***Author's Note: I published this here a while ago but had to take it down. This was originally a scrapped freelancing project, but then the client decided they did want the story rights after all. After a bit of back and forth, we agreed that I could republish the story here with significant changes. For anyone who read the original story, this one is completely different.***
Lillian was running late. She was supposed to have started streaming fifteen minutes ago but had just remembered that she completely forgot to download and set up the game. The day had gone off-kilter since she had been out so late last night. She woke up much later than usual, her head still pounding slightly from a bit too much to drink.
If it were up to her, she would stay in bed all day watching anime. She really didn't feel like streaming, but she couldn't skip it. This one was sponsored by a gaming company. The contract had been signed weeks ago. Frantically, she started to clean up her streaming background. The lump of clothes and random stuffed animals on the bed behind her had grown considerably since her last stream.
"Okay Toby," she said to the laptop on her desk as she tossed her dirty clothes into the laundry bin. "Download the game from Lazer Studio."
"Okay," her laptop's virtual assistant responded with a beep. "I found three file links from Lazer Studio. One titled 'Contract.' One titled 'Contract2.' One titled 'GameFile1.' Which file would--"
"GameFile1," she said quickly, cutting off the prompt.
"Now downloading."
She rushed to her bathroom to try and make herself look presentable. It was only recently that she had started showing herself on camera because she realized that it always resulted in a higher view count. It took her a long time to feel comfortable with her face being all over the internet, but the extra money was worth it.
She glanced at herself in the mirror to double-check her clothes--couldn't go wrong with an oversized shirt from her own merch line and a pair of black leggings. She picked up her hairbrush, wet it slightly, then ran it through her thick, straight black hair that framed her face in a long bob.
Using a makeup brush, she added a bit of concealer under her eyes and bronzer to her cheeks, attempting to counteract her pale, Japanese skin so that it didn't look so washed out on camera. Then, with a bit of eyeliner and a touch of pink lipstick, she was ready to go.
"Download complete," she heard her computer chirp from the other room. "Would you like to start the program?"
"Yes," said Lillian quickly as she went back into her room towards her desk. Sitting down in her chair, she logged into the streaming studio. There were already people in her chat, waiting for her livestream to start.
She's late again,
someone wrote.
Lillyyyy where are you?
said someone else.
Turning on her other two monitors, she pulled up the email exchange with the gaming studio that sent her the game. Glancing over the contract she had signed and using the exact title and hashtags that they had agreed on.
"Okay," she mumbled under her breath as she clicked the "Go Live" button in her streaming studio. "Title...come fight angels and demons with me...hashtag, new drops, hashtag, angels and demons...done." She turned on her camera and her face popped up on the viewfinder. After a quick adjustment of the camera lighting, she adjusted her microphone and took a deep breath.
"Ok, Toby. Start my stream."
Her computer sprung into action, following the voice command she had set up years ago and used nearly every day. The stream started--video, audio, and the recording of her screen. The little red button next to the words "LIVE" popped up on the right-hand corner.
It only took a few seconds for the chat comments to start coming in like a waterfall. She glanced at the view count, watching it inflate--one thousand, two thousand, three thousand. She liked to let the chat go on for a little bit as she caught her bearings. Keeping her expression steady, turned on the camera feed, and the small square of her face cam showed up in the video. She tried not to look at the camera, trying to make it seem as if having so many people watching her in real-time didn't faze her. It was a slow, steady rise to gain the confidence to use the face cam in the first place. In reality, she couldn't help the nerves, and she started to hum as she continued to set things up.
It was only three years ago that she first started streaming, and back then, it was mostly just her and her high school friends messing around. Then everyone went straight to college while she chose to take a gap year. In that gap year, one of her stream videos went viral, causing her view count to double, then triple. Within a year and a half, she was consistently getting hundreds of views, then it started to grow from there when she started to show her face. All of a sudden, her popularity grew tenfold. She was getting so many requests for sponsorships and partnerships, and she had to hire a manager and commission illustrators for stream art.
"Hi everyone," she said into the microphone, her voice soft, still not looking at the camera. Immediately, the comments section heightened, filling with emote icons and gifs and she couldn't help but smile a little bit. A few people sent her $10 fan awards. Some others sent her $20 ones.
"Happy new year, guys," she said, looking into the camera. "First stream of the year 2050, woo-hoo!" She let out a little laugh and then shyly hid her face with her hand. She knew how silly it was to act so timidly while being watched by so many people, but she couldn't help it. It still blew her mind that so many people were interested in watching her play silly video games and sending her money to support her.
"Okay," she said. "So I've got a sponsor today and I'm really pumped about this one."
Everyone in the chat seemed excited to watch her play and many were asking her if she had played the first version of the game.
"I played the first version a lot," she said, looking into the camera now. "If you've been here a while, you'll remember those OG streams. And somehow, I didn't even realize they were working a second one until the company emailed me."
The comments in the chat swelled again as some people recalled her old streams. Lillian read the chat as the game's starting menu ran on the screen, its victorious music playing in the background.
"Singleplayer," she said, clicking through. "For now." She gave the camera a little wink, then laughed. She knew some of her most popular videos were the ones where she gave out an invite code so that others could play with her.
The screen switched to the twelve character options. Everyone in the chat immediately started trying to chime in on which one she should choose.
"Man, this chat is really divided," she said, giggling, scrolling through each character's stats. "I don't know which one to pick. I feel like these stats are so different than in the last game. Like, these are the same characters, aren't they? But so different at the same time." She glanced at the chat, smiling at how excited everyone was.
"Okay, let's do a character poll," she said into her microphone. Using voice command recognition, a poll popped up on the screen, automatically filling it in from the information from the screen. She made the poll live and the votes started coming in immediately. The chat exploded as people celebrated or raged at the fluctuating results.
"I had a feeling you guys were going to want me to pick a tank," she said, giggling as she saw the vote for the goblin character rising.
She was just about to look away from the chat and choose the character when she saw a username she had hoped she would never see again: LinChao.
Hi Lillian,
his message read.
Did you forget about my request?
She froze, watching as the message quickly got sucked up and lost into the rest of the chat. With a nervous hand, she scrolled up, trying to find it again, making sure that she hadn't just hallucinated it. There it was, as clear as day. Her mods hadn't flagged it. How many people had seen this?
"Uh--hey guys, sorry, I--I'll be right back." Scrambling, she turned off her camera and muted her stream. Her heart was beating so hard she could feel it in her neck and she immediately stood up, backing away from her computer.
"No," she said to herself in a whimper. "No fucking way."
This had all started months ago, in the summer. It had been a regular day--a boring one, even. Sitting on her bed wearing her comfiest clothes, she had been looking through the slew of emails that her manager had sent her with sponsorship opportunities that she might be interested in. After a while, she got distracted with different messaging and forum apps, replying and reacting to some of the posts that her subscribers had made on her personal channels. She had dozens of unread messages from friends and she looked through those, responding to a few of them.
Then, a message came in from she didn't recognize. The avatar was just a black circle, the name next to it was LinChao. There was a green dot next to it, signifying that the user was online. She had all of her messaging accounts set up so that the only people who could send her a message or call were ones that she accepted onto her friend list and that she could only send requests, not receive them.
Her first thought was that one of her friends had changed their username and was reaching out to her. She accepted the message.
Hello Lillian,
it read.
Hi?
she typed back.
Who is this? I don't remember seeing this name before.
I'm an admirer,
the person typed back.
I was wondering if you could do me a special favor.
She stared at the message for a few seconds, completely confused and thoroughly creeped out. If I don't know personally, please don't message me. And with that, she blocked the LinChao user and deleted his message, chalking it up to some strange spam.
But within a few minutes, her phone beeped again. When she picked it up, she saw LinChao's name flashing at the top of her screen.
