No Reason to Refuse
A job I had no reason to turn down — one that offered me nothing but upsides.
A collab.
The word meant exactly what it sounded like: a proper streamer teaming up with another streamer to broadcast together. Sure, sometimes a well-known civilian got the label too — but generally, a collab only counted when both parties streamed as a hobby or a profession.
Whatever the technical definition, the word itself felt utterly foreign to me. Part of it was that I'd deliberately kept my head down, focusing on building my own channel from the inside out, never creating an opportunity for something like this. And part of it was that I simply hadn't been in this world long enough to know the industry at all.
…I'm too busy to keep up with other people's streams. I've got Ooparts to salvage, content to plan, and a mountain of studying just to function in society.
The silver lining was that my body didn't actually need sleep, and while I could get mentally drained, physical exhaustion never really hit me. Even so, time was far from abundant. Streaming, recording, filming, brainstorming — the work never ended. So even if we were colleagues of a sort, I had zero bandwidth to keep up with streamers I had no connection to.
That's why I figured collabs were completely off the table for a while… and yet here one is, landing in my lap first. And not just any collab — a proposal from a ridiculously big name.
Menchi, though. Thinking back, we weren't entirely unconnected. I clearly remembered her sending her own viewers over to my stream as a gesture of goodwill. If she'd done it with malicious intent — to sabotage my atmosphere — it would have been deeply unpleasant. But those viewers had settled in without causing chaos, blending into the room almost immediately. Given how much that had helped me, I couldn't help but think of Menchi in a positive light.
"Hmm. I don't have anything that needs a huge time investment right now… but a collab, huh…"
I carefully set my laptop on the chair and turned my head to look at Noise, who was standing there blankly. Come to think of it, she was the one who'd shown me this email. That meant she had something to say about it. Rather than stew over it alone, I decided to ask her directly.
"What do you think, Noise?"
"…You should do it."
"Ahh. Strong recommendation. Got it."
Nod, nod.
As if to confirm I'd understood her perfectly, Noise bobbed her tiny head up and down in emphatic agreement. It was an unusually clear expression of will from someone who typically drifted through each day without a hint of worry or concern. That rare reaction only made me more interested in the idea of collabing with Menchi.
A proposal from someone who always jumped at every opportunity but never delivered was one thing. A proposal from someone who quietly, steadily did her job without fanfare? That felt far more trustworthy. If Noise — busy enough just editing my videos — was pushing this hard, there had to be real value in it.
"Hmmmm."
"…Look at this."
"Hm? Oh, this is…"
I'd already been leaning toward giving Menchi a collab a try, but Noise seemed to think I was still stuck undecided. She picked up the laptop I'd set down, pulled something up on the screen, and showed me the material.
Two pieces of information floated there. The first was a set of metrics confirming that Menchi was a massive streamer with a full eight hundred thousand subscribers. The second was a short video clip, apparently cut from one of her streams.
I'd seen the first one before. Having received a favor from her, I'd figured I ought to at least know who I was thanking. A quick search had revealed that she was a rising star like me — and the numbers had genuinely shocked me. Fifty thousand subscribers in six months of streaming, and now, just hitting the one-year mark, already at eight hundred thousand. That kind of growth was exceptional by the standards of both the world I'd come from and this one. I'd been left wondering why someone like that would drop viewers into my stream.
Hmm… her fandom's called the Croquettes. Fry up Menchi and you get croquettes, so that's the name? Feels pretty on-the-nose.
Still, naming a fandom after the streamer herself was probably better than me calling mine the Blueys just because I liked the color blue. Every time I mentioned my fans, some part of me still wondered what blue had to do with anything. A name directly tied to the streamer was more intuitive — easier to grasp.
Alright, so that first one's just establishing who Menchi is as a streamer… what's the second?
I studied the second piece of material Noise had handed me with a thoughtful expression. The thumbnail looked like a cut of casual banter, but without playing it there was no way to know what it actually contained. The solution was simple enough: just hit play.
I took the laptop from Noise, sat on the bed with it on my knees, and started the video. After a cleanly edited beat of silence, the frozen woman on screen — Menchi — naturally picked up a topic.
The Menchi on screen had blue hair that shifted in tone from root to tip like a gradient. She burst into a distinctive laugh at the chat, then continued talking to her viewers.
Why had Menchi dropped her viewers into my stream?
No matter how hard I'd wracked my brain, I could never figure it out — and now the secret unraveled with almost insulting ease. The reason was… that Menchi was a fan of mine.
Blinking in mild bewilderment, I stared at the Menchi on screen. She seemed to finally grasp the magnitude of what she'd done, the color draining from her face as she suddenly shouted.
With that, she killed the camera and left her viewers stranded with nothing but a black screen and a scrolling chat. Perhaps enraged by such cruel treatment, the chat on the right side of the screen erupted into a full-blown riot.
Even I — who'd barely watched any of Menchi's streams — found this bewildering. I could only imagine how her fans felt. Their fury at being cast adrift on a black screen was entirely justified… though wanting to pound her with a meat mallet felt a little extreme for a female solo streamer, didn't it?
Ah — Menchi means minced meat, so it's fine? It's not Menchi, it's mince? Well, then I guess there's nothing to be done about it.
The Menchi on screen suddenly flipped her camera back on, staring into the lens with a flushed face as she shouted.
Click.
The clip cut off at the precise moment the chat had thoroughly shredded a Menchi who appeared to be in a state of mental fragility, and she let out a scream no woman should ever produce. I turned to Noise with the queasy feeling of someone who'd just peered into an abyss. She looked back at me with an expression that said she understood exactly what I was thinking, then opened her mouth.
"…Despite how she looks, Menchi is one of the most talked-about solo streamers right now."
"Uh, yeah…. Well, I can definitely see the appeal. She's entertaining, I'll give her that."
"Mm. If you collab with her, it'll definitely help you, Nia."
A unique, four-dimensional beauty who thrived on banter with her chat: Menchi. Just from watching that clip, it was obvious — unless you had zero interest in female solo streamers or preferred quiet, low-key broadcasts — that once she caught momentum, viewers would keep pouring in. There was a delicious quality to the way she danced between polished humor and raw chaos. The kind of thing that made you keep watching without realizing it.
"Plus…"
"She really likes you, Nia."
"Ah, ahaha…. Hard to argue with that after she said all of it out loud."
And on top of everything, she clearly had a strong fondness for me. Of course, it could have been a stream persona using me for content — but if that performance had been acting, she had the makings of a generational talent.
What more was there to think about? The conclusion was simple.
"Alright then. Let's give it a shot. A collab."
I'd already figured I'd need to try collabing at some point for the sake of my channel. And if my first one was with a massive streamer who was clearly fond of me, I had no reason to refuse. There was nothing but upside.
That last bit she showed was a little scary… but hey, what could go wrong?
I briefly replayed her final antics in my head, then decided to let that part slide. Even that kind of thing could come across as personality on stream.