Nightfall - Hidden Route (1)

Ever since making streaming her profession, Winter's daily routine had begun the same way every morning: hopping from site to site and searching for her own name.

The so-called "ego search"—typing your own name into related sites—wasn't exactly great for anyone's mental health. Still, Winter had never once been seriously wounded by it.

No matter how thoroughly she scoured the internet, posts mentioning the streamer Winter never numbered more than ten a day. She couldn't get hurt even if she wanted to.

In Winter's opinion, hate comments were a hundred times better than indifference.

At least hate comments meant someone was paying attention.

Haa… this is seriously draining…

In a way, it was only natural.

By the standards of internet streaming as a whole, Winter was nowhere near famous. Once, after a chance collab with a popular streamer, her viewer count had briefly climbed past three thousand—but that was it. Her current ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠average audience was nothing special.

She'd told Yujin and her viewers that she was a mid-tier streamer, but she knew the truth better than anyone. At best she was clinging to the very bottom of mid-tier. Strip away the spin, and she was nothing more than a small-time streamer.

She prided herself on decent looks and solid physical skill, but plenty of other streamers had those too. Winter simply didn't have that certain special something that would set her apart.

So she had settled for barely hanging on at the edge of mid-tier—streaming not with burning ambition, but just enough to earn a little pocket money.

Until yesterday. The stream with Yujin had flipped the world she knew completely upside down.

"…Holy crap."

That morning, mid ego-search as usual, Winter typed her stage name into the bar and nearly had her eyes flip inside out when more than seven thousand posts came back.

She hadn't known it at the time, but overnight a staging controversy over Yujin and Winter's stream had exploded on Power Gallery, flooding the boards with thousands of posts in a single night.

And that wasn't the end of it.

Drama-focused YouTubers who specialized in the latest news and hot topics were busy name-dropping her, indirectly advertising her for free.

Collab proposals had poured in from countless major streamers she'd only ever seen through her screen. And it didn't stop there.

She couldn't tell how much of it was genuine, but even companies had started contacting her!

After years of scraping by as a mid-tier streamer, Winter reeled under the shocking sense that the entire world had changed overnight.

There was just one thing that left her a little disappointed.

"What are you looking at? You got something to say to me?"

"…No. Nothing."

Everything happening around her right now was the result of one thing only: Yujin's insane physical ability and skill.

That was the truth. At a glance it looked as if the whole world surrounding Winter had transformed—but objectively, nothing about her had changed at all.

The world still wasn't particularly interested in Winter. What people cared about wasn't Streamer Winter. It was Yujin.

The only reason she was getting attention at all was because Yujin wasn't a streamer himself—he'd appeared as a guest on her stream.

Which meant that if, for any reason, Yujin stopped showing up on her stream, all of this would vanish like foam in an instant.

No. That absolutely cannot happen!

How long had it been since a golden opportunity like this landed in her lap? Winter didn't want to end her career as a small-time streamer. She wanted to make ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her name known as a major one.

To do that, she first had to successfully finish the collab streams with Yujin. And if, along the way, she could fully show off her own charm, she might even convert some of the people who flocked in for him into her viewers.

In the end, the conclusion was unavoidable: if Winter wanted to rise as a major streamer, Yujin's help was essential.

"Hey, Oppa… Is there anything uncomfortable about streaming? Hmm? If there is, just tell me. I'll take care of everything."

Winter beamed as she said it. Yujin frowned as if he'd just seen something truly foul.

"What the hell. What did you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠eat wrong this morning?"

"…."

"Get lost. Stop shoving that ugly face of yours at this older brother of yours."

If she hadn't needed something from him, she would have just gone off on him like usual. Swallowing the impulse boiling up from deep in her chest, Winter barely managed to keep a pretty smile on her lips.

The stream was about to start. There was no need to air their messy sibling relationship in front of the viewers.

"W-Welcome! Hello! Your adorable Winter is back on air!"

It was a line she'd delivered countless times since starting her streaming career. But in this moment, Winter felt absurdly proud of herself for not biting her tongue while saying it.

The moment the stream went live, the viewer count skyrocketed at a ridiculous speed. Normally her streams hovered around a thousand. Now the number was climbing by a thousand every second.

"Th-This can't be…"

She'd somewhat expected something like this, but there was a world of difference between imagining it and watching it unfold with her own eyes.

Barely a minute after going live, the viewer count had already blown past twenty thousand. Numbers that had left mid-tier behind and were nipping at the heels of the majors—Winter's face gradually went pale.

No matter how much streaming experience she had, this many people packing into her stream was a first.

Even as viewers cheerfully flooded the chat, Winter was too flustered to run the stream smoothly like usual.

And then—

"Hello, everyone. I'm Streamer Winter's older brother. Nice to meet you again today, following yesterday."

Having somehow sensed that Winter wasn't her usual self, he stepped forward in her place.

The moment Yujin appeared on stream, the chat window exploded. An incomparable number of people were focused on him compared to yesterday—but unlike Winter, Yujin showed no sign of being rattled.

In a way, that was only natural. For the past twenty years as a hero, the thing he'd done most was stand before strangers and put on a friendly smile.

"Thank you all so much for the enthusiastic interest. Honestly, unlike my little sister, all I can do is play games, so receiving this much cheering is making me feel a bit shy."

Watching Yujin buy time by chatting with the viewers, Winter managed to regain her composure. Her heart was still pounding, but she opened her mouth as if nothing was wrong.

"What… Since when has my Oppa been acting like the owner of this stream? Don't tell me I've been raising a tiger cub all this time?"

Confirming that Winter was back to her usual self, Yujin took a step back so she could take the lead for today's stream. For better or worse, Winter was his little sister—and she was clearly the owner of this stream.

"Alright, for those of you who watched my stream yesterday, and for those who newly joined today. What you all want is none other than a continuation of yesterday's Nightfall stream, right?"

"But you know, to be honest—I already know how the game progresses after hunting Ariandel in the tutorial. Because for the smooth progress of today's stream, I played the game a little bit yesterday."

"Of course, I only played a little as a taste—but even so, there's one thing I can guarantee to all of you."

Winter said it with a thoroughly triumphant air.

"No matter what you're imagining right now—today, you'll get to see something beyond that."

With that, she grinned and launched Nightfall.

It was the start of Winter and Yujin's second collab stream.