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“One more game then I’ll look at your dumb submissions.” Kokichi pouts, fingers continuously fiddling with his controller while he leans back on his seat.
Out of the corner of his eye in his second monitor, he sees his chat scroll by fast with a litany of angry emoticons, outraged at his lies.
“Stop lying? Psh, says the person with a 6-month sub badge next to them. You should already know I'm a liar!” He pouts.
That just serves to rile up his audience even more.
“Fiiiine. I'll go look at some of them now.” He exits the matchmaking before it puts him into a game and opens up the window for channel points redemption.
A few days ago he made it so that his audience can use channel points to send him video links and what not. Now some of them were funny but his own audience lacked a sense of humor and they’re all sooo ridiculously stale when trying to make him laugh. They keep sending him clips of his own streams or some unfunny tiktok video that gets the person who sent it insulted.
At this point he’s going to this his audience likes being degraded.
You might think it’s really rude and disrespectful to start chewing out the people who throw money at you but that rude behavior somehow adds to his charm that draws people in and they end up throwing more money at him as a result.
When he goes through the submissions, it's the same boring stuff at first.
“You guys need to do better.” He huffs.
He mindlessly clicks open the next link sent by someone and it leads to a twitter post.
The caption reads “Sweetchi in his natural habitat.”
Attached is a photo.
A photo of the perfect boyfriend material.
It’s a guy his age (he hopes because he really wants just one chance with this guy) with navy blue hair in an outrageous but unfairly handsome bedhead. His eyes are half lidded and the nicest shade of grey– the lighting in the picture make them seem like a dull yellow.
He’s hunched over scratching the back of his neck, as if he’s just woken up. He’s dressed in a white button up, with all the buttons unbuttoned yet still covering him and just showing the slightest glimpse of his lean body.
He knows nothing about this guy except that he looks fine as hell.
It only occurs to him he’s been staring and has been way too quiet for the past two minutes when the notification of a new sub sounds through his headphones.
“Thank you for the sub moogi!” He quickly pops out the tab for the twitter post and shoves it in his second monitor (for later), away from the eyes of his audience. “That was a dud, onto the next one!”
He risks a glance at his chat, some people are being disgusting and sending suggestive smirking emoticons at his reaction to that picture. He can only hope no one clipped that.
And how unfortunate, he sees Miu’s cackling in his chat, her green moderator badge making her stand out.
“I bet you his flagpole is rising right now.” He reads her message out loud. “Oh shut up I’m not as much of a virgin as you! Like I’d get all bricked up for some random guy! You’re probably the one who’s all hot and bothered right now like the slut you are!”
He sticks out his tongue very childishly and moves on.
…
When he finishes up his livestream for the night, he doesn’t get off his seat immediately like he usually does. He looks to his second monitor, which displays the picture of the guy he was definitely not thirsting for on live.
He sits there, just… admiring the other’s good looks.
Ok look, whoever posted this knows it’s a thirst trap and why should Kokichi do anything but fall hook line and sinker for it?
He clicks onto the account who posted the image (hoping to see more) but is disappointed when all he finds is pictures of a female cosplayer and some of her in some other nice clothes or a bunch of sewing materials.
He goes back to the picture from before. Under the replies he sees the girl reply to her own post, tagging someone. Mindlessly, he checks the account of that person and is pleasantly surprised to see that it’s the hot guy’s account.
A little more digging later, he finds that the smoking hot guy is a model, Shuuichi Saihara and the girl that posted pictures of him is his step sister, Tsumugi Shirogane, a fashion designer.
He doesn’t particularly pay attention to showbiz people aside from his roommate Rantarou, who is also a model but even then he doesn’t know what the other goes off to do.
When he livestreams again, he reluctantly goes through his submissions again. The first one to actually send in a submission is his most recent supporter going by the name ‘moogi’.
And when he opens the link they send, he can only hope his face remains blank. If he had installed an eye tracker for funsies on stream he’d be so fucked.
(Maybe he can do that for laughs one day)
He’s staring very disrespectfully.
It seems as though ‘moogi’ has realized that they could get a laugh by watching him be a disaster over Shuuichi because what they send that day is a link to another twitter post that contains a picture of Shuuichi again.
It’s Shuuichi and another guy with a ridiculous goatee and hairstyle in the gym. Shuuichi is wiping his face with the edge of his shirt, giving Kokichi a perfect view of his abs glistening from sweat.
“Why do you guys keep sending me stuff like this?” He looks into his webcam with a ‘disappointed’ look on his face. “One day you guys are going to send me dick pics on stream and get me banned.” He sighs.
Someone cheers with bits, a message attached and read with text-to-speech. “but you like it”
“Like it? Psh, I’m not into skinny twinks like him.” He shrugs off. It’s a blatant lie but he already knows his audience can pick up on that.
Another person cheers with bits and text-to-speech continues to fuck him over. “Fuck marry kill, Saihara, Amami, Iruma.”
His eyebrow twitches in annoyance and he feels a blush rise on his cheeks. He drags his chat window to the other monitor so his viewers can see him mute the person who sent that in. Uncalled for but he is not going to act like a lovesick girl live on camera. There’s multiple cries of protest coming from his audience as they spam the pepeRiot emote.
He goes back to playing and messing around with his audience, the previous conversation forgotten until the person who asked him Fuck Marry Kill is no longer muted because they cheer with bits again.
“Fuck marry kill, Saihara, Amami, Iruma. 100 if you answer.”
Kokichi rolls his eyes. “100 what? 100 bits? 100 yen? Not worth the effort. Sorry!”
They cheer again. “usd”
“How do I know if you’ll actually dono if I answer?” He huffs. “Kinda sketchy if you ask me.”
Right as he says that, they actually follow through with their promise and donate a hundred dollars.
Kokichi giggles, a smirk on his face. “Thank youuuu! But I know my rights and I can choose not to answer.”
He lets a few seconds pass as his audience whines in the chat.
He hums. There’s like no way this Shuuichi guy will stumble across his channel and see him so desperate for him so it wouldn’t hurt to answer. “Weeeeell if I have to answer….Fuck Saihara, marry Amami-chan, kill the slut.”
“Weeeeell if I have to answer….Fuck Saihara, marry Amami-chan, kill the slut.”
Shuuichi can only look at his laptop screen flustered. Why Tsumugi decided to send him this video clip is beyond his understanding.
He feels as though this is another one of Tsumugi’s attempts at making him feel more confident in his looks but it just serves to make him flustered. He wasn’t so keen on random people seeing the pictures his sister insisted he pose for because it was embarrassing.
Ever since they were kids, Tsumugi would dress up Shuuichi in various articles of clothing for fun. They grew up and it turns out Tsumugi does have a talent for designing clothes after she discovered what cosplay is.
Eventually it evolved into Shuuichi modeling for his sister’s garments and he’s somehow been able to sustain himself with a career like that.
He doesn’t usually use social media, not wanting to see his own face in advertisements and such but Tsumugi will occasionally take a photo of him to ‘show off her amazing brother’ to the world.
He’s quite flattered that this charismatic livestreamer finds him attractive enough to be able to make dirty jokes about him.
The short video clip ends and the replay icon obscures the smiling face of the streamer. Under the video in the description shows the streamer’s twitch link and without thinking Shuuichi clicks on it.
He’s pleasantly surprised to see that they’re streaming right now. The big red ‘LIVE’ next to his avatar and display name, KingHorse, catches his attention.
Curious, Shuuichi decides to tune in. It’s just a waiting screen, seeing as the live stream just started a few minutes ago. Upon finding that the livestream hasn’t started yet, Shuuichi takes the opportunity to try and login to his twitch account he’s never used and look over the details of the livestreamer, eager to at least know his name before the livestream starts. A simple search on the internet gives him an answer, Kokichi Ouma.
He finds it funny how his display name is just a direct translation of his last name in English
“Goood evening my underlings!” The shrill voice in his earphones ring. “How are you doing today?”
Upon seeing the other viewers greet back, Shuuichi hurries to do the same.
“Oh! A first time viewer!” Kokichi smiles. “Hey-a saishu!”
Shuuichi never expected to be personally greeted by Kokichi and ends up scrambling to form a reply. He settles for a simple ‘hello :)’
Kokichi seems to be looking for his reply and only brightens up when he giggles.
They engage in a short conversation as Kokichi asks for how he’s decided to tune into his livestream all the while entertaining the rest of the audience with jokes and small quips. When Shuuichi mentions that his sister is who introduced him to his channel Kokichi coos.
“Nishishi! I hope I live up to your expectations then!”
Shuuichi doesn’t really know what’s happening on his screen or how the games Kokichi plays works. But he doesn’t particularly mind it at all. When Kokichi isn’t screaming at the opposing team in a first-person shooter, he’s sharing stories about his day and just holding a conversation with the thousands of people watching him.
Shuuichi finds it amazing how he can juggle so much without faltering. Playing a game and actually being good at the game while chatting with his audience at the same time, Kokichi does so flawlessly.
When Kokichi is about to end for the night, Shuuichi decides to at least support him even just a little and ends up willingly entering his card details and subscribes to him.
Kokichi perks up at the small notification and smiles. “Nishishi! Well I guess I did live up to your expectations if one stream was enough to get you to shower me with money.”
2 months later, Shuuichi ends up tuning in to nearly every livestream after that day. He’d sit down on his desk, and just have Kokichi’s stream open in the pop-out player while he does something else.
He’d study for his college classes and Kokichi’s voice provides nice background noise when he reads over his notes, no need to worry about the deafening silence his room provides.
He doesn’t really know what is happening or why Kokichi is whining in his seat. Just a few moments ago Kokichi was waiting for the maintenance period of some game’s server to finish, seemingly really excited to get into playing it.
Though as soon as he got past the loading screen he seemed disappointed. His screen just shows a small menu page with a particularly eye-catching character plastered onto the middle and Kokichi whining about not getting them. It takes a while but Shuuichi can only assume it’s one of those gacha games that you spend money on to get a chance to obtain digital items.
He doesn’t really know what possesses him to do it but in the heat of the moment he just drops seven thousand yen.
Kokichi immediately stops whining and gasps. “saishu aren’t you a sweetheart? Well, thank you for supporting my gambling addiction– well, supporting me in general the past two months!”
Shuuichi smiles seeing the other’s spirits lift up.
Kokichi blows a kiss to his webcam. “Thank yoouuuu saishu!”
His cheeks heat up at the action and he scrambles to type out “you’re welcome :)”. Some of the other viewers whine and demand they get blown a kiss as well, to that Kokichi just rolls his eyes before following through with it.
“Okaaaay fine you big babies. Mwah!” He laughs a little at the end. It sounds beautiful.
He watches Kokichi spend that seven thousand yen on in-game currency and doesn’t feel an ounce of regret. At least Kokichi is happy with it.
“Gooood evening my underlings! Today we’re doing something the slut had pestered me to do.”
On the screen, Shuuichi spots a small circle in white darting around the screen.
“You guys see that white blob on screen yeah? Well I got an eye tracker and figured I'd expose myself today.” He laughs. “Soo for today the slut is actually joining me because this is her idea. Say hi!”
There’s a scoff and a female voice. “Can’t believe people actually enjoy watching this little shit.”
“You were who told me to ‘try out streaming’ that one time and now you’re regretting it?” Kokichi sniffles. “Waaaaaah! I thought you were my number one supporter!”
Banter is exchanged for a few minutes with Kokichi heavily insulting Miu and the other seemingly enjoying being on the receiving end.
“Ooookaay! Back to the matter at hand you guys would try to make me drool over someone and if I do, I have a wheel of random bullshit I’d have to do.” He claps his hands. “So! I don’t trust you guys to be normal so only subscribers can submit hot guys for today.”
“Oh and don’t even think about sending straight up porn Miu will still be checking them before I look at them so if you try anything say hello to the ban hammer.” He groans.
It goes about as well as you’d expect. Kokichi essentially cheats but just staring at the corner of his screen to the dismay of his viewers and Miu who constantly chastises him for being a coward.
When Kokichi finally takes it seriously, he doesn’t falter as much as you’d expect one would when doing this challenge.
“See I told you I’m not a pervert like the slut is” he claims.
That goes downhill when someone sends him pictures of Shuuichi that Tsumugi had taken of him. Shuuichi himself is flustered when he sees his own face on screen but is even more flustered when the white blob that represents Kokichi’s line of sight drops down from his face to his slightly exposed chest.
“Okay I was looking at his face I swear there’s something wrong with this!” He scrambles for an excuse.
“Stop lying you little shit!” Miu cackles. “You are definitely horny for this guy specifically.”
“Am not!” He says as he doesn’t look away from his screen and the white blob moves lower which prompts a flustered yelp from Kokichi.
On the other side of the screen, Shuuichi can only watch the exchange with a bright red face. Once more, he’s very flattered that Kokichi finds him attractive enough to be able to fail at a challenge like that.
Kokichi very quickly spins his wheel of punishments and unfortunately is made to down a shot of hot sauce.
The challenge continues and upon remembering that Kokichi seems to be physically attracted to Shuuichi, they all collectively agree to only send in pictures and videos of Shuuichi which ultimately lead to Kokichi whining about it being unfair.
Shuuichi merely clicks off the livestream when he senses it will not end for a good while and tries to calm himself down or else his head will explode due to the amount of blood rushing to his cheeks. It isn’t the first time someone has been very open about being attracted to him on social media so what’s so different when Kokichi does it?
He doesn’t know.
Kokichi lives a very comfortable life.
Live Streaming turned out to be quite profitable for him with so many people willing to throw money at him. Well, quite frankly, it seemed like a simple enough thing to do when he first started out but he quickly learned that wasn’t the case.
He needed to do many things. He needed to be entertaining, he needed to conform to the latest trends floating around social media, he needed a good computer (he worked his ass off on his part-time job for it, back when he lived in a crummy apartment), he needed to be consistent, he needed to learn so much stuff just to set up a live stream.
Well, he’s somehow overcome every hurdle thrown at him and he’s quite glad that’s the case. He can live comfortably for a while, sharing his rent with Rantarou, working a very boring part-time job at a coffee shop.
It was routinely but at least nothing particularly jarring would happen. Sure doing the same thing, living the same day is boring but he wouldn’t want that cycle to be broken when some sort of disaster just suddenly strikes. He’s happy where he stands.
Well, for the most part.
He definitely wishes to find a significant other like right now. He isn’t particularly lonely or anything, he just thinks it’d be nice to have someone like that.
The windchimes attached to the door bring him out of his thoughts and just as he readies his customer service mask, he spots Rantarou waving to him and–
Oh.
Shuuichi Saihara looks way better in the flesh.
“Hey-a Amami-chan!” He greets. “The usual?”
He nods and turns to Shuuichi.
“What can I get for you handsome?” He couldn’t stop the compliment from slipping out because well, Shuuichi is really handsome, moreso when he’s seen him in person.
Upon realizing that Kokichi was referring to him, Shuuichi blushes. “A-Ah, um. Just an iced coffee.”
“O-kay!”
Shuuichi immediately excuses himself and goes to sit down. Rantarou on the other hand chooses to entertain him for a bit.
“He watches you, you know?” Rantarou muses.
“What?! Ewww to think such a cute guy would actually turn out to be a creep.” Kokichi sighs.
The other flicks his forehead, shaking his head. “Not that. I mean he watches you on twitch.”
“What?”
“It came up when I mentioned living with you.” He shrugs. “I think he’s been watching for a while now.”
“Amami-chan.” Kokichi wants the ground to swallow him whole. “I don’t have a chance do I?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, I essentially have said how horny I am for him live.” Kokichi bemoans, banging his head on the counter. “And to think I thought maybe I could ask him out or something today.”
Rantarou doesn’t respond but just snickers. Kokichi whines indignantly and finishes brewing their drinks with a pout on his face.
When he hands them over to Rantarou, he catches a glimpse of Shuuichi looking at him from where he sits. Immediately, Kokichi averts his gaze, embarrassment flooding through him.
“Amami-chan I can't show my face to him after I’ve said I’d let him rail me. I said that in front of thousands of people live.” He slaps a hand over his face, the condensation from the cups wetting his face a bit.
“It won’t hurt to try.” Rantarou reassures. “What have you got to lose?”
He huffs. “My pride.”
When he looks up again, he meets Shuuichi’s gaze once more. This time, he tries holding eye contact for a little bit longer and is pleasantly surprised when Shuuichi shyly waves at him. Kokichi waves back hesitantly.
“...Okay maybe I will try.” He quickly snatches Shuuichi’s drink from Rantarou’s hands and scribbles out his phone number on the side and a small heart next to it. “If he doesn’t notice it right away I’m trusting you to point it out to him.”
“Right right.” Rantarou laughs.
When Kokichi spins in his chair that night, preparing for a livestream, his phone buzzes and lights up when he receives a message from an unknown number.
XXXX-XXX-XXXX: Hello?
You: Heeeey! Who is this?
XXXX-XXX-XXXX: Ah, your number was written on my coffee cup today.
He giggles to himself.