Something's Happening
Lying around and resting just fine, I suddenly headed up to the ninth-floor streaming room. Before long, the CEO followed behind me with a puzzled expression.
“What’s going on all of a sudden?”
“Ah. Maru asked for support.”
“Maru did?”
“Yes. She said she’s short on people for I’m a Wolf right now.”
The CEO tilted her head at the game name but didn’t say anything else.
“Alright, just don’t push yourself.”
So there I was, waiting in a small personal streaming booth next to the motion studio on the ninth floor without any special prep. Ding. Ding.
I’m a Wolf has a maximum of twelve players. Roles are largely divided into werewolves (max two), humans, and the neutral faction. Teaming up is generally impossible. The only ways to form a team are either both becoming werewolves or being paired as lovers among the humans.
Maru seemed to understand my point and looked disappointed.
Her will clearly hadn’t been broken.
Her capitalist intentions were far too obvious. …Still, not bad.
Even though their job is selling joy and happiness to fans, they’re still people who can’t ignore money entirely. As one half of Parallel’s vocal duo with Dora, Maru gets tons of cover requests. She pays for all of them out of pocket, and monetization is impossible due to copyright issues. That means she needs steady subscribers and donations just to release cover songs. Everything outside company-planned group content is also self-funded.
Anyway, money, money, money. VTubers live in modern Korea too, so they laugh and cry over money. Is that too pessimistic? Idols don’t exactly dig up the ground to do business either. Whether the metaphor fits or not, think of it as clerics who get paid to cast heals and buffs. People work, find comfort in VTubers, pay for the buffs, and VTubers use that money to spread more happiness. A positive infinite cycle, you could say.
Anyway, to keep that cycle turning smoothly today, I’ll have to work hard in the shadows.
I put on the helmet with its belt-and-net-like motion capture gear and checked that my panel was moving properly. Once everything checked out, I followed the link Maru sent and started the connection. I left Maru’s stream muted in the background so I could monitor whether the broadcast was going out without issues.
My panel had suddenly appeared and started wiggling around, and the viewers reacted first.
Maru placed my panel right beside her and shouted energetically.
Maru says “circle” in Japanese, which is why her nickname is Dong. Other nicknames include Gong Maru, Won Maru, and so on—her surname changes every time. Sometimes she even gets called Cheon Maru after the CEO’s surname.
Maru passed the turn to me, so I started with a simple self-introduction.
“Hello. Somehow we’re meeting again after just a few days.”
“I’m here as a last-minute filler again today. I’ll do my best not to get in Maru-nim’s way.”
“Still, you’ve played more than I have, right?”
“I’ve watched a lot, but this is my first time actually playing.”
“No need. I pretty much know the rules already.”
It was different from Night of Legend. That game had over a hundred released characters and way too many items, so I’d given up on memorizing everything. I’m a Wolf, by comparison, was simple. Three main role categories, with about thirty detailed roles split among them. That much I could memorize easily.
Plus, I’m a Wolf collabs tend to produce a lot of memorable moments, so I’d given out plenty of high scores in post-stream reports. With all sorts of streamers participating and their intentions crossing, the baseline entertainment value is high. In other words, even if I die repeatedly from being bad, it won’t really affect the overall flow. Dying early can be funny in its own way, and it’s better for me to die than for a streamer to die early and not get to play.
Still, if I somehow manage to survive to the end, I should practice taking the lead in conversations. Until then, I’ll just go with the flow and observe what kind of people everyone is.
Half the collab members are VTubers I already know, but I should figure out the rest to avoid mistakes later. If I recognize them first, it’ll leave a good impression on Parallel too. Follow my example, Daknunsam. This works in social life, galleries, collabs—anywhere.
“Ah. That’s right. Can I even join?”
Wait, Ronze was the one leading today’s collab? That was unexpected.
The CEO, who’d been sitting beside me, also tilted her head at that. Ronze is a second-team pro player for Night of Legend. Naturally, he’s more connected to Komari than to Maru. I remembered Komari once going around asking for advice because she wanted to escape Emerald, and she happened to get in touch with him and received a lot of tips.
With the tournament season over and it being the off-season, he seemed to be playing all sorts of games. …But he invited Maru instead of Komari? How strange.
Fortunately, our confusion was quickly resolved. Ronze must have sweet-talked the server admin, because I was granted temporary access. After entering the Pazizik streamer talk code via the invite link and checking the collab tab, I saw a familiar nickname.
Ronze had invited Komari first, Komari invited Maru, and Maru filled the last spot with me. Multi-level invitations like this are common even in large server collabs, so it wasn’t surprising.
Soon Ronze appeared and greeted me.
I changed my server nickname as requested and waited briefly in the collab lobby. Before long, I stepped into a space filled with eleven other streamers.
All kinds of voices poured out greetings at once. I’d joined plenty of streams before, but this was the first time the audio felt so layered and complex. For a moment I felt oddly self-conscious, like I was being welcomed by a crowd.
But the surprises didn’t end there.
During MoovGun’s civil war stream there had been twenty-four collab members, but most hadn’t paid much attention to me. Back then I was just one of the toxic broth members targeting Momo anyway.
Whether it was because of the recent concert and eve festival or not, someone recognized me the moment they saw my nickname.
“Hello, Serena-nim. I enjoyed your Infinite Jump recently.”
She even claimed to be my fan. A mid-tier streamer with around 130,000 YouTube subscribers. My thought process completely froze. I’d never experienced this kind of conversation flow before.
Fortunately, I was born with a talent for quick comebacks, so words started flying out on their own like an ad-lib.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not a streamer, so calling yourself my fan doesn’t feel right.”
This is… Hold on. Um. …What am I supposed to say?
This was the first time since getting involved in the VTuber industry that I’d been completely at a loss for words. I wanted to say something, but the words flew around on their own, colliding instead of connecting. Since I couldn’t form a sentence, all that came out was babbling.
“Uh. Er. Um… uh……”
Komari, who’d been listening, spoke up.