An Unexpected Reaction
"Holy shit. I did not see this coming."
A woman sat before a desk lined with five monitors in a spacious room, silken twintails spilling all the way down to her thighs, and let those words slip out. The way she caught her lower lip between her upper teeth carried a heat that did not match her youthful looks at all.
Yoon Dan-woo. Streamer Ian's manager — ShaShotShaShot.
"How is a guy even allowed to look like this?"
She made no effort to hide her astonishment. He had already reeled in countless women on personality alone. A gentle Grade 1 male, appearing in the middle of all those tyrannical men. Honestly, even the Grade 1 ranking had not mattered that much. What mattered was that he was kind to women too, and that he played along with their teasing without ever getting ugly about it.
Who in the world could have imagined that a man like that would turn out this cute?
"Lee Se-a... you lucky bitch."
ShaShotShaShot let the thought tumble straight out of her mouth. Being a woman did not mean she automatically liked men. Who would fall for someone violent, unemployed, and incapable of even looking after themselves? The social climate just kept people from saying it out loud. Women who disliked men had always existed.
ShaShotShaShot was one of them. A woman who hated men — and a woman who had fallen for Ian.
"If we got married, every morning I'd be with Dan-woo... and at lunch... and then once night came, in bed..."
The moment she started picturing a future that would someday arrive, the corners of her mouth refused to come back down. Once she got like this, it lasted a good thirty minutes.
"No. The stream comes first. As his manager, I need to give him something he can actually count on."
Fortunately, she had not forgotten her actual job. A riot was about to break loose, and she was getting ready to weather it — with a smile still lingering on her lips.
"Huh? What's going on with this? A bug? Did I mess with a setting?"
The chat had gone dead without warning. There had not been any problem adjusting the cam, but maybe I had touched something related to the chat window while I was setting things up. This was not lag, and it was not messages trickling in a few at a time. Literally nothing was coming through.
I was poking at the PC tower for no good reason, trying to figure out the cause, when a donation arrived.
"Ah, Alpha nuna! Thanks for the two hundred thou— two million won!? What are you doing all of a sudden!"
Alpha nuna dropping 200,000 won had become so routine I read it off without thinking. The amount was different. There was an extra zero hanging off the end. It had been a long time since I had seen a million-won donation.
They've all been holding back on the big ones because they know it makes me uncomfortable...
Once they realized I was genuinely uncomfortable with huge amounts, everyone had been trying to keep the numbers down. Sometimes they still opened up with what they called 100,000-won punches and 200,000-won punches, hammering donations like a machine gun — but this was something else.
Alpha nuna's donation was the first drop. Then the rain came. A rain made of money.
"Why— why are you doing this? Stop donating!"
I thrust both hands forward in a please-stop gesture, but there was not a hint of anyone slowing down. I tried to shut donations off entirely a beat too late, then gave up — they had already piled up past the point of no return. Over a hundred donations were stacked and waiting.
"Why is everyone doing this to me? Are the people donating right now here for the first time today? My stream is not the kind of place where you just fire these off..."
The instant I finished talking, the chat that had been frozen exploded. The moment I had shown my upper body, the count had already hit 20,000. It was still climbing, and after the face reveal the speed had only picked up. We were about to break 30,000. With that many people hammering the chat at once, reading it had become completely impossible.
Why is everyone acting like this?
Watching the viewer count and the chat spiral out of control, I briefly dissociated. The donation sound that had already turned into background music washed over me as I stared blankly at myself on the screen and met my own eyes.
I had been counting the lol's flying through a chat window moving fast enough to leave afterimages when the donation landed. My sanctuary. The person I loved. Se-a nuna.
"Nuna..."
Thanks to nuna, I snapped back and faced the chat window again. Bitch, bitch, bitch. How were there this many bitches. I swallowed the dizziness, drew a breath, thrust my hands forward, and said,
"Stop! Chat, stop!"
"Uh, huh?"
Last time, doing this had actually made them stop. Today it only made them louder. I had never been in this situation before, and I had no idea what to do. I flailed my hands around in a panic — and then the chat stopped.
White English letters appeared on a black bar at the bottom of the chat window.
"Chat Freezing?"
So that feature existed. If I had been alone, I might have just shut the stream off without being able to do a thing.
"Thanks, manager nuna."
Freezing the chat did not mean I could not see what was already there. Everything was still sitting in the window, and if I scrolled up I could read all of it. I climbed back to the moment I had shown my face and checked, just for a second, what kind of reaction I had gotten.
"It is not sex. Don't even dream of— ...wait, is dreaming about it okay?"
I was planning to start shifting my image, little by little. Now that I had turned the cam on, I had no more cards left to play. I could not keep riding a gentle personality forever, and it was time to roll out the innocent-tease persona I had planned from the start. It was not as if the Fetish World Cup had not already pushed me toward giving up on purity anyway.
Scrolling farther down, I found Se-a nuna getting mentioned. Probably from when she had called out to me with that donation.
"Nuna really is amazing, isn't she? She's beautiful, she's capable, and I love her."
The me on screen was smiling. The slow eye-smile I was wearing looked annoying even to me.
A remark that would have started a riot on my old Earth was something this world actually liked. If a man liked women, that meant other women had a chance too. It was one of those peculiarities you only saw in a world where polygamy had become common sense.
I skimmed the rest of the chat at speed, but it was all more of the same.
"I can't keep the chat locked forever, so ten minutes! I'll put a ten-minute cooldown on chat."
I set the ten-minute restriction and lifted Chat Freezing. Messages still climbed at a blistering pace, but they would settle down soon enough.
"Thank you, our 2,071st nuna! We've already passed 40,000?"
A world where livestreaming had become mainstream culture was a scary thing. Back on my old Earth, NewTube had already stepped into pop culture, and internet streaming had been in that in-between stage of crossing from subculture into the mainstream. This world, though, had finished that crossing years ago. Most of the population either had an account or used the platform regularly, and the major streamers pulled tens of thousands of concurrent viewers. When they ran truly massive content, you had to talk about it in TV-ratings language, the crowds got that big.
"Yeah... well, that's because I showed my face today, right? What matters is how well it holds from here."
This was the universal phenomenon that happened whenever a no-cam streamer turned the camera on. What mattered was how many people stayed and became fans, and whether I could keep growing steadily after that.
"Honestly, as long as I've got yanderes, that's enough. Viewer count isn't that important, right?"
If there were people who genuinely liked me and came looking for me, I did not think the number mattered. Of course, this was a job, so more people watching was better. But if the numbers grew and the atmosphere we had built until now fell apart, I would rather keep things as they were. Not that that was something I could just decide to do.
"We've got a ton of new people. Should I talk for a bit for everyone who just came in?"
Even if they did not stay as my viewers, I decided to set aside some time so I could at least leave a good impression. I went over the information that was already public — my name, my age, my hobbies, the fan name — and everyone reacted like it was brand new. They got especially loud when I said my hobbies were walking and going out, and asked if the walking stories on the community boards were real.
The memory of those pink little buds surfaced, and my face went red. The cam caught every bit of it.
"Don't teach them weird stuff."
Saying that was just pouring oil on a fire, but I said it anyway. I wrapped up the rough introduction, answered a few questions, and then, last of all, explained the rules of my stream.
"And finally! Please don't walk on eggshells in my stream. Just talk to me the way you'd talk to any other streamer."
The newcomers looked like they only half believed that one.
"I'm fragile? Who said that?"
Who was going around saying that.
"Wait! What are you sending all of a sudden!? That video is banned as a donation in my stream!"
I killed the video donation that had been sent as proof of my fragility as fast as I could. What did that have to do with me being fragile, or with me not being a bad person? And hadn't we already agreed not to send that after the last fight?
...Come to think of it, I might not have actually said it out loud.
I had just said I was sorry. I had never actually said that clip was banned as a donation. Haa... why did I have to cry like that. I had been too scared to think at the time, but watching it sober it was nothing but a dark history.
"Silent Hill clips are banned as donations. Don't do it."
If I did not say it out loud, they would keep coming back like cockroaches.
"I said stop!"
I was going to ban it. I would.