[Viewer "Late Night Iron Lifter": Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!!! What the hell did I just see?! Who is that fat kid in the glass reflection?!]
[Viewer "Melon Eater": Damn it! A voice changer! That black thing is a voice changer! It's just a brat! This was all a setup!]
[Viewer "Kindergarten Meal Stealer": Screw you! I wasted my tears for nothing! Refund! Give me back my overflowing sympathy, you little animal!]
[Viewer "Outlaw John Doe": Fraud! This is blatant online fraud! Using a voice changer to make up a tragic backstory and farm sympathy. This little brat is rotten to the core!]
[Viewer "Raging Psyduck": W Streamer!!! This counter-kill is a textbook classic! Amazing! Truly amazing! The master saw through him ages ago and deliberately made him look in the mirror!]
[Viewer "Forest Fawn": That's terrifying... To be so scheming and have such good acting skills at such a young age. I was crying my eyes out just a moment ago. I feel like an idiot!]
[Viewer "Manager Ruby": No wonder Miles gave me a weird feeling earlier; he was digging a pit for this kid. Beautifully done. A cancer like this that consumes the public's kindness should be nailed to the pillar of shame!]
Meanwhile, on the other side of the screen, the chubby little boy seemed to notice the shift in atmosphere.
He suspiciously lowered his head and glanced at the chat feed, which was frantically scrolling with a unified wall of text cursing him as a "little scammer" and a "fatty."
Slowly, his gaze shifted to the center of his phone screen.
When he saw the glass window and his own clear reflection mirrored within it, he let out a sharp shriek.
"Ah!"
He was so spooked he nearly threw his phone across the room.
In a panic, he slammed the phone face-down on the desk, leaving the stream with nothing but a pitch-black screen.
"You... you tricked me?!"
The voice changer still outputted that crisp female voice, but now it was laced with the flustered rage and humiliation of being exposed.
Evidently, the boy hadn't yet realized the magnitude of his mistake.
Instead, he shamelessly demanded from behind the black screen, "Were you telling the truth about the rich guy sponsoring a Starter Pokémon?! Are you playing me?!"
"Am I playing you?" Miles stared at the blackened screen, laughing out of sheer anger.
Bang! He slapped his hand onto his desk. The loud crash echoed through the microphone, making the fat kid on the other end visibly flinch.
"You wet-behind-the-ears little punk, you have the nerve to ask if I'm playing you?!"
Miles's voice was ice cold, every word a piercing knife.
"You put on a voice changer, make up some melodramatic sob story about a patriarchal family, and play thousands of viewers in this stream like absolute fools!"
"You exploited everyone's empathy and consumed their kindness for the weak, and you dare call this me playing you?! Do you have any idea how vile your behavior is?!"
Miles pointed directly at the camera. Even though the boy couldn't see him, his aura was overwhelmingly oppressive.
"Did you not learn 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' in elementary school? Today, you farmed sympathy with your lies. Tomorrow, if a little girl who is truly desperate and struggling to survive enters this stream begging for help, will anyone believe her?!"
"You are cutting off the only lifeline for people who genuinely need rescuing!"
"What you did is the textbook definition of stupid and malicious!"
Miles's righteous and imposing reprimand struck like a heavy hammer against the hearts of the viewers.
Cheers erupted in the chat; everyone was won over by his incredibly principled stance.
[Viewer "Incarnation of Justice": The streamer said it best! He's absolutely right! This kind of fraud exploiting human kindness must be severely punished!]
[Viewer "Keyboard Dancer": So satisfying! This spoiled brat has been coddled at home and desperately needs a reality check from society! Master, stop wasting breath on him and call the cops!]
[Viewer "Melon Eater": I'm so pissed off! How is this kid so thick-skinned? He gets exposed, refuses to admit fault, and is still thinking about getting a Starter Pokémon? Bro is dreaming!]
[Viewer "Late Night Cultivator": I support the streamer calling the police! We absolutely cannot tolerate this!]
[Viewer "Manager Ruby": We cannot easily let off such egregious behavior that corrupts societal morals. Miles, take legal action if necessary.]
Seeing the screen flooded with demands to "call the cops," the chubby boy on the other end finally grasped the severity of the situation.
The suffocating pressure pouring in from all corners of the internet completely shattered his composure.
"I... I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!"
The kid was genuinely panicking now. Forgetting to use his voice changer, his real voice—a cracking, pubescent squeak—cried out as he frantically begged for mercy into the phone.
"Master, I was wrong! I really know I was wrong! Can you please give me a chance? I just thought it was fun and wanted to trick you into giving me a better Pokémon... I really didn't think that far ahead!"
He babbled incoherently, making a desperate final struggle. "M-Master, I don't want the Starter Pokémon anymore! I won't ever be greedy again! Please, at... at least help me appraise a few more Caterpie! I just want to pick one with slightly better potential..."
"You still want me to appraise a Caterpie for you?" Miles sneered, his eyes brimming with contempt.
"Do you think a liar with a mouth full of falsehoods has any right to make demands here?"
"Let me tell you, today's incident won't end that easily."
Miles leaned forward slightly, playing his final trump card. He deliberately lowered his voice, creating a suffocating sense of tension.
"Did you think I'd be helpless just because you turned off your camera? Did you forget who I was just collaborating with?"
"Officer Barrett from the City Pokémon Protection Bureau. His colleagues have been monitoring my stream in the background this entire time!"
"Your little online fraud operation just now was recorded from start to finish as evidence!"
At the word "police," a sharp gasp echoed from the other end.
Clatter! Something heavy was knocked over in the scramble.
"Let me spell it out for you: your IP address has already been locked onto by the authorities!" Miles continued to pile on the psychological pressure.
"Disconnecting the call won't help! Pulling your internet cable won't help!"
"If you immediately confess in front of everyone in this chat and deeply repent, maybe the police officers will note your good attitude."
"If you resist... heh, just wait for the police cruiser to pull up downstairs and have your parents bail you out of the station!"
This mixture of half-truths and intimidation was a devastating, overwhelming strike against an immature brat.
Only heavy, terrified panting could be heard from the black screen.
The fat kid had clearly had his soul scared out of his body, unable to even string a complete sentence together.
Just as Miles and the stream viewers thought the dust had settled—that this little scammer was about to break down crying and beg on his knees—the situation abruptly mutated.
"Don't bully my brother! He's not a scammer! He's not a bad person! Please don't arrest him!!!"
A shrill, mournful girl's voice, choked with genuinely heart-wrenching sobs, suddenly exploded from the microphone without warning!
Immediately after, the pitch-black feed jolted violently.
Someone seemed to have snatched the phone from the desk and flipped the camera around.
When the figure in the frame became clear, the cold sneer on Miles's face instantly froze.
The chat feed, which had just been flooded with crusades against the "little scammer," seemed as if someone had hit the clear button, falling into an eerie, blank silence.
The person in the camera's view was no longer the greasy, chubby kid in designer sportswear.
Instead, it was an incredibly emaciated, sallow-faced girl.
She wore a ridiculously oversized, faded old T-shirt and had messy, unkempt hair.
Her eyes, slightly sunken from chronic malnutrition, were welling with terrified tears.
She was clutching the phone for dear life, shielding the camera with her frail body like a mother hen protecting her chicks.
"Master... I'm begging you! You don't have to appraise the Caterpie! We don't want anything! Just please let my brother go!"
Panic-stricken, with tears and snot streaming down her face, the girl pleaded desperately into the lens.
Her body was trembling violently like a leaf in the wind from sheer terror.
Miles was dumbfounded.
'What the hell is going on now?!'
The thousands of viewers in the stream were utterly flabbergasted.
[Viewer "Late Night Iron Lifter": Holy shit?! Wait... there actually is a sister?!]
[Viewer "Raging Psyduck": My brain just crashed! What exactly is happening? This girl looks... so pitiful. There's no way this is an act, right?!]
[Viewer "Keyboard Dancer": My head itches, I feel like I'm growing a new brain! Is this a double agent situation, or a chain of schemes?!]
[Viewer "Melon Eater": This is bad, bros! Seeing how terrified this girl is, did we... did we actually just become the cyberbullies driving someone to their death?!]
[Viewer "Outlaw John Doe": This case is too complicated. Even as a law student, I'm confused. Can someone untangle this timeline for me?]
[Viewer "Manager Ruby": Things don't seem as simple as we thought. Miles, hold steady. Do not speak recklessly right now!]
[Viewer "Kindergarten Meal Stealer": Mommy, save me! I can't tell what's real anymore! I really can't!!!]
Miles looked at the girl on the screen, who was crying so hard she could barely catch her breath.
He then looked at the dim, dilapidated room in the background, feeling his temples throb violently.
He originally thought this was just a simple prank by a spoiled brat.
But looking at it now...
'There's actually another twist?!'
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