Broadcast Accident
The chat was already buzzing with excitement.
[Alright. The game we're playing today! It's that one you guys love.]
Because of all the collabs lately, Yuna's solo streams had been pretty rare. Honestly, I preferred these over the group ones. When she mixed in with the other members, it felt like she couldn't fully show off her charm. Plus, with so many people, things just got too chaotic.
[Whoa.] [That game?] [No way. Wow. This is huge.]
Yuna let out a little snort of laughter at the over-the-top reactions flooding the chat and continued.
[Yep. That puzzle game that's trending right now. I brought it with me. They say it really grinds your teeth, right?]
Even I let out a groan at her words. Trending right now? That trend had died ages ago.
The trash bin of trends. The final stop of trends. The end of trends.
Just like all the nicknames people gave her, Yuna was the kind of streamer who always caught the tail end of everything. For some reason, whenever a new game came out, she wouldn't touch it right away. She'd wait until later, which meant she often ended up playing stuff everyone else had already finished.
[You guys don't want me to play this? Why not?]
[Oh... it's super hard so someone like me couldn't do it? Saying that just makes me want to do it even more.]
Yuna could never stand being underestimated. The second she heard that, she fired up the game and slammed the start button.
[Gotta do it. Gotta do it. Absolutely gotta do it.] [Everyone clench your jaws! Your teeth are gonna shatter.] [Look at her refusing to listen to anyone lololol]
I had to admit, when I'd watched other people play this, it really did feel like a brain-melting puzzle game. You solved puzzles to escape rooms and move on to the next one. But the difficulty ramped up to ridiculous levels later, so it was impossible not to grind your teeth. ...And the chat was full of people with strong personalities too.
I was a little worried Yuna might take some mental damage. I chatted along with them, but I wasn't on their level. A lot of them—probably some of these very people—couldn't stand frustration. They'd throw out curses and sarcastic jabs without hesitation.
[Oh. This is really interesting. So this is how you do it.]
Yuna spent some time learning the controls and getting a feel for the game. Once the prologue ended, she moved on to the first room.
At the start, she was actually playing pretty decently.
[Ah... I get it. Put this here, do this with that, and then we can go through that door, right?]
Oh, that was a pretty solid deduction.
Yuna carefully examined the room, moved some objects around to get a key, then stacked things to make stairs so she could reach the high door. She headed into the second room.
[Aaaah. This is easy. Why are you all overreacting so much? It's not even that hard.]
She'd cleared the first room smoothly without anyone's help. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. There were plenty of streamers who gave people headaches right from the first room.
But that thought didn't last long. Starting from the second room, the difficulty shot up dramatically.
[Guys. What is this? Ah... is it this?]
Yuna wasted time clicking on objects that couldn't even be clicked. Anger was slowly starting to build inside her.
No, you idiot. It's right next to that. Please just press that one.
Even I could see the obvious solution sitting right there, but she kept messing with the wrong things. Apparently I wasn't the only one getting frustrated.
But if she kept checking the chat too much during a game like this, it would ruin the fun. A lot of people were trying to give spoilers after watching other streams. Yuna would glance at it occasionally but didn't rely on it much.
Then someone who couldn't take the frustration anymore dropped a donation.
It wasn't really advice. It was reverse psychology in donation form.
Yuna reacted to the donation instantly.
[Oh. Thank you for the ten thousand won donation. Absolutely do not touch the box next to it? Ah... so it's this one!]
She clicked on the box right next to her. She pushed it into the right position, and the door opened automatically.
DyingOfFrustration. Nice work. Thanks to you, we survived.
I sent a silent thank you to the viewer who donated.
But as the game went on, the frustration kept building.
[Ah... is it this?... No... Ah. I got it!]
As the difficulty increased, the time Yuna spent wandering around grew longer too. There were moments where she couldn't find any clues and spent ten whole minutes stuck in one spot.
The chat was slowly turning into a space for venting anger. Aggressive donations started pouring in little by little.
This was exactly why most streamers avoided games like this. Because of these frustrated keyboard warriors.
But once the overall mood in chat started shifting this way, even Yuna began to notice.
[Isn't this how you're supposed to do it? No. You guys said it was this earlier.]
[Everyone. Speak one at a time. One at a time. Ah, I don't know. I'll just figure it out myself.]
With all the self-proclaimed room experts chiming in, she was getting confused about whose advice was even right. I was starting to worry about her mental state.
Yuna hadn't been streaming for that long, and there were times when her mentality would completely break in situations like this. And as they say with Murphy's Law... things that can go wrong usually do.
*
My head was pounding.
Comments that I would normally let slide with a smile were starting to irritate me little by little.
The barrage of one-thousand-won punches was making me dizzy. ...If you're going to curse, at least donate a decent amount. These kinds of people always threw out double curses with just a thousand won and ruined everyone's mood.
I'd known since yesterday that my body wasn't in great shape. Still, it wasn't bad enough to interfere with daily life, so I figured it would be fine to stream. I'd forced myself to push through and started the broadcast, but of all days, the chat atmosphere was particularly bad today.
Even with the same frustrating game, the chat mood could be completely different depending on the day. Sometimes it was aggressive, sometimes people just gave up and watched, sometimes they even enjoyed the struggle. Today just happened to be one of the aggressive days. And with my bad physical condition on top of that, irritation was starting to build up inside me too.
On my game screen was a puzzle. It was one where you had to fit shapes into a door, but no matter what I did, it wouldn't solve. I was at the point where I genuinely wanted to look up a guide. ...No. How the hell do you do this? I've tried every possible way and it still won't work!
I was just as frustrated as the chat.
It's not like I want to be stuck like this. I want to solve it quickly too, guys. Just wait a little longer.
Flames and angry emotes were pouring out nonstop.
And the message that caught my eye struck a nerve.
If you're going to talk like that, why don't you play it yourself!
I knew I was bad at it. But I was still a person. Of course it hurt when I heard such harsh words.
[Everyone. Please refrain from using curse words... I know it's frustrating, but...]
I swallowed down the anger rising inside me and said that.
I didn't want to get cursed out over something like this. I was a streamer, not a punching bag.
The tone was pure elementary school bully, deliberately trying to get under my skin. A headache that felt like it was ringing through my skull hit me, and anger suddenly surged up.
Why don't people ever listen when you talk to them? Seriously.
I couldn't hold back the emotions boiling over anymore. Words I would never normally say slipped out of my mouth.
The tone was so cold that it surprised even me. For a moment, a chilly silence fell over the chat.