Pet King

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

There were many people waiting on the livestream application—fans, admins of the app, the competitors of the admins, watchers from other apps, bystanders—and all these people were waiting for Sihwa to come online and explain herself.

Even though she doesn’t live stream every day in the past either, it’s an extremely important period right now. Her two days of disappearance had given everyone ample time to guess what is going on. Some said that she’s ashamed to face the public again after forging the saving. Some said that she’s discouraged by the cyber bullying she had experienced. Some said that she’s just waiting for the worst of the storm to pass first. But, not many people believe in the true truth — that she can’t come online the past two days.

When Sihwa started her livestream again, the audience that received the notification immediately flooded in.

It was afternoon in China right now. A fair number of home-stayers were online right now, all wanting to get the first-hand information at the earliest possible second.

Sihwa was surprised at the amount of people in her livestream. She had never had this many people watch her stream at any one point in time. She was worried that the room would be too full. In her understanding, a livestream was just a bigger room.

All she was thinking of right now were the lines that she had practiced with Zhang Zian. With how nervous, angry, and even shy she was, she barely said a word for dozens of seconds.

This wasn’t like her at all. She’d used to start praising herself the moment the livestream started, showing off how much money she had and then getting angry because of her fans’ teasing and playful questioning.

This abnormal activity just made her fans more worried, and the bystanders had guessed whether she was going to take out an apology letter to read.

“Sihwa! Say something! What are you spacing out for?”

“Has it started? I thought I had it muted!”

“Holy sh*t! What a beautiful streamer! How high does she have her filter?”

“Hehe, hurry and tell the truth to everyone. Give your supportive fans an answer.”

“Can you all shut up? Don’t you see she’s scared?”

The crowded comments made her even more lost. She shot Zhang Zian a look, not knowing what to do.

He guessed she might be uncomfortable with the other elfins looking at her, so he adjusted the window into a matte finish, blocking her from the elfin’s eyes, but they can still hear her words.

Clearly, she was significantly less stressed, as though she was back to the simple yet familiar bathroom of the pet shop’s second floor.

“Hm hm! Your beautiful and rich mermaid, Sihwa, is back online! Did you miss me? I’ll give you three choices—missed me, missed me a lot, missed me to death! I know you all want to choose number three, haha, so don’t die! Since I’m the savior of your life, you should send me some gifts, right?”

She pointed at her own face, shamelessly hinting, “I’m a person of the sea, so it would be best if you can gift me something that’s of the sea too!”

Something of the sea—that, of course, pointed to the most expensive of the gifts, the Chinese Mitten Crab.

She was back, clearly piss-poor yet always trying to make herself seem richer than she was. Sihwa was back, and so was a whole slew of teasing.

Of course, a lot of people gave her gifts. They knew that this was when Sihwa needed the most support, and they had made fan groups of their own accord, giving money, time, and effort when they could, gathering their cash together to buy gifts for her.

“Sihwa, good luck! We will always support you!” [Sihwa’s fan club] commented and gifted her a Chinese Mitten Crab.

“Sihwa, you are the best!” [Sihwa’s fan club] commented and gifted her a Chinese Mitten Crab.

“Beautiful and kind, often a little silly!” [Sihwa’s fan club] commented and gifted her a Chinese Mitten Crab.

“Thank you for always bringing us happiness and warmth!” [Sihwa’s fan club] commented and gifted her a Chinese Mitten Crab.

“All antis can go die now! Thank you!” [Sihwa’s fan club] commented and gifted her a Chinese Mitten Crab.

“Wow! Are there really, really, really, really, really this many gifts?”

Sihwa’s eyes shone at the gifts that exploded across her screen. This was what her dreams were made of—it was so dreamy that she could barely imagine she was actually in reality.

She read every single comment, feeling like she would cry again. What was up with that “often a little silly”? That was just extra!

With the fan club’s lead, the usual fans also generously gifted presents within their own means.

Under the rain of presents, even more bystanders were attracted here, and the number of people watching the livestream just grew exponentially!

This was a wonderful beginning—a perfect sequence of events for the grand show.

She waited for the comments to calm down before taking a deep breath, “The presents are great! I love them! I’ll be better if you can give me more! But I know you’re here not just to give me presents, right?”

The audience understood the message between the lines. She was finally going to give an explanation for what had happened that day.

The fans that like and care for her quickly sent more comments, asking her to get on with her usual livestream, whether it be reading fairytales, or being an idiot, anything but giving those weird people in the room more attention, to tide the event over naturally with the sea of presents, to deal with it by not dealing with it. So what if it was not a genuine event? She’s still so young, maybe not even twenty years old based on her looks. Which youngster doesn’t like fame? Which youngster doesn’t make mistakes? Does she deserve to die just because of one thing she had done wrongly?

Sihwa didn’t understand their intentions. Even if she had, she probably wouldn’t do as they said anyway.

She held her smile, speaking with rare seriousness. “That day, by the beach of Mersa Matruh, I saved a drowning surfer,” she said. “I did not know him before that day, and I didn’t know him after I saved him either. I don’t even know his name. My phone dropped into the sea while I was saving the man. You all saw that too. That’s why you didn’t see what happened afterwards. Now, let me tell you what happened afterwards. I brought him to the shore, and my friend who’d come with me took over. As the winds were strong, I was worried I would catch a cold, so I left first to put on clothes, and the rest of it was taken care of by my friend, as I never learned CPR.”

That was what had happened after the livestream. She knew that her audience would not believe her words, so she turned the phone’s camera to the laptop screen sitting beside her. The video player was open on the laptop, and a young man whose skin was tanned to a dark brown showed on the screen.

“I am good at swimming, and I didn’t risk my life to save this man like you said. But, I didn’t think someone would take the chance to incriminate me either! I asked my friend to visit the surfer, and to record this video, this is the man you guys saw on that day.”

Finishing, she pressed “play.”

“Hello! I am Salem—Salem Ebeid. I am a Bedouin.” In the video, Salem looked at the camera straight on, speaking from the bottom of his heart. “This is the second day after I regained my life.”