The Last Day of 2022
I decided I would be the one to host the stream on the final day of the year.
Mostly it was to manage any leftover aggro from my awards-ceremony remarks—just in case. And, if I was being honest, there was a tiny bit of ulterior motive mixed in as well.
What was that motive, you ask…?
"Thank you, everyone. I'll take this award as something I only received because I debuted early, and I'll work even harder."
No way I was going to miss a clean, legal collection opportunity like this. Moments like these were when you could legitimately rake in donations. I had to pull in as much as possible before January hit.
Just you wait, kids. Something huge is coming in January.
With all the new viewers flooding in lately, the chat had gotten a lot more varied—Virtual fans, Minecraft fans, the "no-bottom" crowd, and so on. The only way to grow my weight class was to lock as many of them down as my own fans as possible. It wasn't an easy road, but thanks to my future knowledge I at least wouldn't be flailing around completely blind, and that was a genuine relief.
"Everyone's so impatient. I'll announce today's content once all the crew members are here. So… is everyone present?"
"Hello. Perfect day for a drink. Miho's here."
"Mayo's here too geosida. Flew over at the exact speed Seo-a unnie won the Newcomer Award geosida."
"Seo-a, congrats again on the Newcomer Award. And everyone—it's the end of the year. Did you all wrap up the important things properly?"
Our crew members came tumbling in one after another. In an instant the stream's atmosphere turned lively and chaotic. Yeah—this was exactly the kind of excited energy an end-of-year stream needed.
"Now that everyone's gathered, I'll announce the content you all have been waiting for. Ta-da! It's the 2022 V-Live Year-End Awards Ceremony. Drumroll!"
I quickly switched the screen and pulled up the PowerPoint file I'd prepared in advance.
"Watching yesterday's awards stream probably felt like someone else's party, so we prepared an awards ceremony just for our fans geosida."
Mayo's comment hit the nail on the head. Yesterday's Pangea TV Year-End Awards had been packed with four solid parts of entertainment, but from a Virtual fan's perspective it was inevitably disappointing. The only Virtual-related content had been Hiyori's brief appearance and Mercury's congratulatory stage performance. At least I'd taken home the Newcomer Award and saved a little face, but the overall feeling of "someone else's celebration" had still been thick in the air.
"The rules are simple. Miho unnie, Mayo, Seo-a, and I each prepared a highlight video that captures 2022. Enjoy the videos, then vote, and we'll crown the Grand Prize winner of the V-Live Year-End Awards."
Lucy explained the rules for today's content in her usual clear, well-organized way. She'd been on hiatus from Minecraft for a while, but hosting the news broadcasts had clearly sharpened her MC skills. The growth of my crew members was my joy!
We were able to kick off today's content in a genuinely fun atmosphere.
"So… who goes first?"
"Mayo thinks the leader, Seo-a unnie, should take responsibility and start first geosida."
"…So the one who just said that is the one who actually wants to go first? Okay, confirmed!"
"No wait. I was wrong. Majority vote would be better geosida."
"Yep! Then I vote for Mayo too."
Miho, who normally found Mayo annoying, shot her hand up without missing a beat. Instantly outnumbered 2-to-1, Mayo shot Lucy a desperate look, but all she got back was the usual calm gaze.
"Mayo, like unnie always says—you have to be good. Got it?"
"Everyone betrayed me geosida. Just you wait geosida. I'm definitely taking the Grand Prize today geosida."
Mayo puffed her cheeks out like balloons and grumbled, but eventually nodded as if she had no choice.
"Then the first contestant of today's V-Live Year-End Awards is Candidate Mayo. Everyone, please enjoy."
Through Discord screen share, the video Mayo started playing was output onto my stream. Honestly, even I had no idea what the video was. I'd left the preparations entirely up to each person's discretion.
It was also a little test. I wanted to see how much sense and ability each of them actually had in this kind of area.
Right now we were still a tiny crew running on pure improvisation, but we couldn't keep going like that forever. Eventually the day would come when each person had to pull their own weight. Keeping that in mind as I watched, my heart was pounding with anticipation just as much as the viewers'.
So… what kind of video had Mayo prepared!?
The first stage of the V-Live crew's year-end awards ceremony began.
Lately Mayo had been realizing a lot of things.
She had started streaming on pure impulse. The entire reason had been that she loved games and felt happy whenever someone watched her play and praised her. There had been no plan, no direction. She simply turned on the stream out of habit and stubbornly played games.
Despite that brainless approach, her young age and decent mechanical skill had somehow generated buzz, and she'd shone for a brief moment—only for an unexpected platform account suspension to slam the brakes on everything.
She'd considered quitting streaming altogether, but leftover attachment had eventually led her to start again on Pangea TV. Having already tasted failure once, she couldn't help but start thinking for real.
What even was streaming? What kind of stream should she be doing?
While she was wrestling with those questions, she hadn't brushed off a random viewer's chat. She'd taken it seriously.
At the time Mayo hadn't even known who the streamer Seo-a was. She didn't know the big corporate streamers on Pangea TV, so how was she supposed to know some tiny creator? Sure, even among small streamers there were "tiers," but Mayo had never been the type to diligently gather streaming intel in the first place. She'd applied for the content purely on "vibe" and "for fun."
Yeah. It had just been a light application with that kind of mindset.
She'd gotten accepted—complete with the joke title of "intern." For Mayo it was a completely unexpected result. Accepting a total beginner like her who hadn't even been streaming for three months? At the time Mayo couldn't help but doubt Seo-a's judgment. Or maybe it was only a "crew" in name and they were just going to run it for a few months before quietly shutting it down.
But that was my misunderstanding.
The path Seo-a walked after that was genuinely astonishing. Even just managing her own stream was already a full-time job for a streamer, yet Seo-a worked as if she had multiple bodies, looking after the crew members' streams as well. At first Mayo had even suspected some kind of scheme. They weren't blood relatives, yet every single day Seo-a gave broadcast feedback and used her high-level connections to link them up with editors and other workers. There had never been a bigger sucker.
In the end I realized it. Seo-a unnie had been serious from the very beginning.
Because of a difficult home environment from a young age, Mayo had always been full of suspicion toward other people. But even she couldn't deny the meticulous care Seo-a had poured out for over a month straight. This person was the real deal. She was treating them with genuine sincerity and wanted to build a crew that grew together.
The moment Mayo understood that, she decided she had to change herself. She couldn't keep freeloading forever just because she was a streaming newbie. That didn't match her personality either.
She carved out time from her busy schedule to gather information and study streaming. How could she bring out the charm of Virtual? She tried on the concept of an annoying little brat and deliberately changed her speech to something distinctive. The reactions that came back weren't bad. After that she kept studying hard by watching other streamers' VODs and funny YouTube clips. The person she referenced the most was the crew's leader—Seo-a.
When I look at Seo-a unnie, it feels like she works hard not just on the stream itself but on everything around it too. She's seriously thorough.
At first a lot of the suggestions had made no sense. Suddenly prepare a Minecraft server. Or specify detailed plays that had to be done even inside that server. Back then everything had been a question mark. But looking back after time passed, she always realized that every single thing had been pointing toward the best possible direction. And as the streams naturally started going well, fans increased and Candy donations grew.
Yeah. I can trust Seo-a unnie. From now on I just have to keep following hard behind her.
Being with Seo-a had taught her the real fun of streaming—not just mindless solo queue. And watching the fans who cherished and valued her made the hard knot deep in her chest slowly loosen. She wanted to grow even more, show them a cooler side of herself, and become a streamer who could proudly pull her own weight inside the crew.
And today is exactly that first challenge!
It might have been just a small in-crew event awards ceremony, but Mayo decided to take it seriously. She wanted to have her own capabilities evaluated at this point in time. In this moment, Mayo was no longer the usual mischievous brat—she was a proud streamer standing on her own two feet.