My Channel, My Rules

I already knew streamers got donations. I'd heard about it often enough.

My friends used to say things like that sometimes, too—that they wished they'd been born pretty girls so they could stream online, rake in donations, and coast through life.

Sure, the news had stories about illegal organizations using donations for money laundering and clawing a cut back through refunds. But those were deals in the thousands, at minimum. A donation in the ten-thousand-won range wasn't going to be tangled up in something like that.

Still, the fact that one of those donations had come to me was strange. Was it just because this was my first stream? If I'd known this would happen, I would have kept Celesty nearby and asked her about it.

Either way, they'd gone so far as to donate just to ask a question, so I owed them an answer. And it was exactly the kind of question I wanted, so I opened my mouth gladly.

"Yes, whenever I can, I look at our comp and the enemy picks before locking something in, but… ah. Um."

And then, belatedly, I realized that nothing I said out loud would reach them anyway. Same thing as earlier—why did I keep doing this? At least it was a relief that nobody was watching.

"Ahaha, Noel. Not used to streaming yet, huh?"

"Oh."

Or so I'd thought. At some point, without my noticing, the woman from next door had slipped in and was lightly teasing me from behind.

It would have been embarrassing enough with a stranger. Having someone I actually knew walk in on me made the mortification double.

To hide it, I deliberately didn't turn around as I spoke.

"When did you get here? I thought you had plans."

"It was a lunch thing. I came back thinking about you. You had pizza, huh?"

"Huh? How did you know?"

"Pizza cheese has a pretty strong smell."

The way she said it almost sounded like she'd been watching me. But calling her a stalker felt wrong—she'd never laid a hand on me, and she'd never tried to get anything out of me, either. It was probably just like she said: the cheese smell was so thick it carried. When the pizza had first arrived, I'd caught that rich scent even before opening the lid. I was just used to it now, the same way I'd gotten so used to the woman next door's scent that I couldn't smell it anymore. Not that she came close all that often to begin with.

"I should air the place out later… There's some pizza left. Want any?"

"Nah, I ate a lot at lunch. More importantly, looks like a question came in. Aren't you going to answer it?"

"I was just about to."

She was right, of course. Someone had donated to ask, so of course I had to answer—not out loud, but in chat.

It was a little disappointing how fast the chat wilted at even a light joke, but this much seemed fine.

Maybe because I'd gotten off to a decent start, the questions that followed were actually pretty solid.

Now they were finally treating this like a gaming stream. Which meant everything I'd figured out over a month of nonstop games was worth putting down here.

Yes. This was the atmosphere I'd wanted. The same way people in the League of Champions community argued—people with different opinions trading takes, pushing back. Not the exhausting "I carried, you threw" noise. Talking about game balance and how to play champions was so much more fun.

Apparently that kind of thing had been going on before I even started playing. I'd wondered why the system felt so inconvenient—turns out it had been put in place to stop something even more unfair. Nothing to be done about that, then.

I'd thought the explanation had gone pretty well, but of course there was someone so locked into their own take that they had to pick a fight. If they'd at least brought up something they'd actually experienced, it might have carried some weight.

He'd dug his own grave so neatly that I went ahead and kicked him right then. Sure, I'd been the one to mention personal details—but I could hardly ban myself from my own stream.

The viewers' reactions, though—those I didn't like. I wanted them focused on my gameplay, on me as a gamer. Instead they kept giving the troll all the attention.

So I deliberately typed into chat in an over-the-top voice.

The moment I leaned into a meme I'd seen around the gaming community, the attention swung right back to me. I watched the viewers forget the troll entirely and start snickering among themselves.

Somehow, it left me in a better mood than I'd been in for a while. Not the same rush as steering a game to victory—just the urge to laugh at something pointless. I couldn't actually giggle with the woman next door watching from behind me, but if I'd been alone, I probably would have cracked a smile without meaning to.

My father and mother had always insisted that you only felt real satisfaction when something produced a result. That was wrong. Sometimes meaningless things could be fun, too. My mouth didn't actually curve up—but still.

Maybe because the laughing, chattering mood had settled in, other viewers' questions started rolling in one after another.

"Other than performance… You mean looks, or champion lore, right?"

Viewers guessing which champions I'd like. Teemo, Jeanne—sure. I remembered the girls in my department liking champions like that. Not my type, but if I had to name a champion I was attached to, something did come to mind. Not something I'd lock in ranked on the spot, though.

I opened my champion ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠list on the game screen and quietly pulled up the one-legged commander.

A flood of question marks filled the chat.

Watching them invent reasons was so entertaining that I pulled up another champion—a pirate with a musket pistol and a rusted cutlass in either hand. Specifically, the skin where that pirate only had one leg.

That was when people finally seemed to catch on to the joke.

Unfortunately, the viewers still seemed a little too soft for jokes like this. So I decided to gloss over it and move on.

And just like that, I quietly tossed the bait over to the viewers. They started happily chatting among themselves. Some people just enjoyed the game; quite a few others seemed to be into the lore and character backstories. The most memorable chat was someone wailing that their champion used to be a revenge-driven concept after losing their family, only to get reworked into being gay out of nowhere.

There were people who just liked a champion's design, too. See something cool or cute or pretty and of course you'd like it. Others had fallen for a champion's playstyle—stacking infinitely under the right conditions, or pulling off bizarre plays no other champion could manage.

None of that conversation pulled focus onto me, which was interesting in its own way. Watching them chatter among themselves was still fun. When attention drifted elsewhere over something hateful, it felt awful—but if they were just purely enjoying themselves like this, maybe that was fine.

I was starting to get a feel for how to run a stream like this. And I was getting tired, so I quietly opened Notepad.

If I closed the game client like this, the viewers would see the Notepad right away. And the computer would shut itself down after about thirty minutes of no input, so they'd have enough time to keep chatting among themselves.

I transferred myself to the bed before the viewers could try to stop me. Not that they could do anything but type in chat anyway.

The woman next door got up from the bed and made room for me.

"Going to sleep already? Were you up all night?"

"Yes."

"Alright. Unnie should get going too. Sleep well."

"Good night, unnie."

Where the woman next door had been sitting, unlike with Celesty, no scent lingered at all. Or maybe I just couldn't smell it—I'd gotten too used to her by now.

The thought didn't stretch any further. Maybe because today had been such a long day, the moment I closed my eyes, my mind went hazy. I didn't even hear her leave as I slipped under.