It Takes Time for a Heart to Harden
One of the most essential elements of human relationships — something you simply cannot leave out — is first impressions.
They become the measuring stick by which you size someone up when you meet them for the first time with no real information to go on.
Even the gentlest, kindest person in the world, if their first impression happens to be a brief flash of anger, becomes someone with a violent temperament. And even someone who never gives anything to others, if their first impression is the whim of offering a hand to a fallen stranger, becomes someone extraordinarily kind.
If you take the prejudice born of a first impression and use it to judge a person's entire character or disposition, that judgment may one day come back as a serious mistake.
So if you don't want a misunderstanding from a first impression to cause trouble, it's better to avoid the kind of attitude that settles everything in a single glance.
Misunderstanding, preconception, prejudice. If you let yourself be dazzled by nothing but the surface, those screens will block your sight, and you will never be able to see the interior that truly matters.
That was why I always preferred, even with something I was seeing for the first time, not to reject it out of hand, but to think carefully and deeply about its essence.
Put charitably, you could call that careful. Put uncharitably, you could call it being far too much of a coward.
But well — what was I supposed to do about it? The fact that I was a coward, that I felt fear easily, was simply true.
Anyway. That was me: someone who, when dealing with other people, fretted and thought about far too many things.
And the first impression I formed after speaking, through a contact passed along by email, with the person who was the management team lead at Olive, was this:
This person… isn't something about her incredibly suspicious?
"…And that covers the benefits we can offer you, Nia. Do you have any questions?"
"Uh… w-wait. Could I have a moment to think?"
"Ah, of course! Take your time."
After asking the woman on the other side of the video call for a brief pause, I tried to pin down the doubt that had been circling in my head from the start.
No matter how I look at this, isn't this story way too one-sidedly good for me?
"Um, about that, ma'am. You said your name was… Visk, right? I have a question."
"Yes? What is it?"
"Looking at the contract terms you proposed, they seem a little different from the Plus Streamer qualification-maintenance conditions I know about."
I could not help thinking that, because what she had just described included points that did not match what I had researched.
I had only recently learned it, but Olive sat in a position that, in this industry, could fairly be called absolute top dog. As a platform under national protection as part of a cultural-advancement initiative, its influence was far beyond what you could call a mere private company.
So even for individual streamers with huge subscriber counts, Olive almost never bowed its head first. No matter how popular you were, the company still held the knife. At best you ended up as a business partner of roughly equal standing — and that was as far as it went.
Because of that background, the contract Olive typically offered people who had just become Plus Streamers looked roughly like this:
— Simultaneous streaming and appearances on other streaming sites are prohibited. Unintentional appearances are exempt; appearances alone may be permitted with separate authorization.
— Thirty percent of all revenue in which Olive is involved reverts to the company. Deliberate concealment or underreporting may result in disqualification.
— Promoting external sites, running advertisements not routed through Olive, or accepting third-party sponsorships without separate permission is strictly forbidden. Detection may result in penalties.
— A minimum of ten hours of streaming per month is mandatory. Failure to meet the quota results in a warning; three accumulated warnings may result in loss of Plus Streamer status.
In short: becoming a Plus Streamer meant a lot of your activity got restricted, and a portion of what you earned had to go to the company. That was the core of it.
Naturally, if you looked at it from every angle, complaints were inevitable. How absurd was it to have to hand over a cut of your earnings to the company like a tax?
But becoming a Plus Streamer still carried enough merit that most people swallowed those inconveniences and kept streaming anyway.
Well, I don't have any plans to multi-stream on other sites, and I'm not even making money, so it doesn't really matter to me…
If I had to force myself to name an inconvenience, it would have been the mandatory ten hours a month — but right now I needed to grow the channel's weight class as hard as I could, so there was no reason not to stream. The condition was practically meaningless.
And yet — somehow — the qualification-maintenance terms Visk had handed me were a lightly trimmed version of what I knew, with quite a few of the usual contents cut down.
Weird. Most of the restrictions on revenue and simultaneous streaming aren't even mentioned — they've just vanished. There's no streaming-hour requirement either. Looking at the text alone… I could become a Plus Streamer, not stream a single second for a whole year, and still be fine? And if I need help, they'll cover most of the costs?
Small kindnesses — picking up something someone dropped, letting a person who desperately needs the bathroom go ahead of you — make people happy. There was a reason for the saying that praise makes even a whale dance. Living well with each other was a good thing.
But kindness that went past a certain point made people suspicious.
If someone picked up a dropped item and, as thanks, gifted you an expensive foreign car, or casually handed over a famous-brand bag without the slightest hesitation — any adult who had seen a little of the world would naturally wonder whether there was a separate purpose behind it.
There was a limit to the kindness a person could freely offer a stranger.
Suspicious. No — past merely suspicious. At this level, there's a purpose.
In the end, it was only natural that I would doubt her intentions. For a company that worked hard for profit to hand me this much one-sided benefit meant there was something to gain even after accounting for all of it.
"Ah… about that."
Had she sensed, through the call, that I was suspicious of her?
As if she had expected exactly this attitude from me, Visk kept her composure and spoke while looking straight at me through the screen.
"There's no need to talk around it, so I'll be direct. Nia. You're wondering why we're offering you this many benefits — what our intention is. Correct?"
"Honestly, yes. I don't really understand why you'd go this far for someone who only just hit a hundred thousand subscribers."
Of course, the offer itself was not a problem for me. I just needed to keep streaming the way I always had, and the channel would keep climbing without hitting a wall.
But still… I was curious. What on earth did Olive think of me, to loosen the conditions this far — almost as if they were half abandoning oversight?
"The terms we proposed just now… are actually the same ones we offer creators who have entered the Hall of Fame."
"Wait, that's…"
"Yes. Right now, I have just offered the same conditions to Nia that we offer the kind of ten-million-subscriber mega-creators whose names most people have heard at least once."
I blinked blankly at Visk's words, thinking, What did I just hear?
The Hall of Fame… even in this era, those were people who sometimes produced creative work that rivaled Ooparts themselves. And I was being given the same terms as them?
I felt something closer to bewilderment than joy, and I could not even manage a proper expression. My feelings had not sorted themselves out yet.
However she took that look, Visk nodded once as if she had expected it, then continued in a calm voice that had not changed at all.
"You're not as surprised as I thought. Yes — most people would call this insane. But we… focused on the potential. You're only at a hundred thousand subscribers for now, but we're certain you'll reach the Hall of Fame before long."
"How could you possibly…"
"I've watched your live streams and the videos on your channel over and over."
The expression on Visk's face through the video call did not look like someone joking.
I had no idea what impression she had taken away, but it was clear enough that she rated me extremely highly.
And yet I… felt my heart lurch to a stop at the sight of her conviction.
I'm not… that good.
The thought rose naturally. But if I somehow suppressed that kind of fear and thought calmly again, I could arrive at a reasonable conclusion about which part of my streams she had rated so highly.
It's the Ooparts, of course. That's the special part of my streams.
If I tried to name the uniqueness that other streams could not copy even if they wanted to, my thoughts inevitably went that way.
In a world where intact Ooparts were hard to come by, I could pull them out of a scrapyard near my house just by digging around. That was something no other stream could imitate no matter how hard it tried.
Who would dislike free Ooparts being opened on stream when they would otherwise cost a fortune?
"…I see."
"Ah — um… is there any part you'd like to adjust or renegotiate?"
"No. This should be fine. Is there anything else?"
"What I just told you is everything."
I had made up my mind. If Olive felt I was worth this much investment… wasn't that actually a good thing?
Assuming I could keep myself under control, the fewer constraints that limited freedom on stream, the better.
"I'll take the contract."
"Excellent. Then I'll send a contract with the full details attached by email, and as for the signature and so on…"
Visk explained the process — how the contract would proceed, what each side had to uphold, and from when until when it would remain in force — trimming it down to the important points.
Somewhere in there she mentioned that it would have been nice to meet in person to sign, but that was probably impossible. I still had no idea how to affect anything outside the virtual world.
"…That should cover it. Does that all make sense?"
"Yes. I think I understand well enough. So — is that everything for the contract?"
"I… suppose so?"
The conversation about the Plus Streamer contract was more or less finished.
After this video call ended, Visk would send me an email with the contract attached, I would leave my mark on it and send it back, and that would truly be the end of it.
The thought that I would have to do this all over again when I hit a million subscribers and became a Complete Streamer made my head spin for a moment — but by then, maybe I could do it happily. A million subscribers, after all.
Whew… at least it ended cleanly. I was worried it might turn into something annoying, but I managed to become a Plus Streamer.
Talking with other people was, in so many ways, mentally exhausting. Even after becoming Nia's body, this fragile heart of mine was still the same. I felt pathetic for no good reason.
"Um… excuse me…"
While I was half-unwound like that, Visk spoke up again, as if she still had something left — something she wanted to ask.
I thought there might be additional information I needed to receive, but listening to her, it seemed she was curious about something more personal.
"Looking carefully at your record so far, you seem to end your streams after about two hours at most… is there a particular reason you keep them short? Health issues, or something like that?"
"Uh… a reason I keep them short?"
She asked the question while looking at me with something like worry in her expression.
Hmm… were my streams that short? I had always tried to clear at least an hour every time.
No — thinking carefully, the original Nia had filled three hours every stream even on short days. On long days she went past twelve. I even remembered staying up all night following those streams. Yeah.
…Right. I could not deny that my stream times were on the short side. Compared to Nia's alone, I was not even managing a quarter of her hours.
But still…
"Wouldn't viewers get bored if I went long? I thought it would be better to focus on short, dense prepared content."
"Oh — I think longer would actually be better!"
"Hmm…"
Was that so? I could not help letting out a low hum at Visk's words, which felt like they were pressing on a sore spot.
Yes, longer streams were good. Longer stream time meant more chances for viewers to chat, and that ultimately led to more CP.
But still. Still.
Would people really like someone like me, who only looks like Nia on the outside?
When I thought that… I naturally cut down the small talk and ended the stream early.
And because I had wasted a full month doing nothing right before I started streaming under Nia's name and face, even more so.
"I'll… think about it."
So that was all I could say to her, who seemed to be carrying a little expectation.
It was still too much. More precisely, I needed a little more grace time.
At least until this heart of mine — softened by the rain — grew a little firmer.