Even a Fish Bun Without Red Bean Paste Still Has Value as Bread
Home sweet home. It was one of those idiomatic expressions people from English-speaking countries often used when they finally made it back after grinding through hardship in some far-off place.
I supposed the saying held true no matter the era or culture: nowhere settles the body and mind, nowhere offers peace, quite like home.
Which was exactly why, determined to savor the feeling a little longer, I canceled tomorrow's scheduled stream and tacked on one more day of rest.
In other words, I took what was supposed to be two days off—a regular holiday plus one extra—and stretched it into three. A thoroughly unprofessional, self-indulgent declaration if there ever was one…
Naturally, the viewers who'd been waiting for my break to end had plenty to say about the sudden, unannounced hiatus, all of them demanding to know what kind of nonsense this was.
…That opinion wasn't wrong in the slightest. If anything, it was exactly the kind of thing I needed to hear right now.
It felt almost ridiculous to notice this late, but apparently my sense of consideration for my viewers ran a little thin.
Maybe it was because I still didn't quite see myself as a proper streamer—more like someone stuck somewhere awkward between viewer and broadcaster.
Leaving people hanging with zero explanation, vanishing like I'd gone dark, really wasn't a decent way to treat anyone waiting on you.
I used to be a devoted viewer myself. How did I forget what that felt like?
Streaming was never something I handed out one-sidedly in the first place.
No matter how hard I worked at it, without people watching, the whole act was structurally nothing more than an empty echo.
And I wasn't even earning money—I earned CP from viewer chats. Their attention and affection mattered that much more.
Once that fact settled properly in my head, a brief moment of thought was all it took to change my mind.
Cancel the sudden break I'd declared today. Turn the stream on as originally planned.
Though… it wouldn't be the fully locked-in, serious kind of broadcast I usually ran.
The world's only dedicated Ooparts review stream, run by a newcomer who also claimed the mantle of a virtual idol—the kind that had once been popular long ago. That was Nia.
Having recently hit a hundred thousand subscribers and earned Plus Streamer status, she was riding that momentum into explosive growth, a hot potato drawing attention from countless people at this very moment.
[ Post : Compiling every Ooparts that's appeared on Nia's streams so far ]
[ Thread : Isn't Nia's face top-tier on Olive? ]
[ Video : I tried cooking the dish that viral creator salvaged myself ]
The absurd generosity of casually tossing out rare Ooparts that money alone couldn't buy. A face of such violent beauty it made you question whether she was even human. And on top of the diligence of streaming five times a week, a slightly airheaded personality that made that perfect image feel just a little more approachable.
A monster known only to those in the know just days ago was now stretching a hand into the mainstream, growing at a ridiculous pace as if she meant to conquer Olive itself.
That said, her radical, overwhelming rise hadn't left everyone free of questions or resentment.
When a spotlight that bright falls on someone, the people nearby get swallowed by a darkness so deep they barely register at all.
The silver lining, at least, was that Nia's steady effort in crushing toxic viewers head-on had broken the mood before the jealous ones could coalesce into any real faction.
Individuals might personally resent or envy her, but the fact that her haters never managed to build a massive, tightly knit community was genuinely fortunate.
Meanwhile, thanks to the Ooparts she occasionally dropped as posts—ones too awkward to turn into streams or edited videos—her personal community site, Nia World, had become about as lively as any major community platform.
At Nia's own request, moderation was light unless things got truly out of hand, which made free speech the rule of the house. And on Nia World's free board, the usual idle chatter was rolling along as always.
I wish
What had been a two-day break had, on the day a stream was supposed to happen, turned into three days off in a row. Her regulars, left with a hole in their schedules, naturally vented their disappointment and did whatever they could to soothe the gloom.
They desperately wanted to watch the stream that had been planned for today. But after a full month of fighting off every troll and naysayer who'd attacked her since she started broadcasting…
There was a quiet consensus that, without knowing what her circumstances were, they should hold back from demanding she turn the stream on.
Post: Just had a hilarious idea lol
Picture this: Nia, who declared a break today, just flips the stream on with zero explanation lol. Reason? She's bored.
Then she wrecks a song stream while waiting for viewers to show up.
Pulls out a game she never finished last time and runs it all the way to the ending, soaks in the afterglow a bit, chats with chat.
Then the screen cuts and Noise suddenly shows up for a dance stream lol. Absolute cinema.
When she gets tired of dancing they do a watch party, mini-games, wander around nearby and talk, and then out of nowhere the emergency alarm goes off and a Virtual Beast shows up holy crap
Nia grabs her sword like she saw it coming, takes the beast down in style, casually mentions they've been streaming a while, hits the twelve-hour mark, and ends the stream.
Thoughts? I was just daydreaming but wouldn't a stream like that be insanely fun? Heading to Nia's email with this proposal right now
Whether the shock of an unscheduled break had completely fried someone's brain, a viewer's pure fantasy diary had now appeared on the free board.
The people who lived on this board, though, seemed used to meaningless posts like this already—they left a few casual replies and prepared to scroll right past.
And they would have. It should have meant nothing at all.
For whatever reason, Nia wasn't the type to turn a stream on unless she had something that would properly hold viewers' attention.
This post had simply flipped her usual format on its head and filled itself with the least likely scenarios imaginable.
But did the person who wrote it know? That a post dashed off just to get a few laughs…
…was about to rack up dozens of likes and hundreds of comments?
Mere minutes after Nia herself left that reply on a completely meaningless post—
notifications fired off to everyone who'd set alerts for her stream, with no announcement of any kind.
And on Nia's channel, which had been sleeping quietly offline… a bright red light flicked on.
In a situation where not a single person expected her to go live, it was a full ambush stream—a slap to the back of the head for everyone who'd half given up.
For real for real not a lie
People thrilled that Nia was here. People intrigued by the unusual start. People already settled in with their mats laid out, already satisfied. The moods on display varied, but the thought underneath was the same.
I really didn't think Nia would show… and she drops in like a surprise like this!
And those who'd already been startled once by the news that she was live hurried over to her stream on Olive—only to be startled all over again.
Roughly a month and a half since Nia had started streaming—almost two months, if you stretched it—and for what was essentially the first time, the title listed no content at all!
What on earth was about to happen? Sensing something unusual in the air, her regulars entered the stream half excited, half tense…