VR
After returning to Korea and streaming diligently without a single break day, the month flipped over and October arrived.
"Hmm… what content should I do in October…?"
September had been packed with big-ticket stuff—a cooking stream, the Chuseok special collab, and so on. November would take care of itself with Pepero Day and the CSAT, plenty of events to milk there. But October…? What did October even have?
I stared a hole into the innocent calendar, racking my brain, but the only content idea that surfaced was speaking nothing but Korean to commemorate Hangul Day. Tsk… that one's way too common. Not interested.
"Hmm!"
Dunno!
I'll think about it later!
Should I just play games today like any other day? The viewers do like watching me game. Of course, that's only because I carefully select games with their dopamine in mind.
Having decided on gaming, I browsed through my library for something stream-worthy. This one… would be way too cruel on stream. That one's way too long. Ah, this one… I have zero confidence in redoing the early sections. By the time I'd scrolled to the very bottom with my standards in hand, I hadn't found a single playable game.
…There's really nothing I like?
Tsk… were my standards too high…? Or… wait, did I just not buy many games because I regressed to the past?
Wondering if my library was simply too thin at this point in time, I opened up the store. Oh, this one looks good. Ooh, this one too. Right—this is the library I built back when I was broke, spending my allowance from my parents only on the games I truly, desperately wanted. Of course there's nothing worth streaming in it.
Browsing the store, though, a new question occurred to me. Is it about time I started feeding them my taste in games?
Like I said before, up until now I'd been picking games with viewership and entertainment value in mind—but isn't the protection period over by now? It's been over half a year since my debut. Sure, a bunch of viewers would leave, but this isn't shaking out the ants—it's pouring concrete. Compaction is a good thing… Hmm. I'll settle on today's stream first and think it over.
Deciding to give myself a pass for today, I went back through the games I'd shortlisted as candidates. Hmm, this one's better… Ah, wait, this game comes out in VR later, so when that—
Oh. Wait. My VR headset shipped, didn't it? The box was buried unopened in the corner and I'd completely forgotten about it…
"Hmm… you know what, maybe I'll just do VR today."
If I didn't do it while I remembered, I'd forget again, so I decided to knock it out quickly.
A short while later.
"Everyone, today I finally…"
"Tsk… never mind. Not telling."
"Ugh, agh… tsk…!"
"Fine, you've all suffered enough, so I'll tell you."
But honestly, when they react this hilariously every single time, how could I not tease them? Satisfied, I cut the games and got to the point.
"That VR headset I bought? It arrived."
That was, what, a week or two ago?
"Yep, so I need to set it up."
"Ah, well, I hadn't even opened the box yet."
An unboxing cam?
"What cam? It's not a cam stream."
Why do they love cams this much? I'm a VTuber.
"There are a million unboxing videos on YouTube, go watch one of those."
Leaving the chat in an uproar behind me, I brought over the box from the back of the booth. Thud!
"That's what the box sounds like."
They couldn't see it, so I smacked the box with my palm just to give them the audio at least.
"Huh? It's a perfectly ordinary delivery box. What quality?"
"Now for the box cutter… I can't see it. One sec, I'll grab a kitchen knife."
I brought the kitchen knife back, sliced through the tape, and carried it away again.
"Oh, the product box is actually pretty?"
I lifted the retail box out and set it on the desk, then casually flung the empty shipping box behind me.
Huh? The audio picked that up?
Turns out a microphone catching every tiny sound isn't exactly a feature. Today I learned the unexpected downside of expensive mics.
"Anyway, let's get the actual product out."
I pulled out the manual and the necessities, closed the flaps so nothing else would spill out, and tossed the retail box toward the shipping box pile.
No need to volunteer the truth, so I ignored it and installed the required app on my computer while reading the manual.
"Okay, now… link it up… oh, there we go?"
It asked me to define the play area based on my room's dimensions, so I got up from my chair and paced from one end of the soundproof booth to the other.
Ah, the boxes… The ones I'd tossed earlier were right in my path, so I opened the booth door and chucked them outside.
"Hmm… if there's one more noise, I'll go check."
There wouldn't be one, so I gave a noncommittal answer and tried out the VR headset.
"Oh…!"
This is incredible!
"What should we try first?!"
Since chat wasn't linked in the headset yet, I took it off and checked my monitors.
…I shouldn't have looked.
Doing my best to ignore the chat that tried to gaslight me into "cute" no matter what I did these days, I downloaded the zombie FPS I'd been wanting to play—the one where you shoot the undead dead.
"This looks fun."
…Wait, why is it taking so long? The estimated download time was over two hours. Tsk… this is a poor fit for today.
"I'll download this after the stream ends and play it tomorrow. For now, let's try something else."
Hmm. Just as I thought—the viewers love watching me suffer. I ask for suggestions and this is what they suggest? Well… actually, that works for me?
Regardless of the viewers' intentions, it seemed like a solid pick for a VR beginner like me, so I decided to go for it.
Frankly, I was wearing the headset, I was inside the soundproof booth so I couldn't feel any wind, and my bare feet felt the texture of the booth's floor mats—so I was genuinely curious whether sight alone could conjure up that much terror.
Once the download finished, I launched the game. I decided to fool around with the various features first rather than jumping straight into the main content.
"Looks like this lets me fly?"
After learning the controls by mashing every button on the controllers, I floated up into the sky.
"Ooooh…!"
This is legitimately amazing! This is what VR is like?!
Sight really does rule the body—despite clearly feeling the mat under my bare feet, I had the unmistakable sensation of flying.
"Wow… this is unreal—"
Huh? Why can't I see chat? I set it up earlier… Oh. Right, I never enabled chat inside the game. Tsk… nothing to be done about it. Even if I can't manage chat myself, the moderator will handle it, so no problem.
"Though in this state, I don't think I'll feel scared at all?"
Hmm… normally a line like that should trigger 'lololol we'll see about that' messages… and 'there goes the brat flexing again lmao' spam that I'd have to slice away…
With the chat that had always lived on the right side of my screen gone, the silence felt oddly hollow.
"…Let's just hurry up and finish this."
The moment I realized one of my stream's sources of fun had vanished, the excitement that had been climbing all stream withered on the spot.
So I quickly teleported to the rooftop scene with a single wooden plank laid across the void.
"Cake… how do you set that up? You know what, skipping it. Too much effort."
Normally I'd have to slice the 'ARGH, you brat, at least commit to the bit!' messages, and…
The same hollow feeling kept washing over me, so yeah—finishing fast and re-enabling chat was the right call. Still, in the interest of a YouTube clip, I did my best not to make it obvious as I stepped onto the plank.
"Oh…"
I moved my actual body instead of the controllers for full immersion, and it definitely felt more real that way.
"Hmm, anyone here with a fear of heights?"
Imagining the answers that would never come back to me, I delivered the next line.
"Looks like a few of you do. Then leave. I'll give you three seconds. Three, two, one!"
I finished counting and took a single step to the right. My field of view began plummeting downward.
"Fascinating. It really does feel real, doesn't it?"
I swiveled my head around in midair for a while, and before I knew it, I'd respawned on the rooftop.
What were their reactions like?
Heart pounding with anticipation, I pulled off the headset and looked at the chat.
"Heh. Fun."
Watching myself cackle as I deleted the cursing messages, one thing became clear.
I'm the type of streamer who needs to read chat while broadcasting.