemed like it would be fun to incorporate it into this page.

He was concerned about server and traffic costs, but he thought it might be possible if he implemented it properly on a minimal scale.

Jinha smiled as various ideas came to his mind.

“Hehe… Ehehehe…”

A low, sinister laugh escaped his lips.

If anyone saw him, they would think he was crazy.

Day 1 of the project.

In the morning, he redesigned the structure of the fan page.

He wrote a proposal by adding the ideas he had been thinking about all night to the basic structure centered around the main page, announcements, photo gallery, and free board.

It was a document to explain the structure to Cosmo Live. At the very least, they needed to know in detail what was changing and how.

It was fun to write a document after a long time. This is why people should live doing what they love.

In the afternoon, he completely redesigned the main page.

Centered around Astra’s official illustration, he captured the sensibility of a night sky.

It would have been better if he could draw it himself, but unfortunately, Jinha had no talent for drawing.

He scraped together the existing resources. He used programming and the power of AI for the polishing work.

He repeated the process of entering prompts and modifying parameters until he got a satisfactory result.

Then he would clutch his head, slam his keyboard once, sigh, and then coax the AI again.

It was only at dawn that he finally got a satisfactory result. The movement was fine, the limbs were fine. There were properly 5 fingers on each hand.

The AI gacha wasn’t going well today. Blaming the gacha with no ceiling, Jinha fell asleep as if he had passed out.

Day 2 of the project.

He collected the highlights of Cherry and Mary’s broadcasts and organized them in an album format.

There were so many legendary clips that he had a hard time choosing which ones to include. It was a shame to leave some out, but if he included all of them, the server would suffer.

After much deliberation, he went to the Astra Gallery and asked for advice from the ghosts who reside in the community.

[Honestly, Mary’s singing is f*cking bad, isn’t it?]

I looked up a few shorts and they were all bad, so I skipped them. I don’t understand why she’s so popular.

Mary fans, if you agree, upvote this.

[Cherry snipers, bring one life clip each.]

I’ll give a Burger Set to the one who killed Cherry the most deliciously.

I’ll leave a Papa Touch coupon for verification.

As expected of dedicated fans, carefully selected legendary clips were gathered in an instant.

Warm words of encouragement for longevity were a bonus. These are the dedicated fans. The way of the community is still alive.

The clips to be included in the album page were quickly selected. This shows that AI is still no match for human collective intelligence.

Centered around the album page, Jinha constructed the metaverse space.

First, he set up a virtual lobby where fans could access and customize their own simple avatars.

Then, he placed a space themed around Cherry’s personal color, red, and a space themed around Mary’s personal color, blue. He greedily added a square where fans could interact with each other, a fan meeting place, and even a mini-game room…

“Huh?”

The page crashed.

Most of today’s work was lost.

Astra page down! Jinha ultra-emergency!!

He couldn’t blame anyone. It was just Jinha’s fault for being too greedy.

“F*ck!!”

Unable to contain his anger, Jinha slammed his fist on the keyboard. Three or four keycaps flew off the keyboard.

Day 3 of the project.

Before starting work, Jinha went to the Astra Gallery.

Both of the posts Jinha had uploaded yesterday had made it to the ‘concept’ list.

[Honestly, Mary’s singing is f*cking bad, isn’t it?] – 281 upvotes, 4738 downvotes

Why is this noob who doesn’t know anything acting up?
There’s someone here who hasn’t seen Mary’s legendary concert clip kekeke
This guy is obviously a troll. Don’t feed him.
Unpopular opinion) Mary’s singing is overrated, right?

[Cherry snipers, bring one life clip each.] – 3325 upvotes, 852 downvotes

I’ll tell you the story of how I kept ganking Cherry’s lane and made her cry.
I ran over Cherry with a jeep while she was eating a supply drop.
The legendary moment was when 4 survivors took turns turning on their flashlights and teabagging the killer Cherry.
LOL kekekeke
That time Cherry was really tilted kekeke

There are so many idiots in the world.

The biggest idiot among them was Jinha himself, who lost a whole day’s work, but seeing the comments on the posts gave him a little comfort.

Jinha barely managed to hold onto his sanity and continued working.

In the morning, he quickly recovered the work he had lost yesterday.

Fortunately, he had saved the resources separately, so there wasn’t much to redo.

In the afternoon, he thought about optimization.

It’s not visible, but it’s the most important task.

First, he subdivided the space.

He categorized the clips within Cherry and Mary’s spaces.

The album cover was composed of 2D thumbnail images, and the video and 3D space were separated.

He optimized the resources of the mini avatars. He reduced his greed and used light polygons that could run smoothly even on the web.

And what was completed was.

Not just a simple fan page, but…

“…You created a metaverse site that includes a whole virtual mini-world.”

Youngjun muttered, looking at the proposal attached to the email and the colorful fan page.

“Where does this look like… something you made because you were bored?”

It was difficult to modify while maintaining the existing page, so you created a new one. If there are any problems, let me know.

The short message in the email looked like this to Youngjun.

Your original page was kind of cute, wasn’t it?

I made this while taking a break because my research wasn’t going well.

It was fun. Use what I made well.

“There’s no way there would be a problem.”

Youngjun created an avatar and did a quick test.

Not only was the content rich, but the various transitions were also clean.

At this rate, he thought it would be okay to abandon the cafe and switch the main base.

“Winter-nim… brought a real gem.”

At first, he was skeptical about entrusting this person with the job, but now he was completely overwhelmed.

“What kind of person are they?”

Youngjun turned off the fan page and returned to his inbox.

His hand on the keyboard trembled slightly.

Youngjun was also a fan of Cherry and Mary before he was a manager.

He couldn’t put into words the emotions he felt seeing the fan page Jinha had created.

“How should I express this feeling…”

Youngjun sent a reply with a long message of thanks, along with a simple additional proposal for server operation and online fan meeting management.

Even after sending the reply, he kept going in and out of the metaverse lobby and repeating the test on his own.

No, as a fan, he was enjoying this world.

He admired Mary’s clips on the music-filled album page and reminisced about old memories while watching Cherry’s shorts.

“Wow… right, this happened too.”

Every detail was meticulous.

It was a result that couldn’t have been achieved if he didn’t love Cherry and Mary.

At this point, he wanted to meet them.

Talent aside, he was curious about the person.

He wanted to meet in person, drink, and talk about Vtubers all night long.

“Well, if I keep giving them work, there will come a day when we meet.”

While manipulating the fan page, Youngjun turned on his smartphone and sent a message to the group chat room where Cherry and Mary were together.

[I have a suggestion regarding the next collaboration content. This time, the fan page has been renewed…]