Chapter 1: The Wrong Button

Lin Xiao Zhi sat at his terminal, staring at the holographic interface like it might bite him. A faint crease appeared between his brows, which was about as dramatic as his expressions ever got nowadays. Honestly, navigating this thing was harder than the actual martial arts forms he’d learned back on Earth.

The streaming platform was called StarCast, which sounded more like a weather service than a place for people to watch other people play games. The whole concept still felt bizarrely public, though apparently it was a normal hobby here in the Federation. The System had suggested it yesterday with that particular brand of sarcastic cheer, calling it a “low-impact method for building social credit and plausible deniability.” Whatever that meant. Mostly it sounded like a way to kill time before the world ended, which was a solid enough reason.

He poked at a menu labeled “Trending,” and the screen fractured into dozens of smaller windows. Each one showed a person talking, smiling, making exaggerated faces at their cameras. Xiao Zhi leaned back in his chair, watching with the detached focus of a scientist observing alien lifeforms.

One host, a girl with neon-blue hair, screamed and threw her hands up as something monstrous burst onto her game screen. The chat window beside her feed exploded with laughing emojis and symbols he didn’t recognize. Another streamer, a guy who looked like he spent more time at the gym than at his terminal, was calmly explaining some complex strategy for a spaceship combat sim, pointing at diagrams with a laser pen. He smiled often, showing perfect teeth, and kept asking his viewers questions.

So that was how it was done. You had to perform. You had to react. You had to… engage. Xiao Zhi’s frown deepened slightly. The original owner of this body probably would have been great at the cold, silent gamer archetype, but that ship had sailed. His own internal wiring was more… bunny-like, as the System so unhelpfully put it. He got distracted by shiny things and small animals. He wanted to comment on texture and fluffiness mid-battle. Performing calm detachment for hours on end seemed like a special kind of torture.

Better to practice first. There had to be a way to test the waters without an audience. Scrolling through the interface, which seemed designed by someone who hated intuitive design, he finally found a section for stream setup. There were two large, prominent buttons side-by-side. One glowed a soft, reassuring green with the words “PRACTICE MODE” in clean, friendly font. The other was a vibrant, pulsing red that declared “GO LIVE” with an urgency that felt vaguely threatening.

Practice Mode. That was the one. He could load a game, figure out the audio levels, maybe see how his face looked on camera without the pressure of people watching. He reached for the green button.

His terminal chose that exact moment to emit a soft ping. A system notification about a scheduled update scrolled across the top of the screen. It was harmless, but it made the entire display stutter for a fraction of a second.

Xiao Zhi’s finger, already in motion, landed just left of where he’d aimed.

It pressed directly onto the pulsating red “GO LIVE” button.

The effect was instantaneous and silent. The interface shimmered, the practice mode options vanishing. A small red dot appeared in the corner of his camera feed, blinking like a tiny, accusing eye. The title of his stream defaulted to his chosen username, “PinkChaos,” in bold letters. A new, mostly empty chat window materialized on the right side of his screen.

He didn’t notice any of it.

Satisfied that he’d successfully entered a private testing space, Xiao Zhi turned his attention to his game library. The System had pre-loaded a few titles it deemed “culturally relevant.” His eyes skipped over the military sims and the hyper-competitive arena fighters, landing on one with a haunting, minimalist icon: Echoes of the Abyss.

The description promised psychological tension and sudden jump scares. Perfect. Horror games were fun, mainly because he found the developer’s attempts to startle him genuinely amusing rather than frightening. It would be good for practicing deadpan reactions.

He selected it and hit launch.

The game loaded with a slow, ominous fade from black, accompanied by a low cello note that vibrated through his desk speakers. In the newly created “PinkChaos” livestream, which was currently broadcasting to the public StarCast network, the same scene began to play for anyone who might stumble upon it.

Xiao Zhi settled into his chair, completely unaware that the red light was still blinking, or that the stream’s viewer count had just ticked from zero to one.

The stream lingered on the platform’s vast directory, a single line item among millions. Its title was just “PinkChaos,” which gave exactly zero information about its content. A handful of viewers trickled in, mostly through the automated “New Channels” feed that StarCast pushed to users who had exhausted their usual subscriptions.

User VoidWalker_87 typed into the empty chat: ?? no cam?

The camera feed was active, but it showed only the back of a head with soft, pink-tinted hair, and a slice of a dark gaming chair. The screen was dominated by the opening sequence of Echoes of the Abyss: a first-person view of a crumbling, rain-slicked stone corridor. The only light came from a flickering lantern in the player’s virtual hand, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to move just a little too independently.

User NovaSpectre commented: abyss run? brave. this game is mental.

Xiao Zhi, oblivious to the text crawling up the side of his own screen, guided his character forward. The sound design was impressively oppressive. Dripping water echoed from unseen cavities, wind moaned through broken archways, and beneath it all was a sub-auditory hum that made your teeth feel weird. It was the kind of atmosphere that was supposed to make you lean closer, your heart rate picking up.

He didn’t lean closer. He sat perfectly still, his hands resting lightly on the control interface. His expression, had the camera been on his face, would have been one of mild academic interest. The original Lin Xiao Zhi’s face was naturally elegant and somewhat cold—sharp jawline, pale skin, long red lashes that looked almost painted on. Maintaining a blank mask came easily to the architecture of his features, though for entirely different reasons now. The old owner used it to repel people. The new one simply… didn’t see the point in grimacing at a screen.

Is this an ASMR channel? typed GalaxyBaker. So quiet.

A soft, shuffling sound came from off-camera. Bao Bao, a small ball of white fluff with eyes like polished black beads, hopped onto the edge of the desk. His nose twitched rapidly, investigating the new scent of warm electronics and his human’s focused silence. He ignored the glowing screen entirely, his priorities being strictly terrestrial.

With a little hop-and-scramble that involved some inelegant clawing at fabric, Bao Bao launched himself onto Xiao Zhi’s shoulder. Xiao Zhi didn’t startle, only tilting his head a fraction to give the bunny a better landing zone. It was a practiced maneuver.

Bao Bao explored the terrain of Xiao Zhi’s shoulder for a moment before deciding the summit was preferable. Another hop, and he was nestled securely in the soft pink locks atop Xiao Zhi’s head, turning in a tight circle before settling down into a compact loaf shape. His ears relaxed against his back, one occasionally giving a lazy twitch.

In the stream, the viewers now saw the back of a pink-haired head with a living, breathing bunny perched on it like an organic hat.

Chat_User_A1: OMG is that a real rabbit VoidWalker_87: wtf kind of stream is this NovaSpectre: the bunny has better composure than i do in that game

Xiao Zhi finally moved his character around a corner in the game. The corridor opened into a grand, ruined hall. Statues of weeping angels lined the walls, their features eroded by time and dampness. The lantern light caught something glistening on the floor ahead—a trail of thick, dark fluid. The game’s audio dropped to an almost silent whisper, just the faintest echo of a child’s laughter spinning away into the distance.

Every horror game player knew this pattern. The quiet before the scream.

Xiao Zhi’s character stepped forward onto the sticky patch.

The screen exploded.

A grotesque, decaying face filled the entire display, its jaw unhinging impossibly wide as a piercing, metallic shriek erupted from the speakers at maximum volume. It was a masterclass in jump-scare design, calibrated to trigger a flinch reflex in even the most seasoned players.

On the stream, the bunny’s ears shot upright in surprise. Its nose stopped twitching.

Xiao Zhi blinked. Once.

His hands didn’t leave the controls. His shoulders didn’t tense. He just watched as the horrific face dissolved into pixels and the game perspective pulled back, showing his character stumbling slightly in the hall. The eerie ambient sounds returned, now with a faster, more anxious heartbeat rhythm layered underneath.

He let out a slow breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Huh,” he murmured aloud, his voice quiet and even. “The texture mapping on those teeth was actually pretty good.”

In the chat, which was now up to maybe fifteen viewers, a new message popped up.

NovaSpectre: did he just… critique the monster’s dental work? GalaxyBaker: the bunny reacted more than he did lol Chat_User_A1: is this a bot? has to be a bot.

VoidWalker_87: Is this a robot? Lol.

The comment sat in the chat for a moment before others began to pile on, their text scrolling just fast enough now to be noticeable, if anyone was looking.

NovaSpectre: robot with a pet bunny? advanced tech. GalaxyBaker: the contrast is killing me. nightmare fuel game + bunny hat + zero expression. what is happening.

Xiao Zhi, of course, was not looking. His focus was on navigating the ruined hall, which had several branching paths. He chose one at random, pushing through a heavy oak door that groaned on its hinges. The game’s oppressive atmosphere clung to everything, a masterpiece of sustained dread.

Then the scene shifted.

The darkness of the hall fell away, replaced by the soft, warm glow of afternoon sunlight filtering through a high window. The stone and decay vanished. Xiao Zhi’s character now stood in a clean, well-kept kennel room. Wooden pens lined the walls, and in each one, virtual puppies tumbled over each other. They were rendered with absurdly fluffy detail—golden retrievers with clumsy paws, corgi butts waddling, a sleepy bulldog pup snoring in a sunbeam.

The game’s soundtrack switched instantly from ominous drones to a light, plinking melody that sounded like music boxes and wind chimes.

It was a classic horror game trope, the “safe room” or the calm before a much worse storm, designed to lull you into dropping your guard.

Xiao Zhi did not think about tropes or narrative design.

His entire posture changed. He leaned forward, his earlier stillness melting away. A brilliant, unguarded smile transformed his face, making his red lashes seem even darker against the sudden warmth in his eyes. The cold, elegant features softened into something utterly approachable and bright.

“Aww,” he cooed aloud, his voice losing its flat neutrality and gaining a layer of genuine, sparkling delight. “Look at the fluffy babies!”

He guided his character closer to one of the pens, where a virtual Shiba Inu puppy was chasing its own tail in a tight circle. “Oh, you’re so silly,” Xiao Zhi narrated, a soft chuckle in his words. “Going so fast you’re gonna fall over.” On his head, Bao Bao’s nose twitched with renewed vigor, as if he could sense the shift in his human’s energy.

The chat, which had been pondering robotics, stuttered to a new kind of halt.

GalaxyBaker: …what. VoidWalker_87: VOICE REVEAL???? NovaSpectre: HOLD ON. FROM TERMINATOR TO PUPPY WHISPERER IN 2 SECONDS.

Xiao Zhi was completely immersed. He spent a full minute just watching the puppies, making little comments about each one. “That one has a spot on his nose, how cute.” “Look at how small those paws are!” He even reached out a finger as if to poke the screen, stopping himself just short with a slight shake of his head. The sheer, unadulterated joy radiating from him was so at odds with the game’s genre and his earlier robotic calm that it created a bizarre, captivating dissonance.

It was during this puppy appreciation session that a new username slid into the viewer list.

Serpent_Sovereign joined the stream.

The name carried a certain weight, even in this obscure corner of StarCast. To the platform’s gaming elite, particularly those who followed the underground competitive mecha circuits, “Serpent_Sovereign” was a legend wrapped in mystery. He never streamed himself. He never spoke in public chats. He was rumored to be the undefeated champion of the Black Star arenas, a player whose cold, analytical style had bankrupted countless challengers. His presence in any stream was usually followed by an astronomical, anonymous donation and then silent observation.

He did not type anything into the chat of “PinkChaos.”

He simply watched.

On screen, Xiao Zhi had discovered the kennel had an interactive ball. He picked it up and tossed it into one of the pens, laughing softly as three pixel puppies scrambled after it in a tangle of legs and yips. “Easy now, share, share!” he chided gently. Bao Bao, perhaps jealous of the digital intruders, stood up on Xiao Zhi’s head and stretched, his little white form silhouetted against the screen’s glow.

Wei Chengliu, known only as Serpent_Sovereign here, sat in the sterile quiet of his own penthouse suite. His expression was typically impassive, his dark eyes blinking at a slow, reptilian pace as they tracked the data on his multi-screen setup. One screen showed complex market fluctuations. Another displayed the schematics for a custom mecha actuator. The third was now dedicated to this inexplicable stream.

He had clicked on it by pure algorithmic accident, a random suggestion on his dashboard. He’d intended to close it after three seconds.

He had now been watching for six minutes.

His gaze was fixed not on the horror game—a title he considered psychologically crude—but on the streamer. The impossible contrast held him. The placid bunny. The lethal calm during the jump scare that would have made Wei Chengliu himself adjust his grip on the controls. And now this… this radiant, unfiltered affection for meaningless digital constructs. It made no logical sense. The emotional whiplash should have felt manipulative or stupid.

It didn’t. It felt… fascinating. Like observing a complex equation that kept solving to zero by breaking all known mathematical laws.

Unconsciously, Wei Chengliu leaned an inch closer to his screen.

Meanwhile, the strange alchemy of StarCast’s recommendation algorithms had begun to work. A stream with a low but rapidly increasing engagement rate—viewers were staying much longer than average—featuring a bizarre visual (a bunny on head), wild emotional swings (from stone-faced to gleeful), and an oddly soothing voice was catnip for the platform’s promotion bots.

A small banner appeared at the top of the StarCast interface for thousands of users: Rising Star: PinkChaos – Horror & Fluff?

The viewer count for Xiao Zhi’s stream, which had been hovering around twenty, jumped to fifty. Then one hundred. Then three hundred.

The chat exploded.

Who is this?? BUNNY! Did he really not scream at the face? OMG HIS SMILE IS SO BRIGHT WTF From which academy is he? Looks like an Omega streamer. What’s the game? The bunny is the real star.

Xiao Zhi finally glanced away from the puppy pen, his eye catching movement on the right side of his screen. His brain processed the column of rapidly scrolling text for a full two seconds before the reality crashed into him.

That was a chat. A live chat. With people. Talking. About him.

He froze. The smile vanished from his face, replaced by dawning horror of a much more real variety than anything in Echoes of the Abyss. His eyes darted to the top corner of his interface. The small, blinking red light glared back at him like a curse.

“Oh,” he said quietly, the word barely audible over the game’s cheerful kennel music. “Oh no.”

He had been live. This whole time. Publicly live. With a bunny on his head. Talking to puppies.

Before he could process this further, before he could even think about frantically searching for an “END STREAM” button, the entire screen was engulfed in a silent, spectacular explosion of digital gold and platinum.

Gigantic, holographic numerals materialized in the center of the game view, shimmering and cascading like a waterfall of wealth.

ANONYMOUS DONATION: 999,999 CREDITS

The number hung there, obscuring the virtual puppies and bathing Xiao Zhi’s stunned face in a golden glow. It was an amount that could buy a high-end personal mecha component. It was more than most people earned in a year.

In the chat, the frantic scrolling stopped dead.

Absolute silence reigned in the text window for three full seconds—an eternity in streaming time.

Then it erupted into pure chaos.

?????????? WHAT WAS THAT 999k????? WHO??? SERPENT_SOVEREIGN IS IN THE CHAT OH MY GOD IT WAS HIM IT HAD TO BE HIM

Wei Chengliu watched the pandemonium unfold on his screen, his own finger still hovering over the confirmation key he had pressed without conscious thought. He hadn’t meant to send that particular sum. He’d intended to send a more modest amount, a mere ten thousand credits as a token of… curiosity. A miscalibration in his custom donation interface had added two extra digits.

He didn’t rescind it.

On stream, Lin Xiao Zhi just stared at the golden numbers slowly fading from his screen, his mouth slightly agape, the bunny on his head twitching its nose at the sudden shimmering light. The kennel’ peaceful music felt like a cruel joke. He was live. He had viewers. And someone had just thrown a fortune at him for… for what? For being a disaster?

He had no idea that this single, accidental broadcast had just lit a fuse. That it had captivated a king of hidden arenas, amused hundreds of strangers, and rocketed an unknown username onto StarCast’s radar. All he knew was that he needed to find the “stop” button before anything else absurd happened.

The chapter of his quiet preparation was over. The chronicle of pink chaos had officially begun