Chapter 634
Her opponent was an Asian who wasn’t familiar with party culture.
Meanwhile, Vanessa had been the center of parties since before she could even remember.
If they bombarded her at a crazily fast pace with stories about private-school days and the sort of upper-class cultural context that outsiders could never possibly understand, along with memories they had shared since childhood, she would understand the difference in class between them immediately.
She would try to fit in with an awkward smile, and that would be their opportunity.
They could brand her in front of everyone as a pitiful Asian who didn’t belong at the party and couldn’t even communicate properly.
“It’s not like she was gifted a seven-billion-won diamond... She’s getting excited over one lousy cheap diamond....”
“Exactly. She has to be from North Korea! You can tell just by looking at her that she’s poor! What exactly makes her the Princess of T-fany?”
“My dad wouldn’t even imagine putting a diamond at that price around his daughter’s neck. Maybe around a dog or cat’s neck!”
Vanessa bit her lip as though she wanted to chew up the face of that insolent Asian bitch.
“I’ll make her realize she doesn’t belong here.”
She seemed fairly capable of both understanding and speaking English, but that would surely be the extent of it.
Once people got a little drunker and their tongues started slurring, it would become difficult for her to catch every single word.
Toying with Asians who pretended to understand even when they didn’t was one of Vanessa’s specialties.
“Let’s go live later. It’ll be fun.”
If they immortalized that pathetic sight on a TinTok Live, she would never be called the Princess of T-fany again.
Erno’s mistake.
That name would suit her much better.
* * *
“I missed you so much.”
“Hahaha.”
When you had absolutely no idea what was going on, the answer was to laugh first. I quickly purchased the item again.
“You remember me, right? Selena. Selena Cruz.”
Selena...? I definitely knew that name....
“I’ve been telling everyone all day that you wore a dress I designed for your very first schedule in America!”
Ah. Now I remembered.
“Of course I remember. Selena, the greatest designer of my life!”
She was the one who had made my dress when I attended the Critics Choice Awards for .
“If you guys are interested in K-Drama too, I absolutely recommend watching . I swear right here and now, once you watch it, you’ll never forget it!”
Selena and I clasped hands. Bursting with excitement, Selena kept letting out dolphin-like shrieks.
The friends around her each chimed in.
“Congratulations, Selena. You finally met your princess!”
“Nice to meet you! I follow you!”
“Jihwa!”
Han Yeoreum’s materialistic calculator began spinning rapidly again.
“Selena, since meeting like this must be fate, shall we take a picture together?”
“Aaaaaah. I’ve been waiting for you to say that! But just a picture? Can’t we do a live? All my TinTok followers must be waiting.”
I smiled brightly.
“Of course.”
How many TinTok followers did Selena have...? Hugging my pounding heart, I waited for Selena’s TinTok Live to turn on.
And the moment I saw the screen.
@Teentok SelenaCruz
Followers 64M
I froze at the number.
Sixty-four million.
The scale of America was unbelievable.
Live
?? 7,731
The instant Selena hit Live, seven thousand people poured in.
The chat moved so quickly that it was almost impossible to read, making me dizzy.
“Hi, babies! Guess who’s next to me? Eeeek! That’s right. Jihwa. That Jihwa from ! Of course, you guys probably don’t know very well, but in my heart, she’ll always be Huijae. Though from now on I suppose I should call her the Princess of T-fany. All right, Princess. Come over here and show everyone your face.”
Like the TinTok star she was, Selena handled the live broadcast with ease. I leaned into the frame of her phone.
And at that moment.
Live
?? 68,881
-Oh damn
-Jihwa!!
-Jihwa????????
-Where is Kangil? (crying while crying emoji) They must get married!!
-omg Jihwa!!!!! Jihwa!!!!! Jihwa!!!!!!
-Cheering for Unnie from {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} Taiwan :D
The entire chat filled with people welcoming me.
The dismissive tone from just moments ago, asking who I even was, seemed to vanish instantly under the flood of enthusiasm.
-I love Yeoreum Unnie????
Some people even knew my name. I smiled and waved.
Like a professional, I kept my expression perfectly controlled while frantically punching numbers into the calculator in my head.
‘The advantage of live broadcasts.’
It was intimacy.
Why had we done a live broadcast for the final episode of ? To make viewers feel just a little closer to us.
In fact, remarks from the live video had gotten more views than interviews uploaded separately afterward.
[HOT/ The three leads being awkward around each other on the early ParCheHi set.jpg]
[Issue Board/ What Choo Gaeul and Joo Junseo were thinking whenever Han Yeoreum delivered her lines.jpg]
[Today’s BEST/ Collection of stories revealed during the ParCheHi finale live.jpg]
Because the public wanted to hear vivid, spontaneous words from real people rather than something polished and curated.
And right now, I had one super pass that let me swagger more than anyone else at this party.
-The pink diamond today was absolutely amazing!
-The one she’s wearing now looks like T-fany too
-My ddal...
-Selena show us her outfit more closely
-Move the camera!
“Everyone’s asking whether the jewelry you’re wearing now is T-fany too. Is it?”
I nodded. I swept my hair aside slightly to show off the earrings as well.
Since I had openly made enemies of the nepo babies, I needed to build a new network fast.
Here we go. Double-views event.
“Of course. It’s all T-fany. Erno sent them to me as gifts.”
The moment the name of the LMVH chairman came out, murmurs exploded not only across the TinTok Live screen but all around us.
The power carried by the name Erno was beyond imagination.
Live
??175,672
-Erno????
-This is insane
-She’s basically already a T-fany ambassador lol
-I can’t believe LMVH is treating an Asian like this
The chat raced by too quickly to follow, and even the people standing behind us began stepping closer and joining the conversation.
They were making it very clear that they wanted to appear on the TinTok Live too.
A two-shot with the Korean actress Erno personally looked after.
They seemed well aware that it would make perfect material not only for Trttr but also for the editors posting articles in real time.
This was New York. A place where buzz exploded by the minute and second.
And Fashion Week was already over, which meant there would be no more opportunities.
This was the final timing to get themselves in front of the public even one more time.
The stars who had calculated that were far more aggressive than the editors who had grabbed me earlier for shoots.
In the middle of the chaotic, glamorous party, more and more people began gathering around me.
“Hello, Princess of T-fany. Nice necklace.”
Jade, a singer-songwriter who had ridden the TinTok boom straight onto the Billboard chart with her debut single, suddenly struck up a conversation.
‘This person gets ridiculously famous later!’
Time to buy in while the stock was low. I should follow her private Yousta account later. I smiled and talked with her.
Items and points were melting away in real time, but I’d worry about that later.
Everyone involved in Hollywood movies would end up watching this live eventually. Please look at me and think, Her pronunciation isn’t bad, then send me some damn scripts.
“Hi. I saw you at the M Jacobs show earlier. I wanted to say hello, but I guess we finally get to meet here.”
Kiernan, HBQ’s teenage star and a rising name from a fantasy series, approached too.
‘This is driving me insane....’
There were so many people here who could trigger follower-bug events. Screenshots from this TinTok Live alone could make the buzz explode.
I smiled and broadened my field of view. It really hit me all over again that I was playing in the big leagues.
‘Han Yeoreum’s materialist scout function is running at peak performance today.’
Far away, I spotted Dok Gomin standing by the second-floor stair railing with a camera in her hands. She seemed to be there to capture natural paparazzi shots.
‘Unnie, thank you.’
Now I would never again have to suffer the sorrow of failing to get a two-shot with Erno at House of D-ol.
From now on, no matter who I took selfies with, it didn’t matter if I never received the pictures. My gallery would get ultra-high-definition paparazzi shots, Dok Gomin version.
‘Let’s hit twenty million on Yousta by tomorrow.’
Before I knew it, the number of viewers on the TinTok Live had grown beyond comparison with when it started.
Live
?? 438,621
The thought that more than four hundred thousand people were watching me sent a surge of dopamine straight through my brain. I could really feel that I was playing in the big leagues.
And then it happened.
“Selena! You can’t keep her all to yourself. Come here, play with me too.”
A woman who smelled sweet pulled me into her arms. She already seemed slightly drunk.
When I looked up from the soft sensation, I nearly fainted.
It was Riley, currently a rising star and a future Grammy winner.
“I watched . And I completely fell for you, you know? I’m thinking of mixing an apocalypse mood into my next album.”
Riley refused to let me out of her arms.
Live
?? 618,992
Riley’s face had appeared for only a moment, yet the first digit of the live-viewer count had already changed.
And Riley was an extremely important person for reasons besides her future Grammy-winning career.
‘Namely....’
She had a terrible relationship with the three nepo babies I had just fought like a dog with.
The feud had gotten so big that even people who didn’t care much about Billboard had heard about it through Intube Shorts.
‘If I stick close to Riley, won’t the difficulty level of Hollywood social circles drop a lot, at least?’
Even if the three nepo babies threw a fit, Riley would be there as a solid shield.
Just then, I spotted the familiar trio of nepo babies in the distance.
‘Looks like they just came out of the powder room.’
Having lost even the slightest lingering attachment to that side, I hugged Riley tightly.
* * *
Seo Eden headed straight for the after-party after finishing his interview.
He insisted that he absolutely had to meet Han Yeoreum tonight, since she had disappeared immediately after the M Jacobs show ended and he still hadn’t gotten a chance to greet her.
Kwon Junhyeok, being dragged along by Seo Eden, sighed.
“I hate places like that.... I’m tired.”
“Quit complaining and come on, hyung!”
“I could just contact Yeoreum separately. Why do we have to go somewhere like that....”
“You contact her separately?”
Seo Eden interrogated him with a look Kwon Junhyeok had never seen before. Kwon Junhyeok obediently nodded.
“Sometimes....”
“When? Why? No, if things ended a long time ago, then they ended. Why do you keep acting so close to her? And now that we’re talking about it, why were you acting so familiar with her on last time? was years ago!”
Kwon Junhyeok answered as though it were nothing.
“I’m not acting close to her. We are close....”
“What do you mean, close? Close how?! From now on, if you have something to tell her, go through me.”
“Who does that?”
“I do. You two didn’t even know each other originally. You met because of me, so this is only right. And button up one more button, hyung.”
“You button yours....”
And so, dragged by Seo Eden, Kwon Junhyeok entered the New York Fashion Week after-party.
He didn’t particularly like loud places packed with people like this, but he did want to congratulate her.
‘It’s been a while since we talked....’
Han Yeoreum was currently the most talked-about person at New York Fashion Week. So even in a chaotic party venue like this, she should be easy to find.
Kwon Junhyeok planned to greet no one but Han Yeoreum, congratulate her briefly, abandon Seo Eden there, and leave the party.
At least, that had been the plan.
“...Huh?”