The Finest Prey Always Appears as Prey

When a sense of loneliness rose from the depths of his heart, Yinzi frowned in confusion, because he did not think of himself as lonely.

Loneliness was different from solitude. He had not felt this way in a very long time.

He occasionally had an emo episode at night, but that was definitely not loneliness.

Now, he had a lover by his side and friends in his stream. He was not super rich, but he had made some money from streaming over the years. He had not repeated the mistakes he once made, and under Old Thief's games, one after another, his streaming career had steadily risen.

He thought games could break his defenses, make him upset, make him curse himself hoarse. They could heal his soul, and move him through the stories of their characters, but he had never imagined that they would make him feel lonely.

Where had this feeling... come from?

Yinzi did not voice what he was feeling. He was afraid everyone would think he was being pretentious. The stream was incredibly lively right now, and suddenly mentioning loneliness would seem a little like overinterpreting things.

Especially after Old Thief's earlier games, Celeste and This War of Mine, many streamers had continued interpreting his other games. Everyone thought Old Thief's games had to contain deeper meanings. Yet when the final results came out and proved those interpretations excessive, basically no one had managed to ride that wave of traffic.

If he stepped forward now and said he had felt loneliness in the game, those streamers who had already faded into obscurity would jump back out again. "See? Even a major streamer feels loneliness. So it was just different people seeing different things before, not because we were overinterpreting."

Still, he was puzzled as to why he