Beginnings Are Always Hard
Beginnings are always hard.
The setup that had started at lunch wasn't finished until the sun was already slipping toward the horizon. The stream was fully configured. All that remained was to hit the go-live button.
She had no intention of starting just yet. Exhaustion from barely sleeping the night before was swallowing her whole, and more importantly, the microphone she'd ordered for talking to chat still hadn't arrived. She could have streamed with the one she already owned, but who would want to sit through a broadcast terrorized by a crackling mic? Jump had said it himself: the most important thing in streaming was talking to your viewers.
"I'm gonna head out and get some rest, then. Hit me up if anything goes wrong."
"Yeah. Thanks a lot."
The call with Jump ended. She fidgeted with the mouse a moment longer, then shut the computer down and stood up from the chair.
Her stomach growled, loud and indignant. It hadn't been that long since she'd eaten, and already it was demanding another meal. She must have burned through too much brainpower. Sleeping on an empty stomach crossed her mind. People didn't die from skipping one meal, and you didn't feel hunger while you were out cold, so what was the point of eating?
Then her sister's voice cut through her head — eat properly, regularly — along with the threat that if Harin showed up any thinner the next time they met, Seoyeon would ignore school and everything else and move in until the problem was fixed.
"...I'll eat something. Even leftovers. Then sleep."
She trudged to the fridge. A little of the food Seoyeon had made was still left — not a feast, but enough for a meal. She pulled out the meat and the assorted side dishes and set them on the table. Instant rice waited in the cupboard, too. She had no memory of buying it, and the expiration date was recent, so Seoyeon must have stocked it. She could have managed rice on her own without the assist, but she was grateful it was there now. She'd come close to filling up on side dishes alone.
There was a microwave in the house. She didn't see the point of using it. Once food hit your stomach, it was all the same. She gave the instant rice a quick spin — the only thing that would have been miserable cold — and sat down.
"That's good."
It had gone past lukewarm into actually cold, and Seoyeon's cooking was still delicious. Not as good as when it was hot, but nowhere near inedible. There hadn't been much left, so the plates emptied fast. A little disappointing, but she was full, and she headed for the bed without lingering.
You weren't supposed to lie down right after eating. Her exhausted body didn't leave room for that kind of consideration. If anything, being full made her even more tired than before.
Well. What else was there to life? A warm back and a full stomach. That was enough.
"How long... did I even sleep..."
Scratching the back of her head, she grabbed her phone and checked the time. Six-thirty. She'd gone under around six, so maybe thirty minutes? Except that didn't track. The fatigue was gone, which was strange if she'd only dozed.
"A whole day... went by."
The date sitting just above the clock had changed. She'd closed her eyes for a moment, and twelve hours had vanished. Even accounting for having been awake all day before that, it was far too much sleep. She pulled her groggy mind together and checked the date again. Nothing had changed. Then the flood of notifications on the screen finally registered.
Some of it was spam. The problem was that most of it was from her sister — and the messages that had started out sweet grew sharper, more emotional, the further they went.
The timestamps lined up with the hours she'd been dead asleep. Of course she hadn't answered — but Seoyeon had no way of knowing that. From her sister's side, the older sister she'd just seen in person was simply ignoring her texts.
Better to reply now. She sent an apology: she'd fallen asleep and missed everything.
It was early morning. She expected the answer to take a while. Instead, Seoyeon's reply landed in under a minute. At that speed, she'd been sitting there clutching her phone, waiting.
At this rate she'll want bathroom reports next.
She shoved the useless worry aside, pushed the hair out of her face, and powered on the computer, dropping into the chair. She didn't have anything particular in mind. It was just habit — the day's automatic motion. Turn the PC on. Sit down.
She fiddled with the mouse, wondering what to do, and the streaming software on the desktop caught her eye. Jump had said it was best to go live after six in the evening, once people got off work. She wasn't expecting a huge audience for her first stream anyway. And she really did need to test that everything transmitted cleanly before she started for real.
The microphone still hadn't arrived, but her main content was going to be Last of Quantum regardless. Her voice just needed to come through without static when she was chatting.
She didn't agonize over the platform. She picked Trisch without a second thought. Whatever recognition she had had been born on Jump's stream, so her eyes naturally went to the site where he broadcast. He'd recommended it, too — said there was a reason it sat at number one.
The settings were already done the way Jump had walked her through. Nothing left to tweak.
The long-awaited first stream. Now she just needed a title.
A title was a first impression. She had to be careful. Unknown should go in — a landmark viewers could actually find her by. The rest... maybe a line that sold the concept?
If she kept it simple, she wanted something like Unknown — Last of Quantum. But she knew enough about internet streaming to know that aggro mattered. Even for a first broadcast — unless you already had fame and a dedicated fanbase — you needed a little bait to pull people in.
The Talk of the Town: A Skilled Woman's Debut Stream!
She didn't like it. She'd riffed on a title from Jump's stream, and it felt stacked too hard toward clickbait. Pure shock value could become a problem of its own. Better to sell what she actually had as a streamer. Being good at games, for instance.
This Game's So Fucking Easy, Why Can't You Play It?
No. Too provocative wasn't smart either. A title like that would just invite trolls to walk in and wreck the broadcast.
No matter how she turned it over, nothing landed. Some options were all aggro and no substance. Others were bland, personality-free, and forgettable. Maybe that was why people said well begun was half done — because starting was the part that actually hurt. Of course starting something new wasn't easy. Going from one to two and going from zero to one were not the same difficulty.
Doing something you'd never done lived in the territory of fear more than excitement. You didn't know the ground, so you were anxious, and you worried about mistakes and failure. Like her, sitting here agonizing over a single line of text. She couldn't know how viewers would take it, so the thoughts just kept deepening.
After a moment, she made up her mind. She would start with something intuitive, even if it meant less bait.
Last of Quantum Newbie Unknown's First Livestream.
Short, simple words were the ones that stuck.
And so the long-awaited first stream began.
Was this actually going out?
The monitor showing the broadcast displayed a starfield — a backdrop she'd prepared ahead of time, because she couldn't exactly stream her desktop wallpaper. The viewer count sat at zero. The hour was part of it, but streaming wasn't a cozy system where hundreds of people flooded in the second anyone hit go live.
So now she was supposed to leave an empty stream running and talk to herself?
A hollow feeling settled in her chest. She'd thought at least one or two people would show up. Whatever fame she had was extremely limited — all of it filtered through Jump. Right now she was no different from any random person going live on Trisch for the first time.
She didn't have the streaming hours to start babbling into empty air. Past awkward. Straight into embarrassing. If she'd at least had a bot to listen, it would have been easier.
She decided to just play Last of Quantum. She'd been told to warm up with just chatting first, but a warmup needed viewers, didn't it? What kind of warmup did an empty stream need? That could wait until someone actually showed up.