The Joint Broadcast
A week had passed, and a lot had happened in it.
First, the viewer count dropped. Or, to be precise, the bubble blown up by all the aggro from the showdown with BJ Mia had finally popped. Lately the numbers were holding between a hundred and a hundred and fifty. That was still higher than before the controversy, so I was plenty satisfied.
Second, I hit Diamond. It was genuinely moving. Through Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday I fought off the gatekeepers' sabotage and at last claimed the tier. That glorious moment!
Viewers had watched me hardstuck in Platinum since Season 4, and they'd piled the stream with missions, calling a Diamond climb a safe asset—there was no way I'd ever make it. Thanks to them I walked away with five thousand Water Balloons in a single day. The most I'd ever received before was a little over a thousand, so Diamond really was something else. I cleared the missions with room to spare, and because so many Balloons had come in, the bonus points I was granted dwarfed the reward tied to the original mission. A classic case of the navel outgrowing the belly. Riding that luck, my points now sat at 420. A little more and I wouldn't be looking at a mere upgrade—I could buy an entirely new Level 3 ability. Just staring at the total was enough to leave me full.
And third! After last week's one-on-one, BJ Mia apologized, properly. She'd been under a lot of mental strain, she said, and in the middle of it she'd taken it out on me and challenged me rudely. I spent a while soothing a teary Mia who insisted she truly regretted it, and a little familiarity took root between us.
She knew plenty of BJs, she told me, but didn't have a single close female one. Viewers and Water Balloons turned everything into rivalry and jealousy, so she only ever grew close to the male BJs she gamed with. I was a small-fry BJ. Mia wasn't conglomerate-tier, but she was a solid mid-sized firm, and getting friendly with her couldn't hurt me. I comforted her, and we dropped the formal speech.
That familiarity didn't stop at polite words. To my surprise, she invited me to the joint broadcast she, Lac, and Clemoomoo ran every Friday evening.
Only one of the three ever actually went live for that weekly collab, so the viewer counts were beyond imagining. I'd watched a few times—somewhere around six or seven thousand. On episodes with a really fun topic, or a popular guest, they'd even broken ten thousand. Ten thousand viewers: the line people called the conglomerate standard. For a small-fry like me to appear on that broadcast was an incredible opportunity. At the very worst, I could put the name BJ Hani in front of more than five thousand people. For me, it was nothing but upside.
For Mia, who held a stake in the joint broadcast, it was a double-edged sword. If I went on and failed to show any presence at all—or worse, caused an incident—the blame would rest wholly on the two of us. Me, and the Mia who had recommended me.
"So you recommended me anyway?"
I wanted to answer that feeling. Which meant I had to make my presence unmistakable on that broadcast.
Fortunately, I knew the joint broadcast they ran fairly well, and I still had a full 420 points to spend on abilities. And the theme of this week's collab—already announced in advance so viewers could take part—was voice. Anything you could do with a voice was fair game to show on stream. Singing, impressions, funny bits and videos made from edited audio: if it could win over the viewers and the three BJs sitting as judges, the category didn't matter.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday... three days left. Earn a few more points and find the ability that gives the best return. Prepare thoroughly. Don't become a burden on Mia, who invited me.
This was a moment that called for thorough preparation, and a strategy.
The Internet Broadcast Gallery was on fire again today. Several major-league broadcasters were currently laying low after remarks that had caused a public stir, and in that quiet the joint broadcast run by Mia, Lac, and Clemoomoo was more than enough to talk about.
Public opinion was not kind. Broadcast viewers skewed young, and for them the keyword fairness was a sensitive nerve. Questions of qualification were bound to come up. Set beside earlier cases, this one looked wrong, and sharp, disapproving eyes were bound to turn on Hani and Mia.
Canceling now won't change public opinion. It might even make it worse.
Mia had contacted me yesterday. She was sorry, she said—she'd pushed things too fast and made me a target for nothing. So I told her. Thank you for the chance. And look forward to it.
I agonized for a full day. How could I pull the best possible result out of this? What ability, tied to the theme, could truly draw viewers in?
Singing? Sure. It was clearly a good choice—an ability that would help on the joint broadcast and on every broadcast after it. But it was too common. People in this country love to sing. There are that many skilled singers, and the average level is high.
Points have crept up to 435... If I buy singing abilities with this, maybe Vocalization 2, Timbre 2, and Rhythm 1?
I'd get a lot better. I'd felt what a Level 2 ability could do well enough while climbing to Diamond. At that level, friends and people who knew me might say so-and-so could actually sing a little. But not bad, or pretty good, would never reach the mark I wanted.
There are too many people who sing well. Unless I'm overwhelmingly good, actual-singer good, it's hopeless. There's nothing special about it.
On Friday, probably half the other guests and the viewers joining in would sing. I'd be remembered as a BJ who sang a bit well, and then I'd be buried without a trace of impact.
Something almost no one else does... but where being good is obvious, and it sparks the viewers' fun and curiosity.
Now was the time to spend five years of watching personal broadcasts. If I were the one in the audience, what talent would I lose my mind over? The truth was, I'd had something in mind from the start. That was why, when Mia called yesterday, I could tell her to look forward to it with a measure of confidence.
All that remained was a repertoire built to pull the biggest response possible, and the work of finishing it.
One day, two days... I cut my stream time down to about three hours and poured every minute left into practice. I watched related videos, hunting for any trick that might make me even a little better, recording constantly, comparing, recording again... repeating work so simple it grew boring, all to bring the details to life.
Public opinion was still burning. Now and then a viewer came into the broadcast and tore into me with the crudest words. I made a point of ignoring them and sharpened the knife. A keen blade that would shock every last one of them.
And at last, the day of the showdown arrived.
Discord is buzzing. Me, Mia, Lac, Clemoomoo... and, as if my name alone had been judged too light to carry the night, two more guests booked on top of me.
"Hello! I'm BJ Myamya, variety-game specialist. It's truly an honor to appear as a guest on the Miracle Joint Broadcast. Please take care of me!"
"I'm not just gonna anyway my way past getting roasted last episode. I have returned at last! Point me at anything and I'll do it! Deserted-island tours, boarding a squid-fishing boat, you name it! I'm BJ Bintz, the reckless one who hesitates at nothing."
"Whoa, the energy is unhinged right from the jump. Really. I am very much looking forward to today's broadcast. Hello, viewers! Your very own Clemoomoo, big brother of Miracle. I'll do my best today, as always, to make this a good broadcast and a fun time."
"I'm Mia."
"Haha. The folks ahead of me fired the room up so hot I figure I can just gratefully squeeze my way in. I'm Lac."
The introductions are over in a flash. In that same span the viewer count was swelling at a terrifying pace—already past five thousand and pushing for six. Chat was climbing so viciously it was nearly impossible to read, and the screen kept getting drenched, one burst after another, in every color of Water Balloon image, like fireworks going off.
As a viewer, this was the kind of broadcast where I used to simply become one with that enormous current and do nothing but laugh and chatter. Now I had to be one of the pillars actually steering it.
"Hello. I'm BJ Hani, a newbie in my second week of streaming. Twenty-four this year, fourth-year reservist. Please be good to me. Hooah!"
Most of the viewers didn't actually know me. The one-on-one with Mia had hit so hard that they simply took me for a game BJ whose main was Legend of League. I needed to break that assumption first.
"Huh. You're really a fourth-year?" Clemoomoo sounded delighted. "That'd make us practically the same cohort. Where'd you ship in?"
"The 306th Replacement Depot. But do you know what actually pissed me off?"
"Hm? What pissed you off?"
"What was it?"
Everyone caught the ball like the broadcast pros they were. I kept an eye on the chat—its firepower hadn't dipped—and carefully started unreeling a story I thought might land.
"I mean, come on. Grades 1 through 3 are all active duty anyway, and I only got a 3 because my eyes are bad. If I'm getting shipped off regardless, they could at least let me feel good about it. That's mean, don't you think? Just stamp every active-duty case as Grade 1."
"So bad eyesight got you a Grade 3 on the physical, you entered the 306th Replacement Depot, got sorted into the 30th Division, and from there you were dragged off to a front-line artillery battalion?"
"Yeah. It was the front, kind of, but the old barracks were the moment I really saw red. And it didn't even stop there. The week I got my unit assignment, they hauled me straight into cold-weather training—"
"Your ID gender digit does start with a 2, right?"
"..."
"..."
Maybe he decided it was perfect material for lifting the early-broadcast mood. Clemoomoo started tossing out verification questions—barracks life, army songs, the code of military conduct, issued gear, on and on. Somewhere in there he got sucked in without noticing, and ran the first verse, the second, the third, and then clear off the edge of the joke.
"Back in my day, you hear me?! They issued cigarettes. That's what I'm saying."
"Ugh, Cle-Boomer. Hyung, maybe take it down a notch. Keep this up and the rest of us get filed as fossils too, wholesale."
"...A complete uncle."
"Ghk!"
"Ahem. Understood. That's enough army talk. Let's move things along."
The mood was high enough. It was time to start.
"All right, first up. A devoted regular from Mia's broadcast. Says they're going to seize everyone's ears with a song. Whether that turns out to be a good thing or a bad thing..."
"Oppa! Did you just talk down a special member of our room?"
"N-no, I didn't. Then—we're starting!"
The delivery was a man scrambling to escape Mia's cross-examination. In that instant, bright music bedded in underneath. The Miracle Joint Broadcast—Mi from Mia, Ra from Lac, Cle from Clemoomoo—had begun.