Just Once
What do you believe sets humans apart from animals?
It is, quite simply, conceptualization.
A lion does not know that it is a lion. Only because humans have conceptualized it as a lion can a lion be a lion.
Even the most ordinary pebble tumbling along a roadside becomes a work of art the moment someone picks it up, calls it a suseok—a viewing stone—and sets it upon a pedestal.
Just as the famous line of poetry goes: until I called its name, it was nothing more than a gesture. Through conceptualization, a thing at last acquires its own unique meaning.
If humans—or any life capable of assigning meaning—did not exist in the universe, would existence itself still hold any meaning at all?
…Why am I torturing myself with this headache of a question when my bank balance has only three thousand won left in it?
Those expensive VTuber rigs sitting on the desk are Jeong Eun-gyeol’s keepsakes… though calling them keepsakes feels wrong when I still have no idea whether she’s even dead.
Anyway, ever since reading her diary, I’ve conceptualized those things as the vessels of her desperate dreams and hopes—which only proves how painfully human I am.
In short: it pricks my conscience.
But in a capitalist society, morality comes out of your wallet. I have to stay alive for there to even be anyone else.
The dreams and hopes of someone whose whereabouts I no longer know will not fill my stomach.
The most rational choice would be to pretend I never saw that diary, sell every last piece of VTuber equipment, and secure my own survival. But as I said—I’m far too human for that.
That said, I also can’t just leave all this expensive gear sitting around gathering dust.
“…Hmm.”
Shall I try a method available only to humans? It looks a bit bothersome and pointless, but…
That method is a ritual.
Nothing grand—something closer to a funeral, I suppose.
I don’t know where Jeong Eun-gyeol’s soul—or her mind—has flown off to. Perhaps it possessed my male body. In the worst case, it may have vanished from this world entirely.
What is clear is that the VTuber she wanted so badly to become has become an impossible dream.
I ought to grant that dream at least once, using her body. And then sell everything cleanly afterward.
Mm. An excellent excuse.
I returned the diary to its original place and sat down in the computer chair. Taking hold of the mouse, I opened the “Stream Prep” folder on the desktop and double-clicked Debut Greeting Script.txt.
"Nyang-ha nyang-ha! I'm the magical cat Nyangpaca who dreams of becoming a cosmic superstar! Did everyone get their churu ready?! Are you prepared to fall head over heels for Nyangpaca's charms?!"
“…Fuck.”
I could feel the resolution I’d just made starting to crack. Even if this was a ritual to fulfill Jeong Eun-gyeol’s unfinished dream in her place, there was absolutely no way I could deliver that line.
I closed the window without a shred of regret and created a new text document.
…Though, hang on—I wasn’t actually planning to become a full-time VTuber. Did I even need a debut greeting script?
For that matter, I doubted anyone would drop into the stream the second I went live. In that case, I’d just skip the greeting entirely.
And that bizarre name, Nyangpaca, needed some serious reworking too.
Mm… Let’s just settle on something rough.
I tapped at the keyboard.
Unknown.
A completely unknown soul had entered this body. In other words, to the people of this world, I was an unidentified being. That would do nicely.
Name decided. Time to test the performance of all this equipment.
I double-clicked an icon that looked like an avatar-driving program inside the folder. A large webcam propped up on one side of the desk lit up with a green indicator, and I heard the soft whir of the lens focusing.
Ziiing—
On the monitor, a magical-girl avatar with pink twintails popped into existence. The bright, adorable cat-eared magical girl that Jeong Eun-gyeol had wanted to become.
By design she was supposed to be beaming with a cheerful smile, but… she was completely expressionless. The cam was reading my face in real time and overlaying it onto the avatar. Proof enough: when I forced an awkward little smile, the character on screen pulled a crooked smirk that didn’t suit her design at all.
“Pretty wild, I’ll give it that.”
I ran all sorts of tests—angry faces, sticking out my tongue, contorting into grotesque expressions. True to its price tag, the delicacy of the face-tracking technology was genuinely astonishing.
I fiddled with everything else as well: mic tests, shortcut keys for avatar emotions… Press a number key and she’d cry, laugh, make heart shapes with both hands—the whole ridiculous suite. Naturally, I would never have any use for those functions.
Anyway, stream prep was done, so I could start broadcasting right away… except I wasn’t going to. Doing it too half-assed would feel like disrespecting Jeong Eun-gyeol’s dream. Even for a one-time stream, I figured I ought to put a little proper form into it.
…I barely watch internet streams—VTubers even less—but maybe I should do a little research?
Research turned out to be easy. As expected, Jeong Eun-gyeol’s phone had streaming apps installed, and she’d subscribed to various streamers she liked.
As it happened, her absolute favorite—Hina—was live. Her viewer count was well past ten thousand. The avatar floating in the lower right was a white-haired angel.
“Hee~? What did I eat for dinner, you ask? Hina’s already full from eating all of your love tonight~!”
…Intense. She could spit out lines like that, in a voice like that, without a single cringe. That was professional consciousness for you…
On the right side of the screen, chat was spamming things like “SO CUTE!!!” and “I’M DEAD!!!” at a deranged pace. What was this? It felt like witnessing a cult gathering held online.
But preferences ought to be respected…
That was when it happened.
Flash—!
A massive golden effect exploded across the center of the screen, accompanied by a cheerful jingle.
Bam-ba-ba-ba-bam!
User Hina'sSlave has donated 100,000 won!
"Our Hina's got great energy today! Go buy yourself something tasty!"
A hundred thousand won…! Burning a hundred thousand won just to float a single line of text on that screen…!
“Hyaah! Ah! Onii-chan Hina’sSlave! Thank you so, so much for the hundred-thousand-won donation! Hontoni daisuki! Love you, mwah!”
The angel avatar on screen drew a huge heart with both hands and gave a smiling squint of her eyes. Chat erupted into another frenzy of ecstasy, and ten-thousand-won and fifty-thousand-won donations started firing off one after another.
“……”
I stared blankly at the monitor. Pulling in hundreds of thousands of won in under a minute with that cute voice and a single little dance move… Marx himself would leap out of his grave at productivity that overwhelming.
Back when I was a man, the daily wage I ground myself down for an entire day to earn had just been matched by one set of choreography. A hollow laugh escaped me on its own.
…Hmmm.
I turned on my phone’s voice recorder, hesitated, then forced out a line.
“O… Onii-chan.”
Fuck. My face felt like it was about to catch fire.
Anyway—might as well listen once. I hit play.
—O… Onii-chan.
It had already sounded pretty good just speaking it, but hearing the recording made it a voice that could actually melt someone. It didn’t lose to Hina at all…
As a VTuber voice, the competitive edge was more than enough. But pulling off that kind of coquetry would require plating your face in industrial-grade shamelessness.
I glanced sidelong at the “Nyangpaca” still floating in a corner of the monitor. Maybe… Jeong Eun-gyeol’s dreams and hopes hadn’t been such a reckless challenge after all.
I could never do it, though. I had no confidence I could flirt like that with an unspecified mass of people—especially with men.
Well… this was only a single stream meant to commemorate Jeong Eun-gyeol’s spirit. No need to put on that kind of act.
For about an hour after that, I gritted my teeth and watched other VTubers’ streams. The atmospheres varied wildly, but the common thread seemed to be having some kind of concept and bouncing off the viewers with back-and-forth banter.
Mmm… Anyway, I roughly understood how a VTuber stream was supposed to run. Naturally I wasn’t going to run mine the same way. I planned to just ramble about whatever I felt like saying, then shut it down.
What if not a single viewer showed up? Honestly, that might be better for my mental health.
All right. With my resolve steeled, I opened the streaming software and logged into the broadcast platform Vivid.
As for the title… According to the plan written in Jeong Eun-gyeol’s notepad, it was supposed to be “Who wants to eat churu with Nyangpaca~,” but there was no way my fingers could type those words. After a moment’s thought, I tapped the keys.
All That Exists Is Suffering
Mm. That had a nice ring to it. A perfect barrier to entry—anyone with eyes would refuse to click.
I took one deep breath and pressed the Go Live button.
About ten minutes after that: zero viewers. The expected result. If anything, I felt more at ease.
Mm. That said, just staring blankly at the monitor was its own kind of torture. Maybe a mic test?
I looked around and spotted a stack of dusty books on one side of the desk. They looked like workbooks Jeong Eun-gyeol had half-finished in high school. I picked up the one on top—Ethics and Thought.
…There was dried ramen broth splattered on the cover. Strangely endearing.
I flipped open to a random page and began reading in a low, quiet voice.
“…God is dead. We have killed him. Nietzsche’s declaration heralded the end of Western metaphysics…”
On the screen, a cat-eared magical girl was announcing the death of God with a gloomy expression.
I’d been reading for about ten minutes when—
Ding—
Oh… One viewer had come in.
Hmm… A troll, is it? Jeong Eun-gyeol might have burst into tears, but I wouldn’t. Occupational hazard—I’d taken more than my share of hate comments. Aggro of this caliber couldn’t put a scratch on me.
“Middle school edgelord, you say. When people hear something they don’t understand, they slap the label ‘edgelord’ on it and stop thinking… It’s certainly a comfortable habit. But Schopenhauer said that suffering is the very essence of existence. Calling my title ‘edgelord’ is nothing more than the product of ignorance born from your shallow visual prejudice. My title is the result of existential anguish.”
The troll seemed flustered, spamming lol’s. I turned a page and continued in the same indifferent tone.
“It is not a concept. Beneath your barrage of laughter and mockery lies a defense mechanism—seeking out tiny streams to tear others down so you can confirm your own pitiful sense of superiority. Nietzsche called this ressentiment. Unable to grow strong yourself, you diminish others for consolation—the textbook form of slave morality.”
“PassingByDoggo. You did not enter this room by chance. The abyss called you.”
Huh. Spouting nonsense like this… might actually be kind of fun.
The troll seemed to wilt in an instant. Decent feedback, this one.
“Now then—shall we proceed with Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch in a spirit of repentance? Open to page one hundred twenty-four.”
And so began a peculiar stream: me seating a single troll and continuing a lecture from Ethics and Thought. The viewer count in the upper right had somehow crept from one to three, but I kept my focus solely on advancing through page one hundred twenty-four.
I wondered whether this would be enough to satisfy Jeong Eun-gyeol… and that was when it happened.
Tiro-ri-rong—!
A cutesy little sound suddenly spilled from the speakers. What now?
A notification window slammed into the center of the monitor.
Hina has raided with 12,450 viewers!
“…Huh?”
The viewer count in the upper right started rocketing upward like mad. Ten. A hundred. Three thousand. Ten thousand…
Chat text scrolled so fast it was impossible to read.
Over ten thousand viewers’ worth of chat. The scroll was racing out of control.
I dropped the copy of Ethics and Thought I was holding. On the monitor, the cat-eared magical girl’s pupils were trembling as if an earthquake had struck.
“Fuck. What the hell is all this.”