A Fleeting Dream
It felt like a short dream, like a mirage that would vanish the moment I opened my eyes. The feeling of dreaming while awake. A dream that would disappear if I closed my eyes tightly and opened them again. Like a mirage shimmering on a desert of sand. The kind that seemed like it would scatter and vanish the instant my hand reached out to touch it.
'The viewers who came for one-time clickbait probably won't show up next stream.'
I didn't want to send them away. I hoped they'd come back next time too. But I had no idea how to make that happen, so I threw a tantrum instead. I kept the broadcast running without ending it, wishing today would never finish.
Nod.
Nine and a half hours since I started the game. Not a single break. Current record: nineteen wins, zero losses. I hadn't even dropped the burger yet. Every time I pulled off something insane, the chat exploded in silent cheers. That praise sent my blood racing faster, and the adrenaline kept me spinning up new matches.
But even that had its limits. My nervous system was fried and the dopamine had worn off. Right now I was just tired.
'If I queue again, I won't be able to play properly.'
Luck doesn't visit just anyone. And it doesn't keep coming back once you let it slip away. Even so, the viewer count had climbed past six hundred and was hovering close to seven hundred. But how many would return when I turned the stream on tomorrow? Two hundred? One hundred? If it dropped to double digits I'd be genuinely devastated.
In my half-asleep daze I answered on autopilot, like sleep-talking.
"The people here right now aren't guaranteed to come back tomorrow. So I have to show everything I've got to the people who are here right now."
"What I drank earlier... was water~..."
Thud! The moment my forehead hit the desk I realized what I'd done. Thank goodness I didn't snap my head up in surprise. If I'd lifted my face right then, the hand cam would have captured it perfectly. Instead I slowly slid my upper body out of the camera's view.
Had they seen it? I rewound the stream a little and checked the chat reactions. Thankfully my face hadn't appeared at all. Only the top of my head had shown.
"There was a tiny accident just now. I'll go drink some cold water and wash my face real quick."
Even so, it terrified me. The thought of ending today's stream and turning it on again tomorrow. It felt as scary as switching a person's power off and on. Like stopping my heart and then reviving it with a defibrillator.
Anonymous Supporter sponsored 100,000 Film for the mission!
"Go straight to bed and it's 100,000 won."
"I'll turn the stream on again tomorrow at two in the afternoon, so please don't forget and make sure to come back."
I ended the broadcast. Sleep hit me even harder than when I'd slammed my forehead on the desk. The pressure of having to show my skills in front of so many people, plus the insane amount of focus I'd poured out, seemed to have exhausted my body far more than usual.
When I wake up tomorrow, will people still come to watch me? It was scary, but for now the only thing I could do was close my eyes and drift off to dreamland.
Communities that cover the exact same game are secretly keeping an eye on each other. It's not like their user bases overlap one hundred percent, but at least ten percent of them are playing spy while browsing both sites at the same time. So any topic that becomes a huge issue on one side quickly becomes an issue on the other. No matter how much they call each other pretentious, rude, or immoral. In the end, loving the same game means they're destined to bite the same bait.
Kim Haru's Red Pill video (face not shown) received a ton of views before it was eventually taken down. But the discussion about her had already caught fire.
Dozens of threads about Kim Haru went up. The debate about the proxy player had been cleanly refuted and was over. Now most of the fights were about whether she was a real newbie or playing on an alt account.
The thread turned into complete chaos. Pros and antis tangled together in a mess. Some people found this kind of dangerous attention burdensome, unpleasant, even frightening.
As for Kim Haru, she actually enjoyed it. She preferred attacks over indifference. After all, streamers starve to death in indifference, but they can still earn money in the face of malice.
"Oh my god."
While the stream was off, a donation angel had dropped two hundred thousand won with the message "Use this money to buy a new keyboard."
"Four hundred thousand won in one stream? Did I get isekai'd into an easy mode life?"
Before my reincarnation, that was money I could barely earn after streaming an entire month. Open beta buffs really were something else.
Kim Haru thought that maybe the interest wouldn't fade so easily after all.
The promised time arrived: two o'clock in the afternoon. The moment I turned the stream on, something unbelievable happened. As if yesterday's peak of seven hundred viewers had been a lie, the count broke through seven hundred in less than thirty minutes and kept climbing.
Anonymous Supporter donated 10,000 Film!
"The haters must have been hard on you, right? I believe in the streamer and support you."
I banned the donor for one hour. A relatively light temporary ban.
"I set chat rules yesterday. Mindless unconditional hype gets you banned."
"I can't make exceptions just because it's a donor."
"Of course hate gets banned too, dumbass."