After the First Stream
After the first stream ended...
When I thought about the things I’d done to Lilith, I was honestly nervous.
Not just a little nervous, either. I was very nervous.
Honestly, it was way too obvious that I’d shamelessly sunk my straw in and used her as a stepping stone for my debut stream.
Even if someone with a conscience called me out for stabbing them in the back like that, I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
Because I really had done it! Not once, but twice!
"Hello!! Labellehar-nim!!"
"O-oh, yes! Hello, Lilith-nim!"
"If you're not busy, could I talk to you for a bit?"
Huh? No, wait—don’t people usually ask that before calling?
Who opens the call first and then asks if you have time?
And what did she mean, talk?
"Sure... I'm not busy, so of course I can talk. What’s going on?"
"Then, Labellehar-nim? You’re going to keep streaming, right?"
Gulp!
I was so tense I couldn’t answer right away.
Was this... one of those things?
Was she about to tell me not to keep backstabbing people like that if I was going to continue streaming?
...What should I do? Should I give her the Hanseong Department Store gift certificate I’d prepared just in case, as an apology?
Honestly, I thought I’d ridden my luck perfectly today, but if the other person was truly furious, none of that mattered!
"Y-yes... I’m planning to keep streaming."
"Then! Would you like to do a collab with me?"
... ... Huh?
"A collab?"
"Yes! We only talked for a short while today, but Ar-nim, your sense of timing was really amazing."
Lilith went on, even clapping her hands as she spoke.
"Uh..."
"And your voice is so clear and lively, too, which is really nice... Did you prepare for an announcer exam or something? Your pronunciation is accurate, your tone is great, and I really think you’re going to do well as a streamer."
...What? This doesn’t feel like forced praise.
It felt like she was sincerely complimenting me because she really thought I had streaming potential.
I’d wondered if she was being subtly nasty and insulting me by indirection, but there wasn’t the slightest hint of that. Then again, her voice itself didn’t sound like that kind of thing at all.
"If Lilith-nim is praising me that much, then I’m totally happy! Did I really do okay today? I was honestly super nervous because it was my first broadcast."
"You really, really were good. Have you streamed before? You handled Mallang-i-nim’s Discord perfectly, and you were great at reacting to chat and donations, too."
"Ah... Well, I’ve watched a lot of livestreams in general."
"Come on! Is watching and actually doing it the same thing? It feels like you were just born for this. You even had over a thousand viewers today, and you never stammered or froze up. You just kept talking so well."
With praise pouring in without pause, my heart thumped dangerously fast.
Heat rushed through my whole body, dopamine bursting out of me like a fountain, and I even drank some of the water in my tumbler for no reason.
...Getting praised by viewers feels amazing, sure, but praise from another streamer is weirdly even better?!
"Anyway~ if you’re planning to keep streaming, wouldn’t it be good for both of us to do a collab?"
On the Galaxy Train, there are all sorts of multiplayer content.
I’m not talking about Colosseum or clan wars.
"If you mean a collab, are you talking about the 'Please Take Care of Our Station' event?"
An event.
The lifeblood of modern mobile games!
Players want fodder that lets them pull new characters, and developers don’t want to hand that out for free.
At the same time, they can’t exactly force players into miserable labor, and players always want dopamine.
So they make events.
"Exactly! The 'Please Take Care of Our Station' event is multiplayer, after all. It has a little competitive element, too, and if we use the voting system on Pazik, I think it could make for a really good broadcast!"
The fun that comes from the relationships built by characters that burst out of a gacha roll in a glorious mess.
Revealing tidbits that the main story hasn’t fully covered yet, or clues that make you look forward to what comes next.
Simple mini-games that are just fun.
Challenge games with a surprising amount of difficulty that make you want to try harder.
Even the joy of tearing through a shop and scattering the rewards players absolutely love—as payment for effort—all over the place...!
Events were the very light and salt that let a mobile game stay enjoyable for a long time.
"You mean the event where you compete against a matched opponent to make the prettiest station, right?"
"That’s right~! Doesn’t that sound pretty good? If we just queue up raw without any setup, there are so many people who’ll snipe us that we won’t get broadcast material at all!"
Lilith let out a small laugh.
"And if it’s a content where you can draw something, there are always idiots who try to snipe it just to draw a penis somehow..."
Cough...!
Hearing the word penis come out of a woman’s mouth was incredibly jarring.
No, wait—maybe this was just the way girls who were close enough to each other talked casually?
Don’t panic. Don’t panic! There’s no need to wave around the fact that the core of my soul is male for the whole world to see!
"Ah... I know what you mean. There are people like that who just want attention any way they can get it!"
"Right? But if I collab with Ar-nim, we can enjoy the event together, and it’ll be easy to get great broadcast material, too. Forcing ourselves to grind the game just to empty the event currency sounds like it would actually be pretty fun!"
"Sounds good! Let’s do the collab! Although..."
It made no sense for a streamer playing the Galaxy Train not to enjoy the event.
But if you were a capable streamer, even when playing the same content, you still had to create broadcast material on your own!
For someone like me, who had to establish Streamer Labellehar by any means necessary, this collab offer was unbelievably delicious.
So I decided to get a little closer to Lilith and opened my mouth.
"...Aren’t you breaking your RP a little too much~?"
"...Huh?"
"You have a cat-girl idol setup, don’t you? But you haven’t kept it up at all since earlier."
"...A-aaah! Seriously! That’s so mean, danyaang! Ar-nyang!"
Lilith shot back with a very satisfying snort of laughter.
"You can’t even imagine how hard this voice style is, Ar-nyang! It’s terribly, terribly exhausting, danyaang!"
"Pfft...!"
"I don’t know what idiot said this setup was easy, danyaang! Thanks to it, I get teased to death every time I collab, and I feel like I’m going to die, nyaaah!"
Ah, that was satisfyingly crisp.
If you’re going to collab, isn’t this kind of ping-pong exchange the important part?
At the very least, when I collaborate with Lilith, I don’t think I’ll have to worry about that sort of thing.
"Then, Lilith-nim. Shall we start deciding the collab date and exactly what content we’ll be doing together?"
"I’m in favor, danyaang! First of all, tomorrow is... "
Lilith kindly told me when her schedule was open as a VTuber.
* * *
"Ugh... I should hurry up and wash up and go to bed."
It was already 1 a.m. by the time I wrapped up the collab planning and all the other random conversation I’d had with Lilith.
Had we talked for almost an hour? There were more things in common between us than I’d expected, so I hadn’t even noticed the time passing.
"You’ve worked hard, Lady Seah."
"...Hii, kyaaaahhhh!!!"
Just as I was bent over in front of the bathroom, trying to pull down my pants and panties, Elodie’s voice came from behind me.
No, waiiit! What? Why was Elodie here at this hour?!
She normally went back at exactly 8 o’clock?!
"E-Elodie unnie?! Why are you here at this hour?!"
"My, my, with Lady Seah’s first stream today, I simply couldn’t stand idly by."
"Huh? Don’t tell me... you’ve been waiting until my broadcast ended?"
Elodie smiled brightly, as if that were only natural duty.
Ugh! Meanwhile, I’d been talking with Lilith for an entire hour after the stream ended?!
I felt terrible...!
"Ugh... You could’ve texted me or something! I had no idea you were waiting for me."
"You weren’t doing anything unpleasant, so all you had to do was happily accept the congratulatory gift I prepared for you."
"A gift? Don’t tell me you’re congratulating me because I did my first stream today?"
At this point, the embarrassment was starting to feel so intense it made me wonder if this was some kind of hidden camera prank.
What kind of person gets congratulated for their first broadcast?!
"It’s nothing grand, but..."
I saw Elodie quickly turn toward the kitchen, and I followed the sway of her hips.
"Whoa..."
"I thought cake would be the best way to celebrate, so I prepared a few slices."
On the white marble table sat a slice of fresh cream cake loaded with strawberries and fruit, along with cheese and chocolate cake.
"I... I didn’t expect to be celebrated like this."
"Today is the day you first prepared and carried through something you wanted to do on your own, Lady Seah."
Elodie’s eyes sparkled with a pressure that was almost hard to bear.
"It was the first time I’d seen you doing something while smiling so brightly, Lady Seah."
"E-Elodie unnie..."
"So I wanted to celebrate today, and I hope you’ll be able to spend many more happy days going forward."
As she spoke, Elodie was about to light a candle—no! No! A candle was too much!
"W-wait! Elodie unnie, hold on! I don’t think we need a candle!"
"My? Then perhaps I should sing as well from here..."
"N-nooooo! What do you mean, sing with candles for my birthday or something?! Just! Just sharing the cake with you is more than enough!"
I hurriedly pulled my smartphone from the pocket of my shorts and snapped a photo of the cake with the flash on.
"This is the special cake Elodie unnie prepared for me!! I took a proper picture of it!"
"Oh my... Before, no matter how many gifts I prepared like this..."
Ahhh! Kwon Seah! What kind of life did you live?
If an older sister gave you a gift, you should be happy, right?!
Were you really living that recklessly just because of depression?
"Mm...! Things are different now."
I quickly took Elodie by the shoulders and sat her down in a chair.
Then, before she could do anything else embarrassing or even more excessive, I quickly sat in the chair across from her.
"Thank you for celebrating my first stream, Elodie unnie. I’m going to keep streaming brightly and energetically! Happily, too! So please keep cheering for me a lot, okay?"
"...Yes, I will certainly do so."
Under Elodie’s shimmering gaze, I scooped up a big bite of fruit cake with my fork.
"Nyam...! O-oh...! This is incredibly good? Where did you buy it? If I ever need to give someone a present, I’ll have to buy it from this shop!"
Was cream and cake sponge always this soft and delicious?
"My, my, of course I made it myself."
"Cough..."
So Elodie had baked three cakes just to celebrate Kwon Seah’s first stream?!
What kind of streamer gets this kind of celebration?!
I couldn’t possibly say I’d only eat one and save the rest for breakfast tomorrow!
* * * *
"One, two, three..."
After happily finishing breakfast, I took a shower and dumped my laundry into the hamper.
As I was about to leave the laundry room, my eyes caught sight of a luxurious drying rack.
Hanging on it was a set of Calvin Klein underwear and two pairs of panties.
There were other clothes hanging there too, but the important thing was the panties.
"...So I really wore this crap yesterday."
Why was there a pair of panties with a sky-blue ribbon on them, anyway?
Even while grumbling, I did wear them without saying anything because Elodie had prepared them for me.
But standing there and staring at the laundry made it impossible to ignore the thought that suddenly came to mind.
"... ... Is this normal? It doesn’t seem normal."
Was it right to change panties three times a day?
"What if something’s actually wrong with me? What if I need to go to the gynecologist, or what if I’ve got some disease? I’d really hate that..."
I got strangely scared, like a kid who didn’t want to go to the dentist.
Since this was, inconveniently, a woman’s body, I had no idea whether this was natural or not.
Sex ed sure doesn’t tell you whether the rule is for girls to change their panties three times a day!
"Hsss..."
No matter how I thought about it, there was no way I could ask Elodie about this.
Swallowing hard, I picked up my smartphone with both hands.
These days, if you search a little, the internet tells you everything, right?
...Right?!