The Size of the Ember
Jump could feel his head spinning in real time.
Collab streams were usually locked in days ahead of time. That way you could actually plan, sit down and talk through how the broadcast was going to flow. Today's appearance, though, had come together out of nowhere — which meant there was a lot more to prepare than he'd expected.
With things unfolding the way they were, Jump had no choice but to post a notice that he'd be starting late. All of it was the fault of his past self for suddenly proposing the collab in the first place. He didn't regret it.
If he just explained the reason properly, the viewers would understand.
...There had been a moment when he'd thought that.
The chat's response to the donation was, to put it mildly, scorching.
A streamer clocking in a full two hours past his regular start time. And the one doing it was Jump, a streamer whose entire brand was setting things on fire. The scale of the blaze about to erupt in chat was obvious without even looking.
Jump felt his already spinning head start to spin even harder.
"Alright, everyone. First, calm down a little. I'm not the type to show up late for no reason, right? I had my reasons..."
Those two hours had been precious time spent prepping a collab that had been thrown together at the last second. Not that his benighted viewers were ever going to give him credit for that.
Jump swallowed the excuse sitting in his throat. Once a chat started burning, a half-assed explanation wasn't going to put it out. In a situation like this, the smart move was to cut straight to the point.
"As some of you already know, I met the hacker in real life today, didn't I?"
Jump forced himself to ignore the rising chat and pressed on.
"Meeting them in person was pretty shocking. I've got footage I recorded, so let's watch it together."
He worked the mouse and pulled up the duel video he'd shot with Unknown at the PC bang. Time had been tight, so all he'd managed was a rough cut — but that felt like more than enough.
No matter how many times he rewound it, he still couldn't figure out how he'd died. He'd only barely pieced it together after slapping slow motion on the clip.
What kind of human movement is that...
Even watching it again, the motion still didn't feel real. She slipped the incoming bullets with the smallest possible adjustment, dropped her stance, and vanished from his field of view in a single beat. Then she closed on an unprotected opponent and finished it by driving a knife into a vital point. The whole sequence was so fast that, from his own perspective, she had simply blinked out of existence.
Getting knifed while you were the one holding the gun was the kind of humiliation you could milk for a month of teasing — but Jump didn't feel embarrassed. That was movement nobody would have an easy time reacting to, no matter who you put in the chair.
Even the chat, which had been half skeptical, went quiet the instant the video played, like it had been hit with a stun.
He wasn't sure how long that lasted. Then the dam burst all at once, and chat started ripping upward.
Chat sentiment was ugly. The viewers still thought Unknown was a hacker, so the reaction was only natural.
"Everyone, calm down. You think I was late just to show you this?"
"First, before that — I want to apologize to Unknown, who took damage from the bad information."
At Jump's sudden apology, chat flooded with question marks. And of course it did. He was the one who had branded her a hacker, and he had even gone so far as to meet her in person. On top of that, Unknown still looked like a hacker to the viewers. Unless getting his ass beat in real life had knocked something loose in his head, there was no reason for him to start handing out apologies.
These damn chatters, I swear...
All he was trying to do was apologize for passing along bad information. Why was the conversation suddenly about an IRL fight? And who, exactly, had gotten wrecked?
Granted, there had been the humiliation of going down without even putting up a fight... but that was only because he'd let his guard down. If the same situation came up again, he was confident he could hold.
Jump swallowed the anger climbing up his throat and kept going.
"I met Unknown in person, we talked, and I even verified it in-game. I sincerely apologize for the unnecessary criticism she took because of my hasty judgment."
"...Looks like a lot of you aren't buying it. The footage you just saw was recorded at a PC bang. There wasn't even time to install an illegal program, and I checked afterward, so it's confirmed."
Chat was running hot. A few viewers started stirring up trouble, thrown by a turn they hadn't seen coming — but one thing was unmistakable. Interest in Unknown was burning.
Now it was time to bring her on. It would be pouring oil on a chat that was already on fire, but a streamer's job wasn't limited to putting fires out. You also had to know how to use one — the way farmers torch the paddies and fields once the harvest is in.
"Ah — ah. Can you hear me?"
Chat had gone past burning. It was hot enough to vaporize. Messages were flying up so fast the window started hitching, then froze outright.
"Chat is burning way too hard. Sorry, but I'm putting on a five-minute cooldown."
Ordinarily he liked to leave chat wide open, but today was the exception. Leave it like that much longer and it wouldn't be the chat window that blew — it would be his stream.
Plenty of messages were still coming in, but it was better than leaving the floodgates open. If you wanted to actually talk to people, chat had to scroll at a speed a human could read.
I figured it'd be good content... but I didn't think the reaction would be this big.
Even as he thought it, Jump couldn't hide the way the corners of his mouth were climbing. Live viewership had already broken four thousand. Considering he usually sat around two thousand, that was double his normal numbers.
"Isn't this enough of a reason for being late?"
Internet opinion, as it turned out, could flip that easily.
"Before we jump into the game! I'm sure you've got a lot of questions about Unknown, who showed up like a comet."
She wasn't some player who'd already been making a name for herself. She had appeared out of nowhere. And now that what everyone had taken for a hack had been revealed as skill, plenty of people wanted to know who she actually was.
"Honestly, I'm curious too. So I was thinking we could do a quick Q&A... would that be alright?"
"If it's... simple things."
Jump stopped trying to hide the smile climbing the corners of his mouth.