Going Live
A few days later, I was sitting in front of my computer.
Current followers: 10,621.
Just barely over ten thousand. Considering I'd only been at this for a month — and only streaming about an hour at a time, at that — it was an astonishing number. I'd actually been making pretty decent money off it, too. Though, of course, a few rounds of sperm donation still paid better.
Anyway, while stacking up those followers, I'd picked up a few tricks of my own.
The first was for when chat completely lost its mind.
This kind of thing usually happened whenever I got flustered, said anything even slightly cool, or so much as implied that I liked — or loved — my viewers. For the record, the meltdown above had been triggered by me saying thank you for five thousand followers.
And when it happened, there were basically two ways to handle it. Both were surprisingly simple.
Click. Click.
"Alright~ so what I'm hearing is you guys want a horror game?"
Weakness number one, discovered during a guerrilla stream not long ago: horror games. They were apparently terrified of the stuff. Just pulling up a title screen was enough to send chat into convulsions — and after that, they got very, very quiet. So I mostly just left a horror game running in the background whenever I streamed.
The second method was to simply lean into it, shamelessly.
"Well, yeah. I do like you."
It could backfire a little, sure — but no other method on earth could shut chat up this thoroughly. As a bonus, the chat window would even slow down for a while. Ten, maybe twenty minutes. Then, if I went quiet for a bit, I could watch the rare spectacle of it speeding back up again.
Anyway, the second method was for when I wanted donations. I'd only tried it once, as an experiment, but there wasn't much technique to it. If I just asked, they poured in.
"Hey, think you guys could send a donation? Ah, wait — never mind. You don't have any money anyway."
After that, a barrage of ten-dollar and one-dollar donations brought in nearly another seventy-five bucks. They were good people, really. If you asked for money, they just gave it to you.
Last of all, the third scenario: stream-end o'clock. Compared to everything that came before, this one was extremely easy.
"Ah. That's an hour."
Click.
You just turned it off when an hour was up. If you started laying groundwork before the hour was over, the viewers would all catch on — so the key was to give them absolutely nothing, then kill the stream the second the clock hit one hour.
And if you did drop hints first?
Just like that, they'd chain you down with money.
"Urgh...."
Which was why I never mentioned it. Not a word. Then, the moment an hour passed, I cut the stream. It was a core technique. Truth be told, I didn't have anything else to do after the stream ended, so I could've kept going — but their reactions were just too funny.
Ah, and I'd picked up a habit lately.
Casually chatting with Elmil right after I went offline. She was the only person who knew I was a netkama — which, in its own way, made things easier.
The conversations themselves were simple. She'd tell me she enjoyed the stream. She'd say she wanted to hear my real voice again and ask if she could call. She'd go on about which parts of the broadcast she'd liked.......
Had I been letting Elmil do all the talking?
But most of what she said was praise directed at me. What was I supposed to interrupt that with? We did talk about streaming a little, in fairness. The problem was that it never went beyond simple check-ins — how the streams were going lately, that sort of thing.
Still, I'd gathered this much: Elmil was currently pushing a concept called osugaki, apparently. What she was doing felt oddly like a mesugaki bit, and also a little like a shota thing — the whole vibe was just weird.
I supposed I should call it a good thing? It was proof that public opinion around her had recovered, at least.
The collab stream from a few days ago had gone down as a legend, in more ways than one. Even if Yo-ona had been the one responsible.
Anyway, amid reactions like these, Elmil had gone down as a legend — and public opinion was gradually turning around. Things had stabilized enough that she could even start pushing a new concept.
......That said, the osugaki thing was a bit much. It had apparently been invented in this world, which made it even harder to wrap my head around. I just wasn't used to it, either.
I'd tuned in once to see what it looked like. The situation had been something like this:
"Big sis~ you're all such amateurs♡"
She was going with a guy concept too, but the chats were a lot tamer than the ones in my stream. Was that just how the bit worked, or leftover fallout from when she'd pretended to actually be a guy? I couldn't know for sure — but I felt a strange, unexplainable sense of superiority.
"I really have gotten addicted to this, I swear."
It occurred to me again: getting addicted to a life of being surrounded by women sexually harassing me... is this really okay?
Ding!
"Oh, right."
Lately, I'd been texting with Hyojin, too. The conversations I had with her were a lot more two-sided. ......Not that Elmil's weren't, exactly — she just happened to talk about me to a somewhat excessive degree.
After that, it was just small talk. How studying was going. Whether I was doing alright. A reminder that our promise still stood. It was fun. It felt a little like talking to a woman from my original world.
The moment she started gushing like an otaku who'd found someone who shared her interest, I found myself getting curious.
I slowly read through the wall of text she'd sent, unable to contain herself.
The reason I'd asked to go running with her was simple. My body had been feeling unbearably stiff and sluggish lately. For a streamer, physical maintenance was everything — it was an indoor job, which made it the perfect way to wreck yourself. So I'd started thinking I should get some exercise in before my stamina hit rock bottom. There wasn't much left of the month, but even if I got lucky and didn't have to stream anymore after that, a morning routine like this would still be good to have.
And then, after I'd already sent the message, a thought occurred to me.
......Was this the first time I'd ever actually asked someone to make plans?
I'd been texting without thinking, but I started to wonder whether it was even okay to set something like this up. For her, I mean.