The Ear-Piercing Whisper
I'd made plans to meet Celesty in two days.
The disability welfare card was supposed to arrive sometime today, according to the notice I'd gotten. But it wasn't like I was only going out to buy a wheelchair.
There was that mission of hers to buy me lunch, after all.
I still had leftover chicken to finish by tomorrow, so the earliest we could meet was the day after that.
Sure, I could've just saved the chicken for one more day. But then the viewers would lose their minds, no question.
Even putting it off a single day and eating it the next already had them giving me those little side-eyes and hmms of disapproval. Eating it two days later?
They might straight-up riot in the chat.
That could be fun in its own way, I supposed. Still, I preferred the kind of back-and-forth that left everyone actually enjoying themselves.
Celesty didn't need me to spell out any of those private reasons. She just got it on her own.
Once we'd settled that, Celesty even offered to queue together.
Come to think of it, hadn't she said she was a morning person? I vaguely remembered chat comments like that when I'd peeked at her stream once.
This was probably right in the middle of her usual streaming hours.
Well, thanks to Celesty, a decent number of new viewers had been flowing into my stream. Out of gratitude alone I was willing to play with her.
If this had been any ordinary game, that is.
This person ranked higher than me—how did she not know such a basic truth?
Had she never actually queued with anyone else before?
I was briefly speechless, but her reply left me even more floored.
Celesty was just too optimistic.
It was so absurd that I ended up accepting it, and that somehow made me even more annoyed. So I deliberately picked a different fight.
She was genuinely exhausting.
The conversation topic flipped several times in the span of a few seconds.
Still, I didn't hate that scatterbrained energy, so I let out a quiet snicker—right when the viewers started getting mad at me.
They'd clearly gotten bored the moment I went quiet while streaming with them.
It wasn't anything I needed to hide, so I explained right away.
"Ah, I was making plans with Celesty to go buy a wheelchair. We also talked about duoing in League of Champions, but that seems pretty tough."
The viewers accepted it fast.
They were the ones who'd gone into Celesty's stream and talked her into it in the first place, after all. That was probably why Celesty had gotten the mission to buy me lunch too.
Apparently a fair number of people watched both her stream and mine at the same time.
"Anyway, thanks to all of you, we're going to buy a wheelchair the day after tomorrow… I looked into prosthetics too, but anything under a million won doesn't have great reviews. Feels like just using a wheelchair would be better."
I'd only brought up the schedule to lighten the mood a little, yet some of the viewers clearly knew more about this stuff than I did.
If they'd bought one for personal use they probably would've mentioned that. Since they hadn't, it seemed like they'd just looked into it on their own.
Even if they'd only casually run across the info rather than actively researching, the fact that they remembered it and shared it with me was honestly pretty touching.
There would be support funds coming, and on top of that the viewers were adding their own hearts to it.
I got a little choked up and had to sniff once.
But I couldn't cry on stream.
So I kept my voice bright.
"…Anyway, thanks to all of you caring, things worked out like this. Really, if I'd been alone I'd still just be eating ramen every day and gaming… getting flamed the whole time. I'm always grateful. And thank you for the donations too."
And as always, the chat that made my heart feel lighter.
Still, I couldn't keep going with nothing but idle talk and no content forever.
My identity was still a streamer who played League of Champions, after all. And the viewers came to my stream because they wanted fight-focused gameplay.
So I launched the game.
It somehow felt like I hadn't played in ages, and my hand felt awkward around the mouse. But that kind of awkwardness would vanish after a few clicks once a match started.
"So I should do some grateful LoC, right? I'm a game streamer—I can't just keep chatting forever."
I simply didn't react to talk I didn't want to hear.
It was all over anyway, and the rest could be left to the law.
You people came here to watch my stream.
Focus on me.
As a quiet protest, I was about to queue a ranked match when someone whispered me in-game.
At that friendly greeting, the viewers reacted instantly.
The reactions were good for now.
But I was too scared to type on the keyboard.
Gabi had known me long enough to send a whisper that friendly.
Which meant she was someone who had known me as a guy.