She Finally Crawled Out
The broadcast came on, and chat detonated. Most of it was nothing new. They'd already said it under the fan cafe's possibility notice, the post that admitted I might stream and never once promised I would.
— CRAZY BITCH CRAZY BITCH CRAZY BITCH CRAZY BITCH CRAZY BITCH CRAZY BITCH CRAZY BITCH
— Should I kill you? Should I kill you? Should I kill you? Should I kill you? Should I kill you?
— Give me your address, you fffffucking bitch. I'll stab you, and then I'll die too.
"Now, now. Let's calm down. A threat like that is the sort of thing that can actually get you arrested."
— You're gonna sue me? Sue me, you fucking bitch. We'll see each other's faces down at the station.
— Who is this person I followed? The last stream was forty-six days ago and I cannot remember.
— REFUND MY SUB REFUND MY SUB REFUND MY SUB REFUND MY SUB REFUND MY SUB
— Worst streamer, number one: the streamer who does not turn the stream on
— SO BADDDDDDDDDDD
The viewer count cleared a hundred in a blink. From the look of it, every one of them had been lying in wait for the chance to kill me.
"I mean, I did say I'd be busy. I put out a notice."
— Oh, so that meant a forty-five-day disappearance. I'm only a top-grade language student, so I failed to understand. Sorry.
— You should've told us to cancel. You should've told us to cancel. You should've told us to cancel.
— Yep, ate your sub money right up. GAAAAAACK—
A subscription is 4,900 won, or 14,900 if you spring for the premium sucker tier: money paid for the privilege of cheering a streamer on. Subscribers in that channel skip the ads, and they get to fire off whatever subscriber emotes the streamer bothered to make. Of course, if the streamer in question doesn't go live for over a month, that month's fee is just money thrown in the dirt.
"This is not a 'yep, I'll eat that sub~' situation. I'll compensate you. I am capable of compensation."
— Compensation?
— With what?
— ?
"Ki-burger."
— Booo
— Get lost
— Rock
— bottom
— You vanish for a month and think tossing out a few burgers fixes public opinion? lol
— Crawled out at last. Money must've run dry, huh?
"Last month's subscribers get Ki-chicken, on me!"
— Oh
— Alchemy, holy crap. Magic that transmutes 4,900 won into chicken
— Me me me me me
— I subbed last month too
I checked the forest of raised hands. More than twenty people had one up. Last month's actual subscribers numbered exactly two.
"Everyone. If you lie your way into a free chicken, do you think that chicken is going down your throat, or not?"
— Yep. It'll go down fucking beautifully.
— I want Ki-chicken too
— Just give us the chicken
"Only people with an actual subscription on record."
— So what were you doing. Spill.
— What even is your real job
— Just how incredible is this career that you refuse to go full-time VTuber?
— Nine billion off crypto, fr? Yeah?
— If you made nine billion, hand out more chicken
"What nine billion. Since when is Nine Billion the name of somebody's dog?"
"And since when is Nine Hundred Million somebody's dog's name."
— A bitch who doesn't even have 900 million abandoned her stream?
— nah nah, weak bluff, don't fall for it. She's probably sitting on 99.9 billion
— fr lol. If she didn't even have 99.9 billion, would she abandon a stream that prints money just by being on?
— Notice how she will absolutely not say under.
"It's under. Under. We good?"
It wasn't a lie. Nowhere in the question did anyone specify that the unit was won. Suppose we counted it in gold. Nine hundred million kilograms of gold comes to something like fifteen quintillion won, and fifteen quintillion won I do not have. So: under.
— So she's got 90 million, then
— A bitch without even 900 million abandoned her stream?
— Don't get fooled. Real estate could clear 900 million.
— Obviously real estate counts too
Nothing good was going to come of talking any longer about money, or about the day job. Time to change the subject.
"So! Today's game is—"
— You show up after forty-six days and won't even Just Chat for an hour?
— Check the cafe. Check the cafe. The cafe.
— This room is not a broth room. Just-chat ninjas, kindly take it somewhere else.
— Huh? It wasn't a broth room?
— So you people waited out a forty-five-day hiatus for a lunatic who isn't even broth?
— fr, say something that actually sounds like words
— I AM the broth! I am an unhinged crooked broth!
Who likes a kid with zero professional pride who won't do an end-stream kiss or sing a song lol
↳ Don't run away behind anonymous! Stand and fight!
↳ So you want the end-stream kiss and the song right now?
↳ Aigoo, you crooked broth....
I'd meant to slide straight into the game. One look at the chat, and at what the donations were actually saying, and I knew I wasn't getting past this.
"Listen. No matter how much money you fire at a VTuber! No matter how long you camp the chat and push it up the screen! You cannot marry a VTuber. Wake up."
— Huh?
— Wait. For real?
— Why?
— Is this real?
— What? You weren't my girlfriend?
— stfu stfu stfu stfu stfu stfu stfu stfu
— That can't be!!!!
— My world collapsed today
In the VTuber business a pseudo-girlfriend concept is common enough, and even a little situational roleplay is everywhere. My room has none of it. Not a scrap.
"None of you are getting married! You are never marrying a VTuber!"
— Feels like a personal attack got mixed in there?
— shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up
— If you catch feelings for a bitch like this, go live your actual life lol
"All right. Let's play the game."
What I'd brought was a third-person survival-horror action shooter out of 2023. The hero, a special agent, goes to investigate a strange village and bring back the president's kidnapped daughter. By the standard of someone too busy to turn a stream on, it still counted as new. The world is full of games, and I have almost no hours to play them. Still, I'd stepped back from Deepwell Financial, and there was no rival left behind me worth running a scheme against, so the time to broadcast ought to open up a little.
— Hell yeah
— This is the taste I watch Kira for
— A drug of a bitch. Wrecks your body, and you still can't quit.
— A girl VTuber being this good at games makes sense to you? Isn't she a beomiyuk?
— fr lol
— Explain yourself
— Kira, prove you are a woman!
Right. I'm no genius, only a reincarnator, and the one field where I actually have talent is games. Not genius-at-games, though. Too awkward to go pro, parked exactly between a strong amateur and a semi-pro. The average female VTuber's skill, however, is wretched past belief. In an ecosystem that basically lives in the bottom ten percent, a player sitting in the top one percent is an invasive species. A fandom that still can't quit after a forty-five-day hiatus is not strange at all.
"That is correct. The truth is, I am biologically male. This voice is a voice changer. Congratulations to everyone who has arrived at the truth."
— What?
— For real?
— I knew it
— Excuse me, refund my broth donations
— I didn't want to know a truth that horrible
— Bro, quit the bullshit and shoot the gun
— Kira swindled her viewers with fraud. Atone with Ki-chicken!
— Worst streamer, number one: a netkama beomiyuk hiding their identity.
"A minute ago, wasn't worst streamer number one the one who vanishes for a month with no notice?"
— Worst streamer number one is just this bastard, Kira
— <<<<<<
— Yeah. You. Punk.
"The worst viewers, watching the worst streamer. You're both the worst. Doesn't that make you the strongest?"
— What are you even saying, you weeb
— Booo. Reeks of weeb.
— You give off otaku and I don't like it
— fr lol
I was enjoying a modest little WWE with the chat and getting on with the game when an emergency SOS came in. Not in the game. On my actual messenger.
"Ah, guys."
— ?
— What
— What is it
"The commander's Buster Call just came down. Would it be all right if I set this game aside and go do a collab?"
— What, you're ditching us?
— Worst BAD streamer, whose notice and whose stream are two different shows
— Collab LET'S GOOOOOOOOO
— Hell yeah, off to breathe in that girl-scent
— Not a nearby creep, right? Not a nearby creep, right? Not a nearby creep, right?
— This bastard has exactly two friends. Don't worry.
— And those friends aren't exactly the come-smell-a-girl kind of collab either
— Worst mosquito-straw streamer, number one: Kira
— Off we go to collect the trickle-down~
I had never meant to stream. I had meant even less to get this big.
If you want to know why I started broadcasting, and why I got famous at all, you have to begin with those two, who four years ago suddenly declared they were going full-time.
I had skipped so many grades that friends my own age were a mathematical impossibility, and I treated the friendships I made online as more important than anything in real life. Online, at least, I could actually make friends. We played games together, and now and then we flipped a stream on just to mess around. The entire audience was a handful of guildmates. And I had no intention whatsoever of scaling any of it up.
They felt differently.
"I think streaming might be my calling."
"I want to go full-time. Full-time VTuber."
That was the beginning of the legend of Mina and Aris, who now contend for first and second among the VTuber Emperors.