Mic On
Three hundred and seven viewers. Most of them, I was pretty sure, had come after reading the clarification I'd posted on the community boards.
Calling it a clarification was generous. In practice it sat closer to if you've got a problem, come find me. I'd already uploaded proof that this ID was my one and only main account, not some alt, and anyone still determined to brand me a smurf rat wasn't going to listen no matter what I said. No point wasting energy on them. They were the breed people called trolls—the kind that forgets you the moment the next piece of bait drops, then vanishes. Ignoring them was better for my sanity.
Since I was already going to the trouble of clearing up an annoying misunderstanding, I'd switched the stream on with half a mind to promote it while I was at it.
"...so the account you're all looking at right now, MilkyWay#KR1, was not made for smurfing."
Their reaction was nothing like the one I'd pictured.
I hadn't exactly expected a chat drowning in every curse under the sun, but I had braced for something thin and lethal, ice you could fall through.
Contrary to my worries, the chat was peaceful.
I'd been ready, if it came to that, to hold up my student ID on stream, or the name-verification page on the Rioat site. They believed me without any of it. Because my explanation was perfect? Because my sincerity got through? Not a chance. Even if only one account was registered in my name, that didn't prove I hadn't made it for the sake of smurfing. Why they were being so mild about it—I didn't even have to wonder.
Because I was a girl.
If I'd been a man, would they have typed like this, all peace and quiet? No. The chat would already have turned into a lawless zone. Feeling a little hollow, I kept scanning the lines until one of them caught my eye.
"...Just Chatting?"
Just Chatting. Taken literally, it meant idle talk. In streaming, it meant a segment built around talking with the viewers. But that didn't sound very fun...
"I'm not exactly a great talker. Are you sure that's all right?"
Honestly, today was also that time of the month, and I'd wanted nothing more than to rest. Then I saw the viewer count, and giving up became impossible.
For a long while the broadcast had been a fly-buzzing ghost town of ten or twenty people. Now three hundred and eighty had piled in—nearly twenty times the usual crowd. In a spot like this, better to keep rowing.
"All right."
The moment I declared Just Chatting, the chat climbed so fast I couldn't check it one line at a time.
"Hold on. It's moving too fast. I can't read it."
With ten or twenty people I hadn't noticed. Once hundreds flooded in, reading became impossible. How did streamers with a thousand viewers—ten thousand—even talk to their chats? I was turning that over with no small amount of pride, wondering which line I ought to answer first, when one of them caught my eye.
Donations. Dones, for short. The dictionary meaning was simple support, and these days it was the word for the money viewers sent during an internet broadcast. Through them they passed a message straight to the streamer, or paid to have some clip played, and the whole thing mattered enough to swing a streamer's income. And that was something you had to switch on separately?
"How do you even set that up?"
Back when I'd streamed under the name KZ Galaxy, the donations had come in just fine even though I'd never set anything up myself. Because of that, I hadn't known the system was something a streamer had to configure at all. Well... the manager had done all of it. How was I supposed to know? I'd thought I still had a fair amount of broadcast experience. Clearly that had been a serious delusion.
"So I log in here and turn donations on. That's it, right?"
Fortunately the viewers walked me through the settings one kind step at a time, and after a few minutes I managed to finish.
I'd expected plenty of people to leave while I fiddled with it. Most of them stayed and waited, and at last the first donation on my stream went off.
"Kya! That scared me!"
The alert was much louder than I'd expected, and I jumped.
"...Thank you, FirstDonor, for the 1,000 won."
Honestly, I think anyone would jump if a huge sound suddenly blasted through their earphones. But a kya? A kya? I had never even imagined a shrill little-girl scream like that leaking out of my mouth.
No—wait. Was little girl even the wrong way to put it? I was a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl now. A scream like that wasn't all that strange. I'd always been someone who startled easily at loud noises, so I wasn't the weird one.
"...I just startle easily at loud sounds. That's all."
I failed to notice that scrambling for an excuse only made it worse, and the excuse came out anyway.
Of course the viewers did not stop teasing me. Only when a new donation came in did they finally let up.
Those jerks...
I'd lowered the volume ahead of time, so at least I didn't jump twice. Really seventeen, huh.
"Thank you for the 1,000 won. Yes, born in '07. Seventeen. That's right."
My conscience twinged, but I gave them the age written on my current birth date. They'd taken the salary I'd earned over those three years, so I figured I was allowed to treat the three years I'd lived as a pro as if they were truly gone. Count the year I'd spent as a trainee and I'd gotten four years back. Twenty-one minus four was seventeen. The math checked out. At least, that was what I decided to believe.
"Right. I haven't even had the entrance ceremony."
The entrance ceremony was one of the things I'd been worrying about most lately. I'd gotten a little used to a woman's body, but I didn't know the first thing about living as a woman.
Asia server rank. The account I'd used on the Asia server back in my pro days had been Chaser—and a fairly high one, even among Chasers. Project A had ten ranks in all. From the bottom: Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, Grandmaster, Immortal, and Chaser. The highest of them, Chaser, was rare enough that a single server held only somewhere between twenty and a hundred and fifty.
"I can't give you the exact rank, but I'll say it was at least above Master."
That was why I kept it vague. Even if I told them Chaser, these people wouldn't believe me, and with the account from those days gone, I had no way left to prove I'd been one.
I felt a weird shift in the chat and hurried to shut it down.
"Hey—please don't bring up other streamers so much."
Why were they fighting about someone else in my chat?
"And don't just talk among yourselves. On my stream, you talk to me."
I'd learned that if you didn't stamp the shit-stirrers out at the very start, they fouled the whole chat. So I figured I at least had to say that much.
I'd as good as brought the switch down on them, and they didn't look the least bit unhappy. When people have their behavior restricted, they chafe, and they demand you loosen the reins. These people, though... they were enjoying the restriction far too much.
...Had I said something wrong? Or had they eaten something that didn't agree with them?
The road of internet streaming was still long, and rough.