Maybe I've Got Talent?

Maybe I've got talent?

There was a perfectly practical reason I'd suddenly come to a karaoke room.

If we ran a J-POP World Cup on stream, they were absolutely going to make me sing.

I could brush it off or refuse, sure—but for a VTuber who uploads original tracks and covers to YouTube, singing was basic literacy. I had to put in at least the minimum effort.

"Mm! Ah!"

Mic cover on. Throat felt decent enough. I picked up the remote and started scrolling through the popular songs.

Hmm…

It had been a long time since I'd set foot in a karaoke place. Really only the rare visit after that stretch right out of high school when I'd run around declaring I was going to be a singer. Back then I'd even scraped together part-time money and gone to a vocal academy for a bit.

Vocal cord tension, diaphragmatic breathing, and sending the sound out through the back of the head…

The things Tiger Teacher had drilled into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me floated back up. Everything he'd said had been so abstract that at the time I'd thought it was pure nonsense—but after a few years of humming and practicing on my own, I could more or less tell what he'd meant.

The important part was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this: I had still been a little better than your average person.

Of course, whether that carried over to this body was something I'd have to figure out as I went.

First song—something easy.

After a long hunt I settled on Kim Kwang-jin's "Letter." It was a song packed tight with quiet longing and restraint, no wild peaks anywhere, so even a beginner could get through it cleanly.

"Ah—recording!"

While the intro spilled out I scrambled to hit record on my phone. This wasn't for self-satisfaction anymore. I had to show it to other people, which meant I needed objective data.

"Hoo."

One short breath before the entrance. Ridiculous how my palms were sweating over something this small.

♩~ ♬♪~

"Letter" had been my first practice piece at the vocal academy, too. Teacher had told me to sing it the way you'd sing a children's song. And right now ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I literally was a kid, so there was nothing to be embarrassed about. No one next door to overhear, either.

♩~ ♬♪~

Every word, clear and careful. Putting that much heart into it drained me in its own way. It felt like a panel of judges was staring me down from right in front of the screen. Four minutes vanished in a blink.

"Whew…"

The second the chorus ended I stopped the recording. The nerves came flooding back. Anyone with a pulse feels that dissonance the first time they hear their own voice played back. It had sounded fine in my ears while I was singing, but…

I wet my lips and pressed play.

The recorded accompaniment rolled past, and then the voice came in. I hadn't even thought about uploading to YouTube yet, so I hadn't been recording the stream either—this was the first time I was hearing the raw, unfiltered thing. I hadn't gone hunting for old Yoo Serin videos either, just in case they messed with my head.

And the result of that heart-pounding reveal was…

"Ohh?"

Unexpected jackpot.

Technique this, pitch that—none of it mattered next to how crystal-clear the tone was. Bright, transparent, clean; every word that fit those adjectives applied. And because I hadn't been in this body all that long, there was barely any dissonance at all.

"Th-this is good?!"

The tension coiled through me flipped, all at once, into pure delight. Sure, compared to the VTubers who could actually fly, my singing was nothing—but I was a kid in real life and on the face cam, wasn't I? Being merely decent was way better for the stream than being some polished pro.

"Ehehe…"

A laugh slipped out on its own.

Yoo Serin! You were born with the voice, too? At this rate am I about to become a self-and-publicly-acknowledged V-empress overnight?!

C-calm down.

I looped the recording a few more times and forced the excitement back down. There was still more to test. No getting cocky.

"How do you even search on this thing…"

I wrestled with the remote, hunting for the song I'd already decided on. The one I'd marked was from across the water in Japan: "Bansanka." Hadn't the artist written it at fifteen? Barely any age gap with me now.

"Ah, found it."

I'd been an idiot for sweating over the search. It was sitting right up at the top of the J-POP popularity chart.

Listen through once more before I try it.

VTubers and Japanese music were inseparable. Virtual YouTubers as a culture had started in Japan in the first place. I didn't know the exact numbers, but most of the covers you saw uploaded were in Japanese. And our beloved hardass VTuber "experts" treated pronunciation like a sacred metric. If it wasn't native-level, they claimed it killed the immersion.

I'd watched a clip someone dumped on the V-sniper gallery once and couldn't hear any real difference—but the poster was out there insisting, "She's my oshi and I still can't listen because of the pronunciation!"

It's insanely fast…

"Bansanka" through the earphones. I'd used it as game BGM often enough that the lyrics were stuck in my ears. The problem was how little breathing room there was. The words just piled on like someone talking a mile a minute.

Let's do this.

Which made it perfect practice, the same way you'd train diction with blisteringly fast rap.

Beep—

I hit start with all the courage I had. Mic locked tight to the incoming track. I can do this. If it's me, I can!

♩~ ♬♪~

Ah…

♩~ ♬♪~

Um…

The intro already felt rough, but once you've drawn the sword you have to cut something. After a messy crawl through to the chorus I played the recording back.

"……."

Pronunciation my ass—I'd panicked so hard the pitch was a train wreck. Well. As long as it was cute, right?

"Welcome, everyone."

I'd gotten a rough taste of singing, gone home, and put away a solid home-cooked meal. At a full one hundred percent energy, I went live.

The chat kept climbing and the corner of my mouth climbed with it. The window was way cleaner than before. After watching me hammer the ban button in a row, even the ones who'd been pushing back were starting to keep their heads down.

They're still watching, though.

The scopes were absolutely still trained on me. In other words: just waiting for one thing to blow up. Say I played a climbing game like Jump Queen and ate dirt the whole time. Not that that would ever happen.

"What were you all up to?"

It was a daytime stream, so some of the viewers were clearly on the clock. If I wanted to hit peak weight class, evenings were the right call—but there was zero chance my parents would greenlight streaming late. I'd have to ease the schedule back a little at a time. I wasn't even going to school; maybe eventually they'd let me push to one or two in the morning.

"I went out this morning."

"Mm… I had something to prep for today's content."

A proper VTuber was supposed to do about an hour of just talking after going live. Same as yesterday, this stretch was pure suffering. I was starting to wonder if I should just slap together a café I could freeload through. It would have been nice to riff on other streamers I actually knew—but I was still an island out here, so that was off the table too.

At least I had enough viewers that I could just pick chats off the vine. If this had been a normal cold-start solo channel? No joke—I'd have had to survive the torture of talking to a wall just to grow.

"Mobile games? What's popular these days?"

Wuthering Waves, huh…

I'd seen a few streamers play it on stream. From what I remembered it was an open-world RPG with a heavy story focus, just like chat said. Someone had even full-on sobbed watching a cutscene.

That kind of thing can wait for later.

I'd only just re-debuted. Fishing for a specific fandom this early was a guaranteed way to get buried in hate—people would say I wasn't trying to grow clean, just chasing shortcuts. Ideal Type World Cups were in a similar vein, but at least those pulled in an unspecific crowd, so people cut you some slack. If I'd already been playing Wuthering Waves before I started streaming, maybe. Different story.

"Thanks for the recs. I'll think about it!"

Leave the door open and leave it there. Cutting it off cold just breeds backlash. And who knows—I might actually play it someday.

"Which one?"

I bit down hard on the new bait the second it hit the water. I'd dabbled in online RPGs here and there before. From what I knew, a handful of titles still had the pie locked down tight.

Donations detonated like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠they'd been waiting for the cue—and right on their heels, the chat painted itself in every flavor of scorn.

"Ah… thanks for the recommendations…"

I may have poked the wrong nest.