Monster Rookie, Day Two
The viewers were clearly getting angrier by the minute, and yet the number floating at the top of the screen had climbed since a moment ago.
"Uh. Um."
The chat was burning like a wildfire. Was I actually doing well?
Push them in A-C-B order.
A true martyr, braced to catch a ban and handing the hint over in broad daylight.
"Eh... uh?"
But even that advice couldn't drag me to a win. The attempt counter had already blown past five hundred.
"No, hold on, teachers."
"I'm sorry, but I'm not doing it on purpose. I genuinely don't get it."
The chat was, quite literally, pandemonium. For a viewer count of fifteen, the firepower was hard to believe.
"......"
To pull a reaction like this on the very first day of streaming. Maybe I really am a broadcasting genius.
In the end... I cleared the puzzle on the 650th try.
I had been live for a full twelve hours. The clock read 7 a.m.
At this point, it had to count as a pretty successful debut. A weekday morning, and fifteen whole people had stayed to watch me until this hour. The fact wouldn't quite sink in.
It was so strange that I asked, out of nothing but honest curiosity.
"Haha. Guys, it's a weekday. Is nobody going in to work?"
I had scratched a nerve without meaning to.
"Ah... um... I'm sorry."
Smack!
"Ack!"
A solid, stinging pain spread across my back. Grandma was standing right beside me, looking down.
"What're you sittin' there for! It's already morning, you little wench."
Right. I'd promised to help Grandma with the farm work this morning. My whole body was stiff and aching — twelve hours latched onto a broadcast, so of course it was. But an excuse like that was never going to work on Grandma.
I mounted a small resistance.
"I'm not going. I'm not going. Farming in this weather is a violation of international law. This, right here."
"Has the heat fried this child's brain and spun it clean around? Quit the nonsense and get out here."
"......Yes, ma'am."
"Grandma asked me to help with the farming, so I'm ending the stream."
In the end I jammed a straw hat down on my head and got dragged out to the rice paddy.
That evening, at six, I turned the stream back on. The title, a little full of myself, I set to Monster Rookie, Day Two.
But I had fifteen viewers on day one.
A complete live-streaming newbie, pulling fifteen people from the very first day. At that level, didn't I actually deserve to be called a monster rookie?
"...No?"
What is with these people?
A hakko like me flips the stream on, and they come running the second the notification hits? The chat started moving almost at once.
"Thank you so much for coming, everyone."
Come to think of it, what was I actually going to do today?
What did VTubers usually start with, once the stream was on? I thought for a moment, and one thing surfaced.
Oh, right. Just Chatting.
Warming up with small talk before the game actually started was VTuber basics. Most of the streams I'd watched went the same way.
The problem.
What do I even say?
The moment I tried to talk, my head went blank white. Chatting with someone you know and keeping a conversation going in front of a crowd of strangers were completely different things.
Then, all at once, I remembered something Grandma used to say. Life is confidence. Whether it works or not, you throw it out there and see.
All right. Here goes.
I blurted out the first thing that came into my head.
"Hey, do you guys like animals?"
"Ah. I like animals and nature, you see. My nickname is the Chilam-dong Druid."
"Except crustaceans. Not long ago I lost a paring knife to a live crab and got beaten."
"No...... what even is a sun bear?"
I frowned.
"That's a bear, isn't it? How do you beat a bear."
I immediately opened Blackmuwiki and searched sun bear.
The photo at the very top showed a black-furred bear with a long tongue poking out. The second I saw the screen, I leaned back.
"Ugh, gross."
I zoomed in on the photo and looked again.
"This one? You're saying you beat this one? How do you even win."
I stared at the bear photo for a long while, then shook my head.
"No, but this one's still kinda... yeah."
I didn't even understand why I had to fight a bear in the first place. And while I was thinking that, I suddenly got curious. How far up did the animals I could beat with my bare hands actually go?
"Wait a second."
I opened Paint and started scribbling roughly with the mouse.
"This is my personal ranking of how strong animals are."
"Bangul-i? That's our dog, and he's huge. I've never actually fought him, but if we went all-out bare-knuckle, I'd lose, wouldn't I?"
...I had definitely meant to do some Just Chatting. Somewhere between debating how to fight a sun bear, I had ended up making an animal power-ranking tier list.
I snuck a glance at one corner of the screen.
It had gone up from before.
Something about the direction felt off. I was probably doing fine, though.
Lua, a famous corporate VTuber who held an average of seven thousand viewers, was watching a video donation.
Video donations were different for every streamer. The freer a broadcast's mood — to put it a little unkindly, the closer it got to pure neglect — the higher the intensity of the clips viewers sent tended to climb. Bizarre videos of the Tungsil variety were the baseline, and in rooms that crossed the line, clips openly dragging other streamers would show up too.
Broadcasts by corporate VTubers like Lua were different. Most of what came in were edits of the ridiculous mistakes Lua herself had made on stream, or the antics of other members from the same agency, and now and then a funny moment from another streamer she was on good terms with.
And, very occasionally, a clip from a hakko streamer Lua had never seen — someone whose name she didn't even recognize — would slip in among them.
The video that arrived that day was one of those.
The streamer in it was stuck on the new DLC of a puzzle game Lua herself had played not long ago. The attempt counter had already shot well past six hundred. The avatar on screen stared blankly at the puzzle board, then opened her mouth.
"Eh... uh?"
In that instant, Lua's chat started flying.
Lua burst out laughing.
"Hahaha. Look, look~ That person tried it 650 times too. I'm telling you, 700 isn't abnormal?"
The moment the words left her mouth, the chat swung back around on her.
Lua's eyebrow twitched. She had been streaming long enough to know exactly which line to grab if she wanted the room to come alive.
"Whaaat? An idiot ranking, first and second? Who's in first?"
"You have got to be kidding me."
Lua laughed like she couldn't believe it and waved a hand.
"I'm good at the other ones, okay? I was just a little tired that time."
Of course there was no way that excuse was going to land in chat.
The stream nickname of the person in the video was Mingjwe. A name she was hearing for the first time.
And yet, the longer she kept reading the chat, the more a strange competitive itch rose in her. Six hundred and fifty tries, and seven hundred. A gap of only fifty, and they were treating her like the unrivaled last-place fool. It felt unfair.
"What's that person's nickname? Mingjwe?"
Lua checked the title of the video. A name she was hearing for the first time.
"Still, though, 650 tries is basically the same as me. Why am I the only one being treated like an idiot? This is seriously unfair."
Lua pouted and turned her eyes back to the video. On the screen, Mingjwe was still staring blankly at the puzzle. When that vacant voice drifted out, Lua let a short laugh slip.
"This person is funny, though."
"I am not."
She denied it at once, but her eyes flicked back to the video title one more time.
Mingjwe.
An unfamiliar name. And yet, somehow, it stayed in Lua's head.
"Let's see the next one."
Lua played the next video donation. The chat moved on to a fresh topic just as quickly.
