Chapter 127 (Fixed)

A comment shot up the top of chat.

So you mean the people who can trigger those weird phenomena are the same type as Hime and Angelo, they just chose to blend into regular society?

Ray didn’t hesitate.

"Yes."

Chat stuttered for half a second, then went loud again. Ray lifted a hand and kept talking before they could bury him.

"Think about how crazy that power would have to be. Not fire. Not plants. Not something you can film and clap for. I’m talking a switch. One moment the world has a rule. Next moment that rule is gone and nobody fights it. People just do the new thing. No panic in the moment. No ’wait, this is wrong.’ They walk through it like it was always normal."

He leaned in.

"Worldwide, even. Not one street. Not one restaurant. A whole crowd, a whole city, maybe more, moving on a new script and treating it like common sense. They only start questioning it after the duration runs out. Or after somebody posts the digital trail. Videos. Screenshots. A clip that doesn’t match what their brain accepted in the moment. That’s when the fear hits. Not during. After."

The chat detonated.

The fuck?

Sanity hijack??

Mind power?

Bro that’s possession

That’s a psychic

That’s illegal as hell if it’s real

Guesses stacked on guesses. Cult tech. Government chip. Mass hypnosis. Alien broadcast. Then one comment slid up clean.

Common Sense Hijack?

Ray’s eyes flicked to that one a second too long.

In his head it landed too close. Common Sense Alteration. Different words. Same ugly shape. He kept his face bored anyway.

"Hmm. Could be."

He tapped the desk like he was just playing with the idea.

"Maybe the power doesn’t look flashy. Maybe it just takes something normal and flips it into something weird. Like the way people greet each other. One day it’s hi. Next day the polite thing is just screaming FUCK at somebody and everybody nods like that’s manners."

Chat lost it.

LMAOOOO

RAY OUT HERE MAKING MEMES

HI TO FUCK IS CRAZY

BRO STOP I CAN SEE IT

Some people were laughing because they thought he was parodying the internet. Some were dead serious.

If that’s the power it sounds like a cheap NovelPhoenix where the MC just wants to fuck and rewrite the world around his freak habits.

Ray felt that one. Just a little. Offended in the dumbest way, because the cheap-NovelPhoenix part was too close to the life he was actually living. He covered it with a shrug.

"Could be. That’s the problem. It’s too random. If the power can rewrite what people think is normal, then the next flip don’t have to be holy fire or a plant cult. It can be anything. Greeting. Clothes. Church. The beach. What’s allowed in public."

He looked straight at the lens.

"I’m even scared of my own stream right now. What if the next switch hits while I’m live and my subconscious suddenly decides being naked on camera is normal? I wouldn’t even fight it in the moment. I’d just sit here like, yeah, this is fine, this is how streams work now. And y’all would sit there watching like it’s regular content until the clip hits timeline later and everybody screams."

Chat went feral.

RAY DO NOT TEST THAT

LOCK IN BRO

COMMON SENSE HIJACK PLEASE BE FAKE

IF HE STRIPS I’M SCREENRECORDING

Ray let them yell. He gave a small laugh, the harmless kind, the kind that made it look like a joke he wasn’t actually sweating.

"That’s why I said follow the account. If the air starts feeling wrong, I talk. If I start treating something insane like it’s basic manners, y’all clip it. Because if this Common Sense Hijack thing is real, the dangerous people ain’t just Hime and Angelo on TV. It’s the ones still pretending they’re normal."

Ray glanced at the donation ticker and felt his stomach drop in a good way. The number was already stupid. Subs still popping. Superchats stacked on top of each other. Enough to cover rent and then some, which was the whole point of sitting in Milady’s bunker looking like a public service announcement.

He also knew the longer he stayed live, the easier it got for the wrong kind of viewer to pin him down.

Ray rubbed his face and leaned into the mic.

"Aight. I’m gonna wrap this up."

Chat immediately started crying.

NOOO

ONE MORE QUESTION

RAY DON’T LEAVE

YOU JUST GOT HERE

"I know. I see y’all. I’m grateful as hell you showed up. But I’m not trying to sit on camera all night looking like a target."

That slowed some of the spam.

"I already talked too much. If that Common Sense Hijack thing is real, or if there’s somebody handing out powers like lottery tickets, then running my mouth on a public stream is a great way to get noticed by the wrong person. I don’t want to become that person’s next project."

Chat flipped from clingy to serious fast.

YEAH GET OFF

HE’S RIGHT

DON’T BAIT THE HIDDEN ONES

LOG OFF BRO

THAT PERSON MIGHT ALREADY BE WATCHING

Somebody wrote: If the quiet ones exist they definitely heard this.

Another one: Ray you just drew a circle around yourself. End it.

Ray nodded.

"Exactly. I’m safe right now. I want to stay that way. I’ll post if anything feels off. Follow the account if you want updates. Don’t camp outside random houses looking for me. Don’t start a new hashtag hunting the friend who helped me. Let me breathe."

He lifted a hand.

"I’m good. I’m alive. That’s the only announcement tonight. I’m out before I make myself a problem."

The viewer count was still fat when he reached for the end button. Chat kept agreeing in all caps, telling him to disappear, telling him not to test whoever "that person" was.

Ray ended the stream, sliding the end stream button with a faint smirk. The chat’s reaction went way harder than he expected. As soon as the broadcast cut out, he immediately opened the X app on that thick-ass phone Milady gave him.

The screen on that clunky piece of junk almost blew up. Notifications kept spamming non-stop, numbers shooting through the roof every damn second. His little experiment worked like a charm. His take on the Common Sense Hijack and those dumb jokes he threw out were already clipped up by viewers, spreading like wildfire all over the timeline.

His follower count blew up crazy fast. It jumped from a few thousand straight past six figures in just a couple of hours.

Ray narrowed his eyes, scrolling into the account settings to check the monetization requirements for X’s Ad Revenue Sharing. His fingers tracked down the checklist:

1. Subscribe to Premium/Verified Organization — (Not yet)

2. At least 5M organic impressions in the last 3 months — (Green Check)

3. At least 500 followers — (Green Check)

"Damn... impressions and followers hit the cap in a single stream," Ray muttered, letting out a dry chuckle.

Every technical requirement was checked off. All he needed now was to get that Premium badge so the payout checks could start rolling in. With this amount of clout, ad revenue was gonna stack up fast without him having to pull a finger.

Since he was currently laid low—not because he was some wanted fugitive, but because he got straight-up doxxed and had weirdos want to collab with him—Ray needed to play it smart. He didn’t wanna be some tryhard creator editing complex videos or dropping long-ass threads every day.

His brain cooked up the laziest clout strategy on the planet: post one short, low-effort sentence a day just to keep the engagement alive.

"All quiet today."

"Vibe feels a lil off, but we chillin."

"Shit’s getting weird again."

Just one random line like that every morning. With the whole spooky aura surrounding him—plus everybody losing their minds over this Common Sense Hijack conspiracy—a five-word post would instantly farm thousands of replies from paranoid netizens. Whenever he needed a quick engagement spike to pump his ad check, he’d just drop a slightly more vague bait post.

"Type five words a day, farm the bag, and go back to slacking," Ray whispered, thoroughly amused. Without wasting a second, he smashed the Premium upgrade button and set up a clean, untraceable payout route using the encrypted private network on his heavy-ass phone.