The Second Stream
I kept the title simple. I already knew barely anyone would click in because of it.
"Everyone doing okay? Yesterday the stream died before I could even say goodbye."
The moment I went live, viewers poured in. We'd already blown past a thousand.
All those community posts that had gone up yesterday must have done a hell of a job promoting me.
At first I'd considered capping the viewer count at a thousand, but the real problem was the chat, so I slapped a ten-minute cooldown on it instead. Send one message, and you couldn't send another for ten minutes.
No point capping the viewer count. Anyone who wants in will get in anyway.
If you put a hard limit on numbers, late arrivals got dumped into a JustWatch room — a lobby where you couldn't type at all. Buy a Pass-Through, though, and you could hop into the main room and chat whenever you wanted. In other words, the people who were going to show up were going to show up.
"Hey, everyone. I put a ten-minute cooldown on chat, okay? Keep that in mind before you type?"
"Thanks for understanding. And — is AlphaFemale here, by any chance?"
We hadn't even been live for five minutes. There was a decent chance she hadn't shown up yet, which was why I asked. Luckily, she had.
"Ah… look, you can just type that in chat, you know?"
Burning five hundred dollars to send three words. Wasn't that a waste? I'd called her name because I wanted to react to her, but at this rate I was going to spend the entire stream doing nothing but donation reactions. The money was duplicating itself, and so were the reactions.
"I'm closing donations for now. I've got something I need to do first."
"Why would I?! Who asked for money?! I-I mean, sure, money's nice, but there's a limit! A limit…"
That was twice now. Twice I'd been threatened with people throwing money at me.
Before I knew it, the viewer count had blown past two thousand. We'd only been live for about ten minutes, which was absurdly fast. And the pace showed no sign of slowing. At this rate, three thousand was a few minutes away.
"Okay, okay. Everybody calm down? I've got something I need to do first, and the second I'm done I'll open donations. Deal?"
Finally got them to settle down. Why were they so desperate to spend money?
"Do you guys just have cash lying around? Nothing you actually want to buy?"
A faint shiver ran down my arm. They didn't actually think like that, right? It had to be a bit. Had to be.
"Ah, right. Today I'm doing reactions for the donations I got yesterday! You all said it was fine, but how am I supposed to just let that slide? Right?"
The bar for men was definitely on the floor. If I hadn't gone looking up male streamers yesterday, I would have been completely thrown.
"Don't worry. I'm in this for the long haul. Alright — let me go grab what I need for the reactions!"
I pulled out my earphones and went to fetch my props.
I came back loaded down with everything I'd gathered, and the chat was still flying even without me there.
WikiAnnals? Some kind of Namuwiki equivalent?
Even when the world changed, some things stayed the same. There were brands here that were identical to the ones back on old Earth, too. The binding force of a parallel world, or something like that?
"I'm back. AlphaFemale, you're still here, right?"
"Alright, I'm about to start the reactions — but could you check the whisper I sent you first?"
The donations she'd sent yesterday were five, a hundred, fifty, fifty, and another hundred. Three thousand and fifty dollars in total.
I'd sat there staring at the reaction notes I'd written, and I just could not come up with anything that felt worth a thousand dollars. So I'd landed on DearCode. DearCode was a program where users could make a room and chat or hop on a call.
I sent her the link to the room I'd made. A moment later, a chime rang out and a new icon popped up. The username was AlphaFemale — same as on Twitch.
"Aaand — can you hear me okay?"
"Yes. I can hear you just fine."
Her voice was younger than I'd expected. I'd figured she was at least in her early thirties, but going by voice alone she sounded mid-to-late twenties. She couldn't actually be in her twenties, though. There was an elegance in that voice that no one that young could have pulled off.
"Is it alright if I put your voice on stream?"
I currently had the broadcast muted, so none of our conversation was going out. Blasting someone's voice without asking first was a good way to piss them off.
"That's fine. Do whatever you're comfortable with."
"Thank you."
With her permission, I unmuted the stream.
"I'm back, everyone! And now — AlphaFemale's thousand-dollar reaction! Starting the DearCode call!"
The reaction was finally underway for real.
The instant her voice hit the stream, chat lost its mind.
"Miss Si-eun? Who's that?"
The chat had suddenly started roasting some stranger I'd never heard of. Who was she supposed to be?
"There is someone. Chae Si-eun. She said on an Instagram live that she spent a hundred thousand dollars trying to talk to a guy and never even got a conversation out of it, and it became a meme."
"Is she famous?"
"Very. She's the granddaughter of the chairman of Saint Bear — number two on the Korean business rankings — and a seriously talented actress on top of that."
Huh. So that was a person who existed. Usually a chairman's direct descendants inherited the company, but she'd gone into entertainment instead. Maybe that was its own kind of PR and image-making. Get famous enough and the company rode the wave with you.
Which means she's someone who has nothing to do with me.
Was there any universe in which I'd get tangled up with someone like that? Even a guy who was exceptional in every other way wasn't impressive enough to break into high society. The most I could hope for was showing up as some woman's plus-one.
"So this reaction's a success, then?"
"It's excessive, honestly. Are you sure you're alright with this?"
Alright with what, exactly? What was there to not be alright with?
"Of course. More importantly, I was going to do the five-hundred-dollar reaction next — how does that sound?"
"I'd like that."
So she'd gotten ignored a lot too. Why, though? Looking at how she spent, the amounts weren't anything you'd brush off.
Then a scene from yesterday flickered through my head. Bell, dropping ten thousand dollars for a smile and nothing else.
If ten grand got you that much, would a few thousand get you something more? Or would it get you the same thing?
Not a chance. And if it was worth less than a smile…
Maybe just a thank-you and that was it. Or a "Alpha, three thousand dollars, niiiice~" kind of thing.
Yeah, no.
Honestly, how other people chose to act was none of my business. I couldn't understand them, and they weren't going to understand me either.
"Ian? Can you hear me?"
"Sorry? Ah — yes. I can hear you. What's wrong?"
"You suddenly went quiet. If this is making you uncomfortable, we can hang up here…"
"No! I'm fine. I just zoned out for a second."
I really needed to break this habit. Until now I'd only ever done work that left no room to think, and I'd never had a long conversation with anyone, so looking at myself from the outside had been nearly impossible. But from here on out I was doing a job that demanded I talk to the people watching from the other side of the screen. This was something I needed to fix, and fast.
"…You're sure you're alright?"
"Ah, I'm really sorry. It's a habit — once I start thinking I can't stop."
There it was again. Focus on the stream. Just the stream.
"Let's jump straight into the reaction! Ah — before that, is there any reaction you actually want? Yesterday you said you were fine without one, but maybe something's come to you since then."
"Mm… not really. I genuinely didn't do it because I wanted something…"
A small, thoughtful hum came through the earphones. Then an ah of realization, and she spoke again.
"Well, today's Sunday, so… could you tell me I worked hard this week, and to hang in there next week too? In casual speech."
"That's enough for you? This is a five-hundred-dollar reaction."
"Of course. It's more than enough."
I checked the chat to see if she was being serious.
"I guess this really is enough."
The chat seemed satisfied, so I figured there was no problem. More interesting was the balance game that had popped up in the middle. They'd started discussing the topic and, within seconds, were at each other's throats.
Some of them were defending me.
And some of them were skeptical.
Hmm… this isn't something I should jump into.
Say the wrong thing here and I'd only kill the mood. Best to stay neutral.
"Don't fight, you guys. Whatever the case, I'm doing the reaction now!"
I took a sip of the coffee I'd brought over and cleared my throat.
A second ago they'd been at war. Now they snapped into formation and locked in like a single organism.
Casual speech. Casual speech.
I turned Alpha's extra condition over in my head. Be gentle. Comfort someone worn down by work.
Back when I'd been drowning in my job, what were the words I'd wanted to hear when I walked through the door?
I held onto that, and then I opened my mouth.
Noona. For some reason, Alpha felt like a noona. The competent, overqualified kind.
If I'm being honest, more than a noona, she felt like…
I cut the thought off and shook my head. That would have been rude to even think. Let it go.
And the moment the reaction ended — no, the moment it started — the chat froze.
The viewer count had already climbed past four thousand. Even with a ten-minute cooldown, the chat had never gone completely still. Until now.
Ah. I don't like this.
Yesterday the stream had exploded so hard it nearly crashed. Today the chat had just… died.
I wasn't sure which one was worse. But neither of them felt like a good sign.