OFFLINE REALITY

Bro, are you alright?

"Are you ready? Because I'm very nervous about this."

Oh, we're ready!
Hurry! We can't wait to meet you!
This is so exciting!

Sky couldn't control his beating heart, attempting to make its way out of his chest. His palms were getting sweaty as his cursor hovered over the button. With a click, his title of "faceless" would change.

He couldn't deny that the adrenaline was getting to him. A nervous smile formed on his face.

"Alright, here we go." He turned on his webcam and it popped up on his stream, in the middle of the screen.

"Oh god damn, my face is too big." Sky quickly adjusted the size of the panel while his chat was flying. The messages were going too fast for him to read. Sky took a few seconds to at least try and catch some of the things that his chat was putting in.

"Nah, I'm not that good looking. And Yes, I'm Asian. Very proud of it too."

You should have turned on your webcam long ago.
You look so good!
Yassss boy, one more hottie added!

Tyler couldn't help but laugh. It felt weird, that's for sure but it definitely was nice to receive compliments once in a while. He sat upright and continued to talk to his chat, replying one of the more serious messages that he saw popping up.

"Well, yeah. It's me. I'm that kid from Springleaf. That's my old secondary school to anyone who's wondering. If you are my age and are from there too, you will know what happened back then."

Oh? What happened? Doesn't sound very good.
Baby, what's wrong?
The fuck, he can talk now?

"It's a long story, and yes I can talk. It's a matter of choice. But anyways, to make it simpler, I was outcasted. 'Bullied' wouldn't be the word that I would use to pin it to the situation, or maybe I was. I'm not sure but whatever. It's been long so yeah."

Why were you outcasted?
Omg, who bullied you? I'll hunt them down!
Did they have nothing better to do or what?

Sky wasn't sure if he was ready to share this part about him on the internet yet but thought that it was now or never. It might be easier to say it now since they were approaching the topic but he was sure that some of them may have guessed it.

"Well, I'm sure some of you may have guessed it but I'm.... Atypical?" Sky laughed at his own words. "Whatever man, I guess I'm not your average Joe. An atypical person who found it difficult to fit into the typical world, at that point in time at least."

Aww, baby. We support you no matter what!
Come on man, you do you.
Ignore the haters. They salty only because you are doing well.

"Though, I've always thought of drawing a clear line between the me online and the me offline. That's a big part of the reason why I didn't want to stream with a webcam up till now. At the very least, I could be a little more of myself online. To the person who questioned that I could talk now, he probably knows me IRL. A little backstory, shall we?"

Sky shared to his chat how his whole ordeal went down. While it didn't seem like much, it affected him to the point where he was no longer able to make friends, talk to people nor get close to anyone. His chat said that since he didn't confirm anything with his own words, it technically didn't mean that Sky was admitting to the rumors at that point in time.