Sister Collab (1)
"I'm heading out!"
The bright, energetic shout of her daughter rang out first thing in the morning, and Mother, who had been in the kitchen, called her back with a question.
"You've been going out a lot lately. Did you get a boyfriend?"
"No way. I'm going over to Oppa's!"
In an ordinary household, that answer would have been a relief. The middle-aged woman's expression, however, turned faintly complicated instead.
"Since when were you that close with your brother?"
"We've always been close. And I told you over dinner last time — I started doing tutoring with Oppa."
"...Alright. Don't come home too late."
"I'm not a little kid. I know!"
No matter how you looked at it, she seemed far more excited about going out to play than about sitting down to a tutoring session. But what was there to say about that? Stopping a younger sister from visiting her older brother on the weekend would have looked strange to anyone.
Still, she couldn't quite shake the unease. So she asked her husband instead, who was leisurely working through his breakfast.
"Do you know anything about this?"
"Hm? About what?"
"You went over the other day with some homemade side dishes. ...Is he doing alright?"
At his wife's carefully worded question, he paused mid-meal and sank into thought. More than the question itself, he wondered what that brief hesitation before it had meant.
Was she asking because she truly wanted to know how her son was doing? Or was it something else...?
He hoped it was the former, but even he couldn't be certain what was going through his wife's mind. They were family, and yet a wall of years he had never witnessed stood between the two of them. Charging in with the intent to fix things might only make it worse.
Even so, he wanted them to grow closer. That they needed to get better — that much was certain. In that case... the best thing would be for the two of them to work it out themselves.
"Why don't you just get in touch with him yourself? It's only natural for a parent to ask how their child is doing."
"......"
She couldn't find an answer for a long time. Even she herself probably couldn't have fully named what sat behind that expression.
Today, once again, I was streaming my heart out.
Come to think of it, it had already been more than ten days since I started broadcasting. ...Was that still a short time? Yeah, it was. The second the chat so much as flickered a little too hot, my mental gauge emptied out and I had no idea what to do with myself. Thinking about it that way, I still had a long, long way to go.
Would I ever become a major streamer like Jjangjjangwang someday?
So far, at least, I seemed to be growing well enough. Current viewer count: two hundred seventy. A little down from yesterday, but yesterday's explanation stream had come with the juicy talking point of Jjangjjangwang dropping by, so that was fair enough to write off.
"Aah! Wait, wait! Timeout! Cut me some slack just once! Aah, aaaah!!"
My thoughts had wandered completely off the map, and the enemy jungler did not miss the opening. The gank landed, and I died in the ugliest way possible — one sad little badger, reduced to a cold corpse at the foot of the turret.
Without a shred of hesitation, I assembled an excuse and pushed it out of my mouth.
"That one was unavoidable. The enemy jungler's griefing is way too much!!"
"Please stop slandering Teemo. Let's be honest and admit he's kawaii."
"And from where watashi is standing, this is a conspiracy... They definitely spun up a snipe queue just to ijime watashi!!!"
"It's not an excuse. The enemy top's skill is no joke... He's definitely Challenger!! There's no other explanation for watashi getting stomped like this."
Yeah. Fine. I'd admit it — the "enemy top is Challenger" bit had been a complete throwaway line.
But the smurf part? That actually felt right. I was not even joking. I was not the kind of player who got rolled this hard in this elo.
"Fufu. See that? See that?! This is watashi's honmono skill, desu!!"
Amazingly enough, we won. Our bot-lane Jinx had been an absolute best-in-class bus driver, steering the whole game with terrifying competence. Of course, my Teemo had put in a brilliant shift as well and made sure everyone felt my presence. Especially that electric rush when the mushrooms started popping off around the Baron pit and the enemy team's health bars just... dropped.
"From now on, please call watashi Hana-chan Who Beat a Challenger Smurf. Hehe."
Whatever anyone else wanted to say, I was not listening. Right now I was too busy toasting myself, drunk on the sweetness of victory.
"Ah! eTripleWin-sama!! Thank you for the 20,000 won, arigato! Anata daisuki♡"
While I ran through the thank-you reaction, a thought snagged at me. For the size of my viewer count, the donations seemed to come in pretty well. Female streamers did tend to pull that way, sure — but even accounting for that, it felt like a lot.
And maybe the biggest reason I felt that way was this person.
Known around here as the Chairman, they had been steadily hurling enormous donations into my stream. The really astonishing part was that they never typed in chat even once — they only ever talked through donation TTS.
"...Ah. ZIA-sama. This much money!! 350,000 won, hontouni arigatou gozaimasu!!! Anata daisuki♡"
I scrambled to pull myself together and react properly. It made me curious, suddenly — just how rich did you have to be to throw around money like that? Richer than SAX, meaning Yewon-noona?
Hmm. Not that chewing on the question was going to spit out an answer.
♪♬♩
"Eh?"
In that instant my phone unfurled a beautiful little melody. The caller was none other than our adorable Sea-chan. What was she calling about first thing in the morning?
"Moshi moshi?"
"Oppa! I can come over to your place right now, right?"
"...De? Right now?"
"Yeah."
"...It might be a little chotto inconvenient right now."
"Why?"
"I'm streaming."
"Ah, you did say you were streaming, huh?"
"Sou da. So later, once the stream is over..."
"That sounds fun! Then I'm coming now!"
"...Eh? Nani?"
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The call was already dead. I sat there clutching the phone, trying to process what had just happened, and only a beat later realized I was in serious trouble.
...Maybe I should just end the stream.
That was the thought as I turned my eyes back to the monitor — and found the chat racing upward at a terrifying clip.
Ah. I hadn't muted myself.
This was a bigger problem than I'd thought.
"Eh? Wait! Suicide is dame yo!! And it's not a boyfriend!!"
I gave the viewers a quick introduction. The person who had just called was my little sister, and she had announced she was coming over to the place I was living on my own.
The last message vanished while I was still reading it. Hmm. The manager was earning their keep.
Anyway, it was a relief. I had forgotten to mute, but luckily Sea's voice didn't seem to have gone out over the stream. If the viewers had heard what she'd said, I would have had a nightmare of a time explaining why she had called me Oppa.
That said, I still did not want Sea appearing on stream. There was no telling what kind of trouble it might cause later — and more than that, unlike me, a total outcast, Sea was a social butterfly. If she went on stream and her classmates found out...
My meager imagination couldn't even begin to picture the fallout.
Which was why I had been planning to wrap the broadcast a little early. Professional pride or not, I couldn't put a stream ahead of family.
"Minna sumimasen. Since imouto-chan is coming over, I'll shimai the stream here for today!"
"Really! Would you please stop threatening me with your lives?! That's super off-putting!"
It was something I noticed now and then while streaming — my room had a surprising number of toxic viewers. I had wanted a clean, wholesome broadcast, so why...?
Anyway. Nobody was going to break my resolve this time. Nothing mattered more than family.
"Gazua!!!"
That was, unfortunately, an extraordinary amount of money. But I had to pay our manager and Yewon-noona their salaries, so I didn't have a choice.
Sea-chan. Oppa's sorry...