Debut Stream

Debut.

What a heart-pounding word that was.

Yesterday I'd been so buried in locked test streams ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠until dawn that it hadn't even felt real. I'd connected on mobile over and over, checking whether the audio came through clean, whether the slides and video clips had any glitches. One pass wasn't enough to settle my nerves, so I ran the entire test stream from start to finish twice. By the time I finally got to sleep, it was already around three in the morning.

"Like I said before — image is everything. Image."

Nothing hits harder than a first impression. And I was about to become the first official Virtual Streamer to debut on Pangea TV. The VOD left behind today would get hauled all over YouTube by clippers as reference material, and every related post and clip would be permanently preserved across the communities for years.

Pressure. Weight. All of it sat heavy on my chest and crushed down on my shoulders. It wasn't easy. I'd watched streams obsessively for three years, but that had always been as a viewer — never as a broadcaster.

The one silver lining was that back when I'd lived as Seo Min-jun, I'd worked sales. Dealing with people, at least, was something I knew how to do.

Alright. Time for some mental control. Drop the fixed idea that I'm "streaming." In a way, this was just another sales pitch. I was selling the talent I had — my gifts — and the viewers were buying it with their time and money. An extension of the work I'd always done.

"Hoo!"

Once I settled my mind that way, the tension eased quite a bit. My head was still a mess, though. My heart was hammering hard. I carefully reached out to feel it.

Thump—!

…Wait. That wasn't my heart—

Unlike when I'd been a man, the soft swell of my chest made it surprisingly hard to check my own heartbeat. Unbelievable. The unexpected snag made me snort, and a laugh slipped out before I could stop it. After sitting with it for a while, the whole situation just started feeling absurdly funny.

Right. I'd regressed three years and turned into a woman. A debut stream? That was nothing.

Just like that, the tension melted away as if it had never been there. I ate a simple meal and gave the equipment one last check. The clock already read 08:35. A notification pinged, and when I opened Discord, a message from Lucy was waiting.

"Alright. Let's do this."

The first stream began.

Before the regression, when Rabbit TV hit its 720p quality crisis, there had been one Virtual Streamer who jumped ship without hesitation. Tracing the Virtual lineage on Pangea TV, she was practically the founding figure. Know how many viewers her transfer stream pulled?

A full 7,400.

On Rabbit TV her average had been under fifty. But with a rival platform's resolution scandal tangled up in the story, people flocked in. That was Pangea TV — a platform hypersensitive to hype, with a strong culture of free-floating viewers who had no fixed home base and just drifted wherever the noise was.

I'd understood that, so I'd thrown a stone into a still lake. Pangea TV stock, currently freefalling into the basement. A debut stream. And on top of that, the "Virtual" attribute — still foreign to most Pangea TV viewers.

Before going live, I checked the post I'd put up on FM Community yesterday. Views had hit 57,000. Ups had broken 300. Comments were past 200. The amount of attention for a streamer who hadn't even debuted yet was almost unbelievable.

That was Pangea TV for you. True dopamine addicts. There was even a saying around here: on Pangea TV, everything is forgiven — except the crime of being boring.

"Hoo…"

The stream went live. But all that was broadcasting was a black screen. I hadn't even turned the mic on yet.

Would today's debut stream actually succeed? Sparks were already going off in my head. Before becoming a streamer, I'd spent three years as a viewer swept up in this dopamine-soaked world myself.

"…!"

It was climbing. The viewer count next to my nickname, which I'd been staring at blankly, was shifting in real time. 1, 7, 13, 25, 37… Fast. The numbers were changing so quickly it made my eyes spin. And that wasn't the end of it.

The chat window started climbing like mad. Viewers blew past three digits in an instant, and the chat flooded with every kind of emote and demands to kill the black screen.

Th-this is faster than I expected?

Back when I was a viewer, I'd only ever typed chat — I had no idea. Being the one reading it was a whole different beast. Messages flew up so fast I kept losing my place mid-read, and I couldn't even tell who was saying what.

Calm down. The chat was chaotic, but this kind of feverish reaction was pure good news. In the span of a breath, the viewer count exploded again and broke 500. Only three minutes in, and already five hundred people. The promo post on FM Community had clearly gone nuclear.

Screen first.

Two minutes left. Without letting the nerves get to me, I did exactly what I'd practiced and put the stock trading program already running on my desktop up on stream.

I slowly moved the mouse cursor and pointed at the balance line that read 15,000,000. Then I searched for a stock. The ticker: Pangea TV. Five consecutive trading days of decline had the share price sitting at ₩64,300.

I know it drops a little further than this, but there's no helping it. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠If I wait that long, the debut gets too late.

Money mattered, but timing came first. The title of Pangea TV's first Virtual Streamer would be brought up again and again for years — I absolutely could not let it slip away.

Once one person broke the ice, donations and fan subscriptions poured in from every direction. One minute left until market open. Even past 700 viewers, the momentum wasn't slowing — if anything, it was accelerating another notch.

I slowly moved the mouse and clicked Buy. Selected market price. Set the quantity to maximum. Once the market opened, all that was left was hitting the cash-buy button and the trade would be done.

The atmosphere kept climbing. Viewers, now past a thousand, started counting down the remaining time in chat. A taut, electric tension as the seconds ticked down in real time. Candy donations bursting on top of it all like seasoning. The dopamine had nowhere to go but up.

And then, at last, the market opened.

Click—!

One click without a shred of hesitation, and I became a Pangea TV shareholder at the 64 level. In that instant, the chat detonated.

The debut stream had fully turned into a free-for-all playground of floating viewers. But this wasn't the end. I switched over to the waiting screen I'd prepared in advance.

Against a pure white background, the word Loading floated near the bottom like a game login screen. Just beneath the text, a rectangular gauge bar filled little by little. At the center of the screen, a cute chibi SD character bounced up and down, hopping on the letters.

While the viewers marveled at a waiting screen you almost never saw on Pangea TV, I carefully turned on the mic.

"Ahem — mic test. One, two, three."

My voice came through for the first time, and the chat ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠exploded again. I let myself enjoy it for a second, then fired up a background track that felt like something out of an arcade game. It locked in perfectly with the bouncing SD character in the center. I'd practiced the debut stream to this track for two straight days, so the moment I heard it, a strange calm settled over me.

"Wow, so many of you showed up today. I guess all that promo work paid off."

A quick glance at the viewer count showed 1,523 — a stable four-digit number. Confirming that, I delivered the greeting I'd practiced all last night in a clear, steady voice.

"Allow me to introduce myself properly. Hello, Pangea TV viewers. I'm Seo-a, the Virtual Streamer debuting today. Looking forward to working with you!"

Another screen transition. A black-haired, red-eyed beautiful girl avatar wearing a white gamer headset smiled brightly at the camera.