I hit ten million subscribers on Boovtoob and realized I was a fraud.
"Ten… million," I muttered.
The number sat in the corner of my monitor like it owned the place. 10,000,000.
Chat went berserk.
TEN MILLION LET'S GOOOO
I WAS HERE
CRY OR YOU'RE FAKE
DAD FINALLY MADE IT
I leaned close to the camera, grabbed my cheeks, and forced my eyes wide.
"No way. You guys serious? Who let this happen? Which one of you misclicked subscribe?"
Chat spammed laughing emotes, donations stacked like broken windchimes, the usual storm.
$50 – You got me through some dark stuff, man. Thank you.
Real life hero right here.
You're the only sane creator left.
Hero.
The word slipped through more than once. I pushed it aside.
"I'm not a hero," I said, still smiling. "I play games, talk too much, and forget to eat on stream. That's it. Don't put moral responsibility on me, I'll drop it."
They ignored that, like always.
I did the usual celebration routine.
Reacted to my ancient videos.
Cringed at my old mic quality.
Showed them the first thumbnail I ever made and begged them to forget it existed.
Three hours passed without me noticing. The counter ticked upward, ten million and some change.
"Alright," I said at last. "For real this time, I gotta go. Thank you for ten million. I have no idea why you're all here, but I'll try not to ruin it."
NOOOO
ONE MORE GAME
GOODNIGHT HERO
There it was again.
I smiled for the camera, waved, and hit "End Stream".
Silence dropped into the room like someone cut a cable.
The music stopped.
The alerts stopped.
The only sound was my PC fan and my own breathing.
The smile slipped off my face naturally.
"…Ten million, huh."
My setup looked like a shrine to pixels. Dual monitors, ring light, camera, expensive mic. Wall of foam. RGB lights slowly cycling colors like they were trying to hypnotize me.
Outside the stream, it was just a dark room with expensive toys and one idiot standing in the middle.
I stretched, bones popping, then wandered into the kitchen. Ate cold leftovers in front of the muted TV.
The news showed a shaky clip of three guys kicking someone on the ground near a bus stop. People stood around holding their phones up, filming.
No one stepped in.
The anchor's voice was flat. "Authorities are investigating…"
If this were a comic, some masked idiot would drop down, knock everyone out in three panels, say something cool, and vanish.
Reality: I stood in a warm apartment, full fridge, soft couch, watching someone get stomped through a screen.
Chat called me a hero.
The real world hadn't noticed I existed.
I washed my plate, went back to my desk to shut everything down properly, and checked messages.
Congrats DMs from other creators.
A manager wanting a call.
Sponsors sniffing around now that the number had an extra digit.
And one email with no subject, no message. Just a link.
No icon on the sender. Address looked like someone rolled their face on the keyboard. The link itself was clean, simple. No obvious tracking, no store name, nothing.
"…Sure," I said. "Why not."
If my channel died because I clicked a cursed link after ten million, at least it would be funny.
I pasted it into a fresh tab and hit enter.
The screen flashed white, then settled.
One word appeared in the center.
CHOOSE
That was it.
White background.
The word.
A single empty field under it with a blinking cursor.
No logo.
No "Welcome to Personality Quiz."
No "Click accept to sell your soul."
"Choose what," I muttered.
No answer.
I stared at the blank field.
What did I want?
Money? I had enough to survive.
Fame? I had more than was healthy.
Love? Too complicated.
What I actually had, more than anything else, was people looking at me. Ten million pairs of eyes through a screen. Their comments, their laughter, their anger. Their "you saved me" messages at three in the morning.
Attention.
My fingers typed before I could second-guess it.
A T T E N T I O N
It looked pathetic on the screen. Honest, though.
I hesitated, then pressed Enter.
The field vanished. The word stayed.
CHOOSE
The cursor stopped blinking. Nothing else happened.
"…That's it?"
I refreshed. Nothing changed.
No redirect, no quiz, no ad. Just that one word.
"Quality content," I said to the empty room.
I closed the tab, ran a quick virus scan out of habit, then shut down the PC.
It was past two in the morning. My body felt heavy, mind buzzing from too much noise and too much sugar.
I took a quick shower, collapsed on the bed, and stared at the ceiling.
Hero.
The word floated up again from chat. I tried to imagine myself in a mask, in an alley, telling some thug to cut it out.
The mental image didn't fit. I saw myself tripping over a trash can.
"Yeah, no," I said, and closed my eyes.
I didn't remember falling asleep.
For a while there was only darkness.
Then a circle of white light opened above me, like a spotlight. Then another. And another.
They swung around in the dark, searching, then locked on me.
Voices rose up from outside the light. Laughter. Booing. Crying. All tangled together. Thousands of voices, too many to separate.
Everywhere I moved, the light followed. If I turned away, it slid around to catch my face.
My skin prickled. My throat tried to form words, but they came out as static.
I reached up to block it. My hand looked strangely dark against the bright.
The light flared—
—and I woke up to sunlight leaking through the curtains.
My mouth was dry. My heart was beating a little too fast.
"Dream," I told myself.
I checked my phone. Notifications flooded the screen.
Clips from last night already up. Memes, edits, overlays.
One of them had the title:
"I'm not a hero." – Ten Million Stream Highlight
The view count was jumping faster than usual.
I watched ten seconds of my own tired face denying I was a hero and shut it off.
Enough.
Hoodie. Sweatpants. Cap. Mask. I disguised myself as "generic guy going outside" and left the apartment.
The elevator ride down was quiet. The lobby was quiet. Outside, the city was the opposite of quiet. Cars, people, bikes, someone blasting music through cheap speakers.
I walked in no particular direction, hands in my pockets, letting my head clear.
At a crosswalk, I stopped with a small cluster of others. The little red figure glowed. Cars rolled past.
One of them, a dark sedan, was coming in too fast.
My eyes drifted over it lazily at first, then something sharp tugged inside my head.
The driver's face snapped into focus behind the glass. He was looking down, one hand half off the wheel.
Phone.
My chest tightened.
The sedan didn't slow.
"Hey," I said, voice low.
Pointless. No one could hear me.
The driver looked up.
Our eyes met through the windshield.
For a second, the rest of the world dimmed. The sound of traffic, footsteps, everything dropped away. There was just the car, the driver's wide eyes, and me.
Something invisible pulled tight between us.
His foot slammed on the brake. Tires screamed. People around me flinched.
The car stopped a breath from the crossing line.
I realized I'd leaned forward without meaning to. My toes were over the edge of the curb.
The driver stared at me, pale, sweating, hands locked on the wheel. Then he looked at the red light, at the road, back at me, confused like he didn't understand why he'd reacted that hard.
I stepped back onto the sidewalk.
"Sorry," I said automatically, even though the guy couldn't hear a thing.
He shook his head like snapping out of a trance. The light changed. We crossed. I felt his gaze on my back until I turned the corner.
"…Weird," I muttered.
People slam brakes all the time. Near misses happen every day.
That tunnel vision didn't feel normal, though. It felt like I'd reached out and grabbed his attention with my bare hand.
I tried to shrug it off and headed into a convenience store.
The bell rang as I walked in. The clerk behind the counter was leaning on it with his phone.
He glanced up.
His back straightened at once.
"Welcome!" he said, voice suddenly loud and polite.
I grabbed a drink from the back and went to pay.
His eyes followed me the entire way, locked on, like I was the only person in the shop. Someone knocked into a shelf behind me; he didn't even flinch.
I put the bottle down.
"Morning," I said.
"G-Good morning! Is that all? We have a discount on snacks if you—"
"Just the drink."
"Right, right, just the drink."
His hands moved too fast, almost fumbling the change. His gaze never left my face.
The hair on my arms rose.
I took the bottle and stepped away.
"Thanks."
"Thank you very much! Have a great day!"
His voice chased me out of the store. The bell rang behind me.
On the street again, the noise of the city rushed back in, but the uncomfortable feeling didn't leave.
Eyes.
The driver's panicked stare.
The clerk's forced focus.
Like something was bending their attention toward me and not letting go.
I twisted the cap off the drink and took a sip I barely tasted.
"Attention," I said under my breath.
Last night's white page floated up in my mind. The single word.
CHOOSE.
I had chosen.
My phone buzzed. Another notification.
A new short from my stream:
"I'm just a clown with a camera." – CancelledHero 10M Highlight
The clip was less than ten minutes old and already climbing hard. Comments flew.
Why is this so addictive to watch
I keep replaying this for no reason
He says clown but he's the only real one left
The view counter ticked upward faster than usual, like someone had put a magnet under it.
More eyes.
More attention.
My heart beat once, heavy.
This could all be coincidence.
A lucky moment at the crossing.
An over-friendly clerk.
The usual algorithm deciding tonight was my night.
It could be.
But the memory of that spotlight in the dream, and the feeling of the driver's focus snapping to me like a leash, clung to my skin.
"Alright," I said quietly. "If this is some kind of joke, it's a good one."
If it wasn't a joke…
Then the link wasn't nothing.
The word I typed wasn't just pixels.
On the day after I reached ten million Boovtoob subscribers, the world's eyes felt a fraction closer than before.
It was a tiny shift. Barely noticeable.
But it was there.
And without realizing it, I'd already taken the first step off the edge of whatever passed for normal in my life.