Jealousy and Admiration Are Only a Hair's Breadth Apart
Nickname: Laiky. Real name: Hailey Chang.
She was one of Olive's small-time personal streamers — a so-called micro-streamer. Four years into broadcasting, she was still stuck hovering around the ten-thousand-subscriber mark, which made her a veteran of the small-time circuit by any reasonable measure.
There had probably been a time, back when she first started, when she had hopefully believed she might one day reach Plus Streamer status — or even higher. But the woman she was now had accepted reality. She simply hoped her viewers wouldn't leave, day after day, and kept streaming for the sake of making a living.
Damn it all…!
At any rate, the main content of this turbulent, long-suffering streamer was review broadcasts. Whether the item was currently trending or hopelessly out of fashion, she tried everything herself and shared her impressions with her audience. What mattered in a review stream was how impressive the product was — and how consistently she could bring in something new and fresh.
Lately, those review streams of hers had been utterly demolished by an invasive species that had appeared out of nowhere.
Viewers dropped again! It's all because of that Nia bitch!
That was right. The rising star of the review-streaming scene — no, a star so far beyond that description that her arrival had hit like a colossal meteor plummeting from the sky — the ultra-premium rookie, Nia. Ever since her debut, Laiky's channel had been in freefall.
Why had Nia's appearance led to the collapse of Laiky's broadcast? The reason was painfully simple. Of all the rotten luck, their content overlapped almost perfectly.
Laiky wasn't celebrity-level beautiful, but under good lighting and the right camera angle she could pass for reasonably pretty. Pairing that face with a decent voice, she would pull in viewers, then take on a little debt if she had to in order to acquire cheap Ooparts or trendy new products for her streams. That had been the engine keeping her channel alive for four years without going under.
But Nia… Ideal looks that put famous celebrities to shame. An endless stream of pure, genuine Ooparts. And that innate charm that sometimes slipped out without her even realizing it. Compared to Laiky, whose passion had completely died after her second year, setting them side by side was almost insulting — Nia was overwhelming in every single respect.
And when two streamers' directions overlapped this thoroughly… for anyone without a shred of personal affection for Laiky, there was simply no reason to watch the inferior version. That was the only conclusion that made sense.
But how the hell am I supposed to compete with someone who brings expensive Ooparts every single stream…?!
It was absurd. What Nia was doing was the equivalent of buying expensive artwork every other day just to flex. She could have sat in front of a camera like a doll and still been praised all the way into the mainstream — so why on earth was she doing Ooparts review streams of all things? The sheer lack of professional courtesy toward her own industry made Laiky's blood boil.
If she had to put a name to that feeling, it would ultimately be jealousy and hatred.
Perhaps because of those emotional reasons — and the real, tangible damage — her becoming one of Nia's anti-fans, a so-called Nika, was almost inevitable. She fabricated things Nia had never done, blew minor verbal slips wildly out of proportion, and engaged in behavior so ugly that even people with no interest in Nia would instinctively frown. That was why her defeat at the previous Broadcaster Beat Round still made her grind her teeth. As Nia's channel grew without a single scandal, she could feel the ground beneath the Nikas steadily disappearing.
Please, just one slip of the tongue…! A disparaging remark, a discriminatory comment, or even just endorsing some ideology most people find disgusting! The second I get something to work with, I'll set every community on fire!
And so Laiky was always watching for her chance. She monitored Nia's streams more diligently than most hardcore fans, cramming every word that left Nia's mouth into her head, eyes blazing as she hunted for anything that could spark misunderstanding or controversy. By the time it had become second nature, watching Nia's 100,000-subscriber celebration stream live was simply the natural next step.
Wh-what did she just say?
But the scene unfolding on her monitor left Laiky slack-jawed. The reason was simple. Nia had suddenly clapped her hands, teleported in an instant from her studio apartment to a vast stage, and cried out with a beaming smile:
Nia's somewhat excited announcement sent a cascade of messages flooding the chat — some full of anticipation, others full of doubt. That wasn't particularly strange. Anyone who had followed Nia for a while might have expectations, but new viewers were pouring in in real time. To people who had no idea how far she could go, a sudden dance number was more likely to register as a child's little talent-show act than anything else.
Th-this is…!
But among them, Laiky alone felt a kind of certainty. The confident pose with a finger pointed skyward. The natural smile aimed straight at the camera. And that thrilling beat that seemed to hammer against her chest. There was no doubt. This was no clumsy dance track cooked up in the twenty-second century. This was unmistakably…!
An Oopart. And not just any Oopart — a legendary hit that had almost certainly swept across the entire world at least once.
So unfair…
After a brief moment of silence, Laiky glanced at the chat window as it ignited like a wildfire, then bit her lip and glared at Nia through the screen. Those movements — arms and legs stretching long and free, as if she were hopping through zero-gravity space — were dance steps that drew involuntary admiration from anyone watching. And so, tasting a bitter defeat, Laiky could only lower her head as if quietly looking away.
She looks like she's having so much fun streaming.
This was no different from an earthworm crawling along the ground envying a bird soaring high in the sky. Perhaps she only realized that truth belatedly, watching Nia dance with such a happy smile. Laiky hung her head with a hollow expression and quietly listened to the lively music in her ears. She couldn't bring herself to look up. She had a gut feeling that if she did, she might accidentally become one of Nia's fans on the spot.
I'm such an idiot…
As a complete outsider who only knew K-pop when it came to dance tracks, finding this song in the scrapyard had been almost pure coincidence.
Nia. This data's still alive.
Hmm? Oh! Must've gotten wedged between some junk and survived. Mm… a Video CD? No, a DVD?
When you spent your time flinging mountain-sized piles of scrap metal off the scrapyard cliff to clear a path, Noise — with her sharp instincts — would occasionally dig up intact data. Ooparts. The odds were about as low as digging in the dirt and finding a fossil, but still, we'd pulled enough data to fill our hands, which was plenty satisfying.
And since this one had only revealed itself after a long stretch of that rather tedious, repetitive process, it would have been a shame not to put it to use somehow. Data that would have stayed buried in the trash forever if I hadn't decided to expand my territory. So it was lucky for both of us, really. The Oopart got to exist instead of vanishing, and I got something to hype up the atmosphere.
That should be enough to get the energy up… All right, time for the main event.
I took a good look around the stage — it still felt a little empty — then faced the camera with a confident expression and raised my voice.
"All right! So, did everyone enjoy that little performance?"
"Hehe, thank you. Well then, I'd like to get started on the event I prepared…"
I trailed off deliberately, drawing the sentence out, and signaled to Noise, who was crouched behind the camera. She seemed to understand my intention perfectly — she nodded and started tapping away at the laptop set up beside her. Which meant that, above my head on the stream, a sentence roughly like this should have appeared:
Until Only One Remains!
Nia's True-or-False Quiz!
What that short sentence meant was simple enough. From this moment on, every viewer watching the stream would participate — and only the one person who kept answering correctly would survive. A survival true-or-false quiz was about to begin!
"All right, let's get started right away! Who among you knows Nia the bes…t… huh?"
But just as I was about to carry on the stream as naturally as anything, my mouth locked up mid-sentence. Because when I glanced at the chat and the stream status, an unbelievable result had slammed into my field of vision.
…Why were nearly twenty thousand people watching?
Faced with a number that smashed every expectation I'd had, my mind went completely blank.