The Sealed Chest Pad
A giant chest mouse pad.
A gift from a viewer under the name MarchenMilkDispenserSlurpSlurp. And someone in chat still remembered it. ...Wait. That wasn't the same person who gave it to me, was it? By pure god-tier deduction, didn't this call for an autopsy?
...No. It wasn't even a question worth getting worked up over. No need to go full autopsy. The viewer who'd given me that gift was surely sitting there in perfect silence, not typing a word, just quietly watching the stream. Yes. Obviously. You bet.
"It's perfectly fine, okay? I just didn't put it on display. Gifts get stored properly so they don't collect dust."
I said that, then let out a long, heavy sigh, tipped my head back, and stared at the ceiling for a moment.
"...I wanted to forget."
Every time I looked at that pad, the bad memories came flooding back. I'd meant to keep it sealed until the whole thing went a little fuzzy. Judging by how vividly I still remembered that day, it was going to stay sealed for a good long while yet.
"...Since we're already on the subject, want me to throw in a warning and tell the story while I'm at it?"
Right. If it kept even one person from ending up a victim like me, telling it once couldn't hurt.
"...Hang on. Mind if I kill the lights real quick, just to set the mood?"
Too late. Way too late!!!
It was a summer day, the heat just beginning to creep in.
Streamer Marchen, having decided it was about time to change her pillowcase, caught sight of a certain object: a giant chest mouse pad, boasting a volume that would have done just fine as a pillow.
On any other day she would have glanced once and moved on. That day was different. As if something had taken hold of her, Marchen stared straight at the giant chest mouse pad, and as she went on looking at it without a word, the gift the king of the gods once gave the first woman activated.
Curiosity, that is.
...Should I actually try using that thing as a pillow?
Armed with reason and a cool head, Marchen would have thought it and never followed through. Marchen devoured by curiosity, however, had a remarkable talent for turning thoughts into action.
"Yes. So I slept with the giant chest mouse pad under my head."
"...The really scary part isn't this."
I said that, then took a sip of water. Everything from here was the highlight. One deep breath, and I picked the story back up.
If this turns out all right, I should recommend it to the viewers too. Thinking that, Marchen closed her eyes with the giant chest mouse pad under her head, and because the pillow felt different, she fell asleep a little later than usual.
...And she dreamed.
Chests.
Chests.
Chests. Chests. Chests.
Look left: chests. Look right: chests.
Chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests, chests—
She had fallen into a hell plastered in chests, a hell of nothing but chests no matter where she looked.
Worse still, the chests never stayed the same size. They changed without a moment's rest. A madness that would have made even modern art fold its hand and step aside. If the dream itself had been slapped with an adults-only rating, the reason wouldn't have been obscenity. It would have been excessive grotesquerie.
Just having her eyes open and looking at that hellscape felt like it was driving her insane. But she couldn't close them. That hell didn't even permit her to shut her eyes.
Watching it, Marchen finally understood the true meaning of the saying that too much is worse than too little.
She wanted to scream. She couldn't. Somewhere along the way, her body had gotten wedged between the chests. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't move. She could only be swallowed.
Somebody—save—me—
"And when I woke up, I was fast asleep with my nose buried in the chest pad, pouring cold sweat."
After that, I sealed the giant chest mouse pad. Every time I looked at it, that nightmare seemed to rise again. Sealing a viewer's gift stabbed my conscience pretty hard, but I couldn't help it. My mental health came first.
"If any of you ever buy a giant chest mouse pad, do not—not even out of curiosity—think about sleeping with it under your head. I'm not joking. After that dream, I seriously considered getting a prescription and taking psychiatric medication."
Fortunately, once the mouse pad was sealed, I never had that dream again. The reason to take the meds vanished with it. Still, every time I dug that memory out of some corner of my brain, one question always surfaced. Had that giant chest mouse pad really been imbued with the power to give you nightmares? Or had it only been a coincidence?
But the fear that dreaming it even one more time might leave me with a trauma about chests, and wreck my otaku life—that fear, in the end, shut the door on any further discovery.
And with that, the story was over.
"There! Tack a story like that onto your own room, or onto something in your room, and you'll pick up bonus points, right?"
For a moment I just watched the chat in silence, a little smile on my face.
And then the mood in there started to stir.
"Which means Marchen is an irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind streamer, right? Thanks for the compliment!"
I said it and threw a wink.
A national-treasure-class beauty, as expected. Even the wink is flawless!
Anyway, the story was told. Now I actually had to finish explaining the rest of the contest.
"First! The photo limit!"
The limit was ten photos. You could upload fewer than ten, but more than ten and you were disqualified. The judging came down to how well you satisfied an otaku's needs the way my room did, while still meeting an aesthetic standard. Storytelling and entertainment counted too. And of course, how much care you'd put into the write-up mattered.
The deadline was before Marchen hit two hundred thousand subscribers. Proof that the room was actually yours was mandatory. Write "Marchen viewer" on a piece of paper and get it in the shot when you photograph the room, and the verification was done.
And lastly, the prize money....
"For starters, I'll be dropping thirty dollars' worth of fried chicken on each of fifty participants. First place is two hundred dollars, second is one hundred fifty, third is one hundred. And of course, if the competition heats up like last time, I might drop even more chicken."
A smaller prize pool than last time. But far more people walking away with something. That was the whole point of this contest.
Judging by the chat alone, I didn't have to worry about this bit flopping. The reaction was so satisfying that a smile came on by itself.
Then I ought to answer that heat. With my own voice.
"Then! Starting now! Applications for the Marchen Cup Viewer Room Tour Contest are oooooooooopen—"
"—now! We're doing this!"
And so began the viewer room-tour contest, held to celebrate two hundred thousand subscribers.
...Even then, I had no idea. No idea that in a single day, the number of entrants would surge toward two hundred.