The First Voice Reveal
"Waaaaah!"
I couldn't help the cheer as I tore into the box. Inside, cushioned in neat layers of bubble wrap, sat a microphone. It looked almost plain at a glance, but the thing had cost several thousand dollars.
The old me couldn't have dreamed of a mic at that price. Now I could buy as many as I wanted. My spending had been creeping up lately, though, so I was at least trying to be frugal.
Every month a fortune landed in my account, but I'd been told very little of it was actually mine to spend. Only after I became an adult — once some option or other kicked in — would I be free to stop worrying about money. For the time being it was draining away on taxes and on the people who'd helped build my identity. Even so, a decent amount was left over.
Which was exactly why the money I'd burned on Icarus still ached down to the bone. I hadn't been in my right mind back then. Throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars on a game, of all things... At least my gear was fully built now, with nowhere left for the money to leak. Small mercies.
"Mmm-hm-hmm~"
I hummed my way through the Korean manual, puzzling out how to set the microphone up. All it said was to plug some cable into the tower. I nearly called Bora, but my pride wouldn't let me ask someone else to handle something this simple. I wrung my brain dry and got the mic installed anyway. As expected — I was a genius.
"Ah... ah..."
I leaned into the microphone and ran a test, and the sound came through clean. A triumphant smile pulled at my mouth.
Once I was back in my old room, the place had been upgraded to the hilt. The floor tiles were a fresh, bright white, and the gear — already good before — had been swapped for the very latest models. Maybe that was why everything ran so fast, and I liked it so much it fit me perfectly. Fastest really was best.
I booted the computer and started the stream with practiced ease. Today's plan was League of Relics. Unless you bought skins, it didn't cost a thing, and of every game out there it was the most popular besides. Every match unfolded differently, and there was a pleasure just in watching. Unlike an RPG, with its patterns worn smooth and predictable, League probably owed its popularity to exactly that — you never quite knew what was coming.
HanaBoraHaru has started a broadcast.
Viewers trickled in almost as soon as I went live. The title — Grandmaster on every role — pulled people even without a mic or a camera. After about ten minutes, thirty of them were watching. Modest, if you wanted to call it modest, but for a no-name channel that counted as a success.
I glanced at the chat scrolling up and grinned. Catching the microphone, I blew into it — hoo, hoo — and then I spoke.
"Hello, everyone~"
My voice was pleasant to listen to. I figured the viewers wouldn't find it uncomfortable. The old one had been a perfectly ordinary man's voice and nothing more, but this one was good enough that I could have done voice acting.
Chat that had been crawling along at about one message every ten seconds erupted until a new line was hitting every second. I looked at it and spoke.
"I bought a microphone! So now I can talk while I play!"
I said it in a bright voice. Wasn't talking with your viewers in real time the true flavor of internet streaming? I hadn't realized, until now, how inconvenient it had been to hold every conversation through chat alone.
Watching the chat lose its mind, I understood, more or less, why they were shocked. A girl in elementary school streaming wasn't uncommon so much as nonexistent. Girls that age were busy doing anything other than going live.
"It's not a voice changer???"
Did I even need to modulate my voice? I pulled up Task Manager and showed them that nothing was running. With the proof that clear, the reaction turned even wilder than before.
"I mean... there's no way I'd sue anybody over something like that. Just getting to talk with the viewers who came to watch is enough for me."
Unless someone dropped actual degeneracy or outright obscene comments, most remarks were fine to let slide. My viewers hadn't gone anywhere near that line, so the thought was simply, do I even need to? I had no intention of trotting off to a police station the moment anything happened. To the people in chat, though, those words seemed to land like a hand reaching down to save them.
"Um... my name is Hana. I'll be ten next year. I'm supposed to start school next year, too. I used to live somewhere else, and then we moved."
Of course, I was someone who had already graduated middle school, high school, and university. Going back into elementary school was strange enough on its own. Slip even three or four years behind your entering class and people treated you like a fossil — and I wasn't looking at fossil status. I was looking at crude oil. The brand-new teachers working at that elementary school were probably right around my original age.
"Um... no comment on where the money comes from. For now, I'm jumping straight into queue!"
Bora had told me it was better not to say where the money came from, so I left the details alone. In one sense it was fair to say I earned it myself, but from another angle people could just as easily decide I was raking it in without lifting a finger. Offer a life this comfortable in exchange for a single strand of hair, and if you asked ten people, a hundred would shoot their hands straight up. Plenty of folks who worked all day, and had to keep at it for a full month just to make a few thousand dollars, would get a stomachache watching how I made mine.
Hmm...
To think I could even have thoughts this philosophical. After I'd briefly turned back into an adult body, my brain seemed to have grown another layer. I could even breeze through the Korean spelling questions I used to get wrong! Haru's cram session had been a huge help, of course, but it was fair to say some of it was my own effort, too.
And so the queue locked onto my first victim of the day. I was playing mid — of every role, the one I trusted most. Honestly, if I just poured endless hours into it, I was confident I could hit Challenger on mid alone. Someone had first-picked Lux for mid, so I counterpicked Irelia to teach them a proper lesson, crushed the lane, and dragged the team to a win. I liked the raw mechanics this body came with. It was almost frightening, wondering how far they'd go once I grew. Could I actually take rank one?
"I really am ten. And that is absolutely not a lie."
I stated the fact without flinching. In my original body it would have been a lie, but the me of now was a tiny little thing just about to start elementary school, so it was the truth.
Not long after the win, though, the viewer count shot up. I hadn't seen that coming.
The audience swelled out of nowhere, and with it came a growing crowd of people saying strange things. Put all of their comments together, and the conclusion was that I wasn't an elementary schooler at all — just some guy running a voice changer.
"I don't use any program like that."
I showed the people who wouldn't believe me the facts. A Task Manager window with nothing running was the proof, and besides, no voice changer in existence put out a voice this good. The viewers who had been watching my stream from before took my side, and bit by bit the people who had come over from Kim Ina's broadcast began to come around.
What startled me was the count suddenly hitting a hundred. Normally I was grateful just to have thirty. Was this what becoming famous felt like? Watching the number climb, I smiled a victor's smile on the inside. However you looked at it, more viewers was a good feeling.