Ficorpio
Chapter 1
In my second year on the job, I accidentally discovered that my stern, buttoned-up boss was the male streamer who practically lived at number two on StreamHub’s trending chart.
Deep voice. Never showed his face.
More importantly?
He was entertaining.
Very entertaining.
I’m a woman in investment banking.
No connections. No lucky breaks. I got where I was by working myself into the ground.
My boss, Adrian Sterling, was the perfect investment-banking machine. Education, family background, stamina, physique, looks, client relations. He excelled at everything.
There was only one problem: he always looked furious.
He was cold as ice. Whenever those long legs came striding toward me in perfectly tailored suit pants, they looked like a pair of swinging blades. I could practically feel the chill against my neck.
Before I met Adrian, my personal motto had been: “Money, money, money. Food, food, food.”
After I met him, I developed two new catchphrases.
The first was what I said to his face, with the utmost respect: “Mm-hmm. Of course. I’ll take care of it.”
The second was what I muttered in the darkest corner of my soul: “Go fuck yourself.”
Adrian had studied overseas. Apparently, he used to go around saying, “Money, money, money.”
These days, he only seemed to know one word.
“Shit.”
He could work shit into any sentence with remarkable flexibility. The number of times he used it was a reliable measure of how angry he was.
For example:
“Ms. Bennett, this report is worse than the shit produced by a piece of shit after it ate another piece of shit.”
Or:
“Claire Bennett, I could stuff shit into a pile of shit and make it perform a valuation analysis on top of more shit, and it would still produce better work than this.”
I knew that if this were a novel, he would probably be the domineering billionaire executive destined to sweep the heroine off her feet.
In real life, I simply thought there was something wrong with him.
And in my head, I always answered, Go fuck yourself, you condescending bastard. My report is obviously flawless.
Yes, I had confidence.
An unreasonable amount of confidence.
It was simply part of my personality.
I was an incurable optimist. Even after that miserable ice-cold man finished tearing me apart, I could stroll into the employee cafeteria and polish off two full meals.
Maybe that bulletproof attitude was why I was the only person who had managed to work under him for two years without quitting.
Though there was another reason I could survive all that pressure without losing my mind.
I had a hobby that helped me unwind.
I loved watching male streamers.
Chapter 2
The more suggestive and boundary-pushing their streams were, the more I enjoyed them.
Watching livestreams was actually a pretty decent hobby.
Investment bankers worked late, traveled constantly, and had no time to hit the clubs or lounge beside some Las Vegas bar watching strippers perform.
So when I found myself working until midnight yet again, I put on my headphones the moment the clock struck twelve. Pretending nothing was happening, I angled my screen away from my supervisor’s watchful gaze and quietly opened StreamHub.
Midnight was when my favorite streamer went live.
Mason Reed, the top-ranked streamer on the platform.
He had a bad temper, was terrible with words, and never bothered coming up with entertaining bits. Those were his shortcomings.
But he had one very considerable strength.
As one of the few male streamers on StreamHub willing to show his face, he was handsome.
Not ordinarily handsome, either. He was the kind of devastatingly gorgeous man no one could forget after seeing him once.
“Ah… there we go.”
Static crackled through my headphones. I froze as a lazy, indifferent voice flowed into both ears.
The video came to life.
Mason was curled up in his gaming chair, though “sitting” might have been too generous a word for it. He had both feet planted on the seat and appeared to have just stepped out of the shower.
His damp wolf tail trailed behind him. A fitted T-shirt clung to his body, and his bare toes were still flushed pink from the hot water.
Hugging his knees, he lifted a hand toward the camera.
“You made it.”
Within a minute, the viewer count passed ten thousand.
“Welcome, Mochi.”
“Welcome, fifth.”
One username after another rolled past.
“Welcome…” Mason abruptly paused. One eyebrow rose, and a smile tugged at his lips. “Welcome to our number-one supporter, Divorced Six Times with Two Kids.”
That was me.
Whenever my supervisor tore into me and the stress got too much, I changed my username.
The “number-one supporter” part was also me. It wasn’t another username, but a title I had earned.
Because I really had once been the fool who spent enough money to become Mason’s top supporter.
When he first started streaming, he had been so broke that he broadcast from a battered old phone. The camera quality was terrible, wrapping his entire body in a hazy, almost ethereal blur.
He lived in a cramped, cluttered rental room. The toilet was beside his bed, and the kitchenette was practically at his pillow.
Chapter 3
At first, he streamed from the bed. The camera accidentally captured his pitifully exposed toilet, which was so absurd that a platform moderator warned him for broadcasting unsanitary content.
After that, he streamed from inside his closet.
Back then, Mason had been completely untamed. He said whatever came into his head and often turned his back to the camera so he could sneak a cigarette.
The whites beneath his irises showed slightly, and the corners of his eyes tilted upward. Maybe it was because he had been fending for himself from such a young age, but he watched everyone like a wary wolf, sizing them up as if deciding where to sink his teeth and tear off a piece.
So I had tentatively tossed him a piece of meat and beckoned him closer.
The still-inexperienced Mason received the first massive Rocket gift of his life. He clenched his jaw, his expression caught somewhere between suspicion, confusion, humiliation, and shock.
“Thanks to… So Handsome My Boss Fled in Terror for the Rocket. Thanks, man.”
I had stared happily at his handsome, pixel-blurred face.
Then, very slowly, I realized he seemed to think I was a man.
It didn’t matter. I was only there for the boundary-pushing content and a little fun.
With a face like Mason Reed’s, he had always been destined to blow up.
He didn’t struggle for long before finally making it.
Once he became the platform’s number-one trending streamer, countless viewers showered him with gifts every day.
Sometimes, I couldn’t even make the top three anymore.
But that kind of thing had never bothered me much.
Every day, Mason Reed’s top supporter got to make one request. Usually, they asked to add him on WeChat, record a voice message, dance, or sing.
Today’s top supporter decided to stir up trouble with a question.
“Mason, let’s play Truth or Dare. Out of your top ten supporters, who do you dislike the most?”
Mason’s face remained expressionless. He closed his eyes and tapped one finger against his knee three times. Then he opened them and answered coldly, “‘Six Marriages, Two Kids.’”
I was buried in work at the time. It wasn’t until I heard my username that I realized what they were talking about.
The chat slowed instantly. Countless viewers quietly turned up their volume, ready for the drama.
His top supporter laughed. “Why?”
“That’s a secret,” Mason said.
Speculation flooded the chat. Some people said my username, Six Marriages, must have wounded the fragile heart of their eternally single streamer. Others guessed I had done something to offend him.
I could only sigh. The truth was, I knew exactly why.
After Mason mistook me for a man, he did something completely unexpected.
He had a terrible temper, and he’d been holding that grudge ever since.
I, on the other hand, was good-natured. I had just picked up my phone to post a clarification in the chat when my personal nightmare spoke from behind me.
“How far have you gotten?”