The mood had soured after Raphtalia had inadvertently reminded me of my failures- so I decided I might as well do something to lift it up.

"Anyway, so let me go ahead and cook us something. It's the least I can do to say 'thank you,'" I said. Raphtalia protested and demanded to help with the cooking- though I just told her to sit tight for today and that she could help out 'next time.' (Thinking deep down, 'assuming there is one.' I had no idea whether she would agree to continue on this charade or not.)

I didn't really have that much to cook with. I just had some carrots, lettuce, and tomatoes. So I decided to make vegetable soup.

Raphtalia sat in the living room while I worked on it, and I think she was quite captivated by the smell once I started to get going with the recipe.

"Mmm," she said. "What you're making smells really nice."

I had often been complimented on my cooking skills by other people, though deep down I never felt like it was authentic praise. Whenever I tasted my own cooking it never felt like it was anywhere near as good as people made it out to be.

But whatever.

Hey, they say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, maybe the same is true for for girls. I handed her the soup and I cooked up some rice to eat with it as the main dish.

"I take it you probably don't get that much good stuff as a student like me, right?" I asked, I was pretty sure she was a student, like me, and not someone just working part-time.

"Well yeah," Raphtalia said. "But my parents usually make me something nice, because I'm not very good with cooking yet."

"Oh, I see you live with your parents," I said. I knew a few other students like that back at my own law school- whenever they brought food from home it was usually a free-for-all with the other students eager to get a bite, oftentimes leaving little for them to finish. I used to be involved in those 'Battle Royales' before, well...

"Is something wrong?" Raphtalia asked.

"Uh, no, just got lost in thought there for a moment," I said.

I wish I could have crashed with my family too but there were no private law colleges near where my family was.

"Yeah, it's nice," she said. She then took a sip of the soup and nearly dropped her spoon.

"What is it?" I asked. I was afraid. Did she burn her mouth or something?

"This this is amazing!" she then shouted. I could swear I could almost see 'anime sparkles' in her eyes (if you've seen anime you'll know what I'm talking about.) She took a sip and then another sip, rapidly polishing it off faster than I thought was possible.

"Tell me, why do you even bother streaming? You should become a professional chef!" she exclaimed

"Now, now," I said. "You're definitely flattering me." This was hardly the best thing I had ever cooked- I mean, it was just cheap vegetable soup. Granted, I had learned to milk it for all it was worth given all the experience I had making it, but still, there was no way that it could be that good.

"No, not at all! This is amazing!" she said, once again I could've sworn I saw real sparkles in her eyes. Was I just going crazy from having watched too much anime that I was seeing stuff like it in the real world?

I took a sip of the soup myself. It was good, I thought, but nothing remarkable.

"All right, thank you for the meal, Naofumi-san," she said and lowered her head.

"No need for all these formalities," I said

"Okay," she said "So, um, when should we meet up next?"

"Well, if you want to maximize your appeal," I said. "You should definitely stream on the weekend at least once, and at least twice a week otherwise." From my experience that was the minimum needed to draw consistent attention from viewers. Any less and people would begin to tune off and would be less likely to sub, any more and you'd be exhausting yourself with only marginally better returns. "So, I don't know when you're free, but if possible we could do Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday if that's good for you."

"That seems okay," she said.

"Yeah, and that should also leave time in case you want to do some other kind of part-time job in the meantime," I said.

"Um, well I don't think I'll have time for that. But Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday does work for me," she said

"Oh, one last thing," I said, now drawing a deep breath. This was going to be the difficult part- and the one where our 'partnership' was most likely to go south."We should definitely make a decision on how to split the money. Is 50-50 okay, for you?"

"Ah, 50-50?" she said nervously. "Wouldn't... something closer to 70-30 be more reasonable?"

I resisted the urge to groan. I had thought she was a nice and sweet girl, but at the same time, she was clearly no chump and knew that she had the upper hand in this negotiation. But still. "I- that's a bit too high I'm sorry. Highest I could go is 60-40."

"Wait," Raphtalia said, now a bit confused. "You mean... you want to give me sixty percent and keep only forty percent to yourself?"

"Yes, is that not what we were negotiating?"

"No," Raphtalia said and shook her head. "I was saying that you should get seventy percent and I should get thirty. You're doing most of the work after all."

I was speechless. Was this girl... actually trying to haggle down her own payment? There was no way you could survive with that kind of attitude in the world, and certainly not when it came to being a lawyer. Then again, maybe I had been in my own bubble for so long that I forgot that people like her existed.

"Raphtalia, don't take this the wrong way but..." I struggled when thinking about how to phrase it nicely. "You really need to 'blow your own horn' when it comes to these kinds of negotiations, alright? If you don't, people are going to walk all over you in the future." I didn't want to turn this into a lecture, but looking back I think that was how it inadvertently turned out. "If you don't, you'll always get the short end of the stick. You might think being nice will mean other people will be nice to you- but it doesn't work like that. You'll end up getting the worst shifts, and eventually end up doing double the work for a fraction of the pay if you don't play hardball. It's good to be nice and generous, but not in the world of business."

"Ah," Raphtalia said, looking away. Based on her facial expression I could tell that I had probably hit the mark and she had already had to deal with some of the things I had described. "That's true but... I just don't like being aggressive. I don't like fighting or arguing." Yeah, she definitely could not be a law student then. "But... I mean this honestly..."

She then looked at me with determination. "You're doing most of the work, so you should keep most of the money!"

I sighed. "People log in to see you play not me. You could probably earn a fair amount even without me." Eryuentiu Online was a game whose audience, based on data from the last poll was eighty-five percent male, and there were almost no serious female streamers with talent. The sex ratio was even more skewed in the professional leagues where there were no female players. If even a half-decent-looking girl managed to make it past the Gold Rank, I was pretty sure that they'd quickly become a titan when it came to streaming numbers. I could only imagine how successful Raphtalia would become.

"Still," she said. "I think sixty-forty is alright, with sixty going to you."

"50-50," I said.

She pouted, looking absolutely adorable as she did so. I tried to put that thought out of my mind. "Hey- now aren't you the one who's haggling down? Don't you follow your own philosophy?"

Well, I had to say that she had me there. "Alright then," I relented after she had called me out for my hypocrisy. I took a look at the time- it was well into the evening. At this point I sorely resented the fact that I didn't have a car- I would've loved to been able to drop off Raphtalia at her house.

"No problem, I can find my own way back," she said. Wait- had she somehow read my thoughts from my facial expression? No- that couldn't be possible. "But..." she trailed off. "I do have a question. Don't you think this is kind of... wrong? That we're lying to our viewers, that I'm the one playing?"

I shrugged. "Hey- isn't that what acting is all about? I've heard of weathermen who don't write their own scripts- and even authors who hire ghostwriters, right?"

"I suppose," she said. She then perked up. "Hey- do you think it might be possible for me to... become famous through this?"

I shrugged. "I mean, the top streamers are seen by millions of people- so you'd technically almost be like a celebrity, but I wouldn't expect you to become anything like PewDiePie or something like that."

"Oh," she said. She had a dark look on her face. "It was just that... I thought if I reached out to enough people... I could maybe one day... find..." Her voice trailed off. Based on her facial expression, I decided not to press her on the issue. I had learned there were some things you didn't ask people the hard way after what had happened to me. I had initially assumed she wanted to be famous just like most girls her age would want- but it seemed that there was something else she was after. I was curious, but again, I decided not to probe her given we had just met and instead wished her a nice evening as she left my apartment.

Once she was gone I decided to take the time to take the stream she had done and make some highlights of it. I then uploaded those clips to another site called Brumble, linking back to her TwitchTube account.

After that, I made accounts for her on Facebook and other such sites just to draw some attention in.

I wasn't sure if it would help, but when I checked her account that night before going to bed, I saw that she had managed to gain two more subs. So she had five in total now.

She had also gotten some more views, but we couldn't monetize through ads yet so this didn't help that much. But hey, we were on the right track.

If anything, we were certainly doing better than when I had started out. As such I had high hopes for this.

I then drifted off to sleep.