First Outdoor Stream: Want to Take a Walk with Nia?
In the twenty-second century, reduced to a data wasteland by the Great War, Nia proclaimed herself an idol of a bygone age.
Day by day she expanded her reach across the internet, drawing the eyes of countless people. And perhaps that was only natural. She carried a unique concept — a Virtual Lifeform living inside the cyber world — paired with a beauty that stopped viewers cold. And she didn't stop there. On stream, without the slightest hesitation, she unveiled Ooparts no one else could find anywhere.
She was loaded with so many eye-catching elements that even if she had wanted to stay invisible, the world would never have let her.
Which was why communities that thrived on personal streamers as their main topic of conversation were already locked in endless arguments about her.
If you have even a milligram of knowledge about the cyber world rattling around in your skull, you'd know everything that girl says is theoretically impossible nonsense.
The cyber world is not some convenient sandbox where you can just make whatever you want.
Some people doubted her identity. Others felt genuine goodwill toward her. And still others simply couldn't understand how she could release Ooparts without a second thought.
One camp floated conspiracy theories that she was smuggling Ooparts the government had been secretly hoarding. Another insisted she was a third-generation chaebol who'd already raked in money hand over fist, streaming as a hobby after buying out a salvager company and putting their finds on display for free publicity.
The least credible theory of all — that Nia's concept was entirely real, that she truly was a Virtual Lifeform living inside the cyber world — was dismissed by every regular in the community as pure fantasy. This was a place full of people who at least believed they weren't complete idiots, and none of them considered themselves naive enough to buy that story.
Wait. Was everything Nia said actually real?? Is that place the actual cyber world???
At least, that was the case until one day earlier — when a vlog exploring the Abyss went up on Nia's channel.
The moment that video went live, the community predictably descended into chaos.
Viewers who'd snorted at Nia showing off her cramped studio apartment found their jaws hanging open the second she opened the door and introduced the Abyss. And when she rode a zipline down into the Data Trash Heap and casually picked an Oopart off the ground like it was nothing — some of them literally fell out of their chairs.
It was the kind of video that forced everyone to raise their voices: her haters, her fans, and even people who'd never paid her any attention before. Believers and skeptics. Optimists and cynics. People demanding explanations. People begging for the next video. Every kind of person with every kind of opinion flooded in, and Nia's Olive channel was thrown into pandemonium overnight.
But for all their noisy, contradictory shouting, what they ultimately wanted was the same thing.
They wanted her to go live — right now — and say something. Anything.
Why is she skipping the stream she does for an hour or two every single day like clockwork?! Do you WANT to watch me die?!?!
Had the desperate wishes of so many people finally reached her?
After a full day of silence following the vlog, the live indicator on her Olive channel lit up a deep, vivid red. Everyone who'd been holding their breath for Nia to appear swarmed her channel at once, sensing their moment had come.
> Stream activated.
Viewer: IT'S OPEN!!
Viewer: Outdoor stream what the hell!!!
Viewer: Hell yeah, this is it~
Viewer: Here comes the janky CG background cover-up lol bye Nia, you're finally cooked
Viewer: Ugh, things had been quiet for a bit. Is there no mod in here?
Viewer: This room never has mods, just ignore them.
In a mere three minutes, she'd drawn the kind of audience it normally took a full hour of diligent streaming to gather. And the numbers were still climbing steadily. Today, Nia might just break through a wall that had been holding her back all this time.
For VTubers, outdoor streaming had always been a deeply unfamiliar concept.
A Virtual O-Tuber, after all, was a person who spoke through a face built from 2D or 3D graphics. By definition, the ways that existence could appear in the real world were extremely limited. Projected on a screen. Rendered as a hologram. Embodied in a physical doll. Or maybe the person inside put on a mask and stepped out themselves.
The red pill was traditionally taboo for VTubers — but everything was case by case. It depended on the person and the situation.
No matter which workaround you used, though, the fundamental conclusion was always the same: VTubers and outdoor streaming simply couldn't coexist properly. The most a VTuber could do was approach the world indirectly.
But consider this. What if that VTuber had evolved one step further — and become a Virtual Lifeform who actually lived inside the virtual world?
If such a being existed, one that had stepped outside common sense entirely… then the limits that caged possibility might not exist at all.
Viewer: Tell us what the Abyss actually IS!!
Viewer: When are you opening the door?? I snuck out for this!
Viewer: First time here — when does the stream start?
Viewer: It never used to take more than five minutes… is something wrong?
Nia's chat was being swept by a tidal wave — messages surging up so fast you couldn't even find your own. It was a raw display of just how enormous the expectations of the thousands watching truly were.
Viewer: Why are you prepping for ten whole minutes? Just finish setting up BEFORE you go live
Viewer: Too many people showed up and now she's scared to admit it was all a lie, huh?
That massive swell of expectation could become a powerful tool in her hands — or a dangerous weapon that threatened the life of her stream. Liar. Scammer. Blowhard. If Nia failed to properly satisfy the hopes she'd gathered here, all that anticipation could curdle into malice designed to wound her.
Viewer: It better not be a total nothingburger.
Was it because she was beautiful? Or because she'd grown so fast in barely a month? The ones who hated her, envied her, and burned with inferiority were lurking among the excited viewers, waiting for her to show a single crack. They were about to slip nasty messages into the racing chat — the kind that made anyone reading them feel worse just for seeing them — when something happened.
A clapperboard appeared over the usual waiting screen and snapped shut with a sharp tak.
Viewer: Oh
Viewer: Is it happening?
Viewer: Finally!
A brief transition effect wiped the waiting screen away. What filled the frame was a scene like night itself — a dilapidated scrapyard — and standing dead center, as if caught in a spotlight between shafts of light… a pure white fairy.
Viewer: Damn….
Viewer: Seeing her from a distance, that outfit is actually gorgeous
Of course, that fairy was Nia. Even standing amid an eerie scrapyard of rusted metal, her beauty didn't lose a single shade of its brilliance.
"I'm so sorry for making everyone wait! There was a little error in the setup… You waited a long time, didn't you? I really, truly want to apologize for that."
But the first thing Nia offered her viewers was an apology — for making them wait without warning. Chat, which had frozen for a beat as if stunned by her appearance, exploded the moment she spoke, cascading upward in a rush to answer her.
Viewer: It's fine
Viewer: Ten minutes was kinda long ngl
Viewer: You crossed a line. Making people wait with zero explanation
Viewer: If her face was even a little uglier I'd have spit and left already
Roughly half said it didn't matter; the other half voiced mild complaints. But some of the complainers mixed in language laced with real malice — the kind designed to get under a reader's skin and bait a reaction.
Viewer: Ten minutes was long, but is it really that deep?
Naturally, talk that aggressive was going to get a response from someone. Especially now, with short-term casual viewers flooding in on the back of a viral moment. A fight that could derail the whole stream was about to break out exactly the way the haters wanted — when Nia cut in.
"So! As an apology, I prepared a little song for you…. But the mood doesn't seem great. Should we save the song for next time after all?"
Viewer: NONONONONONONO SONG PLEASE!!!
Viewer: Ten minutes flies by, it's not like we waited an hour, quit being dramatic
Viewer: Anyone who doesn't wanna watch can leave rn fr, the song's mine alone
A volcanic eruption of viewer enthusiasm left the haters reeling. Dozens of friendly messages cascaded up in perfect formation, as if coordinated, and the atmosphere became impossible to poison. Nia hadn't been brazen about being late in the first place — she'd offered a sincere apology for a mere ten-minute delay. Without manufacturing a smear campaign against her, there was simply no excuse to attack her. And once she'd seized her existing audience's goodwill with the promise of a song, the haters' position was even worse.
Damn it, the whole mood just flipped. Fine. Go ahead and sing. I'll spam that it sucks no matter what.
Some of the haters read the room and pulled back, waiting for their next opening. Unfortunately for them, that opening never came.
"All right, here I go! Lady Gaga's Poker Face… the acoustic version!"
She bent down, gathered a guitar from somewhere into her arms, and looked into the camera. The moment the song began to flow from her lips, even the haters found themselves staring blankly at the screen for several minutes, completely lost.
It was overwhelming force — pure and simple. A power so crushing that even people whose hearts had been thoroughly twisted by malice had no choice but to take it in without resistance.
Viewer: She's good….
Good enough to make someone who'd spent their entire life typing nothing but insults write that message without thinking.
The song from the past that Nia had brought back to life carried a specialness that this ruined modern age could never hope to imitate.