Broadcast-Crazy Bastard (3)
The second map we barely cleared was a straightforward one where you just had to kill the monsters that swarmed you. Ignoring the bow they blatantly gave us at the start with a big “use this,” I charged ahead alone, snatched a club from one of the monsters, and started smashing my way forward. I completely tuned out Arine shooting arrows from behind and just kept swinging that club like a madman.
Not only my viewers but Arine herself was cracking up at every single thing I did. I already knew she was a streamer with great reactions, but I had no idea she was this good. And it didn’t feel forced at all. After dating my ex, I learned there are two kinds of women’s laughter. One is genuine, when something’s actually funny. The other is the polite kind—“Well, if you’re not going to laugh, it’ll be awkward, so I’ll laugh for you.” But Arine’s laughter right now didn’t have even a hint of that politeness. Sometimes she was laughing so hard she could barely breathe.
She was a female streamer. She could’ve tried to look a little more graceful for the sake of her image, but she wasn’t holding back at all. Of course, my playstyle was objectively weird. I was doing things in a completely different way from everyone else, purely for the sake of broadcast angles. That didn’t mean I wasn’t trying, though. I looked for fresh plays, but I still gave it my all to win. That’s why the viewers couldn’t really curse at me—they could only laugh and call me crazy.
And the strange thing was, the more genuinely Arine laughed, the more my confidence kept rising. My movements became more natural and bold. The bolder I got, the better her reactions became. I had no idea what she was thinking when she laughed like that, but there’s one thing every man knows: when a beautiful woman genuinely enjoys what you’re doing, even nonexistent self-esteem can shoot through the roof.
In fact, the viewers’ reactions had already drifted a little out of my focus. At some point, I was completely zeroed in on making Arine laugh. Of course, there was still the calculation that if a top-tier streamer like her found it funny, regular viewers would too.
“Huh? I’ve literally never seen that before either. What is it?”
“What are you talking about? You have to open these no matter what. I’m curious. Whoa— what the hell!”
“Stop laughing and get this off me! I can’t see anything!”
Of course, if I claimed I wasn’t trolling at all in the name of satisfying viewer curiosity, that would be a lie. But since it was all for broadcast content, there was no way a pro like Arine wouldn’t understand. The whole point of these ad streams wasn’t to win the game with serious hardcore gameplay. It was to show viewers streamers having fun playing games.
But.
If you could play in a fun way and still win, that was the absolute best outcome. Arine’s stable gameplay—which definitely wasn’t bad—combined with my fresh plays meant we weren’t falling behind in speed at all. Even though we died quite a few times, we still managed to secure the victory.
“See? I told you. This is how you win.”
Anyway, my choice to go left in the first round and my “Club General” play in the second round had drastically shortened our time. Anyone could see I had carried the team, so Arine acted like she was acknowledging me too.
My own viewers were busy praising my plays too. Hmm. Looks like my judgment was right after all. Though telling Arine to step on the trap and tank it with her body in the last map was probably a bit much. But it really was the fastest way—what was I supposed to do?
While I was roughly checking the public opinion through the chat, the host came out and started our interview.
Arine smiled as she gave her comment.
If she had fun, that was enough. After all, this would probably be the last time we ever met. How many more chances would a hako streamer like me get to collab with a massive top-tier streamer like Arine? Leaving her with this much laughter and good memories was already a pretty happy outcome for me.
I put on a satisfied smile, steadied my breathing, and answered.
“I liked how pretty the death scenes came out.”
That was my honest impression.
“How was it, everyone? Did you enjoy the ad stream?”
Arine scanned the chat that was reacting quickly to her words. She hadn’t been able to check the chat properly while hosting the ad stream, so she was catching up now. If the public opinion had been too negative, she’d have to consider reducing the number of ad streams. But she was certain that wouldn’t be the case this time. After all, even she had been so focused on the bizarre streamer in front of her that she couldn’t pay attention to the chat either.
The ridiculous things he kept doing were so absurd and funny that she’d felt like she’d turned from a streamer into just another viewer. It was almost surreal.
And just as her intuition had predicted, the viewers’ reactions were more than good—they were explosive. Even when she prepared high-quality content with all her heart, the chat didn’t usually fly up this fast. This kind of reaction only appeared when she did something like those slightly risqué challenge dances that were trending online. She hadn’t expected to pull this much entertainment out of an ad stream, so her mood improved even more. At this rate, even if she used it as a YouTube source, no one would complain that ad streams were boring.
“Right, right. I seriously thought I was going to die laughing. Mr. Do Doyun. He looks so ordinary but he’s pure madness, isn’t he?”
The face of Do Doyun that Arine had seen through the cam was plain. A skinny build and slightly hunched shoulders. Not ugly, but nothing that stood out either. The kind of face you’d get if you grabbed any random guy on the street and looked at him—well-maintained, but hard to call handsome. And because he looked so ordinary, he didn’t seem like the type of person who would be overflowing with that kind of crazy energy and high tension.
If you asked whether that made him unlikable, the answer was obviously no. If anything, he was likable. For example, the part where he pushed himself in front of the trap first for the sake of broadcast content.
“Arine, you’re closer right now! Hurry up and step on that and die! That way I won’t fall!”
“Excuse me? Me?”
“You don’t want to win? We’re on the same team! We are team! You understand?”
Remembering him passionately yelling like some soccer coach from somewhere made a small smile spread across her face. At the very least, he looked endlessly serious about broadcasting and had zero pretense about himself.
She hadn’t met that many men in real life, but most of the ones she had encountered were exhausting. If it had been another male streamer, he probably would have gone ahead first and sacrificed himself instead of pushing her forward. Because that would look cooler. That was the kind of man Arine understood. And even if they weren’t streamers, most men tried to show off in front of her. How great they were, how cool they were, how strong their spirit of sacrifice was, and so on. They worked hard to look impressive in front of Arine.
She understood why, to some extent. It was because of her appearance and her charm as a woman. Still, it was burdensome when men who weren’t even interested in her acted that way. But Do Doyun was a little different from the men she had met. He let out ridiculous screams, did bizarre things, and didn’t hesitate to put himself in humiliating situations. He had zero intention of trying to look attractive as a man in front of her. Or rather, he had zero intention of preserving any dignity as a human being at all.
A monster crazy about broadcast angles. The term broadcast-crazy bastard fit him perfectly. Because such men were so rare, this type of person felt much more comfortable to Arine. The first impression she had gotten of Do Doyun had turned out to be exactly right.
With the donation exploding, the viewers’ reactions poured out like a flood.
“Did I really laugh that much? It was funny in a chaotic way, but that much?”
To be honest, it did feel that way. She laughed on stream a lot even when she wasn’t genuinely amused, but this time it had been so funny that she laughed like she was watching a comedy show as a kid.
Arine felt strangely embarrassed by the positive reactions from the viewers. It was true that she had enjoyed herself, but openly showing her emotions like this felt a bit uncomfortable. She also wondered if she had laughed too crudely. The thought kept circling in her head.
“Ah, okay. If you guys like it this much, I’ll try to arrange a collab sometime later.”
Well, the chemistry was good and people seemed to like it. Seeing the viewers—who liked it even more than she did—react that way, she casually threw out a promise she wasn’t sure she would actually keep.
Year-end regular meeting.
Arine’s team held these regular meetings at the end of every year. A streamer of her size had quite a lot of staff, and each of them handled very different tasks. Checking this year’s results against last year’s goals and praising everyone was something Arine quite enjoyed. It made her feel like a CEO.
Arine, who had arrived quite early before the appointed time, was browsing the content request board on her fan cafe. Whenever she had some free time, she would check it like this. As expected of a top-tier streamer’s fan cafe, there were a ton of posts, but the ones that kept catching her eye were the requests for WGM. It seemed like there had been even more of them lately. Arine swept her hair back with a sigh.
……I get it. I really do.
She knew exactly why the viewers were doing this. Right now, Naty was in the middle of a huge WGM boom. It was no exaggeration to say that most of the top streamers were doing it. The demand was enormous, and there were even cases of relatively unknown streamers blowing up overnight because of WGM.
Still, if it were male streamers, maybe. But generally, the demand for female streamers to do WGM was supposed to be low. Unlike virtual streamers, the majority of viewers for female streamers were male, so not many people wanted to watch their favorite female streamer flirting with another man.
But Arine was a bit of an exception. From the very beginning, she had strictly separated her broadcast persona from any fan service. Of course some fans would still develop feelings, but at least on stream she never showed that kind of attitude. She had the concept of a “cool, easygoing female friend,” so her position was more about bantering and joking around with people. That was probably why she received more WGM requests than other female streamers.
Most top female streamers were already doing WGM anyway, so there weren’t many people who would openly express strong opposition to it.
Click.
The sound of the conference room door closing snapped Arine out of her thoughts on her phone.
“Um, Arine. Can we start the meeting now?”
“Ah, yes. Sorry.”
A staff member from the live streaming team carefully spoke to her. While she had been lost in thought looking at her phone, it seemed the meeting preparations had finished.
“Then we will now begin the 2025 year-end regular meeting for streamer Arine’s team. Everyone, applause please.”
Because it was a company run by a streamer, the atmosphere wasn’t overly stiff. The staff smiled and clapped in a relaxed mood. Arine didn’t like overly rigid atmospheres either. If she had, she wouldn’t have become a streamer in the first place.
“First, we’ll start with the live streaming team’s goal report…”
The live streaming team, goods team, branded ad team, and so on. They reported to Arine by comparing the goals set at the beginning of the year with the current achievement rates. Since Arine’s broadcast had grown explosively over the past year, she had thought most of the goals would have been met. And that prediction was mostly correct.
“Most of the goals have been exceeded? But the only team that didn’t… is the YouTube team.”
At Arine’s words, everyone’s eyes naturally turned in one direction. The YouTube team and editors sitting on the right side lowered their heads. Seeing that, Arine let out a small sigh inside.
YouTube was her biggest sore spot. Even though they had poured enormous resources into it for three years, the actual profit—excluding sponsorship ads—was still far below her expectations. And Arine knew the reason why.
“I know. YouTube team, you can raise your heads. It’s not your fault. It’s all my fault.”
She smiled as she looked at the YouTube team. It was only natural, perhaps. She did various kinds of content, but her position was close to a variety streamer focused on live broadcasts. Aside from the occasional low-chat collabs, there weren’t many sources in her streams that could be used for YouTube. Knowing that, she couldn’t blame the YouTube team. They were doing their best, and this was entirely her own fault.
I really need to do something about YouTube. I need to.
Even while thinking that, she was always busy, so she kept putting it off, and now another year had passed like this. But she couldn’t keep doing that forever. She knew that too. She knew that YouTube was only going to become more and more important. It was a major influx route, and a lot of younger audiences came in through YouTube. There were even more people who focused on pulling out YouTube clips from their lives and uploading those instead of streaming live. The influence of YouTube was enormous.
Yeah. Even if it’s small. Let’s try to make at least some content for YouTube.
She carefully asked the YouTube team a question.
“Is there any content that’s trending in the streaming scene lately? Something that I could realistically do?”
“……Um… well.”
“It’s fine. You can be honest. I have some time, so I’m thinking of squeezing in whatever I can to make some sources.”
With looks that said “Can we really say this?”, the YouTube team exchanged glances with each other. Then the head editor, who had the highest position among them, nodded and spoke to her as if he had steeled himself.
“……Well, wouldn’t it be WGM after all? Just attaching the keyword WGM multiplies the existing view count by several times.”
WGM again?
Feeling like the entire world and even the gods were pushing her to do WGM, Arine let out a deep sigh.