It's a Different World
It's a different world. I didn't know the exact term, but there's this phenomenon—something like, once you properly learn and internalize something, it suddenly starts jumping out at you in real life. For example, after realizing that swirling water pours out faster or whatever, you notice the toilet water draining that way. That kind of feeling. And I was experiencing it live right now.
'...It's really different.'
All sorts of things I'd overlooked for a solid half year without a second thought were suddenly glaringly obvious. Those minor but varied dissonances were finally gnawing at my mind from every angle. Why hadn't I noticed anything off until now? Probably because I hadn't been paying attention at all.
First off... I had to consider that I wasn't exactly in my right mind. I wasn't some expert on psychology, and I sure didn't have the skills to analyze it professionally. But even just thinking about it simply, I hadn't been in a normal state, right?
One day, I opened my eyes with no warning whatsoever, and the body I'd lived in my whole life was gone. I'd come to in a body with a different gender altogether, and at that moment when I confirmed that every trace of my previous existence had vanished... judging anything with normal reasoning obviously wasn't easy.
Instead of looking into myself, I'd suddenly started streaming out of nowhere. I wasn't about to starve to death right then—there was no need to fire up a broadcast. I could've taken time to assess the situation properly without any issue. But maybe I just wanted to run away.
Maybe I deliberately thought of it playfully, imagining that if I turned on a stream like in some novel or manga, I'd get flooded with attention and love, leading to endlessly busy days.
'Sigh...' I had no idea. I wasn't much of a drinker, but for some reason, I suddenly craved getting totally wasted. Still, going out was a hassle, and with this body, I dreaded the annoying situations that might crop up at a bar. Sure, if I explained and proved my circumstances, there'd be no problem, but... this body really hated interacting with people that much.
The fact that the words in my head wouldn't come out right was way more frustrating than I'd anticipated. Sighing heavily, I started wandering the internet, checking various things.
Only now had I noticed, but even the streaming site where I'd started broadcasting had a subtly different URL from what I remembered. Realizing this after half a year was utterly ridiculous.
Yet amid these subtle differences, there were things almost identical to my memories. Like the names of famous companies. The one I remembered as A was A here too, B was B. Some were the same, some different... I couldn't figure out where these discrepancies came from, but that was reality.
Honestly, changes in companies that didn't interest me much or relate to me weren't what hit hardest. The real unease came from fields I knew inside out, naturally.
Manga, anime, games... otaku culture, to put it bluntly.
The works I knew weren't entirely absent. Most existed just as I remembered. According to a quick wiki check, the stories matched too. But... there was this subtle dissonance that kept it from being perfectly the same.
The lines or scenes I vaguely recalled were off by a bit... The same scene, but the composition subtly different, or the dialogue phrased just a tad otherwise. Every time I spotted one, the thought deepened: the world I was breathing in right now was different from the one I remembered.
Not exactly sure how, but different in the tiniest details. I could feel it so clearly. Why? No good answers came no matter how I pondered.
Works I'd doubted could ever be hits were flops here, and ones that shocked me as releasable had decent sales. Chewing over this bittersweet gap endlessly led nowhere, so with a sigh, I switched from the YouTube I knew to this world's version.
Then I searched frantically for names and agencies of VTubers I remembered.
Some yielded zero results, others something. But even when results appeared, they weren't my ones. Mostly bland names that screamed "generic"—no surprise, since people here named similarly.
What to call this feeling... VTubers and streamers were always a one-sided relationship, obviously. As a regular fan, they had no clue I existed; it was just me feeling unilateral intimacy and connection.
Thinking they cared specially about each fan was delusion, and I'd never over-immersed like a gachikoi. So this emotion wasn't from my favorites vanishing entirely... more like a sense of loss from my years-long past, my fun memories, being erased root and stem. Like denying my own self.
No way to prove I existed before, and now even my memories couldn't be verified as real. Was I a girl with memories of being a real guy, or just some pitifully broken girl? How do you even prove that?
During searches, I clicked a live stream from one VTuber and stared blankly at the game screen.
Hanasaki Nanoha... yeah, that's how you read it? 570k subscribers, 7,000 viewers... High viewer ratio to subs—maybe her teammates weren't streaming? Didn't matter. Anyway, she was playing an FPS game I knew well: Project W1.
The [P1] in the title probably meant that. I'd once hated this game intensely. Not the game itself, but VTubers playing it. Why? Couldn't recall exactly. Maybe 'cause I didn't like FPS much, or various reasons.
I didn't remember why I hated it or when I went from watching streams to playing myself. Anyway, now I liked both the streams and the game plenty.
'Even in this changed world, streams are still streams...'
Staring blankly, I paused playback and read the pinned messages below.
Chat rules... obvious stuff: no spamming, no badmouthing, no chatting among viewers. Scrolling down revealed the thumbnail illustrator credit, personal SNS links, company SNS.
I blankly moved the mouse to click the company SNS. An account decked out with illustrations of affiliated VTubers, posts about birthdays and anniversary merch caught my eye.
Official homepage, goods shop, event ads, secondary creation guidelines—all listed in pinned posts. Nothing special; I'd seen official accounts like this tons of times. Just seemed like a pretty big agency.
The official site naturally had company info, member details, VTuber profiles. Flowery mission statement, activity history... Skimmed the boring parts and hit member intros.
About ten members, short names and self-intros, detailed info collapsible. Nothing standout. RP-based intros, but judging by names, motifs, profiles—not extreme.
Some agencies crammed in every trope excessively, others just "high school girl~" and done. This was the latter.
This redhead's cute... memorize her name?
Scrolling idly, my eyes suddenly locked on one spot. Why? My mind said it was none of my business, keep scrolling—but my hand froze.
A single word in a super cute font.
Beneath it, various entry conditions listed every which way. My eyes were glued there, unblinking.