From Live to Life

“GET OWNED, KID!”

I ripped my sword out from his stomach as I kicked his limp body to the floor, collapsing with a deliciously satisfying crunch.

“You should know better than to challenge ME, huh?”

His body, wreathed in a red glow, faded from view as the words INVADER VANQUISHED appeared across the screen. Hell yeah.

I looked over at my chat, which was flying by a mile a minute with ‘LMAO’s, ‘NICE’s, and a bevy of emotes. Chief amongst them: the phrase GET OWNED, in the same font as the game’s. I always yelled it during my streams, and over time, people had adopted it and repeated it nonstop. My community was great.

My desk was rather messy and cluttered. Whenever there was garbage, I always just moved it out of the way rather than clean it up. Old cup noodle containers sat stacked to the side, but they didn’t interfere with my livestream, so who cared? And it was a great stream, too. I was playing one of my favorite games of all time, Devil Souls 3, to an audience of a few thousand people.

As I moved my way through the level, I scanned the chat.
RavenLord: what was that guy thinking lol
heeeeeeeelpme: GET OWNED LMAO
stealthy_mage: haven’t seen an invader that bad since childhood!!!
soulfan99: bad idea
aidoruLava: GET OWNED
starvingArtist21: absolute clown mode
glizzyGodd: LOL GET OWNED

I read the good ones out loud. “‘What was that guy thinking,’ ‘absolute clown mode,’” I noted, agreeing with the astute chatters. They knew what was up. Then I saw a first-time message from a new user:

goblinGuyMan: that wasnt anything speical, are you kidding?? are u guys stupod or what. pathetic…

Oh, this was going to be fun. After reading their message verbatim, I replied, “Well, first, nice spelling mistake. Second, my lobby code is on screen if you want a crack yourself,” I goaded the new viewer with a smirk, mirrored in my VTuber character on screen.

I kept moving, keeping an eye on the chat while running past a few skeleton enemies in the game. While my community was great, the larger it got, the more random people showed up trying to be toxic.

“Another message, goblinGuy?” I read it out. “Let’s see here: ‘im not scared of some man pretending to be a girl, bro,’ I’m not! But nice try. Guys, tell this rando — everyone loves looking at a cute girl, it doesn’t matter what the voice sounds like. Girls are just better!” I said, moving my head around to control my live anime model, bouncing up and down as cutely as possible. That same sentiment instantly filled the chat, 50 different people directly replying to the troublesome new face with myriad responses from mild to, well, devastating. Whoops. Maybe I shouldn’t have sicced the mob on this guy.

“Anyway, take your toxicity somewhere else, dork. MODS…!” I shouted. The chatbox became a wall of the exact same message, 400 chatters echoing my last word. In an instant, my moderators banned the troll to a chorus of virtual cheering — it was almost like being some ancient royal deciding the fate of some poor schmuck in the Colosseum. Kind of scary, to be honest. But it made for good content, at least.

“Thank you, good mods,” I praised them. Sitting down at one of the game’s signature campfires, a checkpoint, I broke the bad news: “Now, you all know I hate to end on notes like this. But, well, my shift at the shop starts soon.” Wow, that’s a ton of crying emojis. “I’m sorry! I’ll make it up to you all, I promise. There’s gonna be a SUPER special stream soon. I don’t wanna spoil anything, but you’ll be blown away.”

I liked to do event streams from time to time: marathon gaming challenges, speedruns, and even hand camera streams. I had one such marathon planned for tomorrow, actually, but I wanted to keep it a surprise.

“As usual, everyone, thank you so so much for watching today, and make sure you follow if you haven’t!” Ugh, I hated doing that second part, but the stats showed it genuinely helped your metrics. “I’ll be back tomorrow for some more Devil Souls! If anyone’s feeling gutsy, why don’t you take me on~?” I cooed with a cutesy wink. The chat went wild. Like I said, everyone likes looking at an anime girl. Although, I thought, I’d like it even more if- Ah, never mind. Not now.

“Well, then, I’ve gotta jet. Goodbye for now, my loyal subjects!” I waited a few moments, then switched the screen to a cute animation of my avatar waving from a palace window, with the word “Farewell~” etched in shining silver cursive across the screen. The chat filled with many, many ‘farewell~’s as I let the ending music play, a lovely classical-sounding tune I had a talented musician make bespoke just for my stream.

My VTuber character was a princess, a piercingly beautiful girl with purple eyes and toasted blonde hair in a fluttery, frilly, green off-shoulder dress. I gazed at the animation, letting the song play in its entirety as I simply enjoyed seeing her — my character — grin and wave. I sighed. This was actually one of my favorite parts of every stream, though it always felt tinged with a hint of something strange. Some thing, some feeling I didn’t quite understand.

Oh well. The song ended, and with it, my stream. I closed out of my livestreaming programs, shut off my PC, and tried to psych myself up for work, to no avail. The room returned to its natural state, a solitary hole of loneliness. I had been ejected back into reality, the sensations of my apartment forcing me to acknowledge my surroundings. The only sound, the fan in my PC, became deafening. Blackout curtains barred all light from entry, my room lit purely by the glow of the monitor and the half-dim lights above. I really should replace that bulb, huh.

I did not enjoy working part-time at a convenience store, but my online activities didn’t quite fully meet my financial needs, so I had to maintain a secondary job on the side. Cute animations didn’t pay for themselves, after all.

A few seconds passed. I still felt… numb? It was a regular feeling, to be sure, but for some reason, today was especially bad. Looking at the clock, I saw it hadn’t been a few seconds, but minutes. Oh, shi-

With that, I hurriedly threw on my uniform and dashed to work.

~~~~~~

I awoke in a bundle of blankets and sheets. I felt rather groggy — to be expected, with how awful yesterday’s shift had been (what kind of manager screams at their employees in front of customers?). I couldn’t remember anything past when I had gotten home, taken a turbo-shower, and collapsed.

But, that was the past. I have a big event to put on today, after all! I thought, trying my best to send the signal to my limbs that it was time to get up, forcing them to impel my body out of the heavenly comfort of my bed.

Today’s stream was going to be special, a 24-hour fantasy game marathon with a twist: I had a bunch of weird foods and snacks I’d bought online, and whenever my character needed to eat something to heal or whatever, I would eat the same thing in real life. Clever, right?

I had about an hour before my self-appointed start time. While surprises were fun, there was also value in giving people some heads up; so, I shot out a quick post on my social media accounts letting all my loyal subjects know to get hyped.

Still groggy, I put together a simple breakfast and made some morning caffeine. It was hard to pinpoint, but a certain discomfort still reverberated inside me. Nerves? No, I’d done plenty of big streams before. Bad sleep? Probably not, since I slept like a rock for almost 12 hours. As a dog drying off from the pool, I shook my head in hopes of abating the feeling. No point worrying about it now, right? I got a stream to do.

And a stream I had to do, indeed. With my breakfast consumed but the strange feeling still lingering, I sat down at my PC. Next to the Empire State Tower-of-Cup-Ramen, I had a small table with all the cool snacks and food for the stream. It all stared at me, inviting me into the worlds of the games I was going to play. Hah, as if.

As I opened my streaming programs, got my phone connected for face tracking, and prepared final checks for the event, my nerves mounted. I stared at the monitor. The clock marched forward. I sat lost in thought. It was almost time. Why do I feel so off? I made another post on my social media, announcing the start of the big event. Sitting up in my office chair, I straightened my back and put my hands on my desk. Nothing to it but to do it.

With a deep breath, I hit “go live.”

The world flashed.

And my surroundings changed in the blink of an eye.

Suddenly, instead of staring at a camera, I was face-to-face with the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She took my breath away, awestruck adoration overpowering the pure panic the rest of my body felt. She was stunning, toasted blonde hair gently curling down her shoulders, resting on a sparkling, emerald green dress. My mind caught up. What? Wait, what? Where am- Who is- A hundred questions flooded my thoughts. This beautiful woman, somehow oddly familiar, was being fussed over by a maid.

I opened my mouth, my breath catching on my lips, to ask who she was.

She opened hers back.