Chapter Text
Carla found it mildly amusing that Shin was talking about video games to him; being that of the two of them Carla tended to indulge in human culture far more than Shin. Shin was explaining about this guy, Kino being a streamer. "He's the first ever gamer vampire.(not that anyone knows Kino is a vampire besides the Mukami and Sakamaki family and Shin and Carla and Kino's posse of ghouls and the demon world itself.) He has a twitch stream. I only know this cause Ayato wouldn't shut up about it in class." Shin still isn't sure what that is. Carla raised an eyebrow "You hang out with Ayato?" Not really. He was more .. like eavesdropping though it isn't entirely Shin's fault that Ayato talks so loud. Carla thinks that he could be a way better streamer than Kino because he is a founder. "Ah ...I don't know ...brother you aren't exactly the best at technology." or cooking but Shin can't mention that.
"Shut up."
Shin knew his brother loved learning about human culture more so than Shin anyway but for whatever reason he found it fascinating that Kino could apparently stream 24/7 at times. "Brother can I use the computer?" Shin wanted to see what this was all about for himself.
Carla was still thinking over if he could be a successful streamer. He could buy so much cured ham and more expensive paintings with that amount of money in donations as Shin so told him about. "Do as you will." Shin left to go find the laptop the two of them shared. Intially Shin hadn't been interested in such a thing but Carla had the most difficulty with it so he ended up learning about it anyway to help his dear brother with online shopping. Shin searches up the name he remembers Ayato mentioning Kino goes by on the site, "ZER0PR1NCE". Kino was still streaming and had been for the past six hours apparently. Shin curiously clicked in on the stream. The chat was moving far to fast for Shin to keep up with and he wasn't entirely sure what Kino was playing either. He catches glimpses of text in the chat.
67_star: when do you sleep dude i swear i see you streaming ALL the time.
780cats: when sleep cam.
Shin has no idea what the fuck a sleep cam is. He's pretty much gathered so far that Kino plays a game and then has his face next to the game where he talks to his chat apparently but not that. "Ah? I'm not tired yet. I'm wired on energy drinks to be honest and I want to get higher in ranked. SoloQ is a fucking bitch," Kino mutters as he taps away on his keyboard for a moment, switching through internet tabs as he waited in queue in game. "Next donator can pick the next character I play."
Immediately money comes pouring in.
Kinofan69 donated 50$
Kinofan69: play comfey
Kino grimmaced, at the donator message and character suggestion. "That things such pain in the ass to play in SoloQ, it's team reliant."
Kinofan69: I want to see you suffer.
Juicebox44: yea do it.
goldfish_420: put shoe on head
7dandelions: your problem. Get gud. Morbidity666: lol he can't do it
Kino proceeded to do it anyway. "I'm doing it, I can make anything work after all." Whenever Kino has annoying or strange chat members badgering him Yuri would step in and ban them, though Kino didn't mind either way since he found it funny and he loved the attention.
Kinofan69: where's that guy you live with? The one that puts a blanket on you during sleep cam?
7dandelions: Kino asmr when
"Ah, you mean Yuri? He's out doing errands. He'll be back later. Anyway, I'm starting next match." Kino much preferred playing jungle because he didn't really like relying on other's to carry him or anything, that and he enjoyed being the hard carry. Shin still doesn't really get what's going on but he finds it amusing when the chat bullies or annoys Kino. The match starts and Kino chose his respective lane. "Of course my lane mate is already over extending," Kino curses. "I can't heal this kind of stupidity fast enough y'know?!" He tries his best to keep his lane partner alive but it's not going well with how much the random he's stuck with keeps trying to kill them on their goal pad which is just plain stupid. "Hell, can this guy stop dying and leaving his support alone? This character can't solo defend lane, come on." Shin has no idea what the terminology Kino is using means but he's mildly amused by how pissed Kino seems to be getting.
Sunflower_sunshine: lol why's the guy keep diving in 2 v 4 fights.
Kinofan69: bad play. He isn't even going to objective and Kino can't take the objective alone as Comfey lol. He's fucked.
Thankfully the jungler eventually helps them successfully shred bottom lane objective. "Finally," Kino says. Kino really wishes he was jungling because relying on his teammates to accomplish the simplest of tasks in soloQ seemed like pulling teeth or at least when playing support at times. Eventually the match reaches the two minute mark where his team is somehow in the lead and he hopes it stays that way because it's frustrating when your team gets overly cocky at the last minute and throws somehow.
"Alright we team wiped them!" They don't need to secure the last objective but they can but it's safer not to with the respawn timer for the enemy team coming back up but of course one of his teammates starts hitting it alone. Kino's chat loves it when he gets on mic apparently and says something to the players in his match.
"Leave the green bird alone," Kino says because they don't need it to be flipped or stolen and then they lose when they're already winning. He turns off his mic and they successfully keep anyone from the enemy team from trying to take last objective and securing himself a win. It was always stressful when you had people not knowing when to do something in this game or back off but this match was relatively grief free as far as Kino is concerned. He's had far worse matches that he's had to try and carry (not always successful).
Kinofan69: he did it!!! 30k heals!!!!
Sunflower_sunshine: gg.
_tenacity_02: he got a good team this time.
Kinofan69: Kino why don't you duoQ or five stack? You'd win more games and suffer less.
Kino reads the message and then thinks it over. Sure he could teach the ghouls to play this game and help him but he thinks that'll go as well as a SoloQ match and he's tried and most don't seem to get it even if some do watch his streams. "My roommate Yuri doesn't like this game and won't play it with me. He says I get to competitive and pissy about it and that it stresses him out," Kino says flatly because he doesn't get the problem? He just wants to win what's so bad about that?
Ghoul02: excellent game Kino!
Ghoul05: excellent game Kino!
Ghoul09: excellent game Kino!
Ghoul011: excellent game Kino!
Various messages like that flood the chat all of a sudden and it's no fault of the ghouls that they don't realize how off putting and eerie that looks to see in such quick succession. It does come off like spam and Kino can't blame what he only assumes are his normal human audience being extremely confused; other inhabitants of the demon world watch his stream as well so they were less put off by the messages.
Kinofan69: oh god the spam bots are back
Shin snickers at the chat text and the flood of confused chat members being put off by said ghoul's messages because Shin knows they're not the least bit scary in actuality.
Kino ends up playing a few more matches and one in particular he gets a little too tilted and throws the joycon controllers on the floor in anger. "Are you serious?! I call jungle and this guy steals it and then does nothing with it all match when I relent and let him have it and then he shows up for none of the objectives and team fights and we lose?!" The stream ends abruptly after that. Kino thinks for a moment of clarity that maybe this is why Yuri won't play with him. Yuri supports his streaming endeavors and all but he does not like how Kino gets during gaming sessions if it isn't going well. Normally Kino kept his cool most of the time but on a particular painful loss streak that was no fault of his own he found that very hard to do. Normally joycons aren't going to crack in half if you throw them but the strength of a vampire says otherwise. Kino's switch has suffered the same fate of being cracked in half. Admittedly this is probably his third switch and they're expensive so Yuri says not to do that anymore which he has gotten better at. The joycons being obliterated though? Not so much. Kino remembers those are also expensive but it's fine for now he has extra pairs and sponsors he has tend to send him things anyway.
Yuri eventually comes home and after putting the groceries and the other items he bought away he comes to find Kino in his bedroom of their mansion to find the mess that is the joycons broken apart on the floor. "What happened this time?" though he can certainly put it together that Kino didn't take well to either the teammates he had or a particularly bad play that had frustrated him enough to break his controllers so badly. Kino flops on his bed. "Oh you know, just SoloQ things, the usual," he sighs as he watches Yuri pick up the broken pieces of said controllers. "You really must stop taking your frustrations out on the console and controllers itself, they are not cheap," Yuri tells him. "You're lucky I figured that this is almost such a regular occurrence that—" and he doesn't have to even finish before Kino is off the bed and looking through one of the bags Yuri had set on the ground. "A new pair of joycons? You know me so well," Kino says and smiles and gives the latter a hug so suddenly that it takes Yuri off guard for a moment. "Stop breaking them," Yuri replies flatly as Kino pulls back and takes them and quickly unboxes them, placing them in his switch as replacements. "I'll try, no promises though," Kino says as he puts the console away because he's done streaming for the day after that disaster. "You ended your stream suddenly again as well, didn't you?" He had to stop doing that, it was a bit unprofessional but when has Kino ever particularly tried to be professional. "It's fine, I'm sure they'll think it was funny and I'll see clips of me tilted online, but you know there's no such thing as bad attention," Kino says as he idly stares at Yuri now. "I wish you would not think like that, it's the same thing as when you slacked on our workings with the church." Kino had taken out his phone by this point. "Those guys sucked anyway, they needed my help more than I needed theirs." Yuri just can't help but laugh it off.
Kino had made up with the Sakamaki family for the most part, Ayato forgiving him for trying to kill him and take his powers because they're family or whatever. It kind of touched Kino that Ayato was one of the first to accept him. Admittedly Kino had given up on trying to take Yui from Ayato after all of that and Ayato did help his people out by giving ghouls a place in the vampire clan areas. Just as well Kino hated living in Rotigenberg because the Wi-Fi was absolutely dreadful, even when Yuri had stolen a Wi-Fi tower for him.
Kino was thankful he could live in the human world now with his new found luxuries and be accepted in the demon world by his siblings in a way, not that he'll tell any of them that though. Kino thinks his sudden decision to become a streamer a few months ago which he so loves doing considering he loves gaming was one of his best ideas. That was definitely one fun thing humans had invented, besides guava juice he thinks. Kino also got lots of attention which was something he adored and counted as a bonus. Kino feels he's happier than he's been in a long time.
Shin who had been watching the stream was stunned by Kino ending it so abruptly; not that he knows if this is a regular occurrence or not. Shin found it mildly amusing that Kino had basically quit in a fit of rage. Shin stared at the "OFFLINE" status of the stream for a moment; he didn't really get the appeal of all of this still. Shin figures he might watch Kino's next live stream if only out of further curiosity.