of study streams and sports prodigies | norenmin

three

he slowly tumbled his way to his bed.

renjun's day was horrible and that was probably even an understatement.

finally having gotten the confidence to finally come out at his university friends, all his confidence got smashed into tiny little pieces, not even a day after.

they all had mixed reactions, but he could clearly see the disgust in their faces.

his brain kept repeating all the things they said, over and over again, even though he knew he didn't deserve this.

he really didn't deserve this. he deserved better. he deserved to be accepted and supported, to not have insults being thrown at him from left and right.

yet, when so many people screamed their negative thoughts about you right into your face or let you know their opinion with tiny signals, it was nearly impossible to keep the positive thoughts around.

he felt like a nobody, just wanting to crawl under his blanket, not even showing himself to the ones he loves, because he might be an attention seeker, right? according to his fellow friends, he was, apparently.

attention seeker?

he shook his head. when was renjun ever an attention seeker? he never was. he was always seen in the background of things, never really prominent in the front, rather invisible even. not to mention that he hated having all the attention on himself. it made him insecure and nervous and he stumbled on his own words, forming sentences that barely made sense and only consisted of at least five words.

yeah, but maybe he was an attention seeker.

the chinese tightened the grip on his blanket. these thoughts weren't suppossed to be still there, he was so sure he had finally chased them away.

renjun's thoughts were screaming at him and his heart hurt, but somehow he actually managed to turn on the stream, showing himself to the entire world with his visibly red eyes, still swollen from crying.

his heart still felt heavy and he hoped it'd go away soon, because he wasn't sure for how much longer he could endure this feeling.

that didn't stop him from smiling as bright as ever, though.

and it might've been a stupid idea, a dumb thing to do, but the moment he saw a familiar username joining the live, he genuinely gigged a little. maybe they giggled because they still could not believe why someone would use such a stupid username or maybe because of the dumb familarity of seeing this person in basically every stream he makes.

picklelover69: hey, ren! how ya doing today? :D

"i-", he hesistated for a second, holding another giggle back, "well, to be honest- up until now pretty average, but your username never fails to make me laugh, pickleboy"

on the other side of the screen, jaemin was grinning so brightly, it even made his sister ask him, what the hell made him grin like that. if only she'd know.

okay, now he really understood why jeno loved watching his streams. and his best friend was right: renjun's voice was really, really pretty.

at some point in the stream, renjun had gotten so tired while drawing, that he felt his own eyelids close every once in a while for a few seconds.

even though he knew he couldn't just fall asleep on stream now, the relaxing feeling of closing his eyes for just a few mere seconds almost pulled him in.

that was until his eyes catched a specific comment in the chat.

ayaemae: "you're really hot lol"

something in his stomach twisted in a very uncomfortable way and it was clearly visible in his face, at least until he panned the camera to his drawing again.

renjuns mods, a small team consisting of two boys named jungwoo and sicheng, immediately banned the user, reminding everyone that comments like these were strictly prohibited, leading to a permanent ban on the lives of the chinese streamer, since he already adressed this issue and said that he doesn't like such comments and that they make him feel weird in an uncomfortable way.

it had always freaked renjun out a bit, to not know anything about the people watching his streams, while the viewers himself knew a whole lot about him, just by simply watching him talk or respond to questions in the comments.

he didn't know the person who wrote it, what they looked like, not even what their first name was, most of the time. the only thing he knew was what was written and their username on twirle.

yet, he tried to not let this scare him off by the fun of streaming.

and it worked, because all the positive comments he got convinced him to keep his schedule of streaming every second day.