Suspicion
Ten thousand subscribers.
To most people it might not have seemed like much, but to me the number landed with real weight.
I'd thought the same way before I started on Vtube myself. Only ten thousand? Something like that.
Just browsing Vtube, you saw channels with hundreds of thousands or even millions of subscribers everywhere, so your sense of scale got completely dulled.
But once I hired two editors, started uploading videos, and began taking Vtube seriously, the realization came on its own.
This is harder than it looks.
Streaming and Vtube both looked easy from the outside. Actually doing them was another story. As someone who'd only just started both, I'd learned that even freeloading took effort. Call it your personal selling point. You had to keep thinking about how to pull aggro, how to get people to click just one more time.
Still, after the Taker Cup Streamer Tournament brought in a huge wave of viewers, and after I uploaded that footage, Vtube started responding a little too. People who'd been watching the other streamers from the tournament began drifting over to my channel. A kind of mutual favor-trading — and exactly the virtuous cycle I'd been hoping for.
So I'd figured I'd hit my first target of ten thousand subscribers pretty quickly. And apparently, that moment was right now.
"Hehe…."
I logged into the Vtube channel a viewer had mentioned and stared at the number sitting there — 10,002 — with a dumb little smile on my face. Even as I watched, it ticked slowly, steadily upward: 10,003… 10,004…
"It's all thanks to you guys. Thank you, thank you."
Riding the high, I briefly flipped on the cam feed I'd had connected but not broadcasting — then carefully angled myself so my face wouldn't show and bowed to the viewers. Once to the left, once to the right, dipping at the waist like a cute little mouse saying hello.
It was my own little thank-you and a reaction bit at the same time. Once the bowing was done, I turned the cam off again and settled back into my seat.
"I'm in a great mood! Mm, I was a little bummed I couldn't pull the Snow Queen Camilla skin. But I'm feeling better now. Skins you can just buy with money, right? But Vtube subscribers? You can't buy those no matter how much you spend."
A QnA. They meant the usual thing — people ask questions, you answer them.
Honestly, the idea was a little annoying, but it was a good day, so I decided to take it with an open heart.
"A QnA, huh… My editors said they were going to film and upload something anyway. Oh — give the live viewers preferential treatment? Yeah, yeah, fair. Live streams need their own special charm… Alright, how about we take just two or three short questions?"
The second those words left my mouth, questions flooded in like a dam had burst.
I read every chat flying up the screen. There were just way too many.
"This is a problem — too many questions is its own issue. Just pick whatever you want me to answer… Three sizes are obviously off the table. Let's see, mm…."
I trailed off on purpose, partly because I was actually deciding, and partly because I was deliberately stalling.
A sharp-eyed viewer caught on immediately.
"Oh, you caught me? Heheheh."
I had to eat too, okay? I already had two mouths depending on me.
And even without me, streamers who used these kinds of techniques were pretty common. Dragging things out like I was, playing dumb on purpose to bait donations, ignoring chat entirely and only answering donos — that whole toolkit.
At this point, I might not be a pro streamer yet… but I'd at least graduated from pure amateur, right?
Once people figured out the rules, the questions started coming in through donations.
"On off days I do whatever I feel like or whatever needs doing. Like this time — if there's a movie, I go see a movie. Other days I go for a morning walk… Working out? I should probably exercise, but it's not in the plans right now."
Starting with what I did on off days, all kinds of questions came flying in. I answered the ones I could and cut the ones that felt off-limits — and then one of those questions arrived.
"My voice?"
A pretty random question. My voice?
"Ahh…."
I finally understood what they meant.
Well — of course it was similar. Right now I had a body completely identical to Camilla's. From face to arms and legs and everything else, every part was synchronized, so the vocal cords that produced my voice would be completely the same too.
I sat there for a moment wondering how to answer, and the viewers' discussion just kept going.
I flinched.
For a split second the correct answer was right there in chat, and I reacted before I could stop myself. Thankfully the cam was off, so nobody caught it.
More importantly — Ririyang had said that behind my back? It wasn't wrong, exactly, but I hadn't expected her to hand out clues like that.
Crisis. Crisis. Major crisis.
I hadn't expected that post to exist, and I definitely hadn't expected a QnA to pivot into something resembling an interrogation this fast.
I'd never been good at lying. An awkward smile crept onto my face as I opened my mouth.
"I-it's just that our voices are similar. Yeah. Look like Camilla… do I? Ririyang said that? Well… maybe she was just overlaying me and Camilla in her head. I might look a little similar… I honestly don't know."
Leaving the restless chat behind my half-baked answer, I raised my voice.
"Moving on! Next question!"