100K Subscriber Event — Let's Party!
Every so often, someone would crack the same joke.
That a birthday wasn't really a day for the person born to receive congratulations — it was a day for thanking the ones who'd brought them into the world.
In my previous life I'd had no close friends, and my family had all passed away early, so a healthy social life had been out of the question for me either way. Neither version of the day had ever been possible.
Still, if you thought about it carefully, the idea wasn't entirely without merit.
You needed parents to give birth to you before you could even have a birthday to celebrate, right? Cause and effect, basically.
And saying "thank you for bringing me into the world" sounded a lot more humble than "congratulations on being born," didn't it?
It had that filial-piety glow that people generally found moving.
This was the same kind of logic.
Hitting 100,000 subscribers was a joy so big I barely had the words for it.
But rather than just sitting back and accepting congratulations, shouldn't I be the one to thank the people who'd subscribed first?
Especially since it felt like I'd stumbled into the goal without any particularly heroic effort — the thought came to me naturally.
So today's stream concept was simple. Give back what I'd been given. The classic The Boss Has Gone Crazy! event.
My job for this short stretch of time was to show as many viewers as possible some real goodwill.
It wasn't as if handing things out was going to put me in any kind of fatal hole, after all.
Make as many people as possible feel happy… and, as a result, grow the channel's fame even further. That was the ultimate purpose of this event.
Alright. Good. With this many people gathered, it might be about time to start. In that case…
I swapped the usual clear waiting-room screen for the camera feed, then yanked the string on the little party popper in my hand.
Pop. Pop-pop.
A compact party popper of the kind usually reserved for birthdays. The moment that tiny explosion burst outward, I blew hard into the party whistle clenched between my lips.
"Pupu-! Nia's Olive channel — thank you for 100,000 subscribers! It's all thanks to every one of you!"
"Ah, this? This is something called a party whistle. Doesn't the sound sound adorable? Pupu-"
A party whistle. CP cost: 50. Surprisingly, it was something that didn't exist on the 22nd-century internet — but the structure was so simple that glancing over a design schematic I'd stumbled across had been enough to create one.
I'd made it because it seemed perfect for a moment of enthusiastic celebration like this…
But looking at the lack of any real surprise from the viewers, it apparently wasn't landing as well as I'd hoped. Why, though? Party whistles are cute.
Feeling a little awkward, I gave the whistle another halfhearted pupu- and casually shifted my gaze to the stream settings panel floating on the monitor.
I'd prepared a few modest games, songs, and performances so everyone could enjoy themselves today. All the more reason a bigger crowd would make things easier to run than a sparse one.
Still, I just went live, so it shouldn't be that many yet… huh?
But the numbers on the screen carried a distinctly ominous energy.
In the less than five minutes since I'd gone live… thousands of people had already filled the seats!
F-five thousand already?
From my perspective, I couldn't help blinking in pure bewilderment.
The last time I'd checked, the viewer count had been sitting in the mid-two-thousands — and in the blink of an eye it had nearly doubled!
Even at this moment, the number already rivaled my previous average concurrent viewers…
And the truly shocking part was that the rate at which it was climbing only kept accelerating.
After the outdoor stream in the virtual world had once peaked at 12,000 and the growth curve had been slowly tapering off, something was clearly shifting.
Was this the power of being a Plus Streamer? Or had the event I'd announced in advance simply spread that far?
Either way was fine by me. Even if the ratio of casual drop-ins who weren't yet fans ran high for now, just being given that kind of opportunity was an enormous stroke of luck.
But… I firmly repeated a thought that felt like dumping a bucket of cold water over the heat bubbling up inside me.
…Whew. Don't obsess over the viewer count. Get swept up in it and the whole mood could go weird. More is good. But fixating too hard on the numbers can have a bad influence.
Besides, I wasn't the kind of live streamer who ran on pure chat interaction — I was a content-first creator.
Whether the viewer count was high or low, it didn't have that much of a direct effect on my stream.
If anything, I should probably be more worried about newcomers who didn't know me well throwing off the atmosphere.
"I'd love to jump straight into the event I prepared… but I only just went live. We can take it a little easy, right? We've still got plenty of time today."
"Alright, alright, no fighting. Hmm, want me to tell you a funny story from the other day? Something that happened when Noise and I were cleaning up the scrapyard…"
With that lead-in, I launched into a fairly vivid retelling of the time Noise and I had been clearing a mountain of trash — and her hazard suit had gotten perfectly wedged into a hole less than fifty centimeters deep, leaving her completely stuck.
It was pure small talk, with nothing particularly impressive in it.
But maybe the gap with Noise's usual cool demeanor made it interesting, because the viewers' reaction wasn't half bad.
When I even pulled out a Noise-shaped plushie I'd made on a whim a while back for some of the newcomers who'd never heard of her, the response there exploded all over again.
"M-merch? Um… Noise is cute, so I'll think about it."
Merch, huh. Well, if I went through the right procedures, it probably wasn't physically impossible…
I'd never actually considered making real-world merchandise before.
Still, wanting to make something didn't mean I could just whip it up on the spot, and this was probably something I'd need to discuss with the Olive-side contact.
For some reason Visk keeps reaching out to me. I'd pictured a management team lead as someone constantly busy… I should consult her about this later.
Maybe because I'd wrapped up that train of thought with something that sounded roughly affirmative?
The chat window suddenly erupted — messages cascading down in a flood. The surge in CP was sharp enough that my body flinched.
Was some kind of malicious spam flooding in? I widened my eyes and looked at the chat…
And belatedly realized why the messages had exploded all at once.
Ah… they want Nia merch too?
Some were carefully requesting it. Others were complaining hard. A few were practically pleading, almost tearfully.
But the meaning they all shared was consistent: why would Noise merch come out before Nia merch?
I blinked blankly at the chat for a moment, then could only scratch my head with a faintly troubled expression.
"I'd never even thought about releasing merch in the first place… You're right, though. If I were going to make something, it might make more sense to start with my own stuff rather than a Noise plush…"
"Ah, no. The price would probably… not be that high. I, uh, don't really need real-world money or anything. If you all want it, roughly cost of materials plus distribution fees?"
I closed my eyes for a moment, seriously weighing what kind of price point would make sense if I actually made my own merch.
A beat later, the viewers seemed to catch on to something in what I'd said, and a string of utterly flabbergasted reactions rolled in.
"Ahem! That's enough chitchat. If you want to talk among yourselves, please do it in Nia Land after the stream. Right now, focus on me!"
My stream aimed for a fairly free atmosphere, but I still needed to shut down this kind of side conversation.
Leave a topic that far off the rails alone and the whole flow would get disrupted. Besides, my chat wasn't some free-for-all bulletin board.
Though honestly, it was impressive they could even hold a conversation with chat scrolling this fast. Wild.
Wondering if some of the viewers might have hawk-like eyes, I gathered their attention back and continued in a light tone.
"Alright…. We've been going about twenty minutes now. Shall we start the event I prepared? Excited?"
The fact that people said roughly the same things every single stream was genuinely tireless of them.
But it was inevitable. I'd only just become a Plus Streamer — this was the period with more newcomers than ever.
A chat atmosphere I'd carefully sifted and settled several times over was bound to get messy under the sheer volume of incoming traffic.
Well…. No need to wear out my mouth making excuses.
If this had been the very start of my streaming career, maybe. But I was a proper one-month veteran now.
This was the stage where a solid concrete layer had formed — something a light breeze wouldn't shake.
If I just kept proving myself the way I always had, without getting dragged into the trolling…
The people who believed in me would actively flip this atmosphere. I could trust them on that.
"But… this place is a little cramped for the event I prepared. It'd be nice to have somewhere brighter and more spacious, right?"
I sent a small smile toward the chat scrolling so fast you could barely read a single character, then lightly pressed my hands together as if in prayer.
I'd recently discovered something new. Several hidden functions buried inside EP — which I'd previously thought of as nothing more than fuel for my Scissors Blade.
CP, which could create anything I could imagine.
LP, the foundation of my formidable strength and stamina.
And EP, which could call forth any phenomenon in this virtual world.
Using EP, surprisingly, even this was possible.
…Transfer!
Whoosh!
A sharp, unpleasant sensation like a cold wind slicing past my ear, and a mild dizziness that spun my vision.
But the result that little bit of discomfort produced was far too dramatic.
"And so…. Here we are. A freer, more spacious place! Please call it the Stage!"
"It's not recorded. From earlier until now, this has been live the whole time."
In the literal blink of an eye… the camera filming me, and I myself, had teleported into a space as wide as an auditorium!
The viewers looked thoroughly rattled by the sudden jump from a room into a vast hall.
Which was only natural. They'd thought it was live, and then the location had flipped as if someone had cut to a different shot.
To anyone staring at the screen the whole time, it must have felt like magic.
Of course, the cost had been considerable. No — quite steep, actually…. But I wanted to put the meaning on the fact that I'd actually pulled off a production I'd written on my bucket list.
If anyone asked me to do it twice, though, absolutely not.