Should we kill him?

“Pep?”

“Yes?”

“What the fuck is this?”

“I don’t know! It’s only been a couple of days, this doesn’t even make any sense!” Pep opened the quote-retweets of the video and got to scrolling, and after stopping over a certain few tweets, she seemed to realise what had happened. “...ohhhh, I should have seen this coming…”

“What? What should you have seen coming? Why are you talking in ominous cliches all of a sudden?”

“A name that I’ve seen pop up a few times in the retweets, it’s one of those YouTubers or whatever that just takes a clip from the internet and babbles about it for eight minutes. He must have seen the clip of you two talking and talked about it in a video or something.”

“And that multiplied the view count a hundredfold overnight?”

“If it hit meme status that wouldn’t even be all that much.”

Ah, what a headache. The task had just gone from entertaining a few hundred or so viewers at most to potentially pulling numbers in the tens of thousands. Not only did that mean more unwanted eyes on us, it also meant they were likely to act out more heavily. The larger a group of basement-dwelling terminally online twitter users there are in a group, the more confident they are acting without a shred of basic human decency. The more your words are drowned out by the sea of usernames, the more cruel you’ll allow those words to be.

This is the real reason people insist that humans are social creatures: so they can dilute their guilt between their peers when they act reprehensibly. What a cowardly write-off of a species.

“Apologies, but as someone with hardly a shred of knowledge in online culture, I must say I haven’t a clue what you two are talking about” said Sai, raising an eyebrow at us.

“The long and short of it is that some guy with a big following talked about us and now the number of people who’ve seen the clip has jumped from ‘small town’ to ‘small European nation’ in a single day,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose in exasperation.

“I see. How horrid. Should we kill him?”

“Sai-chan, why is that your go-to solution?”

“Yeah, I’m with Pep. As much as I like the enthusiasm, killing him now wouldn’t fix the problem since the video is already up.”

“That’s your problem with it?!”

“I see. Could we torture him until he removes it?”

“Unfortunately it’s probably too late, the video is circulating too fast for that to have any effect.”

“Am I the only person in this club with a moral compass?!”

““Yes.””

“You two are exhausting sometimes.” Pep huffed dramatically, pacing slightly as she started to speak again. “This obviously means that if I stream again the amount of people tuning in is gonna be way bigger than we expected. If that’s not okay with you two, I won’t be upset if you decide to pull out now. It’s totally up to you.”

That… was something to consider. This had gone from a chance to kickstart organic growth of Pep’s channel to a cultural meme we were effectively attempting to cash in on and replicate. In the first instance it would have been easy to slowly phase ourselves out of Pep’s channel, but now there really wasn’t much choice: if she wanted to build a streaming career off of this, we would have to be mainstays. And for a far bigger audience than we had ever expected. It wasn’t something I was particularly excited for to say the least.

That being said…

“The damage is pretty much done. Sai and I’s conversation is irrevocably in the public eye, whether we like it or not. If we cash in on it like this, we at least gain something from it,” I said.

“I suppose I must agree. My disdain for social performativity aside, if my privacy is to be violated I would prefer to be properly compensated. If this is the effective course of action in that regard, I will not oppose it.”

“Uhhh.. Kabucchi, can you translate?”

“That’s Sai’s way of saying ‘I’ll do it anyway.’”

“Oh. Oh!” She seemed legitimately shocked that both of us decided to stick with it. Honestly I couldn’t blame her, in the past my answer would have been ‘the internet can get fucked by a screwdriver for all I care, I’m not becoming their dancing fuckin’ monkey,’ but despite my protestations this now seemed like the optimal course of action from my point of view.

Perhaps selfishly, perhaps selflessly. Honestly I couldn’t tell anymore. I just knew that this was my choice.

“If… you two are sure…”

“Hey, don’t start talking me out of it, you might succeed.”

“Wait, wait! I mean… thank you. I appreciate it, really.”

“Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t, the more time we spent talking about it the more likely I am to change my mind.”

“Not talking any more! I’m gonna go call mum and let her know about it, be back in a jif!”

Pep excitedly bounced her way out of the clubroom, pulling her phone out of her pocket as she went and leaving me and Sai to our lonesome. With the noise in the clubroom noticeably absent, we went back to quietly playing our game of chess. So far, we had played the e-takes-d5 variation of the Sicilian alapin, with Sai opting to take back with the queen and develop her b1 knight while I moved my own knight to f3 and lofted the g2 pawn to g3.

“For a person so adamant on ignoring the precepts of theory, you certainly have a fixation on fianchettoing your bishops,” Sai said, claiming the centre with e5.

“Hey, it’s not like I actively look for bad moves all the time. I don’t actively despise theory, I just don’t treat it like gospel,” I said, moving my pawn to d3 with hopes of bishop g2 soon. “By the way, I expected more pushback from you on this whole streaming thing, especially after that catapult in viewership. Any reason you’re so… uncharacteristically cooperative?”

Sai seemed to think quite seriously on the question, going silent for a good few seconds. I could tell it was the question at the forefront of her mind because she somewhat absent-mindedly played the inferior move knight-to-f6 instead of bishop-to-f5, letting me freely sneak my own bishop into it’s fianchetto.

“...since you were not at our usual space at lunch today, I presume you’re aware I spent that time with Peppi instead, yes?” She asked, pinning my knight with bishop-to-g4.

“Vaguely,” I replied, castling short. “She and I also had a presumably similar conversation on the way to school today.”

“Well, I suppose my talk with her today changed my perspective on things a tad,” she said, moving her dark square bishop to e2. It was an odd move, but knowing her it was just an attempt to avoid long castles. “Initially, I believed Peppi’s only motivation with regards to this livestreaming endeavour was as a means of gaining attention. Social clout, as it were.”

“And you don’t think that anymore?” I asked, throwing my bishop to g5. Usually this would achieve little, but since I knew Sai would never optionally ruin her kingside pawn structure it effectively ruined the mobility of both knight and bishop.

“While I don’t doubt that it was a contributing factor, I no longer believe that the attention she most sought with this endeavour was that of the public. Rather, I believe it is from us that she seeks connection in this matter.” It was clear that she was giving the matter a lot of thought, because her gaze strayed away from the chessboard and off into space, her hand resting on her chin. “Though she spake it not directly, it seemed implicit from what she said, and after ruminating on it, it makes a great deal of sense. Thus far, the only activity the three of us have shared has been chess, and while you and I may be a good match in skill, Peppi being a near total beginner perhaps left our dynamic uneven. I believe she suggested this endeavour as something equally new to all of us, that we may learn and grow together from the beginning.”

As she finished speaking, I sat back in my chair and thought on her words. Despite her verbose way of delivering it, the things she said made a lot of sense, especially considering Pep’s concerns about Sai and I leaving her behind. Considering how desperate she was to get Sai and I in on it in the beginning, perhaps I should have put two and two together sooner on that front.

“And I guess the reason she picked chess streaming was to ease you and I into it then. Give us a basis in something we’re comfortable with.”

“That was my assumption, yes. I did not ask her directly, but it seemed the obvious conclusion to draw.”

“Almost makes me a little guilty for turning her down so quickly before.”

“My, a man of your rotten nature, I had expected you to be unable to feel guilt.”

“Oh? And I suppose it’s totally normal for an elitist social recluse like you to suddenly have someone else on the mind?”

“”The audacity required for you of all people to accuse one of social reclusion. I almost find myself impressed.”

“Really? I thought you’d be used to my hypocrisy by now.”

“As did I, and yet you continue to find new ways to disappoint me. A talent, truly.”

Despite Sai’s incredibly dramatic eye rolls, the two of us cracked into a light chuckle a moment later. It almost felt strange that just a couple of weeks ago we’d have likely had that same exchange without a hint of irony or playfulness. Even I could hardly deny at this point that I had changed substantially in a short period of time.

I just wasn’t sure which of them prompted that change.

“...say, Kaburi?”

“Yeah?”

“I feel I owe Peppi a great deal. Were it not for her, I likely would have spent my days her in isolation. So, this livestreaming endeavour… I hope we can make it a success, for her.”

“Yeah,” I replied, noticing a slight smile curl onto my lips. “Let’s knock ‘em dead.”