I Thought It Was Staged Too

"I thought it was staged too."

"No, what more was I supposed to do there? All three of them came at me at once."

Dogeon closed the results screen of the game that had just ended.

Chat asked him to rewatch the moment he died at the end, but he pretended not to see it. If he played it back now, it would start with the footage of him walking forward alone before the three of them ever arrived.

He took a sip of water and was just about to queue the next game when the donation alert chimed.

Ding.

"Appears?"

Dogeon reread the donation message.

Right in front of you.

It wasn't that he hadn't understood. He understood perfectly, and had nothing to say.

"Do ads work like that these days?"

The chat scrolled by.

He opened the link the donor had sent, and a single post came up.

A cream-colored box. A golden chicken illustration. Body text claiming the box had appeared on the desk the instant the order was placed.

Dogeon zoomed in on the photo, read through the comments, and came back.

"So you post a chicken photo, say it teleported, and that's the whole trick? Even I could pull that off."

This time a video arrived.

The hand tapping the phone screen shifted, and the shaky footage caught the box in frame. The person filming cursed as they touched the box.

Dogeon dragged the play bar back.

"Here. See how the screen jolts when the hand moves? That's where you cut and splice it."

"Order it myself?"

Five thousand and one won.

For the price of a cup of coffee, he had content. If the chicken never came, he'd have plenty to say; if an ordinary delivery showed up, he'd have plenty to say about that too.

Watching a mysterious ad video together, then verifying it firsthand. Trimmed down and uploaded, it wouldn't make a bad clip at all.

Dogeon minimized the game launcher.

"Alright. I'll expose it as staged for you. All I have to do is order it with the stream running from start to finish, right?"

"The chicken has to come for it to be profit. Right now I'm just throwing money at some random site."

Even as he said it, his mouse was already moving.

When he connected to the familiar gallery site, an unfamiliar list greeted him. South Korea, USA, Japan. So this was the revamp he'd heard about a few times in chat before going live.

Dogeon opened the South Korea Gallery's shop.

"It's not there?"

"I have to snipe chicken now? I've done ticketing in my life, but chicken-ping is a first."

Dogeon checked the time.

Eight minutes wasn't long. He could spend the wait reading the notice and hunting down more reviews.

"I'll just top up for now. I'm covering the payment screen. My bank balance is not today's content."

He switched off screen sharing for a moment but left the camera on his face and desk exactly where it was.

Once the top-up was done, he lowered the camera angle. He cleared the receipts stacked beside his keyboard and pushed the empty cup to the edge of the desk.

"If it's going to appear anywhere, it'll be here. I've even set the stage for you."

"Now. There's nothing here, right? Keep your eyes on this spot."

He rapped his palm against the empty desk.

"There's nothing. What could even get in here?"

Dogeon lifted the camera and panned it under the desk. A chair, a tangle of cables, and one empty box leaning against the wall — that was everything.

After fixing the camera back in place, he held up both empty hands.

"That should about cover it, right? Any more requests and this becomes a house tour video."

Restock time drew near.

The stream link was spreading through the gallery.

People who'd come over from the gallery began showing up in the stream chat one by one.

Dogeon grinned and hit refresh.

Once.

Twice.

Color flooded back into the grayed-out purchase button.

"It's open."

He slammed the button without hesitation.

"There we go. Order's in. Now if you watch closely—"

Thump.

Dogeon's words cut off.

Before he could even turn his head, the chat was already flying.

There was a box sitting on the desk he had left empty.

A cream-colored box.

A golden chicken illustration.

Dogeon froze solid, hand still locked around the mouse.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

On stream, he always had something to say. He babbled even when the game went badly, and when he truly had nothing to say, he'd at least announce that he had nothing to say.

This time, his mouth simply hung open.

He looked at the box.

He looked at the order-complete screen.

He looked at the box again.

"...Huh?"

Dogeon slowly reached out.

He touched the lid with a fingertip, then snatched his hand back.

He checked beneath the box. No crack, no hole in the desk.

He shoved his chair back and peered underneath.

It was the exact stretch of under-desk he'd shown everyone himself just moments ago.

"Hold on a second."

A request to wait — though he had no idea who he was asking.

The chat didn't wait.

"It's not an ad."

The answer came out far too fast.

Any other day, he'd have laughed and said he wished it were an ad. This time, no such words came to him.

Dogeon gripped both sides of the box. The warmth of the paper seeped into his palms. Even a smell was leaking out from under the lid.

It was warm.

It smelled.

This was no prank playing out inside a monitor.

He lifted the lid carefully, and a thin curl of steam rose.

A whole golden-fried chicken filled the box to the brim.

Dogeon didn't eat the chicken.

He stared into the open box for a long moment, then picked up his phone. He connected to his own stream and rewound to the moment.

On the screen, he was pressing the purchase button.

Empty desk.

Box.

There wasn't even a falling motion to fake. It simply appeared where nothing had been, accompanied only by the sound of the desk being tapped.

He watched the same stretch three more times.

In chat, people were already fighting over whether the screen had been covered or never covered at all. Someone insisted the whole thing was a pre-recorded broadcast.

Dogeon set the phone down.

"I'm reading your chat right now, aren't I? It's not a recording."

He touched his nose.

Dogeon couldn't laugh.

The payment history said nothing about shipping. Only order complete and item delivered.

He really hadn't entered an address.

The strange things written in the review posts came back to him one by one. He'd wondered at the time why nobody could manage a proper explanation — now he understood.

It just appeared.

There was no other way to say it.

He closed the shop window and checked the top of the gallery. The familiar logo was still there, right where it always was.

"This is... the Gallery?"

Posts with nearly identical titles piled up one after another.

I wrapped up the setup application I was processing and clicked one of them.

A YouTube link.

Inside, a man was sitting in front of a box I knew very well. The viewer count had blown past three thousand, and the chat was scrolling too fast to read.

"Ah. So he bought one."

I caught up on the beginning I'd missed with the short video posted to the gallery.

The man who'd promised to expose the staging froze the instant he saw the box. I couldn't help laughing at the part where he peeked under his own desk.

It probably wasn't much different from when I'd first received mine.

After all, I had backed away and cracked my head on the way down.

By the time I returned to the stream, he was pulling on gloves.

"It keeps smelling, so... I'll try just one bite."

He read that last message and didn't answer.

He bit into a drumstick, and his eyebrows shot up.

Watching the screen, I gave a small nod.

That's right.

That's the taste.

"...Hold on."

The YouTuber stared down at the drumstick.

For a man who'd just said "hold on," he took the next bite almost immediately.

"It's delicious. No — it's really, genuinely good."

He swallowed and looked down at the box again.

"And that's what annoys me. How am I supposed to explain this?"

Laughter flooded the chat.

In the middle of it, someone asked about the remaining stock, and someone else answered that it was already sold out.

I opened the sales window.

This time it had sold far faster than usual.

The people who'd watched the stream from the very start must have hit the purchase button the instant the box appeared. Those who came in after enjoying the shocked faces were already too late.

There was still time until the automatic restock.

I almost topped up the inventory, then stopped my hand.

Measured against the crowd pouring in right now, the amount I could buy for myself was a rounding error. Better to watch how this spread first.

I went back to the gallery.

Posts from people saying they'd come straight from the stream kept growing too.

The same familiar questions repeated, but this time it didn't grate on me.

After all, the point counter was climbing with every new post.

The notice's view count changed first. The comments mixed people asking the same questions over and over with people telling them to read the notice first, and the post claiming to have spotted something suspicious in the video drew rebuttals within minutes.

Someone searched for the box illustration.

Someone set it side by side with the packaging of every existing chicken chain for comparison.

Apparently, neither turned up an answer.

I didn't know where it was fried, either.

The first video to spread was twelve seconds long.

A hand pressing the purchase button. A box appearing out of nowhere. A face frozen mid-thought.

The title was short.

A little later, a different cut went up.

The videos left the gallery and spread to other communities. Someone cropped one vertical and reposted it; someone slowed down the exact moment the box appeared.

I followed the links attached to the related posts.

The reactions there were much the same as at the beginning.

Someone pasted the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stream address.

Someone else replied: he's still eating.

First-time viewers kept flooding into Dogeon's stream. People who'd missed the beginning asked what was going on, and the earlier arrivals left video links in reply.

He set down the chicken and repeated the same explanation.

"I don't know either. I ordered it here and it came out."

This was the man who'd been sneering at the reviews minutes ago.

Now he was saying exactly what those reviews had said, word for word.

The stream title changed too.

[Game on Pause / What the Hell IS This Chicken]

After that, donation alerts began ringing on other streams as well.

Someone sent Dogeon's video and told the streamer to try it themselves. Someone asked them to check whether it was staged. Someone sent it purely out of curiosity about the reaction.

As the next restock approached, a new stream link went up in the gallery.

The second streamer was not smiling.

He'd already watched the first video several times over. But he didn't look like a believer, either. He had a second camera running, and with his phone he was filming the side ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the desk.

"The computer feed could have something overlaid on it. This is recorded separately, so we can cross-check it afterward."

A perfectly plausible argument.

I looked at the countdown to the next restock.

0.

The shop's stock had been refilled.

The second streamer pressed the purchase button.

"Ah, done—"

Thump.

The chair wheels shrieked against the floor.

The streamer recoiled and smacked the phone propped up beside the desk. The phone toppled over, and its screen caught nothing but the ceiling.

The front camera recorded every moment, perfectly intact.

Even after righting the phone, that streamer couldn't speak for a good while.

This time, before opening the chicken, he reviewed the footage first.

The box was there in the side-angle recording, too.

By nightfall, even posts with nothing to do with chicken were dragging the topic along behind them.

Ask for a late-night snack recommendation, and a chicken link came back.

Post about editing techniques, and a live-stream clip got attached.

One community went so far as to suggest creating a separate board just to stop people from reposting the same video.

The people who didn't believe spread the video.

The people begging to be believed spread the video too.

Either way, the address of my shop ended up attached at the bottom.

I paused midway through the backlog of applications and opened my activity log.

The rate at which points were coming in had changed noticeably. That held true even setting aside the chicken revenue.

That morning, I'd agonized over whether I could even afford a five-thousand-point chicken.

Now people were watching the clock in my gallery for the chance to buy that very chicken.

On one side of my screen, Dogeon's stream was still playing.

Only bones remained in the box.

"It's not an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ad. From my order to right now, it's all been live. No — wait, even me receiving it doesn't mean I understand how it works."

I'd lost count of how many times he'd repeated himself.

Then another donation alert chimed.

Dogeon closed his eyes.

I finally laughed out loud.

By the time he finished off the whole chicken, someone had believed a review for the first time, and someone else had placed an order of their own because they couldn't bring themselves to believe it. Some people left after just watching the video, but plenty more stayed behind in the gallery, making noise.

I had never once asked anyone to advertise for me.

And yet the people kept coming.