The Brink of Three Hundred Thousand
Right. I'm thinking back to those days....
Loe, the popular singer-songwriter who had built her whole career on a concept of pure mystique, had collaborated with a nobody internet streamer.
The fandom of that nobody internet streamer was the first to find out, and it was turned completely upside down. The moment the reveal video went up, posts on her fan cafe blew past ten pages in a single minute. A far too precious person had appeared in a far too humble place. And they were thrilled—genuinely, wildly thrilled.
Likewise, even if they couldn't boast a ten-year otaku career the way a certain nobody streamer could, these were viewers who would be called otaku anywhere they went. The chance that people like that didn't know the empress of Korean anime theme songs? You might as well call it zero. Loe's fans among them? Obviously there were plenty. A collaboration between the singer-songwriter they loved and the internet streamer they loved—could there really be a viewer who wouldn't be happy about that? If anyone out there had a birthday on August 31, this had to feel like the greatest present of their life.
That was the reaction inside the nobody streamer's own fandom.
So what about the people who had never heard of her?
A good many of them said the teaser was so well made that they were already looking forward to it. But the ones who had only ever heard Loe's songs, and didn't really know the singer-songwriter behind them, had a different take. Wasn't AY Entertainment pushing some nobody internet streamer far too hard? The insults aimed at that nobody came along free of charge.
Loe's fandom, which scraped together every last scrap of information that had anything to do with her, saw it a little differently.
Loe, doing whatever the company told her? Don't make them laugh. If she had been the sort of artist who listened so well, wouldn't the work of taking on theme songs for anime that survived as nothing but a song have dropped off sharply? When a melody struck her while she was enjoying some work that hadn't even been adapted yet, she would knock a song together on the spot, win the anime theme-song slot, and only then reveal the track to the public. Wouldn't they have ordered her to fix a new-song rollout that outrageous?
Loe's fandom had caught on ages ago. In her relationship with AY Entertainment, Loe sat in the seat of a super-subcontractor—the side that was supposed to take orders, and that had long since risen past any level the company could freely control or handle. So when people who didn't really know her insisted this was AY Entertainment pushing too hard, the fandom dismissed it as nonsense.
Instead, the moment they heard about the collaboration, they guessed at the truth. This, more likely than not, was Loe going to her first, of her own accord. Considering the way Loe released new songs, the possibility was plenty real. Of course, a possibility was still only a guess. It amounted to it seems like it might be that way. They had no idea why Loe would approach a nobody internet streamer in the first place.
Some people worried this was a pearl necklace hung around the neck of a pig dressed up in flowers. Now and then, someone would say it would have been better if Loe herself had sung the song.
And so cheers, anticipation, scorn, questions, worry, and regret all showed themselves at once, across the wide sprawl of communities. The people pouring those reactions out knew something else, too. Right now, the communication channel flung widest open was that very nobody internet streamer.
Loe, married to her mystique, did not speak to the public at all. AY Entertainment, being a major corporation, treated every official statement with caution. Set beside the two of them, a nobody streamer who talked with her audience nearly every day—and who had lively two-way channels in stream chat and donation messages—made an excellent place to dump every question about Loe's collaboration.
On top of that, she had spent days using her own broadcast as kindling, steadily setting fires and farming aggro, so word of the collaboration spread remarkably fast even late at night.
And so.
For a nobody streamer who had spent a year living as small-time, bottom-of-the-barrel talent, a future in which she claimed the number-one spot for live viewers in Korea—on a weekday afternoon, no less—was, in a sense, inevitable. Of course, spam, ASCII art, emote chat, and swear-laced chat were waiting right there with it.
So what was the nobody internet streamer, with a future of heaven and hell arriving together, doing right now?
"...I'm still fine."
I was living through the hell of falling asleep and jolting awake, over and over, every single hour.
"...I should've just made it every two hours."
In the end, the crisis of having to go live before my nine-a.m. wake-up never arrived. Which was to say I had brought every bit of that hardship on myself.
It was a countermeasure I'd dreamed up in case the collab news going public caused some dramatic swing in my subscriber count.... And I had definitely caught people's attention. Nearly nine hours still remained before the music video dropped, and yet people were already waiting on the premiere. So yes, I had their eyes. But had things stalled at mere interest? Was there still not quite enough of a spark to make anyone hit subscribe? If they watched the music video and liked it, would they all subscribe then...?
My thoughts got that far, and I pressed lightly at my eyes with my fingers.
"...I'm tired."
The fatigue stacked up in me hadn't broken. My head throbbed, my eyes stung faintly, and the bones in my arms and legs seemed to ache. My body was shouting that I needed to sleep, even a little longer. But I couldn't indulge that argument today. It was about time I got ready to stream.
...Should I at least run to the convenience store and grab an energy drink, just to wake myself up?
The time: 10:00 a.m.
I was sitting in a streaming chair that had cost me fifteen hundred dollars. I'd said I would go live around lunch.... Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that starting even a little earlier would raise my odds of hitting three hundred thousand subscribers before the music video dropped.
I didn't bother checking the mood on the fan cafe or the communities. On the teaser, likes utterly crushed dislikes, and that single fact was enough to give me a rough sense of where public opinion stood. The time I might have spent ego-searching was better spent figuring out how, somehow, to manufacture three hundred thousand subscribers before six this evening. That was the productive option.
...And maybe because I hadn't slept properly, I didn't even have the will to ego-search.
I drew a deep breath. Then I slapped my own cheeks twice with my palms. Pap, pap.
Get it together. Right now, with everyone's attention gathered in one place, was the best moment I was going to get to pump my subscriber count. If I played this well, I could carry that attention straight over into subscriptions. If today's stream became the stepping stones that led them there.... I might hit three hundred thousand in a flash...!
"...Let's go!"
I shouted it with everything I had, and turned the stream on.
Chat began racing up the screen, just like the day I had posted the teaser.
...Huh? That's all?
I'd been sure it would turn into a far worse shitshow.... Don't tell me the one-day follower-only chat I'd put up—figuring it was better than doing nothing—was actually working. Right. Now that I thought about it, it hadn't even been twelve hours since the video went up. Anyone who only learned about it after the music video dropped wouldn't be able to chat even if they wanted to!
I got scared over nothing! I caught myself. Talk like that was how you planted a flag.
That instant.
"...Huh?"
A single piece of ASCII art had landed in chat. And as if that were a signal flare—
"...W-w-w-wait a second?!"
The chat window was shredded into chaos in an instant. It happened so fast that even a professional streamer panicked like an amateur. Thank god the mic wasn't on yet....
A few deep breaths, and I hauled my composure back. Then I nudged the follow requirement up one careful day at a time, watching how the chat changed. If it were up to me, I would have slammed a full month's restriction on it, hot and clean.... But then the people who had finally gathered might just leave, right? For a fast sprint to three hundred thousand subscribers, the more viewers, the better.
Right. I'm thinking back to those days.... Those days when, just to dodge the future of Knight Rise's Seobjong, I took in even the viewers pulling a certain amount of toxic nonsense and held them close, treating them like prospective players...!
I set the restriction only tight enough that I wouldn't suffer the catastrophe of a ban for failing to moderate chat. The rest... I would have to manage with my own hands.
...If it quiets down, I should loosen the limit a little.
Thinking that, I changed the stream title.
"Hello! I'm Märchen, world champion of Raider!"
And with that, I had finally spoken my first line since turning the stream on.
The reaction came in hot!