I Started Streaming My Quirky Hobby to Empty Rooms — I Never Expected What Happened Next

Part 1

I pressed the razor-sharp hobby knife against the tiny plastic finger, holding my breath.

My hands were shaking slightly, just enough to make the delicate work feel like defusing a bomb.

If I slipped, I was going to shave off my actual finger instead of the plastic mold line.

The bright ring light above my desk cast harsh shadows across the miniature pieces scattered everywhere.

I was sitting alone in my small apartment, talking into a microphone that might not even be connected for all I knew.

My viewer count sat at a solid zero for the first thirty minutes.

I didn’t care.

I needed an outlet, a distraction from the crushing weight of the silence that had taken over my life recently.

I carefully scraped the blade along the plastic, watching the tiny flakes fall onto my cutting mat.

“I think I can just shave it off,” I muttered into the microphone, my voice sounding painfully loud in the empty room.

I paused, waiting for a response that I knew wasn’t coming.

“Oh, yeah, that might work,” I answered myself, trying to force a chuckle.

I focused entirely on shaving all the little bits off the miniature.

“Without shaving my actual finger off, I might add,” I said, leaning closer to the lens.

I was genuinely proud of myself when the piece finally fit perfectly into place.

“Oh, yeah, that’s great,” I whispered, applying a tiny drop of super glue.

I held the pieces together, counting to ten in my head while the glue set.

This was what my Friday nights had become.

Instead of going out or dealing with the friends who had slowly drifted away, I was building plastic people.

I picked up the next piece, a tiny torso for an archer.

“Yep, that’s what we’re doing,” I told the empty chat.

Suddenly, a little notification pinged on my second monitor.

The viewer count ticked from zero to one.

My heart did a strange little flutter in my chest.

I froze, the super glue tube hovering dangerously close to my thumb.

Someone was actually watching me do this.

I cleared my throat, suddenly hyper-aware of how messy my desk was.

“You always lose a piece of yourself while customizing,” a message popped up in the chat from a user named Brenda.

I stared at the screen, a genuine smile breaking through my anxiety for the first time in weeks.

“Yeah, I mean, like, hashtag mood,” I replied, letting out a laugh that felt surprisingly real.

I grabbed the tiny archer figure, my confidence returning just a fraction.

“All right, a tiny bit of super glue, and we stick that right on his waist,” I explained, narrating my actions for Brenda.

I held it up to the camera, hoping the focus would catch the detail.

“That is not bad,” I noted, admiring the tiny warrior.

I explained that we had an archer who was going to be standing on a stone face, aiming down at a quarry.

He had this cool, spiky anime hair and carried an emergency founding stone.

Brenda sent a string of encouraging emojis in the chat.

The viewer count slowly ticked up to three, then five.

I moved on to the next miniature, a girl with a ponytail holding a lantern.

I meticulously glued a tiny dagger to her side.

“She’s investigating with her lantern,” I explained to my small audience.

“And she has her side dagger just in case we get to draw an herb gathering event,” I added, referencing the game rules.

Brenda typed that the archer turned out pretty good.

“Thank you,” I said, feeling a strange swell of gratitude for this stranger’s kindness.

I told the chat that I was going to be doing the bases separately because I really enjoyed basing.

I rummaged through my drawers and pulled out a special kit I had bought.

“I got one of those kits that’s like nothing but skulls,” I explained, holding up the plastic sprue.

It was literally a hundred tiny plastic skulls that you could just glue onto whatever you wanted.

I laughed, imagining the tiny, macabre dioramas I could build.

I glanced at the clock, realizing I had been streaming for over two hours.

“Okay, now the next question is, do I do one more for about an hour or do I call it here?” I asked the chat.

I had two more survivors to build for the hunt.

I needed someone with a shield and a whip, and maybe a sword.

“A sword and a shield is a pretty badass paladin,” I reasoned out loud.

I picked up the plastic pieces again, feeling more relaxed than I had all year.

I was just about to start cutting the next piece when Brenda’s next message appeared.

I read it twice, my stomach suddenly dropping as the words processed in my mind.

Then, Brenda typed a message in the chat that made me drop the hobby knife right onto my desk.