Streaming Debut

A few days had passed. Thankfully, what happened that day never hardened into real trauma.

I'd liked women to begin with, and the ones involved would have been called stunners back on old Earth, so it wasn't long before I could laugh the whole thing off. I'd had nightmares the first night and the second, but they faded quickly enough. As long as daily life wasn't falling apart, I was fine.

"This is what you call pure single-celled brain mode."

One of my specialties—pure single-celled brain mode—had done a lot of the heavy lifting. Put simply, it was the ability to slam into a problem that thinking would never solve and instantly switch tracks to something completely different. It wasn't a real power or anything. I'd just always been good at that kind of mental pivot, so I'd named it myself.

I had coffee and bread for breakfast, sat down in front of the sofa, and picked up the routine I'd been running every day since arriving in this world. I opened the notepad file saved to my desktop and hunted down information online, logging everything as I went. I'd already finished surveying the state of the world. Now I was researching jobs I could actually do.

"I spent so long doing nothing but work that I forgot how weird it feels to rest."

Old Earth had rewired me. Sitting around the house made my body itch with restlessness. Going out to work, though, was far too dangerous. Every man was supposed to have a personal Escort Officer assigned to him, but the idea of someone hovering at my side the entire time I worked made me feel guilty just thinking about it.

My Escort Officer was someone named Lee Se-a. Pretty name. I was looking forward to meeting her.

"Yeah. This is the only real option."

The job I'd settled on was streaming. There were plenty of reasons, but three big ones stood out.

First: I wouldn't have to leave the house. That hadn't even been a consideration originally—not until I'd nearly been assaulted. Being overpowered had hit me harder than I wanted to admit.

Second: it would make meeting women easier. I hadn't crossed into another world just to stay alone. I was going to build a family. A big one.

Third: in this world, internet broadcasting wasn't a niche hobby. It was mainstream culture. Back on old Earth it had still been stuck in that awkward transition from subculture to mass culture, so the difference was huge. Years had already passed since it went fully mainstream here, and most citizens of the Republic of Korea used it the way people used OTT services. Naturally, the solo-broadcast market had ballooned—income, fanbases, fandom scale, none of it compared to old Earth.

"Twitch is the biggest platform, right?"

Solo broadcasting in this world split into two broad camps. Creators on NewTube, and streamers on Twitch. I went with Twitch. NewTube was mostly for celebrities; Twitch was where ordinary people streamed. NewTube crushed Twitch in raw site size, but for actual live solo broadcasting, Twitch had the edge.

And I can always edit Twitch VODs and upload them to NewTube later.

Eventually I'd use both—live on Twitch, edited videos on NewTube.

"Account's made. Name's Ian."

Ian. Another form of Johannes from the Bible—a name an old woman who'd been like a grandmother to me had given me back on old Earth. She'd passed away long ago, and I'd ended up in another world entirely, but I didn't want to forget her. So I used it.

"That settles the prep! All the essential programs are installed too."

It was Saturday, so it didn't matter when I went live. On weekdays most people were working, which made post-evening the golden hours. Lunch had already come and gone. I decided to just hit go.

I wasn't planning to turn the cam on, so all I needed was the streaming software running and I'd be live.

"Ugh, I'm nervous… Maybe I should grab something to drink first."

The second I actually tried to start, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the tension hit and my hands started shaking. I got up off the sofa to make some sweet cocoa and settle my nerves. I didn't have a proper desk, so I was going to stream with the laptop on the coffee table.

"Haa… Sugar really does help."

Cocoa filled my mouth and a smile came on its own. I'd barely gotten snacks as a kid, so I liked sweet things more than most people. Walk into a convenience store and I'd walk out loaded with candy and jelly. The house never ran out of snacks, basically.

"Alright. Just turn it on. Putting it off won't change anything."

I moved the mouse and hit the Go Live button.

The stream was live. My heart hammered. My throat ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠went bone-dry, so I took a long pull of cocoa.

"Don't tense up. Don't tense up."

Not a single viewer yet. I was a guy, sure, but nobody was going to drop into a brand-new stream the second it started. I thumped a clenched fist against my chest and tried to calm down as much as I could. It felt like overkill, but I couldn't help it. Standing in front of strangers had never been my thing.

I was still trying every trick I knew to get a grip on myself when a message appeared in the pure white chat. Viewer count: one. About two minutes in, my first viewer had arrived.

"Ah—hello? WartOnMyToe-nim?"

"Huh? What do you mean… Of course I answer greetings?"

I shot back at the incomprehensible chat.

Fake being a guy? Were they seriously thinking I was a woman doing a male voice?

"I really am a guy!"

Wow. I was going to lose my mind. Why wouldn't they believe me?

A new viewer had come in, and that was their opening line. How did I have two people and both of them were nothing but suspicion?

"I really am a man! What do I have to do for you to believe me?"

"Haa… Just wait a second!"

I pulled out my earbuds, went up to the loft, and came back with my wallet. A male registration ID carried a unique personal number that could be looked up online. It was mainly used for the Pregnancy Activity Matching System—the so-called PregMatch system for short. I'd explain that properly later.

"I'm back… Wait—one… a hundred?"

In the short time I'd gone up to the loft, the viewer count had blown past a hundred.

"What is going on?"

"Oh, is that so? Then let's make a bet."

I'd been trying to let it slide, but if they kept doubting me, I wasn't going to keep smiling through it. Once or twice I could laugh off. The nerves from going live had already vanished completely. I spoke with full confidence.

"If I really am a man, every one of you donates a hundred thousand won."

They were really going all the way. And the comments were getting nastier by the second. What were they going to do if I actually was a guy?

Well. Not my problem to worry about.

I quietly pulled my male registration ID from my wallet and read the number aloud.

"007532912315-1."

"That's my male registration ID number. Go check it."

The words male registration ID set off a flood of hooks in chat. At first it was all disbelief, or people warning that impersonating a male registration ID was serious business. But as one person after another verified it, the whole mood flipped.

"Believe me now?"

And after that, a rolling wave of apologies.

There was nothing mysterious about why a single number had convinced them I was a man. Impersonating a male unique ID and getting caught meant prison time on the spot. The sentence varied depending on what you'd done with the fake identity, but the floor was ten years.

I watched four hundred people apologize with a pleased little smile and said,

"Who's going to eat you? It's fine—chat like normal. I'm not that mad."

Even I thought the response was soft, but the truth was I genuinely wasn't that angry, so there wasn't much I could do about it. Forcing a pissed-off act felt weird too. Besides, I was a brand-new streamer who'd just gone live. Flip it around and this had been free promotion—I hadn't actually lost anything.

"Well, I didn't turn the cam on and just said I was a guy, so I get why you wouldn't believe it."

And when people owned the mistake and apologized right away like this, I didn't have anything left to say. It really had been an easy situation to misread. Nothing hard to understand about it. My body had gotten smaller and my voice pitch had gone up with it—cover the face and it wasn't easy to tell.

I was still thinking that when a cheerful sound chimed and a donation landed.

"Huh?"

Suddenly calling it the hundred thousand from the bet… the bet?

"Ah! Right."

I had definitely said it. If I was a man, throw a hundred thousand each. And I'd proven I was a man with my unique ID. Which meant I'd won the bet. And the viewers who'd lost…

Donations poured down like rain and I couldn't keep my head straight. Even the messages attached to them were enough to make me dizzy. Volunteering to become slaves? What kind of lives had these people been living?

No—wait. Men are scarce in this world, so maybe becoming a man's slave is actually a pretty good opportunity?

Hah. I was starting to lose it right along with the weird donations. Time to stop thinking and stop the donations first.

"Stop throwing money! Just because I said to doesn't mean you actually have to!"

The only way to stop the donations still exploding was to shut the donation function off entirely. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠went into Twitch thinking that—and had no idea how to turn it off.

"Huh? H-how do you turn this off? Why isn't there an off switch?"

No matter how hard I looked, Twitch settings had no way to kill donations. I finally searched online and learned you could toggle On/Off in a program called Toonation that managed the donation alerts.

So that's why it was on the essential installs list.

By then, though, it was already too late. The rain of donations had finished on its own.

"Ah, I found it now… Guys? Why didn't any of you tell me? I spent forever digging through the Twitch homepage!"

"Why… why do you only say the right thing at times like this…"

They weren't wrong. They weren't streamers, and there was no reason they'd know. But that just made it more annoying. Teasing me nonstop until the exact moment they needed to sound reasonable—that was what really got under my skin.

"Huh? Come to think of it, there's a refund function too…"

"Ah—okay, okay. I won't."

When they threatened me like that, backing down was the only move. I'd already gotten more than enough in donations.

Do these people just have money to burn?

I had no idea why they were so desperate to throw it away. Either way, peace had returned, so I tried to get the stream back on track. Getting doubted from the jump meant I hadn't actually done a single proper thing yet.

What should I even talk about first? Maybe just start with an introduction?

Honestly, true to the title, I'd turned it on first and figured it out later. I hadn't decided on any content.

While I was still mulling it over, another donation arrived.

…What?

This… isn't over yet?