Just Class-Change into a Clown
There's a saying that a bad feeling is never wrong.
I have no idea what kind of person left a proverb like that behind, but whoever it was, they were clearly a sage who had mastered every principle under the sun.
Right now was exactly that kind of situation.
The donations would not stop, like a fish that had just found water. And they weren't even normal donations. Every single one of them wore its intent to roast me right out in the open. If the donations alone were this bad, I didn't need to look at chat to guess what state the window was in.
Even so. I never thought it would be so much worse than the dimension kiss.
The stream had grown so fast that the scale of the roasting had apparently ballooned right along with it.
…But who was I supposed to blame?
If I hadn't kept jolting awake every hour, terrified that sprawling out in a dead sleep would make me miss the moment I hit 300,000. If, the instant I noticed the old viewers canceling their subscriptions, I had slapped a pledge on the stream, blasted through 300,000, and grabbed even a little sleep before the music video dropped. If, instead of face-planting into bed the second the video ended, I had showered, checked how people were reacting, and realized the subscriber curve was getting dangerous.
If I had done any of that, I might have avoided this disaster.
…And looking at it laid out like this, I had dug my own grave with my own two hands to a truly breathtaking degree. This was basically a work of art, wasn't it?
Anyway, it had happened. From now on I would be living the rest of my life stamped with the brand of hack streamer….
"…Hello. I'm Märchen, the hack streamer who missed the moment I hit 350,000 subscribers and also missed the moment I hit 400,000, then scavenged a channel photo that says 400,000 subscribers off the fan cafe."
It was a greeting so pitiful that any human with blood in their veins and the ability to shed a tear could not possibly have failed to feel sorry for me.
…These people had neither blood nor tears.
Sympathy, it seemed, was something I would never live to see, not even if the sky fell. So I wiped the useless gloom off my face.
"Fine, the past is the past! We'll postpone dwelling on the past until later, and do what needs doing first!"
Back in my usual tone, I threw the hastily revised slides up on the stream screen.
"420,000 subscribers! The music video is this close to a million views! Chart-in news keeps rolling in from the major streaming services! These numbers are, quite literally, insane! Thank you so, so much!!!"
A slide with every triumph this music-video drop had delivered, all crammed onto page one.
Even to me—a born-and-bred otaku gamer gunning for partner streamer on Raider—these were triumphs that sent the dopamine flooding in, no question. Of course, they were results I never could have reached alone. That didn't make the joy of the achievement any smaller. Being carried by countless people's help into a realm you could never touch by yourself is a dopamine-rush of a plot twist too.
Stack on top of that the viewers who knew exactly when to roast and exactly when to congratulate?
The dopamine was climbing all the way to a lethal dose.
"Everyone… thank you…!"
I burned off the lethal dose with a thank-you that actually meant it, then looked at the monitor. Watching the donations keep bursting, one after another, a thought suddenly occurred to me.
…You guys were tsundere this whole time, weren't you?
They say a male tsundere is heresy, but… my viewers are hawawa ex-military high school girls! Okay. Valid!
The thrilling collection hour was over. Which meant it was about time to properly start today's content.
"First off, part one today is the hour where I finally spill every music-video story I've been holding in and holding in—in other words, Off the Record, round two! And for part two, now that the video's out…. I've prepared a karaoke segment for the first time in a while!"
Of course, that wasn't the only reason I had prepared the karaoke segment.
There were definitely people watching this stream right now thinking exactly this.
Is that Märchen actually good at singing?
Didn't they just cover the whole thing with mixing and mastering?
Perfectly reasonable suspicions. So the fact that they were having those impure thoughts? I could understand it. But I'll have you know that I am the one and only student of a genius singer-songwriter, and a body that has even inherited the secret manual. Being doubted on whether I can sing is an insult to me, and no different from an insult aimed at my teacher.
Both of us insulted at once, and I just let it slide? Wouldn't that make me a complete failure of a student?
…Honestly, since I had already sacrificed my days off for five straight weeks to learn, I also kind of wanted to be praised a little more. Not gonna lie.
What are you talking about. Why wouldn't I do Raider?
"Of course we are. This is a sales opportunity. You think I'm gonna sit on it?"
And showing people I keep playing Raider even when the tide is coming in at an all-time high? I could brand it deeper into even more heads: Raider means Märchen, and Märchen means Raider.
That was why I had deliberately wedged a Raider segment between part one and part two. To take the karaoke content hostage and force-feed them Raider…!
"All right then—part one, we're starting!"
Eyecatch here!
Meruring~!
What was the core of today's stream—the real highlight?
The karaoke segment, which never scored below average with the viewers once it actually started? Or the Raider gameplay I had prepared yet again today, all in service of the goal of becoming a Raider partner streamer?
On a normal day, sure. But not today.
"Oh, right. I took selfies after they styled me, you know? …Found them! Even with zero retouching, it's this good, I'm telling you?! A genuine all-time legend! Märchen's personal high score, officially broken!"
Today's star was Off the Record, round two, the segment I had slotted into part one.
"I looked at my own face back then and got so shocked that, in my head, I went kore ga watashi…? I really did!"
Off the Record. It sounded grand if you only half-listened, but once you actually broke it down, it was nothing more than an ordinary storytime stream. The stories I had prepared this time were pretty extraordinary, granted. But the Loe material—the part that was basically the yolk of the egg among everything I had lined up—had been censored in full for the sake of Loe's mystique concept.
So there was a hard limit on how far round two of Off the Record could break past the ceiling of a storytime stream. Could a yolk-less storytime shove aside a karaoke segment whose attention and expectations had spiked because of the music-video drop, and steal the lead role? Was that even possible?
It was.
"A transformation this flashy, I bet I've picked up a ton of fans, right? I went to sleep and woke up to find my subscribers had jumped by 110,000…. So! For you, who became a Märchen fan that way! For you, who was a Märchen fan from the very start! Music-video production commemorative goooooods!!!"
Because if you stuff a merch promo into Off the Record, then yes. Merch promo is a matter of grave importance, after all!
"Revealing them! Right now!!!"
I said it, then flipped the slide, and photos of neatly arranged Märchen merch blew up huge across the stream screen.
Fitting for a first merch drop, they were the safe picks other streamers chose all the time. Desk mats, phone cases, mugs—that sort of thing. The designs, maybe because we had borrowed the muscle of a major company, had come out extremely neat and clean.
…But it wasn't over yet.
"And the merch I'm about to show you was prepared with real, real ambition! Unlike the stuff I just showed you, the quantity is small! That's right—merch with a limited-edition sticker slapped on it!!!"
I said it while flipping the slide one more time.
The secret-weapon merch. That was…!
"Ta-da! The Medongbu regular-member T-shirt, and the eternal seventeen-year-old magical-girl streamer Märchen T-shirt!!"