The Stream That Shattered Everything

Human emotion does not evaporate so easily.

If you do not pour it out and empty it properly, it simply settles inside the heart, layer upon layer, and stays there.

Kim Muwon, however — the man who had been gripping his viewers' feelings and shaking them for all they were worth — cut the stream the instant the atmosphere reached its peak.

At first, people simply reeled from the sudden end of the stream, and the reactions came in hot and violent.

He had just proven that martial arts — which everyone had written off as a bit, a bit of staging — actually existed, and then he turned the stream off. It was like a movie cutting to black the instant the twist is revealed.

Naturally, all that half-burned emotion, left smoldering as if someone had walked out in the middle of taking care of business, spilled onto Inbang-gal in post after post.

At the same time, no small number of people were genuinely worried about Kim Muwon.

There was a reason every eye in the room had locked onto him. Strip away the pretty word martial arts and what he had shown was, for all practical purposes, a superpower.

Anyone who remembered how many dirty things went on in the world could guess that something ugly was likely to follow, even if they couldn't say exactly what.

Then again, the world is full of people who simply do not care about anyone else's business.

Among livestream viewers in particular, there is no shortage of the type who figure that as long as they themselves are entertained, nothing else matters.

And so the viewers who had been evicted when Kim Muwon's stream ended scattered across other channels, carrying the news with them.

"A martial artist? What do you mean by that?"

That was the moment Kim Muwon's name reached Namgung Yeon — the VTuber who role-played as the treasured daughter of the Namgung Clan.

Namgung Yeon was a streamer and VTuber on Twatch.

She had grown her channel the hard way, starting from nothing and climbing, step by careful step, until she had carved out a place as a mid-tier broadcaster. The secret to that growth was simple.

It was the RP. A concept you simply did not find on other streams. Plenty of VTubers hung their identities on a persona of one kind or another, but a VTuber who had built hers out of wuxia tropes? Namgung Yeon was very nearly the only one.

Even the VTubers who had once felt so fresh and new had turned the market into a red ocean so oversaturated it made a sea of blood look like a dried-up creek. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠It was the age of a forest of blades. And yet most of them still pulled their personas from Western-style fantasy worlds, which meant a woman who had taken hers from martial arts novels was always going to stand out — in more ways than one.

"Since you mentioned another streamer, I will have to penalize you according to the rules. Please spend some time reflecting in the Penitence Hall."

The mood on stream was ordinary, the same as any other day.

Namgung Yeon steered the broadcast in that soft, even register of hers, while the chat window boiled over with laughter, loud and restless in contrast.

But the moment a viewer got dragged off to the Penitence Hall for a rules violation right as the stream went live, everyone's attention naturally swung toward the condemned man's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠last words.

"Still, I am a little curious what you were so desperate to tell me that you risked your life over it. Kim Muwon, was it? A new rising star of the martial world, perhaps?"

Nobody in chat even seemed particularly interested in Kim Muwon. Namgung Yeon, whose instincts had sharpened over years of streaming, brought the name up herself anyway and seized the initiative.

On a stream where mentioning other streamers was banned, you could know something and still not be allowed to open your mouth. If the streamer herself named the person everyone was talking about and opened the door, the broadcast simply ran more smoothly. That was the reason.

"Kim Muwon... ah. This looks like the channel."

It had been a stream that went live in a surprise ambush, at an hour when most people were either getting ready for work or just dragging themselves out of bed. The channel had nothing on it but a single VOD, sitting there in the emptiness, and Namgung Yeon felt a flicker of puzzlement.

What is this? A stream that just got lucky with the algorithm? They mentioned a martial artist earlier, so maybe he debuted with a wuxia RP the same way I did.

There was, after all, almost nothing on the channel at all.

Even the channel art and the bio that nearly every streamer bothered to set up were still sitting on the blank default settings. First day or not, was this really what an active channel was supposed to look like?

She thought that to herself as she looked a little closer — and then the view count stamped on the first stream's VOD, and the follower number sitting next to the profile picture, were strangely, almost unnervingly high.

The viewers watching the screen with her were having much the same reaction. They had been around streams long enough to know exactly how absurd the numbers in front of them were.

How long did it take me to grow this much after I first started streaming?

She put the question to herself, turned over her memories, and the answer came quickly.

About half a year, I think.

Which only made the record more staggering. Her pupils trembled, and she swallowed hard.

He matched my entire first half-year with a single stream that ran a little over two hours?

And Namgung Yeon had grown quickly by industry standards.

A distinctive RP, a lovely voice, and on top of that a broadcast instinct and a gift for planning content that even she herself had not fully understood at first. It was a growth curve built on a miraculous run of conditions all landing at once.

"Before we start today's stream properly, shall we watch this VOD together?"

She teed up the viewers' reactions as naturally as breathing and hit play. Namgung Yeon fixed her eyes on the footage with more focus than usual, hunting for the secret behind that explosive growth.

"...I'm sorry, what is this?"

And then she saw it.

A man slicing a boulder like tofu with Sword Qi. Moving objects this way and that with Telekinesis / Object Control. Tearing down a mountain path like a tiger on qinggong.

At first she assumed it was a well-made bit of staging. The longer the stream ran, the harder that assumption became to hold. By the end, she was convinced it was not an effect at all. It was real martial arts.

The Q&A he ran at the close of the stream sealed it.

"Ah. Um. Ah..."

Namgung Yeon's lips moved, but no words came out.

The chat was right. For a VTuber who had built her entire persona on martial arts novels, the appearance of someone who actually used martial arts was a considerable shock.

But her mind started turning again soon enough, and one thought settled into place. She spoke toward the chat in a low voice, almost as if she were talking to herself.

Most VTubers treated their real lives and real faces like a forbidden red pill and never let them show. Namgung Yeon was different. She balanced her actual life against the RP and ran IRL streams often enough that they were hardly unusual.

She was, in truth, a fairly devoted reader of martial arts novels, and before she had been a VTuber she had been a competitive kendo athlete — even if she had hung that up since. Early on, she had even leaned into that background and made a name for herself with the rare sight of a swordsmanship stream.

Chat was clearly on board with the collab news. Namgung Yeon made up her mind and sent a collab proposal to the email listed on his channel profile then and there.

"I am only saying this just in case, but if any of you bring this up in his chat or start bothering him because I sent a collab inquiry, I will see to it that you are permanently imprisoned in the Penitence Hall."

She added the warning for the handful of toxic viewers who were, in all likelihood, already planning exactly that.

After the stream ended, I sat through lectures that ran late into the afternoon, came home, tossed my bag aside, and turned the computer on immediately.

For a first stream, the response was pretty solid.

My phone was almost dead — I had streamed all morning and then spent the rest of the day surviving campus. I pulled up my Twatch channel on the computer instead, and it had already grown to something on the level of a decent mid-small streamer.

Considering I had not been famous to begin with, and that I had not gotten a shout-out from any other streamer either, it was a genuinely startling result.

Maybe that's why. I've been getting a lot of attention.

I opened a new tab and checked my email.

The inbox that usually only saw the occasional social media notification or corporate promo had a single long email waiting in it, written in a rather formal register.

It was from a streamer named Namgung Yeon, a VTuber on Twatch. She was one of the more memorable VTubers I watched — her wuxia RP had always suited my tastes.

Looking at the email address, this does seem to be actually her.

I compared it against the address listed on Namgung Yeon's channel, just in case it was an impersonator, and thankfully it was not.

Curiosity came with the relief.

If it was really her, why would a streamer who was at least mid-tier — not a giant, but not small either — go out of her way to email someone who had streamed for the first time today?

That question answered itself the moment I read the email.

"...A collab?"

The email ran long, padded out with this and that, but the point of it was simple.

Namgung Yeon, who loved martial arts novels enough to build her entire RP out of them, had watched my martial arts stream. She had taken an interest in me as a genuine martial arts master who actually existed, and she wanted to run a collab.

The last line even included a contact so we could discuss what content to run on the collab and how to split the revenue.

...This could be fun.

I had to be honest with myself. I was pretty tempted. There was not really a reason to turn it down, was there?

I would get my stream promoted to a mid-tier streamer's audience, and I could build a friendship with Namgung Yeon and start putting together some connections in the streaming industry.

The revenue split was something we would have to talk through, but thanks to the donations from this morning my wallet was in unusually good shape at the moment.

On top of all that, I had a personal soft spot for her. In a world that treated martial arts novels like an old man's genre, she had still taken her RP from them.

Alright. I should write back and tell her I'll take the collab.

Decision made, I sent Namgung Yeon a friend request on the Deathcord profile listed at the bottom of the email.