[“hey can you get the mail ? i got my hands full rn”]
[“Will do”]
I knew Michael was just being lazy, but getting the mail wasn’t a big deal to me. I usually got it anyway. That being said, Michael texting me about it got me to get up and go outside. I also needed to know if I had mail as well. It was around 1 PM, and I had the day off work and nothing better to do. Formula 1 didn’t start for a few more weeks, so I had no qualifying to watch today. There was an Xfinity NASCAR race on later–the NASCAR season was ‘officially’ starting this week, with the Daytona 500 coming on tomorrow. The Xfinity series was like the tier below the main NASCAR Cup series. The AAA league, for those familiar with the MLB. That race didn’t start for another four hours though. I didn’t feel like watching anime, even though I wasn’t caught up with currently airing anime by any stretch of the imagination. I could go to the gym, but I’m still reeling from slamming my toe into furniture last Tuesday…that was my excuse for now. The gym was by work, so it made it easy to go after I clocked out, but other than that, it was a bit silly to drive that far just to pump some iron.
The walk outside to the mailbox took about a minute. It wasn’t that bad considering I didn’t have to walk in the grass any. The driveway was in good condition. There were a few cracks, but nothing that I considered an eyesore. The road next to our place was…it was something else. It was a two-way road that was barely two lanes long, if that. It wasn’t rarely used other by those who also lived here, and the occasional person who got lost. It didn’t have any potholes thankfully, but it had the light-grey hue of a road that hadn’t been repaved in decades. The speed limit being twenty-five miles per hour helped with it staying in acceptable condition–along with big-rigs never taking the road. I wouldn’t want to speed down a narrow road like that anyway.
There wasn’t much in the mailbox–at least for me. All I had was another credit card offer. I get like two of those a week. They’re so annoying. I don’t know why I get so many, especially considering I’ve only had one credit card ever. You’d think they would give up by now. Michael on the other hand had a small package from Amazon, which was shoved in between more junk mail. Michael’s package was extremely light, with something bouncing around inside. It must have been related to one of his streams considering the urgency he had when asking me to get it instead of waiting until he was free to go outside.
It was quite a beautiful day. While it was still technically Winter, the layer of warmth that the sun was providing was a welcome gift. After months of it being too cold, the weather was in a short window where it was ‘just right’. The grass and the trees had a vibrant glow on them, the trees growing their fur back. It was almost beautiful enough to want to spend some time out there. Almost.
Heading back inside, I threw all of the junk mail on the kitchen counter. I was gonna throw all of it away, but I liked to see where the junk was from in the first place. I found it cathartic to rip up envelopes and slips of paper into pieces. It’s fun.
But first, I had to give Michael his package.
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Outside of Michael’s room, I knocked on his door and said “Hey, I got your package”.
“Come in.” Michael said somewhat reluctantly. Opening his door, I peeped in. Inside, Michael was on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Yeah, you’re definitely busy.”
Michael, barely leaning left to look at me, chuckled and said “Wow, can a guy take a break every once in a while?”
I sighed back. I mean, I was the one who usually got the mail anyway. Today was no different than other days, other than me personally delivering it to Michael’s room instead of leaving it on the kitchen counter. Looking at his setup, it looked like he had spent some time setting something up by the fact that his chair wasn’t tucked in and that there was a box all ripped up on his desk. I couldn’t tell the difference from normal however. “...so, what were you setting up?”
“A new handcam. It’s been in my storage for quite some time now. It’s supposed to be way better quality than the one I was using before, but it’s been a real pain to set up.”
“Let me guess…the driver didn’t want to work.” I’ve had issues with webcams before. I’m sure everyone has. I don’t know what it was about them that made them finicky, but they were nonetheless. You would think that an expensive webcam like the one Michael got wouldn’t have these issues. By the way was Michael nodding, I was right on the money.
As if he was summoned, Michael hopped out of his bed and into his computer chair. Guess he was done with his break. He looked at my hand and said “Oh yeah, toss me that package.”
“Sure thing” I replied. Honestly, I forgot all about his package since it was so light. Whatever Michael had gotten couldn’t be that fragile considering he motioned me to throw it like a fastball. I declined to be that careless with other people’s stuff, only lightly tossing it to him. Once he caught it, he instantly started to open the package. He slid out a small coffin-shaped box onto his desk. All I could see from this distance is that the box had a skull yelling on the front of it. I immediately knew what it was–an ‘One Chip Challenge’ box.
The One Chip Challenge was exactly what it sounded like—a challenge where you eat the world’s hottest tortilla chip. The chip was plastered with Carolina Reaper peppers, which from my experience was so powerful that even sniffing it made your nose run.
image [https://i.imgur.com/7YpUd1D.png]
My rough drawing of the box. As you can see, it roughly resembled a tombstone, with a red skull on the front, and a blue tongue, which the chip was supposed to turn your tongue into. Guess that was the gimmick for this year…or technically last year I guess.
Looking at the box, his mood instantly improved, saying “Awesome, now everything is set up for the stream.”
Hold on. What?
“Wait, you’re eating that today?”
I had to check to see if I wasn’t making things up.
“Yep.” he replied nonchalantly.
“Are you sure? That’s one strong chip.” The Carolina Reaper pepper is the hottest in the world if I recall correctly.
“I’m very sure.” He wasn’t flubbing or backing down in any way.
“I’m just telling you right now, I once had a friend at university do the challenge. He only lasted two minutes and was bedridden for the next day.” It was true–he did it over Discord, and after that, he didn’t go on his computer for a full day.
“No offense to your friend, but I’m one hundred percent sure I’m more prepared than he will ever be.” I had no idea where the sudden burst of confidence was coming from. Was he trying to fake it until he made it? Did he think that ‘confidence was key’ when it came to eating hot things? Who knows, but my warnings were not getting to him.
“Yeah whatever man, have you ever even seen anyone else do this?”
“No. Don’t see why I would need to. Besides, I’ve been eating spicy food all of my life. I’m not your friend.” Yeah, you’re being a total fucking moron right now. “By the way–what do you mean by ‘at university’? Are you British?”
“What?” I mean, Clemson is a University, not a College. “Anyways, that’s not the point…you know what? I don’t care. Go ahead. Eat it.” His arrogance kinda annoyed me. Even if it was his own funeral. “In fact, if you want. I’ll be in the room while you stream it. Just so you can have ‘proof’ that you actually ate the thing.”
Michael suddenly perked up, “You know what? That’s actually a good idea…are you sure you can spare the time to watch me ace this challenge?”
“Well, I mean I got nothing better to do.” I really didn’t. The Xfinity race would be going on, but that wasn’t that important for me to watch.
“Great! The stream is starting at 6, but you can wait until about 6:30 to come.” I’d get to catch the first half or so of the race, depending on how many cautions there were.
“Cool, I’ll be here then. Do you want me to bring what’s left of the milk in the fridge with me?”
“Don’t see why I would need any. I already have my water right here, and something a little extra in case the challenge goes wrong. Besides, you know that I don’t like milk.” No, I don’t. I’m not your mother man.
I started to say something to the effect of ‘you know water isn’t gonna help you’, but then I realized–this could be ‘peak content’. No, this WILL be peak content.
“…Okay. I’ll be around then.”
My annoyance at Michael’s flippancy toward the chip subsided after thinking about the idea of him literally eating his words later on. Of course, there was also the possibility that he could actually take on the challenge and ‘pass’ it. I mean, it was true that he did eat spicy food often. Well, at least he ordered it when he got DoorDash. Nothing on the level of the Carolina Reaper though. I still didn’t really know what the ‘challenge’ was, truth be told. All I knew was that when my friend took the challenge, he lasted about two minutes before he gave. He drank about half a gallon of milk, which did nothing to help him for the better part of an hour. After that, he was rendered asunder, not wanting to move from his bed. The ‘side effects’ of the chip, according to him, included the worst stomachache of his life and a loss of appetite. I felt bad for him, but it was funny seeing his face go from white to bright red in a matter of thirty seconds. Michael’s viewers wouldn’t have the pleasure of seeing this, due to the nature of VTubing, but I would have a front-row seat. All they would get is the face his model freezes on when he gives. I knew in the back of my mind that he was going to regret ever doing this after it was over, but also knew that the chat would love it. Plus, me being there would increase the ‘validity’ of the challenge. The chat already knew of my existence due to my outburst a few days ago. He technically couldn’t prove he ate it with just a handcam, but me being a witness to it added an extra layer of plausibility. Truth be told, if the challenge went anywhere as bad as when my friend did it, the chat would know that Michael wasn’t faking the challenge. You can’t fake that pain.
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I spent most of my free time pondering the events that were going to go down later. While Michael’s streams usually started right at the beginning of the hour, it tended to take him a while to get to the main event. He usually spent some time talking to his viewers before he got started—up towards to an hour for some streams! Some would call this stalling, but in reality, I understood why he spent so much time talking to his chat. Without them, he wouldn’t be able to do this for a living. If the superchats kept coming in, then there was no reason for him to stop. There had to be fans who wanted him to shut up and get the show on the road, but they weren’t loud enough for him to care. I would be in that minority if I was watching. Anyways, the thirty-minute time limit he gave himself would hopefully give him enough time to talk to his fans and get ‘prepared’ for today’s stream.
One of the ways I managed to drain the five-hour wait was to go on social media. I’ve never been a huge fan of it per se, mostly using it for news and to talk to close friends, but lately I’ve been finding myself lurking on there more. Mostly it was due to the fascination I had with Michael’s following. Along with being extremely talkative to his fans in the chat (Apparently, streams that were dedicated to conversing with the chat were some of the most popular out there. While it was questionable if they would see your message or superchat while you were playing a game, it was without question that they would see it if you were doing a zatsudan.), he also spends a good amount of time on Twitter posting about his daily life and chatting with his fellow VTubers and fans. There was a little bit of embellishment on the part of Michael when it came to posting about what he did outside of streaming, but nothing that was an outright lie.
I was on there looking to see if Michael had posted anything about today’s stream. The last post he made, from this morning, was talking about the ‘special surprise’ he had in store for tonight’s stream. The way he was hyping his ‘surprise’ made me wonder if he actually did know how powerful the chip was. Then again, considering that he didn’t even want me to prepare him some milk, he was still showing a massive amount of arrogance that was going to bite him in the ass a few hours from now. It also made me wonder: What would he have done if his chip didn’t arrive today? Was Michael mastering the concept of ‘just-in-time content’? That was highly doubtful, considering that relying on the United States Postal Service being on time would be a world-class bozo decision. But, one thing I learned quickly, is that you never know with streamers. Part of me just wished that he would tell his fans what he was doing, but I knew that would majorly spoil the fun for him when he realizes the chip's ‘power’. Other than that, he was retweeting fanart of Francis, his model–most VTubers do this, but Michael has had a massive influx of fanart ever since last week. Apparently, a lot of fanartists have been drawing his model with ‘Roomie-chan’, which was me. What they were doing…I won’t elaborate. VTubers having roommates wasn’t a new thing, but I’m guessing this was the first time ‘Roomie-chan’ had a speaking part in a stream. While I originally thought that it would be kind of creepy to see myself drawn, in practice, it was hilarious, since ‘Roomie-chan’ didn’t look anything like me. First off, I do not have straight blonde hair. Second off, I’m not ‘190 centimeters’ tall. I think that’s like 6’6”. If I was that tall, I would be hooping right now instead of planning my day around seeing my roommate eat shit due to his hubris. ‘Roomie-chan’ was so different from me that I didn’t feel any discomfort seeing what was basically my likeness. It was basically a Jon Dowd situation. They made me look like Leon Kennedy. It was funny how his fans so quickly came to a consensus about what they thought I looked like. It was a severe case of wishful thinking on their part. I didn’t mind, because it meant that I was pretty much able to stay anonymous. It also confirmed that I haven’t been spotted at work yet. Michael is pretty secretive about saying where he’s located. Most streamers are. Either way, I didn’t blow his or my cover when I had my ‘yabai’ moment a few days ago.
If he was also trying to conceal the fact that I would make a cameo later, he was doing a poor job. Most fans probably assumed that my appearance was the surprise at this point. Considering my first appearance was only a few days ago, it wouldn’t be that much of a ‘surprise’. More of ‘cashing in’ than ‘selling out’. I’d like to see someone try to call a VTuber a sell-out.
Pondering this, I went to the kitchen to grab a quick snack–it was around 3 PM. I should just eat lunch. I was too lazy to expend the energy needed to heat something up, however.
Going to the fridge, I grabbed the carton of milk for the bowl of cereal I was going to make. In the pantry, we had Raisin Bran Crunch and Froot Loops. Today I felt more like Raisin Bran. Looking at the gallon in my hand, I noticed that there was less left than I originally thought. After pouring the amount of milk necessary for my cereal, there was only enough in there for about one or two more cups of coffee. This usually wasn’t really a problem, considering that Michael didn’t drink milk, but considering the topic of today’s stream, this might end up being a predicament. Well, a predicament only in my eyes, since Michael wouldn’t ‘need’ it, or even want it. I was going to go by Kroger after work tomorrow anyway, so it wasn’t really a huge issue. He’s more than old enough to make his own decisions. It’s his own funeral.
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After eating my Raisin Bran, I checked Twitter once more. I saw that Michael finally made the announcement that ‘Roomie-chan’ was going to make an appearance. I figured it was a bit obvious at this point anyway, but I knew confirmation was always nice. It wasn’t like I was going to have any other role than just being there.
While lying in bed, I thought about ways I could contribute to the stream without having a second yabai moment. As far as I know, there wasn’t a precedent for this, so I would have to get creative. This should be Michael’s job, I knew, but considering he just announced I was going to be on, I assumed he didn’t have any plans for me.
After a while, I came up with an idea.
I could write notes and show it to the chat through Michael’s handcam. That way, I could talk without actually talking. I didn’t have the best handwriting, but it wasn’t like I was going to write a thesis on sticky notes. There was a zip-lock bag full of medical gloves in the kitchen, so I could wear those as well so I didn’t reveal my hand in the flesh. God forbid if any of Michael’s fans saw my pale fingers. The gloves were blue, which would differentiate me from Michael and the black gloves he wore.
After my short brainstorming session, I sent Michael my idea for tonight's stream. About two minutes later, I got a response that was just the thumbs-up emoji. He must be playing something if that’s all he’s sending me. It annoyed me that he didn’t even send me a ‘sure’ or even a ‘that sounds good’, but I wasn’t going to badger him more. It was his stream anyway. If he had any better ideas he could bring them up to me in the meantime.
Laying on my bed, I made an executive decision to take a nap–I know it’s bad to sleep right after eating a meal, but I had nothing else better to do for the next two and a half hours. Thankfully (or unthankfully, since this nap is likely to mess up my sleep schedule at least a bit), I fell asleep right as soon as my head hit my pillow.
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Waking up at 5:30, I still had some time to kill before Michael attempted the One Chip Challenge. After turning on the Xfinity race, I decided to go on the Paqui’s (the company that makes the chip) website on my phone.
Looking at the ‘#onechipchallenge’ tab, I watched a video promoting the challenge. As expected, most of the thirty-second advertisement was people grimacing after eating the chip. I’m sure most of you have already heard of the One Chip Challenge, but I’ll sum it up for those who haven’t. The chip of the One Chip Challenge was of the large tortilla variety–it is filled with Carolina Reaper Pepper and Scorpion Pepper, both some of the hottest peppers in the world. This year, the catch was that the chip made your tongue turn blue–something Michael couldn’t show anyone but me. The actual ‘challenge’ was to see how long one could last without eating or drinking anything for relief. My friend made it about two minutes before he broke and gulped down a whole glass of milk. According to the Paqui website, that meant he was ‘powerless’. If he had survived for eight minutes more, then he would be ‘powerful’. For thirty minutes, he would be ‘supercharged’. And if he was somehow able to last a full hour, he would be declared ‘invincible’. I haven’t ever tried the challenge, and I don’t have any plans to after seeing the pain my friend endured. I don’t think anyone had ever lasted an hour–if they did, then they weren’t showing it on here. Paqui also did sell ‘regular’ spicy chips–something that may be worth trying, unlike the chip Michael would be eating later. If they put as much effort into the taste as they do to inflicting damage, then their chips have to be pretty good.
Checking back on Twitter, Michael had tweeted out a link to today’s stream. Most VTubers, and especially ones affiliated with large corporations like Michael, had weekly schedules that they stuck to by any means necessary. Having to postpone or delay a stream wouldn’t make you persona non grata, but it would give viewers an opportunity to watch someone else. The number one objective of every VTuber, hell, every streamer, was to keep eyes on them. That meant that there were no days off for most VTubers who stream for a living. If you weren’t streaming that day, you were more than likely making preparations for future streams–or in Michael’s case, having meetings with management or appearing on other VTuber streams. Michael had always had a weekly schedule up–this schedule allowed his fans to know in advance when and what he was streaming. The fact that people out there were scheduling their day partially around you streaming had to be a weird feeling, but I’m sure Michael was used to it by now.
Funnily enough, if you checked the Twitter accounts of his coworkers, their schedules and his combined for an almost 24/7 nonstop loop of content. I don’t think anybody does that though. Many VTuber fans tended to have a favorite (who they call their ‘oshi’), and only rarely watched other VTubers. To be fair to them, there was only so much time one had to watch streams. Work, school, and life in general would get in the way. If you looked deeper, there were fans that seemed like they had seven VTubers that were their ‘oshis’. At that point, you either have them on all the time, which they very well could. Michael and the other VTubers at AnyClover often collaborated, creating a sense of community that expanded out to their fanbases and a cohesive ecosystem of ‘AnyClover’. Even if you didn’t watch a certain VTuber, you would most likely know something about them if they collabed with your ‘oshi’. AnyClover has ten current members in its English branch, Michael being one of them. I haven’t had the opportunity to meet any of the other nine yet, but they all seemed to be nice people. At least going by the interactions I saw Michael have with them on Twitter.
Clicking the link in Michael’s tweet led to the ‘waiting room’ for today’s stream. The surprise still wasn’t revealed, with the thumbnail being a throwaway one that I’ve seen him use before. There were already over one hundred people in here, even with the stream not starting for another fifteen minutes. Most of them probably had the stream open while doing something else, but there were also people in the chat talking to each other. It was strange how I was now actively playing a part to a role in this community now. I’ve never participated in his chat, even as a random bystander. I never considered getting a membership to his channel. I already knew what he did for those ‘member streams’. He mostly did movie watchalongs and zatsudans and all of that. I’m not that interested in that when I could do the same thing with him in real life.
Funnily enough, I got gifted a membership to one of Michael’s genmates about two weeks ago. It was one of his female coworkers, named ‘Violet Bridgewater’. She was streaming RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, which is a dear game from my childhood. Although I only watched for only about twenty minutes, I was one of ten lucky people to get gifted a sub during that time. I felt bad for not saying ‘Thank you’ in chat, but I didn’t know it was proper etiquette at the time. It was a fun stream, that being said I haven’t tuned in since. From her streaming history, it seems that she’s more into card and fighting games, both genres that I don’t know that much about. She also seemed to stream ‘classic games’ from time to time. By ‘classic’, I mean PlayStation 2 games. I do hope she streams more RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 soon.
I subscribed to her and all of Michael’s other streamer friends in the AnyClover EN branch. If anything else, I could know what he was doing if I also kept tabs on the other members, as it seemed that they all hung out with each other mostly off stream as well. Off-stream, I had no idea how close of friends they were. All I knew was that here was no drama within the group–at least not that I heard of. Michael occasionally had some shit to say about someone he knew, but never about anyone in AnyClover. The funny part is that when he did talk to me about another VTuber in his group, he always referred to them by their VTuber name–never by their birth name or what they went by outside of VTubing. It was a weird dichotomy, since I only really knew him as ‘Michael’, while everyone else knew him as ‘Francis’. Of course, I assumed that his coworkers knew his actual name and vice versa–it was just easier to refer to each other as what they went by on-stream.
I closed out of the stream since I had no intention of watching it–why would I have it up if I was going to be on there? There was only one other AnyClover member on–they were streaming some mobile game that I had no interest in learning about. At first, it was surprising that they were the only ones out of all ten currently streaming, considering it was the weekend and around prime time on the East Coast. However, the more I learned about VTuber culture, the more it made sense. Michael has told me that they have a significant amount of fans in Asia, especially in Southeast Asia. A lot of this, according to him, was due to many members having roots in that region. Some VTubers even did streams in other languages (Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog (which recently I learned ISN’T pronounced ‘tag-along’. My bad.), etc.), which further endeared them to fans from that country. Needless to say, the Virtual YouTubers of AnyClover had an international audience. In that way, prime time could be any time of the day.
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Looking at the clock, it was around six–the start time for Michael’s stream. I could go in there right now, but it would be very early to do so. He still had to talk to his chat–well, technically he didn’t have to, but it was his style to do so. Especially with the number of superchats and subscriptions that flooded in at the beginning of a stream, it would be rude not to thank those who support you. The Xfinity race, which was called Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner 300 funnily enough, was going well for drivers at this point. A ‘big one’ hadn’t happened yet, and the racing was orderly enough to where I pondered if “It’s What’s” was the proper pronunciation. Think about it–”It is what is for dinner”–sounding it out like that, it sounds awkward. Is there really a need for a second ‘is’? Personally, I thought “Its What’s For Dinner” would be more grammatically correct. “Its what is for dinner” rolls off my tongue better. Then again, I’m not an English major, and English has very stupid rules for stuff like this. I’m sure the Beef Lobby would have known if it was grammatically incorrect before rolling it out how many years ago at this point. Grammatically correct or not, the fact that I was thinking about it meant that the marketing was working. That being said, the stereotypical person who watched NASCAR was probably already a heavy beef eater, so it was really an exercise in branding rather than trying to enter an unknown market as far as I see it. Like Gatorade sponsoring something related to the NFL.
Feeling kinda peckish from all of this beef talk, I went to the freezer and grabbed a tiny ice cream cone. It contained a part of the cow, not the one that was being advertised right now. Score one for ‘Got Milk’.
One of the pleasures of being an adult was being able to ruin your appetite on your own terms. With the cereal earlier and the ice cream I was having now, my diet today was rather lacking in everything other than fiber and dairy. The troubling part was that I grabbed the last one, meaning I would have to get some more tomorrow. Another reason to stop by Kroger after work. Michael enjoyed these too, which meant that these were a hot commodity. Maybe I should tell him that there’s milk in it so he doesn’t eat them anymore.
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Thirty minutes passed. The race still was relatively clean for a Superspeedway race. Entertaining nonetheless.
Right at the 6:35 PM mark, Michael messaged me [“you can come now”]. The funny thing is that we use Discord to talk, and he uses his VTuber account to message me. I’m not sure if that’s against the rules or not. I would probably look schizophrenic if I told people that the person I talk to the most only exists ‘on the internet’.
Entering Michael’s room, I saw him preparing to change over to the setup for today’s stream. He was still in his default setup, which was his VTuber model sitting in a room that was way more Victorian in design than his actual room. I didn’t even think his ‘character’ fit the aesthetic, but what do I know. He was putting on his black gloves that VTubers always wear when doing handcam streams.
Turning to me, Michael said “I’m muted by the way.” I was ‘free’ to talk.
Sitting in an extra office chair that was in his room, I watched him pull out a small dry-erase board.
“You can use this to talk once everything’s ready to go.” he said while handing the board to me. This was a better idea than my sticky note idea–also seeing as I forgot to bring them, I’m glad Michael had another idea.
Putting on the gloves I got from the kitchen, Michael said “Oh good, the only other pair of gloves I own are my backup pair of these.” holding up a pair identical to the ones he had on. Did he even read the text I sent him earlier?
Wondering, I asked him “Do they know about today’s stream?”
“Oh yeah,” pointing at his chat “they already knew you were coming.”
“No,” sighing “I already knew that, I’m talking about the chip.”
“Wait? How did you know that?” He look puzzled, like I didn’t personally deliver the damn thing to him mere hours ago.
“I saw it on Twitter.”
“You follow me on there?”
“Well...yeah. I have to keep up with what you’re doing somehow.” The guy had like half a million followers on Twitter, so there’s no way he could have noticed me following him. All I do on there is lurk anyway.
Getting back to the point, I asked again “So, they don’t know about the chip?”
Gesturing to the chip, Michael stated that he was waiting for me to arrive to show the big reveal. This was getting a bit convoluted for what was essentially a tortilla chip unboxing and review, but being a streamer, you have to build hype for your streams. A necessary evil I guess.
While we were having our short conversation, I noticed that Michael’s VTuber model, Francis, was still moving around, as if he never muted himself. This was a regular thing, but it was quite absurd to see happening in real-time in my face. Noticing that I was looking at his monitor, Michael said “Go ahead and roll your chair so I can continue.”
Settling in, Michael un-muted himself and told everyone in the chat that ‘Roomie-chan’ arrived. The chat was too far away for me to see, but I’m assuming most people were saying hi or something of the sort, seeing how fast it was going. In order to prove that I was actually there, I wrote “hello” in marker on the dry-erase board, then handed it to Michael who then showed it on his handcam.
“Come on chat, you know Roomie-chan is obligated to stay silent on stream. It was in the lease agreement he signed!” Some of Michael’s chat wanted me to have a more vocal role in today’s stream, but I think Michael’s managers and AnyClover would have a huge issue with that. I didn’t feel like talking to thousands of people as well, so writing on a dry-erase board like I’m Komi-san is good enough.
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After some further meandering, we got the show on the road. The reception to Michael’s other surprise, which was only a surprise due to his gamble on the Post Office to deliver his goods on time, was met with shock.
Along with my initial reaction, a good portion of the chat was telling their own stories about the One Chip Challenge. I was able to read the chat by pulling it up on my phone, smirking externally and laughing internally while chat scrolled by at a rate of knots. One reason why I never got into Virtual YouTubers, or streamers in general, was because I felt like most communities were built on contrived in-jokes that varied little from streamer to streamer. The culture was so ‘plug-and-play’ that it looked ingenuine at times. This, however, was the real thing, or about as real as I’ve ever seen. This is what Virtual YouTubing is all about.
Michael had a tall canister of water at his side. If I had to guess, it held about 32 ounces of water–a guestimation based on my experiences of drinking eight cups a day for years on end by now. I knew full well that water wouldn’t help him in the slightest, but at least it did feel nice while drinking it. Milk would help him, but Michael already ruled that out, which left the ‘little extra’ help that he referenced. I didn’t know what that ‘little extra’ was, but racking my brain around what it could be.
After a few seconds of deep thinking, I came to a realization…the only other thing in the fridge that could help with drowning out spicy tastes was the ice cream…which there was none of left, because I ate the last cone less than an hour ago…oh shit.
If I was correct, then the secret thing that Michael had in store was the ice cream that was now in my stomach. For about half a second, I panicked, putting myself in his shoes. But after that, I came to the conclusion that this could actually be the best thing that happened. I’ll say it again: Peak content. This was his fault for being smug about all of this. Not that it mattered at all to me–it was going to be his own demise. I would bear none of the pain.
While I was deep in thought, Michael was reading out the rules to the One Chip Challenge. As expected, he was going to go for ‘Invincible’. To last a full hour…barely anyone in chat believed that he would be able to last that long. At least Michael had himself.
Opening the small box, the chip was wrapped neatly in a wrapper that had ‘PAQUI ONE CHIP CHALLENGE’ on it. The wrapper, which was blue, signifying the whole ‘blue tongue’ thing, was laid to the side, still on cam, while Michael read what was inside the box.
“‘Prove it! Show us your tongue!’ Well, seeing that I can’t really show you my tongue, Roomie-chan is going to make sure I actually do it!” Michael stated while nudging at me. Really, this whole arrangement was awkward, and me being there to ‘prove’ that he ate the One Chip Challenge was an awful pretense. Seemingly re-realizing, he said, “Oh sorry. I forgot you can’t talk!” and did a canned laugh, which was accompanied by real laughs in the chat. Seeing a chance to jump in, I wrote “haha” on the dry-erase board. I didn’t find it funny particularly, but I’d rather participate than be a buzzkill. I wasn’t planning on ‘speaking’ much, but I knew I had to at least let the people know I was actually there.
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Michael continued on talking for about fifteen minutes, almost continuously. He was skillful enough at broadcasting to not have much, if not any, excessive dead air. It does help when you have hundreds of people trying to talk to you in chat, but I think it’s impressive to be able to pull off every day for hours. It’s the same skill talk radio broadcasters have. He’s kind of like Rush Limbaugh if he cared about MOBAs instead of MOABs.
I, on the other hand, stayed perfectly silent and still. I was perfectly fine with Michael doing all of the talking–he’s who they came to see! While he talked to his fans, I was on my phone wasting time. Occasionally I would try to pop back into his chat just to see what they were talking about, but it was difficult to keep track of the total amount of messages being sent. Superchats got priority, as one would expect. Those messages usually had questions in them or gave thanks to Michael for providing entertainment to them. Funnily enough, one ‘supa’ that came from him said “Go ahead and do the challenge! Roomie-chan can’t be here all night! He’s got to go to work like the rest of us tomorrow!” The person did make a good point—he was continuing to stall, even after he was ‘officially’ ready. Also, I don’t work on Sundays, so I’m fine chat.
By this time, Michael had already opened the wrapper and had the chip on camera. It was blue, as advertised, and was coated with Reaper Pepper and Scorpion Pepper from head to toe. Even if Michael was a ‘typical’ streamer, wearing gloves while holding the chip would be a very wise thing to do. This wasn’t something that you wanted to accidentally rub into your eyes.
It had been almost an hour since Michael had started the stream, so I was expecting him to get the show on the road and do the challenge at some point. I could understand if he was having second thoughts now that the chip was right in front of him and ready to be eaten. I don’t think he watched anyone else eat the chip before doing this so he had no idea what a world of pain he was going to be in soon. However, by the looks of the chat, they knew what they were in for. I knew as well.
Michael had pulled up a timer and put it in the top right corner of the stream–his goal was to last the full hour, a goal that he was NOT going to make. It was nearing 7 PM, which Michael spotted and gave him the motivation to get on the hurry up.
“Alright guys, we’ve talked enough for now. It’s time to eat the damn thing!” He was amping himself up for the chip, which he was giving the chat a three-sixty-view of. Doing the challenge was easy. All you had to do was eat the chip–in one bite preferably. You’re just multiplying the spiciness if you take two bites.
Michael was looking at the chip like it was a bug…hey man, it’s a bit late to have second thoughts! With a deep inhale, Michael said “Well, here goes nothing!” and inhaled the chip.
He chewed and swallowed it in only a few seconds. Indeed, this was the easy part. The crunch of the chip radiated throughout the room. There was no doubt in mind that everyone watching heard it. He stuck his tongue out, which only I could see, and said “wow, my tongue is really blue!” I nodded. It was in fact blue. His teeth were blue as well, but I couldn’t tell him that.
It was at about this time, ten seconds in, when the chip’s power kicked in. After sticking his tongue out to no one except me, he suddenly raised his eyebrows and said “Oh yeah, this is hot”. His VTuber model made a surprised face that was really close to his real-life face, which made it very difficult not to laugh at his proclamation. This wasn’t lost on the chat, which started spamming laughing and surprised emotes. Michael was trying to play it off cool, but it was obvious from his facial expression that he was in pain. And this was the start of it. Get ready buddy.
At the twenty-second mark, Michael started chuckling, saying “wow, this really isn’t going to stop, isn’t it?”. He didn’t say anything else, just continuing to laugh while shaking his head. I wasn’t saying anything, but I was trying my best not to smile or laugh in his face.
Half a minute into the challenge, Michael’s face had fully changed from pale to bright red. He started coughing uncontrollably, and inexplicably took off his headphones. There was sweat pouring down his face, and he was dry-heaving. My schadenfreude levels were at about max, but others in the chat were starting to get concerned, saying things such as “pls drink some milk if this is too much for you!!!”. Assuming Francis was their oshi, they should already know that he hated milk.
“I don’t need…to drink any milk…this will subside eventually…” Michael was having difficulty speaking. Tears were starting to come out of his eyes. Not even a minute in, he was crying due to a tortilla chip. To be fair, it was the world’s hottest tortilla chip, but still a tortilla chip. Not even concerned with how it would sound over the stream, Michael took a tissue and blew his nose at mach ten. This chip was working wonders if it could clean your sinus within a minute of inhaling it. Michael was lucky that he had an entire box of tissues to the side. He would be needing them.
For the next minute, Michael said nothing. He was concentrating on not breaking. Breathing in deep, Michael was trying to calm himself down. It didn’t seem to be working though, since he occasionally coughed and was still sweating. With his eyes closed, his VTuber model also had his eyes closed, prompting some in chat to say “oyasumi Francis” or “omg he died”. Seeing a way to make them laugh some more, I took the dry-erase board, wrote “he’s also crying if you can believe that LOL”, and placed it in front of the handcam. Once he opened his eyes, he shoved the board out of the way, retorting with “I’m not…crying...”, while continuing to cry.
This continued for another minute. Nothing was said, and all Michael was doing was breathing in deeply, like he had just gotten done with an intense workout. He looked at the packaging again, saying “oh my god…this is taking so long…I can’t believe I’m only two minutes and thirty seconds in…” Right then, Michael reached for his gut. It seemed like the stomach pains were kicking in.
At around the four-minute mark, Michael suddenly stated “fuck this!” and stormed out of his room, his VTuber model stuck looking like he just got kicked in the nuts. I knew what he was probably looking for: that ice cream cone that I had eaten before this stream. Michael was about to be in a world of trouble–since all we had was about a thimble of milk left. He completely forgot about his water.
As I was finishing those thoughts, Michael raced back into the room, muted his mic, and said “Where the fuck is the ice cream?”
Sighing, I had to break the news to him.
“I ate it earlier.”
“You what? You knew that I was eating this chip and you still ate the only thing that would give me comfort!” I had no idea how he had the capacity to yell a whole sentence while fighting for his life. He was exerting way too much energy than was good for him.
“You should’ve told me! I would’ve never eaten it if you were saving it for tonight!” Really, common sense would’ve told him to tell me to save it for him. This is what he gets for being over-confident about this whole thing.
Struggling to breathe, Michael retorted “And also there’s barely any fucking milk! Really?”. Before he could say anymore, he started up a coughing fit. He was extremely upset, and I could understand why. But at the same time, he was certainly putting on a show. I mean, for a man who was currently muted, he was making a lot of viewers laugh in chat. They only saw his model moving around violently. After finishing coughing, Michael grabbed his giant water bottle and chugged from it. The temporary relief wasn’t what he needed, but it was all that he had at the moment. For those keeping score–he stopped the timer too. Four minutes and three seconds for those who care.
Sighing again, I decided to ‘make it right’. “Michael, I’m sorry for eating your ice cream. I can go to the store up the road and get some if that’s what you want.” I wasn’t sorry at all, but I had to indulge him a bit. The man was in excruciating pain and was in a vulnerable state, to say the least. This was also the first time I had seen him get angry.
He seemed to be in pain to the point where he couldn’t muster the energy to be mad at me anymore. All he said back was “please…”, with a pained expression. The water wasn’t helping at all, as expected.
There was a convenience store around a mile away from our house that was going to close in an hour. Its close distance meant that it wouldn’t take but a minute or two to drive there. The only thing that would be working against Michael was if there were many other people in there as well. Also being a gas station and a restaurant, the convenience store had a lot of traffic.
Much to Michael’s dismay, I walked, not ran, to the door. After making sure I had everything I needed to go, I got in my car. I plugged in my phone. I typically used my phone to listen to music or podcasts or to get directions to a location, but today was different. It took a bit to find it, but I finally got Michael’s stream to start playing. With the sounds of his bitching, I could finally go now.
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Being only a mile-long trip, the drive to the store was a short one. I tuned into Michael’s stream to see how he was holding up. While he was complaining a lot, he seemed to be doing fine–at least compared to how I saw him last. He still wasn’t saying much of anything, but he was at least attempting to be receptive. From the sound of it, there were many superchats coming in, meaning that his pain was in fact his gain, at least monetarily.
In the hour that Michael had been streaming, the sun had set. Well, it was already pretty dusky when he started, but it was properly dark now. It was somewhat disorienting, considering it didn’t feel like the night yet. In a few weeks, it’ll still be light out at this time of day. Time going forward an hour was a killer when it came to sleeping in, but having the sum out later in the day was a good psychological force. The sun being down when I leave work subconsciously affirms to me that the day is ‘over’, while it being still up meant that there was still time left on the clock. It could be at the same time, separated by only a month or two, but it would still affect my mood one way or another.
You may be asking, “Why didn’t you just drive there? It’s only a mile…” – while it’s technically possible, where we live is no place to walk. Living near a state highway, there were always vehicles on the road, some of them paying attention less than others. It’s only made worse since there’s no sidewalk anywhere, which means you’d have to walk in tall grass or on the road to get to your destination. You could walk there, but it would involve crossing the road several times and trusting anyone driving wouldn’t hit you. There weren’t any street lights either, so walking at night was suicidal unless if you had hi-vis on. The flip side of this inconvenience was that it was very difficult for Michael to have a stalker. There’s almost no place to park your car and hide. You would have to be a neighbor to be able to keep up with us, and I don’t think our neighbors own a computer, never mind know what a VTuber is.
Pulling into the parking lot was a breeze. There were multiple entryways, which could make maneuvering to a parking spot or to a pump tricky. There were only a few vehicles parked out front, and a man pumping gas into his truck on the other side of the lot.
Walking into the convenience store, there were only a few others inside, one already in line.
There was a chest freezer next to the door which had an assortment of ice cream inside it. Knowing that Michael didn’t care what I grabbed, I got a smorgasbord of ice cream–it was going on his card anyway. Even if he could barely speak, he was able to thank someone for sending a fifty-dollar superchat while I was driving here. Fifty dollars! Although I’ve heard stories about streamers being donated twenty thousand dollars…guess you had to stream CS:GO to be granted that privilege.
Of course, the store had more than ice cream–they had a whole assortment of treats and all the beer that your dad could want…except for Pabst Blue Ribbon for some reason. They also had cigarettes, scratch-offs, and all the fake weed that you could get your hands on They even had ‘Delta-6’, the newest in the line of what I call ‘Diet Weed’ that has been taking over states where marijuana is illegal in the last few years. I heard that it’s not lethal like K2 or bath salts were, meaning it wouldn’t kill you if you did it. There wasn’t any salvia as well, unfortunately. I don’t think it would go over well if it discovered that Francis’s ‘Roomie-chan’ spent his money on a fake weed vape, so I saved my curiosity for another day.
Their milk selection was dismal, but it was a given since rarely anyone who comes in here comes to get a gallon of milk. It was like five dollars for a gallon too, at least twice the price I would’ve paid at Kroger! It was the price you paid for only having to drive a mile to the store versus driving ten miles. As they say; time is money. And it’s not my money I’m spending right now, but my time.
Grabbing a gallon of milk, I headed to the register. The guy in front of me was returning a lottery ticket. From the looks of it, he won twenty dollars from it, from which he bought a pack of Marlboro Reds and six hotdogs.
Smiling to myself, I couldn’t help but say “What a deal” out loud.
The man, hearing me, turned around and said “Yeah, you can’t beat that with a stick”.
I really didn’t care to get into a conversation, but it would be rude to ignore him, so I responded with a chuckle along with saying “Sure can’t”.
“Especially with inflation!” he retorted back…Oh god, I made a huge mistake. I have a gallon of milk and like nine frozen treats in my hand, both of which were making me freeze my ass off, and now I had to listen to what was probably the thousand unprompted explanation about how the President was causing the economy to tank on purpose.
Working in retail, you occasionally get these types of customers. Due to working at Hobby Lobby, more leaned right than left, but cranks of every kind occasionally went off on a tirade that was only tangentially related to their original question at hand. I don’t mind it there, since I got paid to listen to them bitch, but having to listen to this while ice cream melts on my shirt? Oh well, not much I can do other than smile and nod. Even if inflation is a worldwide trend and we Americans were relatively lucky since our inflation rate was lower than say, England and Germany, it wasn’t low enough to stop accusations of ruining the economy. In a sense, I get it–paying more for the same item sucks. The most prevalent example was with eggs, which nearly doubled in the last few months. With things like this, there usually are internal and external factors that cause this to happen. Avain flu reducing egg production. War causing the price of grain to feed chickens and gas to transport eggs to increase. There was also the fact that the point of doing business was to give as little and take as much as you could. These reasons, and others, result in the record-high egg prices we have right now. The point of the matter is that there’s not much the President can do about this. He’s just going to have to take the blame from those who don’t like him. It’s part of the job to be cursed at. Hell, I bet if the other guy was in office, those on the other side of the aisle would be blaming him instead of doing any research. It was easier to point out ‘problems’ that way. That’s politics for you. Man, I wish I went to school for engineering instead.
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In the middle of explaining the concept of how inflation works and pretending that it was a new thing, his hot dogs came out and were ready to go. He left before he could get to the point. If there was one.
Being next in line, I finally got to dump the gallon of milk and the assortment of frozen treats onto the counter–if it wasn’t for me wearing long sleeves, my arms would’ve probably been cold to the bone. Instead, they were damp like I was sweating buckets. The young man at the counter scanned the ice creams and milk. That reminded me; I wonder how Michael is doing...I probably had been in the store for about five minutes now. It felt like an hour due to experiencing unprompted political talk, but in reality, I really didn’t have to wait that long for Mr. Scratch-Off to get his wieners and then leave. As someone who has once waited forty-five minutes to get fish and chicken from Captain D’s, a five-minute wait was nothing.
Speaking of wieners, I decided to get six to go ‘all the way’, since I had no idea what I was going to eat for dinner. I got Michael three so in the case he couldn’t stomach anything else, he wouldn’t be left out. The landlord told me that the hot dogs from this place were ‘out of this world’–I highly doubted that, but it’s very hard to fuck up a hot dog from my experience. Either way, I wasn’t paying.
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About a minute later, I was out the door, frozen treats and milk in one hand, and hotdogs in the other. Thankfully, they were all bagged so I didn’t have to carry them like I was stealing. As I walked out, I started to feel irritated–not because of the length from the front door to my car (quite the opposite actually, since I parked closest to the door)–but because there was currently a truck blocking my way out. There was also some back-and-forth yelling going on somewhere nearby.
This parking lot was small, meaning you would unfortunately have to block someone’s way to get out, but the truck behind my car was seemingly idling. I placed everything in the passenger seat of my car and then went to the window–no one was in the driver's seat. What I did see past the windows was one man whaling on another man.
‘Whaling’ would probably be an overstatement, but it was obvious who was winning this fight. I had no idea who that was, but I knew who the guy on the ground was–it was that weird guy inside.
“I told you not to come around here again!” The man who was beating our fellow hot dog enjoyer up was done landing punches. He dusted himself off, picked the other man up, and threw him against the gas pump adjacent to him. Mr. Scratch Off, not resisting at all, fell against the pump, and seemed to be in no mood to do anything. He must have really gotten the shit kicked out of him in the minute I was checking out.
The other man, now entering his F-150, yelled “Now you better get, and stay get!” and quickly left the station, skidding out like he was trying to do a burnout. Our ‘friend’ must have done something to make him very upset. I doubt it was politically motivated, since the Ford had a faded sticker on the rear bumper expressing support for a famous real-estate-developer-turned-game-show-host.
With the coast clear, I went to see how our acquaintance was doing. He was lying on the concrete with his head against a pump. From the looks of it, he was out cold. He wasn’t bleeding or anything, but he did have a huge knot on his head forming.
As I was about to ask if he was awake, I got a text. Looking at my phone, it said:
[“where tf are you @ !!! im dying over here !!”]
So impatient, damn! I had good reason to be running late. I couldn’t get out! I had to show him what happened–he wouldn’t believe me otherwise.
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A few minutes later, I was finally back home. The guy's truck was still running, so all I had to do was park it for him. I parked it at the pump he was resting at. There were only four pumps at this gas station–taking one of these stations and idling would be frowned upon if he didn’t get up soon. I considered putting the fuel pump into his truck as to make it seem like he was getting gas, but I decided against it. He would be up soon, and if he wasn’t, someone would eventually call 911. I could tell he was breathing–I didn’t know if he was actually out cold or was just playing dead–it really wasn’t my problem to be honest. I didn’t know what prior events caused this situation to conspire, and I didn’t really care to know in the first place. The only thing I could think of to confirm if he was only taking a rest was to toss his keys at him. Aiming for his chest, I accidentally nailed him on the forehead. His closed eyes didn’t flinch a bit. I’m also pretty sure I saw the owner of the store walking out and yelling “You can not be sleeping here!” while pulling out. The situation will solve itself.
Back home, by the time I got to the kitchen, Michael was already there–I’m surprised he didn’t slip and bust his ass how fast he was running in socks. He tore open the first bag I set on the counter and grabbed the first thing he saw.
“What the fuck is this?” Michael said, examining what was obviously a hot dog in a wrapper.
“Well, that’s called a hot dog,” I said with extreme sarcasm as I threw him a random frozen treat from the other bag that I was still holding. He hoovered it up, almost taking the wrapper down the hatch as well, and took the treats bag back to his room. He also took the hot dog if you were wondering.
Now that the fun was had, I didn’t really care to go back to his room. I was there to see him eat shit, not to watch a mukbang. If he was really in that much pain, the stream wouldn’t last that much longer anyway.
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For those who are wondering–the stream was a ‘success’. Michael made around $2,000 in superchats in the two-and-a-half hours that he streamed–$800 an hour! Of course, a lot of that money would go to YouTube and his handlers at AnyClover, but either way, he made a lot of currency that night. Was it worth it? At the moment he would’ve said no, but once his stomach started behaving again, he would see how his pain was for gain. There were also a lot of memberships gifted during the stream, but I was too lazy to look up how many.
After the stream was over, I didn’t hear from Michael for the next 18 hours–that wasn’t that uncommon to be quite honest since he was a bit of a hermit, but he had a valid reason to be bedridden after doing The Challenge. He at least made it back to the fridge, since there were like five ice creams in the fridge along with a half-ate hot dog. Of course, I moved the ice cream to the freezer before it started melting. The saving grace was that he kept them in the bag they came in, so they didn’t get the chance to melt on the fridge. That would’ve been a real bitch to clean that up.
He didn’t have any streams planned for the next day, so he could lounge around in bed all he wanted without feeling guilty. He would probably spend most of the day on Twitter and Discord, which in all honestly wouldn’t be that much different from normal.
As for me, the quick trip to the convenience store saved me the trouble of having to go to Kroger–at least for a day. That stream was a whole new experience for me in more than one way. It was the first time I ever saw someone get beat up in public since university, and it was also the first time I was ‘on-stream’ to thousands of people. A common criticism of ‘corpo VTubers’ is that they have their audiences handed to them and they only have to show up. Sour grapes or not, it was true that it was easier by far to gain a following if you were signed to a company that could promote you. To get there in the first place meant that you had the skill and the dedication to entertain your audience. Some more cynical viewers might think that Michael faked doing The One Chip Challenge, but he really did put his gut on the line for content. I don’t know why he thought he could pass the challenge with ease, but that part of him was one of the parts that made his streams popular. He wasn’t the top VTuber in AnyClover, but he was up there. He had a pretty good knack for knowing what his viewers wanted to see. Sometimes he resorted to the ASMR streams that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, but it also meant that he would make a fool of himself by eating the world’s hottest tortilla chip.
Would I be part of one of his streams again? More than likely, but I wasn’t planning on being a common feature. Hell, my contribution to the stream was minimal–placing a dry-erase board on camera a few times with my musings. Hardly anything revolutionary, but his fans seemed to love it. It would be more appealing if I wasn’t doing it for free. Being paid in hot dogs and ice cream is nice, however, it doesn’t pay the rent. Needless to say, I was looking forward to making a cameo again. I wouldn’t show up for no reason though–I wasn’t going to become part of Michael’s Wack Pack–a group whose only member would be me.
It would be nice to become a streamer if I was rolling in the money like Michael was. I lacked the drive and initiative to attempt to become one though. My personality wasn’t endearing at all either. It took those three things and a lot of luck to make being a streamer a profitable venture. And if there’s one thing I know about streaming, those who start doing it for the money don’t make it.
As it stood, I already had a job. A shit job, but a job that paid the bills nonetheless. I wasn’t going to give that up to be a fleeting streamer who could barely break into the 2-digits. I’ll leave the entertaining to my roommate.