Seo-a's Stream

The President dropped a hundred-thousand-Candy duel mission donation, and Seo-a froze solid on the spot.

Her eyes blew up to twice their normal size from pure shock — and somehow the facial tracking caught every last bit of it.

Facial performance absolutely cracked!

Monday, January 16th.

Early morning.

Still half-dazed, I scrolled through the popular posts on FM Community.

The Skypia landmark building fund had closed at a final 750,000 Candy.

I'd set my goal at somewhere between six and seven hundred thousand and figured that would already be great. I never imagined we'd blow past it like this.

Thankfully, there aren't many posts about the President.

FM Community let people talk freely about streamers, but big-spender coverage was surprisingly strict around here. Flood the board with posts about specific viewers and moderation became a nightmare, after all.

So only two or three tone-deaf community users had put anything up, and the related threads barely got any traction. That was enough to let me breathe a sigh of relief.

I hear that when something like this happens, the President and the hardcore fans start getting a ton of private messages.

That was one of the quirks of Pangea TV — a dedicated station page, free messaging, the whole setup. Once word got out that someone had money, the begging notes with bank account numbers started rolling in, and weirdos would hang around looking for an angle. There were more than a few cases of people actually complaining about the hassle.

Most of those notes came with some nasty claim about the streamer they followed, telling them to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stop supporting. Classic underground-gallery tactics. The kind of scum who just wanted to snicker at a successful streamer's misfortune. One of their specialties was spinning half-fabricated private messages from alt accounts to drive a wedge between hardcore fans and their streamers.

Still, he said he's been watching streams for eight years. He'll know how to handle those toxic messages on his own.

I fretted for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a moment, but there was nothing I could actually do for him. The best way to repay every fan who'd funded us yesterday was to stay steady and keep grinding in the areas I could control.

The President even said it in his donation message yesterday — don't lose your original heart. Stay calm. Keep doing what I always do.

We'd crossed the mountain that was the landmark building fund. But that mountain was only the entrance to a vast range. Our journey was far from over.

Starting today, we all had to begin construction on Skypia — and at the same time, we needed to pull in more capital ahead of the vehicle auction this weekend.

And that wasn't all. I had plenty of personal business too.

First, dig deeper into Iruri. She was Blueby's right hand before the regression, so she's bound to know something useful.

That was critical — something I could never afford to forget. But I couldn't rush it either. Get careless, raise her suspicions while approaching her, and I'd lose the only lead I currently had a grip on.

And I need to carve out time to talk with Blueby too. Ugh, just thinking about it makes me want to skip it.

I'd made a promise, so like it or not, I had to keep it. I'd probably schedule it around the vehicle auction.

And next on the list…

"I've got a pile of twenty-four-hour stream tickets left. Someone already put in a request to use one this week."

Since starting my stream, I still hadn't done a single twenty-four-hour no-cutoff broadcast. A whole stack of worries piled up in front of me. Could I even maintain my energy that long? I was hypersensitive to other people's gazes and evaluations — the last thing I wanted was to look sloppy just because it was a twenty-four-hour stream.

The silver lining is that even though the title says twenty-four-hour no-cutoff, the unwritten rule guarantees eight hours of basic sleep. But doesn't that just make it a sixteen-hour no-cutoff? Whatever — free win for me.

A quick search told me that human streamers counted a twenty-four-hour no-cutoff even when they slept for eight hours with the stream still running and the cam left on. A sleep-stream vibe, basically.

But what about a virtual streamer who couldn't turn on a cam?

There's a way around that too.

A regressor's head always held the answers. Did people really think only one or two virtual streamers had run twenty-four-hour no-cutoff content on the streaming scene through 2025?

I fired off a quick message to Bebe-ttang, the artist. Could she tweak the avatar for this-and-that concept?

It wasn't a particularly hard feature, so she said she could probably have it done in a day.

Hell yeah. That was the power of having a direct line to a star artist.

Other virtual streamers would spend over a week just getting a hold of their artist, placing the commission, going back and forth on feedback, and finally receiving the finished product.

In the end, all of this came down to first-mover advantage. I'd debuted as a virtual streamer on Pangea TV faster than anyone, claimed a blue-ocean market, and built a friendship with a promising popular artist.

And that wasn't all. That snowball had kept rolling, building the scale and recognition I had now. The butterfly effect had been genuinely enormous.

Freeca's original roster had shifted — though it had since gone back to normal — V-Live Company had been born in Rena World, and I was writing a story that had never existed before the regression.

I'd been so active that even the virtual-related company that had once approached Park Na-na had turned its eyes this way. That was a major change I could never take lightly.

And more than anything — it's V-Live Crew that got formed, not V-mellodi. Lucy's future is going to be different. I'm sure of it!

Even buried under ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a breathless schedule, I kept my eyes on hope.

Seo-a's Empty Wallet could still feel the aftershocks of that long-overdue massive donation.

Private messages leaving bank account numbers and claiming they couldn't even make it through the week had become routine by now. The underground-gallery types trying to drive a wedge between him and the streamer were familiar too.

Back when he'd been a streaming newbie, those messages had thrown him off and genuinely shaken him. Now they were so transparent he just laughed.

But there were still messages he couldn't take so lightly.

"……."

All of them were ties from the past. Whatever pure, untainted feeling there'd been at the start had long since vanished. The timing of the contact alone was already far too obvious.

For reference, the Candy Calculator site didn't only track streamer data. There was a separate "Big Spenders" category that ranked viewer accounts by daily and monthly donation totals. Yoonjung-e had probably spotted a familiar account climbing the rankings for the first time in a while and sent the message.

Once they get a taste of the money, they all change like this.

A bitter reality. He'd started this as an online hobby specifically because he didn't want to see that kind of thing offline. Turns out it wasn't much different here either.

Seo-a's Empty Wallet let out a long sigh. Yesterday's considerable donation on Seo-a's stream was still fresh in his mind. It had been the stream he'd enjoyed most in a long while. He'd agonized over the donation right up to the end — then, when everyone started hoping for a 700k breakthrough, instinct had taken over and he'd sent it. A faint regret lingered.

Seo-a will change eventually too, right?

Eight years on the streaming scene. In all that time, he'd never once seen a streamer who tasted money and stayed the same. Some put on a proud, aloof act — but the moment he got busy for a few days and stopped logging into their streams, the private messages would inevitably start arriving from behind the scenes.

The betrayal. The disappointment. Every single time.

Carrying that worry, he went looking for Seo-a's stream when it came on in the afternoon.

Hardcore fans got an automatic alert the moment they entered a stream. A few viewers who'd spotted him before the streamer herself put on a loud welcome. Looks like yesterday's hundred-thousand-Candy fund still had residual effects.

And once Seo-a confirmed that message…

"Wha—?! Acting all high and mighty as the President and then ditching us! The stream's already been going for thirty minutes and you're late? Kneel, hands up, and watch for five minutes."

"Tsk! The President… talking back?"

No — the "original heart" he'd mentioned wasn't supposed to mean this.

Vice-Chairman Seoah Not Streaming, who'd been quietly waiting for an opening, landed what he thought was a killer joke — only to get scolded for talking nonsense and slapped with a five-minute chat ban.

At that familiar spectacle, Seo-a's Empty Wallet couldn't help ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠but burst out laughing.

Maybe eight years of experience had made him jump to conclusions too fast, as if that stretch of time were the entirety of life itself.

This was Seo-a's stream.