With that our livestream was over.

"All right, we're off air," I said. And then Raphtalia relaxed.

As she slumped down onto my couch, she looked like she had just run a marathon, and I couldn't blame her.

Although live streaming might look easy, sitting in a chair for three hours is very annoying- as anyone who's had to give a long test will atttest to.

"Do you think we did good today?" she asked

"Well yeah, we've almost tripled our number of subs," I told her. "We didn't get that many tips this time around, but it's good that we're making progress." Of course, that meant that there was no money for us to split currently because we would get the tips at the end of the month.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?" Raphtalia asked?

"No problem," I said. "What is it?"

"Why do you go into so much detail in your streams? I mean, I think you spent like almost half an hour explaining game mechanics, which everyone should know if they're watching, right? So why bother with something like that?"

"Well," I said, "First of all, I mean, you do want to continue talking because no one wants to sit around watching just empty gameplay for too long. And if you explain the mechanics, it feels like you've said something, not to mention, not everyone knows the intricates intricacies of the game, you know? If as a bonus, you explain something that they don't know about, they will remember that if they're really interested in the game. Some people do watch streams to try to get better when playing the game themselves. And finally, I was hoping though that you would be able to learn something new as well."

"Me?"

"Do you feel like you understand the game mechanics a bit better now?"

"Sort of," Raphtalia said. "But is that important"

"Well, yes," I told her. "I mean, eventually the time will come when you'll have to start talking about this stuff more authentically and spontaneously. I mean, your performance is still kind of stilted."

"Stilted?" she asked.

"I mean, it looks like you're pausing a lot before speaking. Almost like you are reading from a teleprompter," I told her. "Granted that's because... you are but you're not supposed to look like that, right? Uh, do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yeah," Raphtalia said. "I think I do."

In case you were wondering, I wasn't worried about her possibly leaving me and just doing this stuff by herself. Even if she learned all the game mechanics, it was one thing to understand the game mechanics and another thing entirely to put them into practice. Kind of like how you could understand how the best tactics in a game of baseball worked in theory. But you still wouldn't be able to actually manage to make your way onto a Major League team, could you? At least, not just by understanding the mechanics, you have to be able to put them into play which is a whole different ballgame (yes, I'm proud of that pun.)

And that was something I was good at.

"So anything that I can get you?" I asked her. We were technically done with work for the day, but it would be very awkward for me to just shoo her away. I did technically have more work to do- I had to split up the stream into a more refined version- basically, with highlights that people could watch. That would involve condensing the stream into about 20 minutes of footage.

Those kinds of videos tended to do good on other sites, but it would take time to edit everything in such a way that it would be watchable. To give you some idea of the time needed- the stream was nearly three hours long and at minimum, I'd have to watch it twice.

Still, I could do that tomorrow. It wasn't like it was super ultra necessary at this moment. And in the meantime, I figured I might as well get to know Raphtalia better.

"Um, no," she said. "Actually, today I promised I would be helping my father with something later tonight. So, I actually should be going home."

"All right," I said. "Uh, you sure you don't want me to whip up something?"

I was sure she was still going to say 'No', but somehow, the promise of my cooking seemed to give her pause. Really, was my cooking that good?

"Um, no sorry. This is something important. But thank you for offering," she said.

She got ready to leave but then paused looking at me as if she was contemplating something."Is there something on your mind?" I asked.

"Um, well..." It was kind of like she wanted to ask me something, but was unable to put it into words. So I told her to relax and to just spit it out- though I didn't say that exactly, I asked her in a much nicer way.

"Um, this may sound weird," she said "But the last time I came to visit you and this time too... I felt like... like someone was watching me."

If you glanced out the window you'd see that it was becoming close to evening. In other words, it would be dark outside soon.

"If...if it's not too much trouble to ask- could you walk me to the bus stop?"

Perhaps the old me would have been very happy to walk a girl to a bus stop to make her feel better. Basically, long ago, before that incident, I was kind of what you would call a 'simp' in Internet lingo.

"All right," I said anyway. I had recovered somewhat from what had happened, and Raphtalia genuinely seemed afraid. Given this, I felt like I had to step up.

Weirdly enough though, I had to say that even I felt like I was being watched much like I had that morning.

It was weird that both of us felt the same way. Could I possibly actually have a stalker? Nah, it was more likely that Raphtalia would have one if anything, but the idea itself seemed completely ridiculous. There's no way someone was actually following us.

And after I waved away Raphtalia and she got on her bus, I didn't feel anything odd.

So, again, I just chalked up my worries to paranoia and went home to start working on the video I was going to post online later.