Nothing Personal
Kayak had, by now, become something of a celebrity.
If you told her that to her face, she would shake her head as if embarrassed — but it was an undeniable fact. Open the Twish app and her stream sat near the top of the rankings without fail.
The attention had been building for a while. She had appeared on Nikang's stream, then on Taker's, launched her own broadcasts, and finally gone and won a tournament that had every eye in the community locked on it. By the time she took that championship, it was fair to say she had peaked as a brand-new streamer.
A rising star, as they say. A newly ascended supernova.
Lately, her name was being dropped at least once in every corner of the Twish scene. Some people, watching this massive newcomer materialize out of nowhere, felt a strange, unfamiliar emotion. That was just how the streaming world worked. New streamers flooded in by the dozens — but ones who pulled in viewers this fast and seized this much attention in so short a time were rare. Especially when that supernova was a woman, suspiciously good at games, and happened to have a figure that was perfect whenever it slipped into frame. Cases like that you could count on one hand.
Curiosity got the better of most people, and they went hunting all the way to the Abyss Gallery — Kayak's home base, for all intents and purposes — asking just who the hell this person was. It was a natural stage in the process of a streamer drawing interest and new blood. Unfortunately, even the Gallery that had swaggered around calling itself her origin, her roots, her sacred ground, had no satisfactory answer to give. The whole thing was beyond their understanding too.
Why would a young woman in her prime pick up a game this niche? How was she this good? And on top of that, why did she have a voice and a body like that?
These were the same people who had never properly explained the "three-year blank" when Kayak had vanished without a word while still streaming with no mic and no cam. There was no way they had a clean answer for this phenomenon either.
Of course, none of that stopped Kayak's streams — or her name — from spreading further by the day. So it was hardly strange that someone who had been watching the Twish scene closely would take an interest in her.
"Kayak… this is the one who supposedly saved Abyss when it was dying, right?"
A man searching for the right person ahead of a major undertaking muttered to himself. He had agonized over it for days, combing through internet communities and researching streamers. At last, he seemed to have found his candidate.
"Wouldn't mind if she saved our game a little too."
His identity: an advertiser for the game Nvision. More precisely, the team lead of a unit ordered by upper management to place ads with a suitable streamer.
Nvision, once called a god-tier game, had long since lost that reputation. Players kept leaving, and by now it was fair to call it a dying game. They were finally thrashing around, grasping at every straw they could find — but public response remained ice-cold.
Not long ago, Nvision had pushed through a massive overhaul that could only be called a seismic patch. After that renewal, they had started throwing what little money they had at streamers for advertising. Hoping for a good result, the team lead decided to hand the ad to Kayak, the streamer currently riding a wave of fame.
There was just one problem.
"This person… doesn't have an email address?"
Streamers almost always left an email somewhere. Kayak's stream page had nothing of the sort. Normally you would post at least one address to handle viewer contact, sponsorship offers, that kind of thing. Who would have guessed she had none? That meant there was no official channel at all. How was he supposed to tell her he wanted to give her an ad?
After fretting over the unexpected snag for a long while, the team lead finally left posts in two places: one on the Abyss Gallery, and one on the latest video of the Vtube channel Kayak had opened.
The stream had just ended.
After telling my viewers I had hired editors and promoting the channel, I ran a ranked climb and rode it straight into the upper ranks of Grandmaster. Figuring that was enough, I closed the broadcast. Now I was looking over my Vtube channel.
Subscribers had jumped again in the meantime. Uploading a string of extra videos had helped, sure, but the bigger factor was clearly the live-stream promotion. For the next few days — no, for as long as I kept streaming — I would have to keep mentioning Vtube. And while I was at it, I needed to keep thinking about what kind of videos to post, what style people actually liked.
It felt like a whole new assignment, separate from live streaming. Honestly, I had no feel for it yet and it was a little overwhelming — but taking a fresh step forward still felt good. I had staff now. I wasn't the only one fretting over Vtube anymore.
Today was a perfect example. The two of them had dug up some old footage from somewhere and uploaded this many videos while I was still on stream. And there was a certain fun in watching how people reacted, so reading the comments was actually pretty satisfying.
Even the video I had put up a few hours ago was still collecting comments. Another new one had just dropped a few minutes ago.
"Nvision?"
What kind of comment was this? I checked it thinking it might be some new breed of troll bait — and it was a real official channel.
Nvision. The name was pretty familiar to me. I mostly remembered it for reasons that were not particularly pleasant, but still.
Anyway, what was Nvision doing on my Vtube? From the comment, I could roughly guess what they wanted…
Bzzzt—
That was when my phone started vibrating like mad. A call from Yu Sia, one of my editors.
"Boss, can you talk right now?"
"Yeah, Sia. What's up?"
"It's nothing major, but… could you open Vtube for me first?"
What Yu Sia wanted to tell me did not stray far from what I had already guessed. In short: Nvision wanted to hand me a game sponsorship.
"They said they had nowhere else to inquire, so they left posts on Vtube and the Abyss Gallery. On the Gallery people thought it was trolling and it got buried right away. I just found the Vtube one a moment ago, so I called."
"I see."
"I only found this out myself just now, but Boss, you don't have an email address listed on your channel at all. You should put up an address you use often, or make a dedicated work one and pin it."
Yeah. This whole thing had made the necessity pretty clear. A sponsorship. I had not even been thinking in that direction. Thanks to that, Yu Sia — who was not even my personal manager, just an editor — had gone to the trouble of contacting them separately.
Lately I had been getting so many random emails and nasty spam that I had deliberately taken the address down. I had overlooked the fact that I needed an official channel for communication.
Well, putting an email back up was easy enough. That was not the important part right now.
"Nvision says they want you to play for at least four hours and clearly say what works about the game and what doesn't."
"The bad parts too?"
"Yes. That part surprised me as well…"
Usually, a game company handing out sponsorships wanted you to say only nice things about their game. Maybe they figured there was no need to advertise the inconveniences to players. In that sense, Nvision's approach had to be called a little unusual. Setting the ad aside, it almost looked like they wanted a cold, honest evaluation from me as a player.
"What do you think, Sia? About this sponsorship."
"I think it's good. The pay is solid, and it's not a bad first ad. This one might even open the door to more offers from other places… and more than anything, I liked that they asked for the good and the bad. It felt like they were actually serious about the game, if that makes sense."
"We're on the same page. That part sat well with me too."
I was never much good at lying in the first place. Being asked to evaluate it honestly, without putting on an act, was appealing. It meant I could just play the game without overthinking it and spit out whatever came to mind.
And then there was this: before the world had rewritten itself — back when Abyss was a dying game instead of a god-tier one — Nvision had been the one sitting in the god-tier seat. The fact that the same game was now failing to keep up with Abyss's popularity and slowly dying, and that they had come to me for an ad because of it… that sat well with me too.
It was still vivid for me. The contempt and the harassment I had taken from Nvision players.
I would get into flame wars over people asking why I played a game like Abyss, and the second someone hit me with "yeah well your game is dead trash," there was nothing I could do but sit there with my hands and feet trembling.
If I ran a sponsored stream, a solid chunk of their player base would tune in. The game's staff had done nothing wrong — but I fully intended to spend part of that airtime settling a few personal scores.
Yeah. Nice. I was already getting excited. I had even thought about setting aside time to play it on my own someday, and now they were handing me a sponsorship on top of that.
"What's the contact info for the person in charge? I should ask about the ad date and a bunch of other details."
A hum slipped out of me before I could stop it, carried on a strangely cheerful mood.