Class Cancelled

8:50 PM.

When stream time arrived, I dragged my aching body over to the computer chair and sat down.

Even if my body felt like it was dying, work still had to get done.

The moment I went live, a flood of viewers poured in.

More viewers than usual.

Part of it was thanks to the collab with Hina-nim, but it was also because the aggro viewers still hadn't fully cleared out yet.

Still, it didn't feel like that many, so I decided to leave them be for today…

Besides, thanks to the workout, my usual tension just wasn't there.

"I'm not in particularly good condition today, so…"

My voice came out weaker than normal.

"I'm not sick… I just worked out today, so every muscle in my body aches."

Ugh… managing the chat alone really is tough.

But if I were to hire a manager, it wasn't like I could actually pay them a salary…

I'd heard some people do it for free, but I couldn't bring myself to ask that in good conscience.

"For that reason, today's lecture is cancelled."

The chat started to stir.

Obviously I wasn't ending the stream.

But when I looked into it yesterday, not every VTuber ran actual content every single day.

There were VTubers who ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠basically just chatted the whole time.

"Instead of a lecture, it's called Just Chatting, right? Today I'd like to take some time to casually talk with no particular topic and discuss the direction of this stream."

…Hold on, these people.

Weren't they supposed to love the philosophical nonsense I keep spouting?

Why were they this happy about it?

"…You're this delighted… Honestly, I'm a little shocked. Were my lectures that boring?"

I really was a bit hurt, and combined with how drained I felt from the workout, my voice came out even more dejected than I expected.

These people…

Still, I supposed this was their way of trying to cheer me up.

At that thought, a little laugh slipped out of me unbidden.

"Pfft."

I thought I'd laughed in a reasonably manly way, but what actually escaped my lips was an astonishingly adorable sound.

Suddenly embarrassed, I cleared my throat.

"Ahem. Anyway, today instead of a lecture we'll do Just Chatting… but what should I even talk about?"

That was fair.

Hmm…

What should I even talk about?

Now that the floor was mine, I had nothing to say.

I wasn't exactly the extroverted type to begin with.

"Umm… then shall I tell you about what happened while working out? The reason I've been exercising lately is because I seriously felt how lacking my stamina was. Today I went jogging, and here's what happened…"

I gave them a short summary of everything that had happened at the lakeside park that morning.

But the viewers' reactions…

Telling stories…

It was harder than I thought.

No, the story itself was fine summarized, but the problem was that it just wasn't interesting.

I'd thought it was a pretty eventful morning, but the moment I put it into words it became nothing more than a flat list of daily errands.

In that case…

Time to scrap it cleanly.

"Judging by the reaction, my daily life stories are a complete content failure. I'll discard them without a shred of regret. So let's change direction a little—I'd like to ask for your opinions on how we should run this stream going forward."

In truth, this topic was today's main event.

Unknown's stream.

How should I steer it from here on?

Watching various opinions start pouring into chat, I continued.

"I've been studying a lot about VTubers lately, and I realized that my stream is quite atypical compared to other VTubers."

"Not so much a major decision as wanting to get a little closer to the VTuber industry. For that, I need your help. If I'm going to survive in this industry, what do I need right now?"

YouTube, fan cafe, Twitter.

It really hit me how little attention I'd paid to the VTuber industry.

But wait a second.

"But to upload videos to YouTube, someone has to edit them, and if I make a fan cafe, someone has to manage it, don't they?"

I could figure out fan cafe management somehow, but I had no idea how to edit videos.

And it wasn't like I could just learn video editing either…

Or wait, maybe I should learn it for YouTube?

"Ah… YouTube will… probably have to be postponed since I don't know how to edit…"

"Kidnap? And what on earth is a clip channel?"

Come to think of it, I had heard a few of my videos had popped up on YouTube.

That the Daisy Gold cover I'd done had gotten a decent number of views, or something…

But I'd never actually searched "Unknown" on YouTube myself.

"Shall we try it while we're at it?"

No viewers seemed to object.

I opened a browser and went to YouTube.

I was about to type "Unknown" into the search ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bar, but it was such a common noun that I searched "VTuber Unknown" instead.

Familiar thumbnails of my own avatar started flooding the screen.

"Hmmm."

There were more videos than I expected.

And the channel names uploading them seemed oddly related to my nickname.

For example, this one…

UnknownHeadBreaker

The video this channel uploaded was…

Another channel name…

ChannelMadeToGetHitByUnknown

And the video this one uploaded was…

Beyond those there were piles of weird videos—donation reaction compilations, collections of my groans, and more.

Almost all of them had under 10,000 views, but there was exactly one that had cracked 300,000.

That was the Daisy Gold cover uploaded to Hina-nim's YouTube channel.

I clicked on the "Frontal Lobes…" video.

It was a speedy, comically edited compilation of me rambling about Le Bon's The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind while the viewers suffered in agony.

Honestly, watching only this video, you'd be fooled into thinking I'd given a genuinely entertaining lecture—it was that well made.

Next was the "Professor's Squeaky Hammer…" video.

The thumbnail had my avatar comically edited holding a squeaky hammer and looking furious.

On screen, my avatar was relentlessly swinging the squeaky hammer and landing verbal blows on the viewers.

And then…

Ah, I remembered this moment.

The time I'd somehow gotten tangled up in a viewer's sophistry.

I remembered it as a fairly serious situation at the time, but…

How had they edited this?

Suddenly my avatar started madly thrashing the desk with the squeaky hammer.

They must have copy-pasted the same clip over and over.

*Boing! Boing! Boi-oing! Boing!*

The speed of the hammer strikes doubled, then quickly ramped up to 4x speed.

And before long, the squeaky hammer sounds had been masterfully remixed to the beat of an EDM track.

The screen shook violently in time with the music, and at the bottom a damage meter kept filling nonstop under the caption Professor Enraged!

"……"

I stared blankly at the screen before finally asking,

"W-what is this."

"Did… seven thousand people actually watch this?"

"Hmm… the editing skill is honestly pretty excellent, I have to admit."

I had no choice but to acknowledge it.

At first I'd thought "what kind of video is this…", but even so, I could instinctively tell it was a very well-made piece of work.

I watched a few more videos as the viewers wanted, then closed the browser window.

There were differences in editing skill, but I could clearly feel that every single person who made these videos was deeply immersed in me.

So that was it…

Viewers could come in even from things like this, not just from grand content like collabs.

By the way, earlier the viewers had said something about kidnapping… so that meant…

"Hmm… I finally understand what you all meant earlier with the kidnapping and free labor talk."

I chose my words carefully for a moment.

The videos I'd just watched flashed through my mind.

Nobody had ordered them to do it. Nobody had paid them a single coin.

Someone had rewatched entire streams to add subtitles, and someone else had stayed up all night just to put a beat under my squeaky hammer sounds.

"…YouTube is, for now, on hold."

"Even so, exploiting people for free… isn't that a bit wrong?"

I continued slowly.

"There's a saying that one should treat humans not merely as means, but always also as ends in themselves. Exploiting someone else's talent for free under the pretty name of 'passion pay' would be me personally contradicting every single thing I've preached on this stream. I will never steal someone else's sweat and effort without fair compensation. Not now, not in the future."

Chat paused for a second.

"Yes… I promise."