It's a Talk Stream!
I rushed home, threw myself through a shower, and booted up the computer — only to find the chat already fully occupied by waiting viewers.
I dropped a message of my own into the flood.
I pulled on the same top and pants I'd been wearing earlier and got ready to go live.
Keyboard. Mouse. And—
…If I don't turn the cam on now, they're definitely going to start complaining again.
The moment the title updated, chat lit up.
"Hi everyone. How've you all been since last Saturday?"
I greeted them with my voice alone, cam still off.
"Calm down, I'm turning it on. Just double-checking the setup one more time."
I fixed the webcam to the monitor and switched it on.
"Hello~"
Ugh.
The sound of it alone made me want to throw up.
"…Please don't call me noona. It triggers some kind of physiological disgust."
Viewers who, the second you tell them not to do something, immediately invent a mutated version of it.
That aside — the chat's firepower was on a completely different level from before.
Why is it like this?
"…The viewer count went up a lot, huh?"
"Mine? Which ones?"
The second I asked about the chat reactions, a thousand-won punch came flying in.
"Young-do? How do I even turn that on."
I frantically clicked through Shashark's gear icon, poking around until I flipped auto-play permissions to allowed.
"I think I got it! Ah, thank you for the thousand-won dona—"
A video started playing across the stream immediately.
And inside that video was my own gameplay.
The scene of me destroying the stream-sniper's nexus — followed by my own line.
Uagh.
Watching it back on video made the secondhand cringe hit like a truck.
"…Thanks for the eighteen hundred won, but seeing this myself is way too embarrassing."
One of the hardest parts of streaming, for me.
When people looked at me and hyped me up way too hard, it was almost unbearable. The cringe was lethal.
I scrambled to change the subject.
"Alright alright alright, let's start today's LoH stream~."
"Okay you guys are actually weird. You came to watch a gaming stream and you're telling me to do it later?"
Is that how it is?
Did I really just play games with basically zero introduction?
"Alright then — Part 1 will be a talk stream, and Part 2 will be LoH, everyone."
"Drop whatever you're curious about in chat and I'll look and answer."
Chat was a raging wildfire.
With questions pouring in without end, I decided to start with the most basic ones.
Name, age, that kind of thing?
"Ah — Ari is my real name. I'm twenty-one, born in '06."
"Ah, right — I work part-time at a PC Room. As for why I started streaming…"
If I say I awakened as a girl cam streamer, nobody's going to believe me.
I fudged it.
"Mm, I just got bored playing games alone, so I turned it on."
Freedom without control is license.
That was the line my homeroom teacher always shouted when I was in high school.
I think I finally understood what it meant.
I miss you, teacher.
"…Can we get some normal questions, maybe?"
Aigoo, this was pissing me off.
And they call this a talk stream.
Determined to shut down the endless stream of toxic questions, I tugged at the waistband of my pants, checked inside, and answered.
"Ugh, today's panties are black, and my MBTI is INTJ."
That noona spam I'd been sick of looking at since the start.
I declared martial law.
"Most of you in here are probably older than me, so from now on, anyone who says noona gets banned. Permanently."
"You. Banned. Caught red-handed."
I clicked the nickname of whoever had typed last and dropped a permanent ban on them.
"When I say I'll do something, I do it — I'm a man of my… I mean, a woman of my word. Be careful."
Right.
Come to think of it, I barely knew anything about this new body.
At the very least, I ought to know the height and weight.
"I haven't measured my height — should I try?"
"There's always a way. One sec."
I grabbed a computer marker pen from the corner and flopped flat onto the floor.
From there, I pressed my feet flush against one wall of the room.
"Oh, exactly. See? People really do all think the same, huh?"
Chat seemed to be exploding with something, but I couldn't see any of it anyway.
I marked the top of my head with the pen, stood up, and started measuring with a 30-centimeter ruler.
"One-nom, two-shi-gi, three-sam, four-raccoon, five-squid, plus eleven centimeters. Height is 161."
"What old man — you guys all do that too. Anyway, next question."
"Don't give other viewers a hard time — I don't have a boyfriend. I've never even dated. Next question?"
One thought as I watched the chat roll by.
If you're not going to ask normal questions and you're not going to believe a word I say, then why did you even want a talk stream?
You came to watch a gaming stream — why do you care about my dating status?
As if I hadn't already gone through all-boys middle school, all-boys high school, and the military without a single relationship.
"Stop digging at people and just believe me. I went to all-boys middle, all-boys high, and the military — what dating are you even talking about."
Ah. I messed up.
I'm a woman right now.
But the more I thought about it, the more it pissed me off.
If I'd just awakened a little earlier, I wouldn't have had to go to the military at all, right?
"Ah, misspoke. I meant girls' middle, girls' high, women's college~"
One slip of the tongue had birthed an even bigger lie.
"Ah, I got expelled. I'm just unemployed now, ahaha."
I was just thinking I'd managed to skate past it cleanly when—
A thousand-won donation popped with no sound at first — then suddenly a voice poured out of the speakers.
"Our resolve! We! Devote our loyalty! To the nation! And its peeeeople…?"
A man's voice had burst out of nowhere.
But my mouth — barely out of active service — had already answered it on reflex.
Ah hell. I'm screwed.
A way to break out of this situation.
No matter how hard I spun the gears in my head, only one answer came out.
"Ah… my dad's a soldier."
Why is everyone so suspicious.
Just let it slide already.
"I heard it so much growing up that I just memorized it."
There was one irritating comment in the middle, but the overall mood was sliding past well enough.
"Anyway, talk stream's good here, right? LoH time?"
Ignoring the split opinions in chat, I launched LoH.
I can't do everything they ask for, can I?
I'm not some kind of wish-granting streamer.
Display shelves glowed under soft neon light.
In a room fully rigged with professional broadcasting equipment, streamer Seonuyang's broadcast was underway.
"Hello everyone~"
"Ah! Through the end of this week I'm going to keep practicing LoH mid."
She was entering next week's streamer tournament as a mid laner.
But as a natural-born support player, she was currently struggling hard in mid.
She practiced every single day, and yet her skill barely improved.
And then.
A completely random question out of nowhere.
"Hmm…… I haven't memorized it myself, but I feel like I could? You'd hear it a lot, right? But why?"
"Thank you for the Young-do, AJinYo-nim~ What's this?"
On the video sat a strikingly pretty young woman.
In a perfect attention posture.
"Ahh, so that streamer memorized the Military Oath and that's why you asked? Yeah, you could definitely memorize it."
As Seonuyang watched the video and answered casually, people who already knew Ari started typing in chat.
"Oh really? That person is this streamer?"
She, too, had been a victim of that toxic player.
Stream-sniped three games in a row on her Gold promotion series.
She'd been so furious she'd ended the stream in tears.
"Someone who school'd that toxic menace… now I'm interested?"
Seeing that chat's reaction wasn't bad, she spoke in a voice full of curiosity.
"Oh, should I actually try getting a mid lesson?"