Happier Never Having Seen the Teaser

I would have been happier if I'd never watched the teaser...

During the maid-concept broadcast, Märchen had let a fair amount of information about the music video slip. The reason that "fair amount" needed a qualifier was simple: almost every piece of information that actually mattered had been sealed under airtight secrecy. Who had written the lyrics and composed the track, what genre the song was, how long it ran—she gave up none of it. She also never said when the teaser would drop, the one clip that might offer even a hint of the video's mood, or when the premiere would go up, the upload that would finally reveal who had written and composed it.

It wasn't especially strange. Märchen lived for surprises; the idea of her laying out every detail in advance was absurd. If that ever happened, and people began to suspect some monster had crawled into her skin and taken her place, the woman herself would have nothing to say in her defense.

And so, with no one outside the inner circle knowing when the teaser would appear, time flowed on and on...

August 30th, 12:01 p.m.

At last, the teaser went live.

Russia's great writer, Dostoevsky, is said to have left these words behind: man is a pliant animal—a creature, in other words, who comes to adapt to anything.

Just as the great writer said, Jeon Gyeoul was human, and so she adapted as a matter of course. To the world of internet broadcasting, and to the streamer called Märchen. The Jeon Gyeoul who used to type her chat in neat, courteous formal speech was dead. In her place was a viewer who dropped into casual speech all the time and, now and then, even spammed the chat window.

She couldn't help it. Even if she wanted to keep her manners, Märchen's clown persona had a talent for making whoever watched her feel close, and closeness had a talent of its own: the relief of realizing you didn't have to strap on the stiff armor of etiquette.

Even so, in that she never swore at all, Gyeoul still ranked among the top ten percent of well-mannered Märchen viewers.

And yet even Gyeoul, thoroughly adapted to Märchen's streams as she was—

"I'm losing it, I'm losing it...!"

Watching the teaser that had just gone up, she had no choice but to take a brutal hit. It was only a thirty-second video, a clip holding nothing but the tiniest sliver of the music video set to premiere at six tomorrow evening. That alone, though, was more than enough to slam into Gyeoul's soft little brain. Which made sense. She had never even imagined she would see Märchen looking like that.

Of course she ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had expected some dressing up. It was a music video. But that had blown past "dressed up ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a little" by a country mile.

Gyeoul turned the Märchen from the teaser over and over in her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mind. The frames still seemed to shimmer in front of her eyes, which made the dwelling remarkably easy, and the more she chewed on the teaser, the more startlingly new it felt. The everyday image of Märchen driven deep into her brain and the Märchen in the teaser were simply too different.

The conclusion that spilled out of her mouth after all of that was painfully simple.

"She's seriously beautiful...."

How beautiful? A face that would make flowers jealous, a face that comes along once in a thousand years—those lines were far too worn out. Put in terms a Märchen viewer could actually feel, she would ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bet on this: if Märchen had streamed looking like that, she could have gotten away with every bizarre stunt she had ever pulled on broadcast. The clown image now rooted so deep in her would never have settled in so easily. Viewers who affirmed everything she did, no matter what it was, would have spawned in droves.

That was the level. That was the face. And because it was, Gyeoul resented reality.

She had to wait another thirty hours? For real?

She was already starting to worry whether studying would stick to her hands at all before she got to see the music video.

The thirty hours of hell had only just begun.

Gyeoul was not the only one drowning in despair. Viewers who had watched Märchen's streams for any length of time were feeling it right alongside her.

The despair Märchen's viewers were feeling spilled into the fan cafe in exactly this way—far past the simple anticipation you would see on any other streaming community.

Even there, though, the song itself never really became the topic. Because the song was bad? No. It wasn't that. You couldn't argue whether it was good or not even if you wanted to. The teaser only let you hear a single line at the very end; how was anyone supposed to judge from that? So, naturally, the viewers' attention swung toward the version of Märchen radiating that intense impact.

Of course, that swing wouldn't last very long. There was still one big hit left—a single blow that would reduce every scrap of music-video information released so far to a mere whatever.

Eleven hours and fifty minutes after the teaser went up.

"...Shall we start getting ready to end the stream?"

I said it and stretched. Today, despite the huge event of the teaser drop, I hadn't prepared anything particularly special. Part one was watching anime. Part two was Raider. Today's broadcast had been utterly ordinary.

But everyone watching had probably felt it: the ordinariness on display today was, in truth, the view before the storm.

"The music video will go up as a premiere the moment I end the stream."

What did that mean? That in a little while, they would find out what the thumbnail looked like—and which artist had written and composed the song. That the moment before the storm was about to end.

"And like I said before, I figured I'd go live tomorrow around lunch... but that might change depending on how things go. If it looks like three hundred thousand subscribers is within reach before lunch? Then I'll probably start a little early."

Even as I said it, I caught myself hoping I could go live in the morning instead. The earlier I started, the better the odds of hitting three hundred thousand before the music video premiered.

"Then I'll see you tomorrow, everyone!"

With that, I ended the broadcast at the precise instant the date rolled over.

August 31st, 12:01 a.m.

A premiere titled that was uploaded to Märchen's NewTube channel. And the instant my own two eyes confirmed the description—Composed by Loe. Lyrics by Loe—

"Oh."

The premiere's live chat froze. Seeing that, I was certain.

"...Tomorrow is going to be an actual war."

I knew I had dug my own grave, but this one felt less like a grave and more like Qin Shi Huang's tomb—the kind there is no climbing out of. The sense of crisis was starting to prickle against my skin, enough that shutting off donations entirely and pivoting to a no-talk stream was beginning to look like an attractive option.

"Crazy bastard.... What the hell was eh, might as well give it a shot even supposed to mean...."

I finished the shower in record time, inwardly dumping every curse I had on the past me who had run her mouth because it wasn't her problem yet. Then I lay down, killed the lights, closed my eyes to sleep—and picked up my phone before I actually did.

Humans are animals who learn from the past. Was there any guarantee this wouldn't turn into another one of those situations, the way it had the last time I hit two hundred fifty thousand NewTube subscribers?

There wasn't, was there? So I had prepared. A countermeasure, in my own way...!

"Two, three-thirty, five, seven-thirty, nine.... Okay, all set!"

That countermeasure was setting alarms and getting up every hour and a half to check the current subscriber count. This was it—my iron resolve in the face of three hundred thousand subscribers...!!!

...Is an hour and a half actually kind of brutal? Maybe I should just make it every two hours.