Starwave Live Headquarters
The office was in chaos.
Developers rushed between workstations. Phones rang incessantly. Monitors displayed error logs and traffic graphs spiking into the red.
A large man pushed through the glass doors, still tying his tie. His shirt was half-tucked, his hair disheveled.
"What the hell is happening?" he demanded.
He was Manager Xu, head of the platform's technical operations division.
"We keep receiving reports," he continued, scanning the room. "I was even woken up by a call from the higher-ups."
He grabbed the nearest developer by the shoulder.
"Are we under attack?"
The developer - a young man with dark circles under his eyes - shook his head frantically.
"We're not sure yet, Manager Xu. We're checking."
Manager Xu released him and stormed toward the central monitoring station where a cluster of developers had gathered.
"Talk to me," he said. "What are we looking at?"
A senior developer pulled up the traffic logs.
"Our servers started experiencing unusual load about five minutes ago," he explained. "At first we thought it was a DDoS attack, but the traffic patterns don't match."
He pointed at the screen.
"See here? The requests are all legitimate. Real user agents, normal session behavior. No botnet signatures."
Another developer chimed in.
"We've isolated the traffic to a single point of origin on our platform." He typed rapidly. "It's all going to one user's page."
Manager Xu frowned. "One user?"
"Moon Fairy," the developer read off the screen. "A streamer on our platform."
Manager Xu's frown deepened.
"Is she botting her page or something?"
The senior developer shook his head.
"We checked her account status. She's been doing fairly well for a newbie, but none of her previous traffic was anything unusual." He pulled up another window. "We're tracing where the current traffic is coming from. Maybe someone is sabotaging her."
"Do it quickly," Manager Xu snapped.
At that moment, his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen. His expression shifted instantly.
He brought the phone to his ear, a smile spreading across his face.
"Director Wang! No, no, everything is fine. Yes. Yes, yes, my team is working on it right now. Give us just ten minutes."
He laughed politely.
"Of course. I'll report back personally."
The call ended.
The smile vanished.
"Anything?" he barked, turning back to the developers.
One of them raised a hand.
"We found the source of the traffic," he said. "It seems evenly distributed among several external platforms. Mostly originating from links to this."
He pulled up a page displaying an audio release.
"Some kind of music," he said.
A young woman with glasses leaned in, adjusting her frames as she studied the screen.
"I recognize this," she said.
Manager Xu turned to her.
"It's the leaked music that's been popular lately," she continued. "People were thinking it belonged to…"
"Do you think I give a fuck about music?" Manager Xu interrupted. "Get to the point."
She pushed her glasses up nervously.
"I just checked the profile of the account that posted the music. It's linked to Moon Fairy's streaming account on our platform."
She pulled up another window.
"I'm guessing Moon Fairy is probably the artist behind the music. The audio release has already gotten over two hundred thousand views in just ten minutes."
She pointed at the traffic graph.
"These viewers are following the links to her page. And looking at Moon Fairy's account..."
She clicked through to the streamer's profile.
"She made a post saying she's going live soon."
She turned to face Manager Xu.
"I'm assuming we're experiencing trouble because over a hundred thousand people - and climbing - are constantly refreshing Moon Fairy's page, waiting for her to go live. It's overwhelming our backend."
The other developers nodded in agreement.
Manager Xu stood still for a moment, processing this.
He stroked his chin.
"This Moon Fairy... she's that talented?"
He turned to his assistant.
"Get me a report on her. I want it on my desk by tomorrow morning."
The assistant nodded and hurried off.
Manager Xu looked back at the developers.
"When is this Moon Fairy beginning her stream?"
The woman with glasses checked the post.
"Twenty minutes. That's what she said."
Manager Xu's eyes widened.
"Then what are you all waiting for?" he shouted. "Fix the site! Do you want us to lose over a hundred thousand viewers?"
The developers scrambled back to their workstations.
"On it!"
Keyboards clattered. Commands flew across terminals.
At that moment, Manager Xu's phone rang again.
He looked at the developers, his expression hard.
"Get it done," he said.
Then he turned around, bringing the phone to his ear. His voice shifted back to its sweet, accommodating tone.
"Director Wang! Yes, we just figured out the problem. Yes, my team is working on a solution as we speak..."
He walked toward his office, his voice fading into the distance.
"No, no, it's nothing serious. Just an unexpectedly popular streamer. Yes, I'm handling it personally..."
…
Inside the apartment, Su Yue sat before the camera, her posture stiff with nervous anticipation. Her gaze kept drifting past the lens to where Lin Feng and Mengqi sat - both of them drenched in cold sweat.
What's happening?
Lin Feng's eyes were locked on his laptop screen, fixed on the banner plastered across the top of the StarWave homepage:
[We're currently experiencing technical difficulties. Our team is working hard to resolve the issue. Thank you for your patience!]
His mind raced through the possibilities. Could their traffic have actually crashed the site? It wasn't impossible. The music had gone viral faster than any of them anticipated. It had only been half an hour since release, and the track with the highest view count was already approaching a million. Sure, many of those were probably people listening on loop - but even accounting for that, the sheer number of unique viewers was staggering.
They really needed this to work. This was supposed to be her debut stream. They'd just released the music, and before the attention faded, they needed to show the audience exactly who Su Yue was.
"Ah, something changed," Mengqi said suddenly.
Lin Feng's attention snapped back to the screen. The website was refreshing on its own, stuck for several agonizing seconds…
Then it rendered.
The maintenance banner was gone.
A nervous smile spread across Lin Feng's face. "Finally."
He looked up at Su Yue and gave her a firm nod. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, her shoulders relaxing slightly.
Lin Feng raised his hand, counting down with his fingers.
Three. Two. One.
Thumbs up.
Su Yue's expression transformed instantly - bright and radiant, every trace of anxiety instantly disappearing.
She waved energetically at the screen.
"Hi everyone~! Guess who's back?"
The chat exploded.
[MidnightWanderer]: MOON FAIRY!!!
[SleepyPanda99]: FINALLY IM CRYING
[WanderingKnight]: THE FAIRY HAS RETURNED
[CloudChaser]: Do you have any idea how long we've been staring at that maintenance screen??
[NightOwl42]: StarWave almost gave me a heart attack I swear
[BubbleTeaAddict]: I refreshed 47 times. I counted.
[SnackKing]: cosplay today?
[GamingLord]: ^^^
[MoonlitPath]: Ignore them Moon Fairy, your real fans are here
[CoffeeZombie]: wait who is this
[LazyRiver]: new here, heard the music, had to see who made it
[StardustDreamer]: She is even prettier than the cover art??
[SilentObserver]: Welcome back. Chat was losing their minds.
[sleepy_penguin]: you tricked your fans. Not cool fairy
[LonelyFisherman]: Moon Fairy you can't just drop fire like that and vanish
[RainyDayVibes]: first time here, the hype is real huh
Su Yue blinked at her monitor, her eyes widening as messages flooded past faster than she could process.
"Whoah... there are so many of you," she breathed, genuine surprise breaking through her composure. "I can't even read the chat!"
She paused, taking a moment to collect herself. Her hands smoothed over her skirt as she sat up straighter, slipping back into character.
"Right. Before we begin..." A playful smile tugged at her lips. "This stream is brought to you by..."