Chapter 6
It had been two weeks since I started playing games on my Just Chatting stream.
The first thing I realized while streaming...
was that I wasn't good at talking.
"Ah, so, the thing is..."
I stuttered all the time, and I frequently let some weird slip of the tongue slip out while talking.
"Ah, so I get up every morning and have sex... Ah, no, wash my face."
Some people said it was cute and that there was a market for it, but I couldn't help feeling so ashamed of myself.
"Khaaah..."
Until last month, doing bizarre things like this hadn't made me feel ashamed, embarrassed, or mortified.
'Is this because I became a woman...'
Come to think of it, in anime, female characters often blushed bright red first, so maybe it wasn't that strange...
'Ha, what kind of knowledge about women do I have if all I know comes from anime?'
Ding—
It felt like a bell had rung in my head.
It was about time to start streaming, but I couldn't muster the strength to move.
But today was Friday.
'I can't get branded as a streamer who took Friday off to go out after only two weeks of streaming.'
Just then, an idea suddenly came to mind.
'If I'm bad at talking... shit, what do I do?'
Before I could even finish thinking that, some bizarre thought took over my mind.
"Fuck! I forgot! There was some great idea, but what was it?!"
While I was agonizing over it, I made eye contact with a child through the curtains of my semi-basement window.
I was wearing a hoodie and shorts.
At noon, someone had caught me making a scene at home in nothing but a shabby hoodie and shorts.
'...I should start streaming.'
Having been caught off guard like that, I suddenly felt an urge to turn on the stream.
'If I don't let it out on stream, I'll die of embarrassment...!'
I immediately started the stream and greeted my viewers.
[Jia, aren't you going to play a game?]
Seeing one viewer's chat, I fell into thought.
Games... Of course, I played games normally, but I hadn't played any since I started streaming.
Basically, people can't focus and talk a lot at the same time, and I liked games that required concentration—puzzles, FPS, and MOBAs—more than brain-off games like RPGs.
"I should try playing a game sometime."
[Have you never played a game before?]
"Ah, I have played games, but you mean I should play them on stream. Are there any popular games these days?"
The games people mentioned in chat had viewerships of 90,000, 80,000, 70,000, even 55,000.
Of course, they say it's good to play a mainstream game, but I needed to find a new game.
'A game with hardly any viewers.'
If I played something like that, people's attention would turn to me.
Even with an average of 50 viewers, I needed a game where I'd appear on the first page—in other words, among the top five streamers when people opened it.
[Otherwise, how about Eid Chronicle? I heard Sahyang's looking for streamers to play with this time.]
At those words, I perked up.
Sahyang was one of Twitch's popular streamers.
300,000 followers, at least 3,000 viewers, and an average of 8,000—a massive top-tier streamer!
'She's looking for streamers to play with?'
I immediately checked out her stream.
"Oh, really~ Right, right. Oh, exactly. Ooh, this class has a pretty small player base, but you're quite high-level."
The stream had been going for over two hours, and judging by the title, she seemed to be interviewing streamers to play with.
I immediately opened the donation window and sent her 10,000 won.
[LeeJia01:Hello, how long will you be holding interviews?]
"Oh, the interviews? It's one now, so... until around two-thirty?"
As soon as I heard that, I downloaded the game.
Her current viewership was 9,000. I could collab with a streamer who had 9,000 viewers.
And it wouldn't be a one-off collaboration; we'd keep playing the game together.
'At least a week. Even if it's one episode a day, that's seven episodes minimum.'
On top of that, Sahyang had 400,000 subscribers, and aside from full-length gameplay videos, her average views ranged from 150,000 to as high as 400,000.
This was a jackpot, plain and simple. I downloaded the game and signed up right away.
#
"All right, next... Lee Jia?"
"H-hello."
It was my turn before I knew it, and when she called my name, I entered the map to meet her.
A lot of thoughts ran through my head, but in the end, one thought stood out.
'Don't adopt some weird persona.'
"Nice to meet you. Let's see... Ms. Lee Jia, what class do you play?"
"Ivan."
"...Pardon?"
Her voice was tinged with confusion.
The reason she was taken aback was simple: Ivan was a character with an insanely difficult control scheme.
Of course, Ivan dealt a lot of damage and was very tanky, but no one played the character.
Why?
Because the controls were insane.
Unlike other characters, who basically chained skills together and used only a few skills consistently depending on the situation, Ivan used every skill as part of his regular rotation.
On top of that, every time you used one of those skills, you got a penalty, and you had to execute a perfect combo while ignoring those penalties to deal explosive damage.
"...Isn't Ivan a trash character?"
"Mm."
Ivan was definitely a trash character. And since I had no talent for games, picking such an absurdly difficult character as my first was practically suicide.
But why did I choose this character? Simple.
'The story.'
In the Eid Chronicle community, Ivan was known as a so-called 'romantic pick.'
Of course, the term meant a character with trash-tier performance that only certain players got high on for the sheer thrill of playing. But once that became a meme, it was a different story.
While the game was downloading and I waited for my turn, I searched YouTube for Eid Chronicle.
And among the results, I found a channel called 'Sam-ban.'
The creator mainly played Ivan. Their overall views were lower than other YouTubers', but there was very little variation between videos.
'An average of 30,000 views, a low of 27,000 except for the newest or oldest videos, and a pretty respectable high of 500,000.'
Eid Chronicle had only been out for a year. Would you believe those kinds of numbers?
'You'd believe it, but anyway.'
"I'll go with Ivan."
"Uh... not many people play Ivan. Have you played this game much?"
"No, this is my first time."
"Huh? What? Then why...? Wait, don't tell me you don't know Ivan's a bad character..."
"I know this is a bit rude, bringing up another YouTuber, but there's someone called Sam-ban."
At that, she seemed to know who I meant and said, "Aha~"
"I watched them play and got completely hooked on Ivan. I just... want to start with the romance and end with the romance."
I told her matter-of-factly.
I instinctively knew she wasn't trying to get carried by a bunch of veterans.
So far, two members had been selected.
Her, her editor, and two other streamers: three were almost complete beginners, while one had some experience with the game.
When you travel, do you have several guides? No, there's only one guide.
In the end, I was there to join her on her journey, not to lead her.
On top of that, she was planning to build a story in her head, too.
Her editor would be the tank, the two other streamers would be a priest and a rogue as support DPS, and she would be the mage.
Of course, my being there was a bit of a wild card, but Ivan's gameplay was just as unpredictable as its control scheme was difficult.
In other words, there'd be plenty of good YouTube material.
'And if clips of it spread around online, people might bring it up more.'
"...All right, send me a friend request for now, and we'll do a final interview among ourselves soon, then get back to you!"
"Thank you. You won't regret it."
"Ahaha... Yes!"
The interview ended, and I left the map.
As I left, a gentle breeze blew over my character, making its hair flutter.
"I feel lucky."
I smiled, spent about an hour writing a post about the interview, then ended the stream.
#
"First off, Lee Jia has more streaming sense than I expected. While the other streamers picked the same thing as us, she came in with a completely different angle. And Ivan? That's insane."
The editor was busy kissing Lee Jia's ass, bringing up her name as he praised her.
"You're gonna wear a hole in her ass."
"At times like this... gulp."
"Oh, fuck..."
He chuckled and looked over Lee Jia's character stats.
"Honestly, saying she watched Sam-ban sounds like a lie, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. But finding a YouTuber just for one game collab and quickly figuring out public opinion is insane. I watched the VOD, and she acquired that much knowledge within an hour of learning I was doing a collab? That's not easy."
"She's useful."
At that, the editor shook his head.
"Useful doesn't cover it. She's incredible."
"That good?"
"Yeah! Honestly, this might bruise your ego, but you learned a lot from me about streaming, right? But even though I was hearing her voice for the first time, she streamed like a veteran with two years under her belt!"
"She just seems good at cultivating simps."
"For a female streamer, that's all she needs."
At that, she groaned, stretched, and deleted the rest of her notes.
"Then let's go with Lee Jia."
The editor grinned at her.
"I'm looking forward to the next collab. I'll send her a message."
While Sahyang and her editor were discussing Jia, Jia was...
"Ha, fuck, you simp bastards..."
puffing away on a cigarette.