Click-clack. Click-clack-click.
My fingers danced across the mechanical keyboard with surgical precision, every keystroke a perfectly calibrated strike.
One year. Twelve months of invisible sacrifices now materializing in an impossible shot, a perfect flick.
My agent spun ninety degrees, the crosshair lining up—for a split second—with the enemy's head.
Headshot.
A second enemy burst into my field of view from the left corner of the screen.
My fingers reacted before I even realized it, repeating that deadly dance with millimeter precision.
Headshot.
The third tried a desperate retreat, sprinting toward cover, but it was already too late.
My bullet caught him right between the eyes, turning his polygonal model into a cloud of red pixels that dissolved into the virtual air.
Ace.
The Twitch chat blew up:
«What the fuck did I just see?!» wrote DragonMaster00, skeptical.
«That move's impossible!» noted StarCliber51.
«Report him, he's cheating!» ArticRaider exclaimed to the chat.
A bitter smile tugged at my lips as I skimmed the comments out of the corner of my eye.
If only they knew. If only they could see the purple bags under my eyes that I wore like medals, hidden by the webcam filter that softened them; my sore fingers, slightly curled from the unnatural position held for too many hours; the nights spent training instead of sleeping.
The price I had paid to reach that level of skill wasn't visible in the replays, didn't show up in the game stats, and wasn't reflected in my follower count.
It was etched only in my body, my mind, my life.
But it hadn't always been like this. Eight months earlier, I had no audience, no recognition—just evenings on Discord with friends, until a joke tossed out for laughs changed everything.
"Come on, become a streamer!" China huffed on Discord after dying embarrassingly, his agent collapsing in Valorant. "You've got more charisma than those clowns with 100k followers!"
I snorted, faking indifference, my heart still pounding from the adrenaline of the match. "Gimme a break! I play to compete, not to clown around in front of a webcam like those idiots who do stupid voices to entertain kids."
But that same night, when the house was plunged into total silence, I found myself staring at the monitor with red, tired eyes, unable to tear myself away.
The mouse wheel scrolled endlessly through browser tabs: "How to start on Twitch without pro gear," "Low-budget streaming setup under 50 euros," "Tricks to grow your channel from zero in three months."
Every article, every video tutorial I watched added a piece to my determination, fueling a fire I didn't even know I had inside me—a bonfire burning like the one my grandpa used to talk about.
At 4:17 a.m., after hours of feverish research, my makeshift studio started taking shape within the four walls of my room.
For a webcam, I used my old phone, an Oppo A5 with a scratched front camera, propped precariously on a stack of schoolbooks.
For the mic, I had to make do with the one built into my cheap gaming headset, with that muffled sound that made every word feel like it was coming through a tube.
I was about to start the first test, my fingers already poised to click "Start Broadcast" on OBS, when…
Knock knock.
"Christian! Turn that thing off or I'll chuck your keyboard off the balcony!" My dad's voice burst into the room like a gunshot, making me jump in my chair.
I shut everything down in a flash, my heart hammering so hard I worried he could hear it through the door.
I should've expected it. My dad was a financial advisor and had the habit of waking up at 4 a.m. to watch his favorite shows.
His routine also included checking my room to make sure I wasn't still up "wasting time on that stupid stuff."
With a resigned sigh, I flopped onto the bed, my eyes burning with exhaustion, but my mind still buzzing with plans for my channel.
I knew it was time to hit the sack, but I already figured I wouldn't sleep much.
The next day came my official Twitch debut.
My hands were sweating so bad I could barely keep a grip on the mouse, my fingers slipping slightly on the keys.
My heart was racing like crazy as the countdown on the screen ticked off the last seconds.
3… 2… 1…
"Hey everyone… uh… today we're playing… I mean… Valorant…" I stammered, feeling sweat trickle down my back like in my worst school oral tests—the ones where I hadn't studied and knew disaster was inevitable.
My voice sounded weird to me, unnatural, like it belonged to someone else.
China messaged me privately on Discord: «Talk more! You sound like a corpse! You gotta entertain, dammit!»
The viewer count was a stab to the heart: 3. Me, with the phone I was using as a camera at the same time; China; and a stranger who popped in and out in seconds.
I desperately tried to comment on the game, but the words got stuck in my throat, turning every attempt at being funny into a monologue full of "um"s and "I mean"s.
After thirty-eight minutes of pure agony, when even China—the last viewer and the only one besides me—decided to bail, I shut it all down with a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of my soul.
In the following days, I kept at it, stubborn, but with no results. Stream after stream, the stats stayed stuck at miserable numbers, and the next month was no different.
My average viewers hovered at 1.9, basically just China, and sometimes Mathew when he had nothing better to do.
Total followers were about thirty, all relatives and friends I had forced to sub.
Peak viewers? Four, including myself.
Then, when I was about to throw in the towel—when I had decided maybe China was wrong and I wasn't cut out for this world—came the unexpected turning point: that stroke of luck that changed everything.
A pretty well-known Italian streamer, Predage, after seeing a viral clip of mine that a guy—who had only recently started following me—had posted, in which I pulled off an impossible ace, decided to raid my channel right before ending his own stream, suddenly flooding hundreds of viewers into mine.
It was like living in a dream. That night's stats left me frozen, staring at the screen:
Max viewers: 415.
Average viewers: 112.
New followers: 48.
New subs: 4.
Total donations: 12 euros, a fortune for me.
"Th-Thanks so much!" I stammered, my voice cracking with emotion, while China yelled on Discord loud enough to burst my eardrums. "I knew it—you'd make it! Don't quit now!"
I was fully aware that most of those people were there just for the raid and many wouldn't come back, but in that magical evening, I had won over a small, loyal group of viewers who seemed to really appreciate my playstyle, my vibe, even my awkward silences.
From the next stream on, the numbers started growing steadily. With more people in chat, though, came the need to mod it.
That's when China offered to be a moderator.
"You sure?" I asked, embarrassed. "I can't pay you, I don't have a steady monthly income yet…"
China cut me off with a laugh. "Don't worry about it, I don't need the money. Consider it a favor from a friend."
From that moment, my growth knew no bounds.
At fourteen years old, two years after starting my Twitch career, with nearly eight hundred followers and an average of 25 viewers per stream, I started feeling strangely empty, like something was missing.
I couldn't climb to the max rank in Valorant, Radiant, stuck in a limbo between Immortal 2 and 3, and that frustration showed in every match, every stream, making me more irritable and less fun to watch.
The chat didn't hesitate to point it out:
«Hey Pantera, chill out a bit! It's just a game,» wrote CrypticxSmile.
«You can't keep going like this, you get mad over every little thing,» noted Cofee_Addict.
«Come on, it's just a video game, not real life,» added DemonTea.
They couldn't understand. They didn't see the hours of solo training, the sacrifices, the sleepless nights.
They didn't know that for me, it wasn't just entertainment or passion anymore: it had become my reason for living, the only thing I believed I was truly good at.
I would win one match and lose another, always staying at the same level, like a hamster on a wheel—running but never getting anywhere.
If things went well, I would hold my rank. If they went bad, I would plummet, and my self-esteem would crash with it.
The emptiness inside me grew day by day, match by match, stream by stream.
I desperately searched for a new title that could give me back that initial rush of adrenaline, that pure joy of playing I had lost somewhere along the way.
I liked speeding through Assetto Corsa with the wheel I had gotten for my birthday, racing full throttle on the Shuto highway—a map that recreated Tokyo's lit-up streets.
It was another reason I had fallen in love with Japan, that dream of temples and megacities burning inside me.
Assetto Corsa, unfortunately, was a sim-racer, not a competitive game.
I couldn't climb leaderboards, couldn't prove anything. And I needed a challenge, a stage to shine on.
Nothing seemed to work, until my gaze landed on an icon in my Steam library I had almost forgotten: Osu!.
Osu! was a rhythm game I had tried months earlier, during a break from training, and it hadn't really grabbed me. But now, in desperation, I decided to give it another shot.
I opened the game skeptically, but almost immediately, something clicked.
I realized a key concept: I needed rhythm and precision. The second one, apparently, I had already honed from countless FPS games in the past.
I didn't stop for a single moment.
From eight p.m. until dawn the next day, without breaks, without distractions, without even noticing time passing.
Eyes burning, wrist throbbing from the strain, fingers starting to ache but refusing to quit.
In one night, I managed to complete a four-star map, while most Osu! players took months.
I was already above average after just a few hours, and that realization gave me an incredible boost.
In just two weeks, I had reached the goal I had set when, with a mix of fear and excitement, I had announced to everyone that I wanted to quit Valorant and start this new path.
"Finally!" I yelled, jumping up from my chair and nearly knocking over the can next to the mouse, the liquid sloshing dangerously. "I cleared my first six-star with 91% accuracy!"
The chat exploded with excitement:
«You switched games and you're still killing it!» wrote a fan who had followed me since Valorant.
«How the fuck do you track those circles!? They're too fast!» exclaimed a new fan who had joined the stream.
«Incredible,» added SavageSpinner.
I took a few minutes to rest my hands after that level. I turned on my phone, and a notification from Mathew popped up on the screen.
I opened it. «Hey, since you've gotten good at Osu! too, I saw a post on the official Instagram announcing the World Cup. If you're interested, sign-ups are open on their site. Tokyo 2025… that'd be cool, right?»
My fingers trembled slightly as I read the message.
Finally, after all that time, after all those sacrifices, the opportunity I had always dreamed of was materializing right in front of me, concrete, real.
The World Cup. Tokyo. An international stage.
There was a problem, actually two: the first was that I still played with mouse and keyboard, while almost all pros used graphics tablets for better precision.
The second was that the level needed to compete was way beyond my current six stars; I had to at least hit a consistent eight stars to have a shot at qualifying.
I opened Amazon with hands shaking from excitement.
I frantically searched "Osu! graphics tablet," filtering by price because I had to stay under 50 euros.
"Found it!" There it was, like a sign from fate: a Wacom CTL-472 on flash sale, from 50€ to 30€. "Only 3 left!" the site warned.
Without a second thought, I clicked "Buy now," using the money I had saved from stream donations.
Now I had a month to learn the tablet and reach eight stars.
The upcoming Easter break would help, with those two weeks off school where I could train day and night.
I knew it would be tough, that I would have to push beyond every limit, but for the first time in months, I felt that flame again—that pure motivation that had driven me to start all this. A bonfire burning stronger than ever.
The challenge had just begun, and I was ready to give it everything I had.