Come Back, We Had a Good Thing
"Guys... come back... we had a good thing..."
Plenty of people had posted ideas that were never going to be picked in a thousand years—bikinis, bunny maids, naked aprons. Even so, dangling a prize had done its job. A fair number of them had actually written something decent.
Everyday hanbok. Hairstyle suggestions. School uniforms.
...If I hadn't put a prize on it, I wouldn't have salvaged even these, would I?
"Honestly, the one that tempts me most is still the school uniform. I'm an eternally seventeen-year-old pretty-girl streamer, and never wearing a uniform feels kind of wrong, you know? But the everyday hanbok... how do I put it. It stirred something in me. I think."
A school uniform, or an everyday hanbok...
"...What if I just smash them together, half-and-half, like black-bean noodles and spicy seafood noodles on the same plate? A hanbok school uniform!"
Wait. I'd come up with it myself, but this was actually good, wasn't it? Borrow AY Entertainment's pull and getting my hands on a convincing hanbok uniform would be nothing. I was busy congratulating myself on the stroke of genius when a donation alert cut in.
Info donated $1.
"For real?"
I typed hanbok school uniform straight into the search bar. ...They really existed.
I smacked my own forehead, once, sharp—just to give the regret and the indignation somewhere to go.
"If I'd only been born a few years earlier and started streaming a few years earlier, I would've taken the title of the first hanbok school uniform!"
...Fine. There still isn't a streamer who's worn a hanbok school uniform, right? I'll take my comfort there.
"There might still be another good idea, so I'm not locking it in on the spot.... For now, I'll put the hanbok school uniform up as the top candidate, okay?"
That's what I said. In my gut, though, I already knew. No matter what idea came flying out next, the hanbok school uniform was going to be the one chosen as the New Outfit.
...Anyway, why weren't the subscribers going up?
No way.... It isn't that, right? I'm imagining it?
...Right. Look how many people are watching the stream right now.
"Okay, next post, then..."
I'd browse what people were posting, doodle a hanbok uniform design while I was at it, and 300,000 subscribers would fall into my lap with room to spare!
The design session for the hanbok school uniform—the one chosen as my New Outfit—came to an end.
"...Everyone? Be honest with me."
And even now, Märchen's YouTube still hadn't hit 300,000.
"You're hitting unsubscribe right now, aren't you."
"...Then maybe don't go posting things like this on the fan cafe."
"You're gonna deny it even after that?"
...Yeah.
The one who'd honestly blurted, in advance, that the stream had to end before the MV dropped—that dumbass, that moron, that complete fucking idiot—was me. I should have kept my mouth shut and hidden it for as long as I could, right up until I signed off.
If I were going to make excuses for why I'd done something so catastrophically stupid: in more than a year of streaming, I had never once had viewers unsubscribe on purpose. So it had simply never occurred to me that they might deliberately get in the way of 300,000.
...Doesn't change the fact that I'm a dumbass, a moron, and a complete fucking idiot!
The option of sweetly coaxing them with a pledge flickered through my mind, and I threw it out at once. Staking a pledge felt like a waste—because, annoying as it was, I could still see a real chance of pulling this off. And putting a pledge on the line... it just feels a little ugly, doesn't it. When I'd hit 150,000, the pledge had felt like an extension of a penalty, not a tool for pumping the subscriber count. This wasn't that.
There was still time before the MV dropped!
For now, give it everything!
I can do this!!!
...So this is what they mean by the torture of hope?
If it had looked completely hopeless, I would've said screw it and fired off a pledge just to be done with it. But the finish line kept shimmering right in front of my eyes, and even if I wanted to let go of that rope of hope, I couldn't.
"Guys... come back... we had a good thing..."
Maybe the desperate cry swayed a few hearts. The count crept up, just a little.
It really had only crept up a hair....
...Not even a hundred left.
Was this actually possible? Was I about to put a victory for humanity on display?!
"...Ah."
The goal was right there in front of me. But holding out any longer was impossible. I'd promised my manager I'd end the stream before the MV premiere.
"I'll be heading out now.... The MV link is in the pinned comment, so you can go through that, or just find your own way there...."
Even as I said it, I couldn't shake the lingering attachment, and I checked the subscriber count one more time. Our viewers, though—bloodless, tearless—didn't look even slightly moved by how pitiful I was.
"...Then this hack of a YouTuber, who failed to catch the moment of 300,000 on stream, will be going. See you all tomorrow!"
At last the picture went black, and up came the screen you only see when a broadcast has ended. And the stream timer kept right on running. My masterstroke—the one where I refused to give up, even at the very end.
Pretend the Stream Already Ended
And fool every last one of them.
But our viewers had already been through something just like this last Friday, and the chat filled with people announcing they weren't fooled. The karma my past self had piled up reached out and seized the present me by the ankle.
And the result——
Done. I'd done it. I'd succeeded. A victory for humanity.
Among the people who'd hit unsubscribe, there were bound to be some who hadn't seen last week's stream, and my last gambit—aiming straight at them—had landed perfectly. Beaming, I ended the stream for real, then immediately sat down in front of the MV premiere.
"Now that the tension's gone, I'm suddenly so sleepy..."
...I'll just hold the seat for a bit, and the second the premiere ends, I'm going straight to bed.
I'd been sleeping and waking in one-hour loops and then streamed for eight hours straight. I was so tired I could have died. Forcing back eyelids that kept growing heavier, trying to fall shut, I stared at the screen.
...Ah. It had started.
A woman whose looks could stand beside a work of art slowly extended her hand, eyes closed. And the moment those eyes opened—soft, lingering—a voice arrived.
A clear, solid voice. A voice that held softness and strength at once. A voice you could feel reaching for you.
And the song Märchen-tic You held that voice perfectly. It was a vessel that could carry the voice which had been hiding inside her all along, the one nobody had known she possessed. A song you could call a masterpiece without stretching the word.
But no matter how well a song is made, a vessel is only a vessel in the end. Drawing all those different voices out of a person and pouring them in was never the vessel's job.
Which meant this.
The people watching Märchen — Märchen-tic You / Official Music Video were listening to a masterpiece sung by a singer more than capable of carrying one. Getting to look at a face that could be set beside a work of art was simply a bonus.
And among everyone watching that video, aside from a few, not one person had expected the woman singing in it to be this good.
Even so, the same song naturally drew different reactions from different people.
Someone who hadn't expected much from the singing watched the MV through tinted glasses, certain that a song, at least, was something she wouldn't be able to pull off, their chest already packed tight with complaints. Expecting anything from a performance by someone who wasn't even a music creator was nonsense. That's what they thought.
"...Not bad."
And the song blew straight past that someone's expectations. Still wearing the tinted glasses, though, they decided the reason it wasn't bad had nothing to do with Märchen the streamer's skill. Someone had simply slathered money all over the mixing and the mastering. That was their guess.
Someone else had been looking forward to Märchen's singing quite a bit. They'd watched the streamer called Märchen since way back, and they'd listened to Märchen's songs since way back, so they knew perfectly well that she sang above average.
"...This is Märchen?"
And so that someone was purely stunned. It was on a different level entirely from every Märchen song they had ever heard. The Märchen who used to reek of amateur the moment she opened her mouth to sing was nowhere to be found.
Someone who had worried it would turn out to be a pearl necklace hung on a pig's neck admitted it, calmly.
"I was wrong...."
That they'd been wrong. That this person had at least the minimum qualification to be given a song by Loe. They knew perfectly well that no matter how good the mixing and mastering, a good song only comes out if the raw source is good. Yes—that someone was admitting that this was a good song, and that Märchen was a good singer.
Someone who had taken an interest after seeing Märchen's face in the teaser pressed subscribe without a moment's hesitation.
"This is fucking incredible...."
Pretty, and she can sing too? More than enough reason for the crush goggles to slam down.
In that way, the reaction changed from person to person. But one thing was certain. These were people interested enough to show up for the premiere, and the reactions they were showing—however much they differed from one another—had almost no chance of turning their interest sour.
And so, with this MV as the starting point, the streamer called Märchen was going to grow even further. It might as well have been a future already set in stone.
And someone, having watched the MV all the way through——
September 1st. 8:00 a.m.
"Slept well...."
A full fourteen hours of sleep had shaken the fatigue off me, and I got up wearing an extremely satisfied smile. Let's see.... How many views was the MV at.... The manager had said the better the early numbers, the better, ri—
"...Huh?"
The moment I saw it, I shut my eyes and opened them again, over and over, then rubbed them with the back of my hand. Then I checked once more.
...For a second I wondered if I was still dreaming, so I yanked hard on my own cheek.
"Nngh—owww...."
It hurt like a bitch. And I checked the YouTube subscriber count one more time. Still 410,000.
Not a dream.
I'd thrown that whole fit yesterday about not missing 300,000, and then I'd missed 400,000? For real?
...I could already hear the viewers' public roasting ringing in my ears.