Chapter 70: I've Gotten All Puffed Up
"Whoa..."
I came back into my room with my arms full of the snacks Bora and Haru had bought me. They were nothing but my favorites, and just looking at them was enough to make me smile.
Of course, I was going to make them last this time. Polishing off the whole pile in a single day would not have been very good behavior. I drifted over to the desk. It was time to go live.
The routine repeated itself every day. Once lunch was over I streamed through the afternoon, and doing it day after day had earned me a little crowd of regulars. The microphone—a cheap twenty-thousand-won thing—had died before I could even speak into it, so I'd ordered a more expensive one.
👁 Viewers: 35
Barely a few minutes after I went live, people came pouring in. Among tiny channels, this counted as about as premium as a tiny channel got.
The mic was due any moment, so I talked to the viewers by typing. Streaming was honestly a lot of fun. Chatting with people in real time gave me a thrill no other job could match.
Grr...
I watched their teasing scroll by. They weren't wrong. In the jungle, where so-called brain mechanics mattered most, my hands didn't do me much good.
Not completely useless—mechanics were essential once a fight broke out. But after the game passed the midpoint, in the vision war and the scramble for objectives, the limits of my head showed themselves plain.
I didn't have the strength to drag a game I'd blown open early all the way to the end. That was why jungle, and only jungle, so often ended in a reverse sweep. There was nothing I could do about it. I had been getting better lately, but still...
A soft elementary-school brain simply did not belong on a battlefield churning with cyber gladiators.
I was Master with zero LP. One loss and I'd be demoted straight back to Diamond. I had to win the next game with my life on the line.
I queued with a grim look on my face. The chat, for its part, stayed perfectly calm.
And thirty minutes later...
Defeat
"Aagh!"
I tore at my hair, launched myself out of the chair, and thrashed around on the bed. I'd played fine. The team was the problem. It really was a team-luck coin flip of a doomed game. No matter how well I played, if a teammate was a hole, there was no winning.
In low elo you could cover a hole to some extent. The higher the rank, the harder that hole was to patch.
My rank had dropped to Diamond. Drained of all motivation, I had no choice but to sit back down in the chair. A demotion was a demotion, but the stream still had to go on, didn't it?
"Hmm..."
Last time someone asked my age, I'd said I was going into third grade next year. Not a single person believed me.
Bora had told me not to show my face if I could help it, so maybe once the microphone arrived the misunderstanding would clear itself up. My voice was an ordinary little girl's voice.
Today just wasn't the day. I shut off League and booted up Icarus. There were still plenty of gear slots left to finish, so with practiced ease I ran my card and bought Cubes without limit.
According to Bora, the money I earned was like a spring that would never run dry, so long as I didn't cosign anyone's debts. So, following her word, I was spending however the mood took me.
If even Bora wasn't saying anything about it, it had to be fine, right? With a solemn face, I started rolling Cubes again today, chasing the options I wanted.
Lately my days had been wonderfully full. I'd wake up, watch TV, and charge on sunlight. After a little homework, I'd charge on sunlight again over lunch.
Then I'd do my stream, and because the winter sun set early, I'd go out for dinner in the evening with whichever of Bora or Haru hadn't left work yet.
A nice, full daily routine had taken shape. Lately, though, my stomach felt all wrong. It was the feeling of sunlight refusing to go into my body anymore—the way a battery might feel if you overcharged it. Clutching my bloated belly, I told Bora.
"Bora, my stomach's all bloated..."
"You okay? Everyone in the lab's already gone home... Can you hold out until morning? If not, we'll go to the hospital nearby right now."
But I couldn't be bothered to go outside. A hospital, over a little bloating? And it was only as bad as I could stand, so I told Bora I could hold out until morning.
"Here, I'll pat your back."
"Mm..."
Bora patted my back. I felt whatever was stuck in me start to go down. Sure enough, Bora had the healing touch.
"Ugh..."
I realized, all at once, that I'd forgotten to open the curtains last night—the sunlight pouring in from outside was stabbing at my eyes. I opened them. Something felt wrong. It was like I was wearing clothes too small for my body.
"What...?"
My dinosaur pajamas couldn't possibly be this small. They were the roomy kind, proud of their generous fit; unless I'd turned into a pig, there was no way they would have shrunk. Waving my hands this way and that, I pushed myself up in bed.
My line of sight seemed higher. Had my room always been this small? Normally, when I got out of bed, my feet hung in the air for a moment before they found the floor. Now they touched even while I was sitting. Short legs and all, dangling had been the usual state of things.
I had no choice but to call in the relief pitcher—the first person who came to mind whenever something went wrong with my body.
"Bora!!! Mmph!"
Startled by how big and full the sound came out, I clapped a hand over my mouth. It was supposed to be a child's voice. What came out now belonged to a grown woman.
Until a moment ago I'd been too fogged with sleep to notice, but now I understood. My body had gone completely wrong.
From the hall came the sound of someone sprinting closer. At this hour there would be only one person in the office: Bora. The door flew open, and there she was.
In a teary voice, I said to her,
"Bora... I think something's wrong with my body."
But contrary to what I'd expected, Bora stared at me the way you stare at a complete stranger, bewildered, and said,
"Who are you?"
Haru came into the lab today all smiles, same as always. Very few people in the world actually enjoyed going to work.
Ask an office worker on the street whether they liked heading into the office, and nine out of ten would go stone-faced and ask if you were joking.
Haru, though, could be that one.
"Hm-hm~"
Waiting at a light, she pulled out her phone and flipped through the gallery. It was full of pictures of Hana. Haru had always liked her nieces and nephews when the relatives got together, and Hana's existence had become an enormous joy in her working life.
At first the little life-form had frightened her a bit, but spending time with Hana had made it obvious she was nothing but a child. Once Haru understood she was a kid still full of a purity the world hadn't stained, her favorability toward Hana shot straight up.
And the workplace that had been clinging to the edge of the red had come fully back to life with Hana's arrival. Not only had it swung into the black—bonuses nobody would have dared expect came pouring out.
Under those circumstances, not one employee at the Starlight Institute could dislike Hana. Everyone liked her.
Having come in early, Haru stopped by Hana's room before she went to the office.
But sitting there in tears was a grown woman with the exact same hair color as Hana. Beside her, Miss Bora was placing call after call with a stricken face.
"Huh?"
Haru could not accept the scene laid out in front of her.