Strictly Private
Lee Da-som, the real body behind the megacorp VTuber Hina, sat down at her computer humming a little tune.
That honey-sweet rest after a successful stream.
But first, as always, she opened her business inbox.
"Let's see~"
Sponsor pitches, fan art, collab requests from other streamers—the usual flood.
Her mouse cursor scrolled down a list of dozens of mails, then stopped dead.
The mail she'd been waiting for had arrived.
Unknown.
A VTuber Da-som had stumbled across a few weeks ago while filming a small-streamer raid series. Among recent newcomers, Unknown was probably the most famous of the lot.
Not a conventional VTuber—more of an irregular—but that was exactly why the viewers were losing their minds over them.
The decisive spark that had rocketed Unknown to fame was Da-som's own raid. Raids weren't always kind to tiny channels, so she'd worried a little… but from the first time she watched, she could tell.
This streamer was no ordinary talent.
And she'd been right. Unknown had taken the sudden flood of over ten thousand viewers and, with that strange silver tongue of theirs, held the room in a perfect grip. In no time at all they had carved out a place on the scene, building a regular audience of nearly two hundred.
Da-som was among those two hundred. Their stream times overlapped a little, so she couldn't always catch the start—but watching Unknown after her own stream had become part of her routine.
Her own chat had reacted well when she'd floated a collab, the memory of that raid still vivid. So she'd sent the proposal—and a reply had come within a day.
Da-som clicked the mail open, read it through, and burst out laughing.
"Is this person actually unhinged about the bit? Or is it some real middle-aged guy voice-modding on stream? Ah, whatever. As long as it's fun."
Without a second thought she copied the Distalk ID listed at the bottom of the mail, sent a friend request, and fired off a note.
She wanted to talk to Unknown right that second—but they were live. First things first: get a meeting on the calendar.
Beep!
The toy mallet's sound effect rang out.
"Court is now in session. The Philosophy Tribunal is open."
As always, roughly two hundred viewers piled in the moment the stream went live.
"Excellent. Now, for our first point of contention…"
I was reaching to open the mail inbox when—
Ding-!
A Distalk notification chimed.
What even was Streamer Mode.
And why they were suddenly screaming about horns I had no idea—but a DM had definitely arrived.
"……!"
Having the collab with Hina leak this early would be a problem. Fortunately the note had opened on a screen the viewers couldn't see.
"Horns? Have you somehow become a goblin, or… The DM that just arrived is a strictly private message, and I cannot disclose it."
"I do, after all, have something called privacy."
I'd said it without thinking, and the chat immediately exploded.
Chat went completely feral. The scroll speed looked about three times the usual rate—angry emotes, interrogations, baseless accusations, the works. I started mass-banning everyone who crossed the line.
Banning only bought a moment. The chat's energy barely dimmed. If anything, they took it as a cover-up, and the suspicion only thickened.
That donation finally told me why they were furious.
These idiots… thought I had a boyfriend. Ugh, even the word was nauseating. An lover, apparently.
"Dating…? You actually believe that note just now came from a boyfriend? How absurd. Let me be perfectly clear: I have no boyfriend, and I have no intention of acquiring one."
"…Oh-ho."
A wall of text that long was a first for me. And a rather fine composition, too—a magnificent ring composition, beginning with fuck and ending with fucking bitch.
The viewers showed no sign of calming down. Leave it like this and the whole stream would be hijacked by "Professor Dating Scandal," topic be damned. I had to break the current somehow.
"Hmm."
An amateur would slam their forehead to the floor here whether guilty or not. An intermediate would hit the End Stream button. And a master?
A full frontal charge.
"Shall we begin a lecture, for a change? Today's subject: love."
At my words, the chat hooks went berserk.
The viewers only got louder. I ignored them and opened my mouth.
"First, let us establish the ground. What is love?"
"Love is not an emotion."
"Love is a skill."
"Most people think of love as something you 'fall into.' One day, as if by fate, you tumble into someone. English even phrases it that way—fall in love."
"But the philosopher Erich Fromm rejects that. That, he says, is not love—merely the emotion of being 'smitten.' A temporary state of hormonal excitement. Which is why that kind of love inevitably cools with time. So what, then, is real love?"
I glanced at the chat. It was no longer burning the way it had been. Proof they were listening.
"Love must not become an 'emotion'—it must become an 'activity.' Not 'I love you because I need you,' but 'I need you because I love you.'"
"Furthermore, to love someone, one must be capable of standing alone. That is—one must be able to endure solitude."
"…Clinging to someone because you cannot bear loneliness. That is not love—it is dependence. Filling the hunger of loneliness by keeping anyone at your side. When a human who cannot stand on their own two feet leans on another, that is not love… it is parasitism."
"And so a truly mature human does not fear time spent alone. They love it, even. And I love the time I spend alone. In those moments I feel a fullness beyond compare. In other words—I am not a human who cannot endure loneliness and therefore requires someone. To me, ordinary romance is nothing more than an unwelcome guest invading my solitude."
"Therefore the conclusion is singular. I have no boyfriend. From the start, I have had no need of one."
"My solitude is not a realm ordinary humans may casually trespass upon. I have never granted permission to anyone—and I never will."
Of course, stopping there would not make one a master.
I let a beat of silence fall, then dropped my voice a tone lower.
"However… if I were to make an exception."
A touch of bashfulness in the delivery, perhaps.
"Those of you who come to my stream every day and listen to my rambling monologues… you, I will allow. No one in this world may disturb my solitude—but the only ones granted leave to pace outside its door… are you."
"To stand there quietly and look up at me. That much privilege, I will grant you."
And then the donations started firing off one after another.
"……."
Looking at that particularly eye-catching nickname, I let out a quiet snort of laughter.
At first they'd only looked like an audience tossing money at my clown act… but honestly, they might be a little cute…
Krah! Goosebumps!
I gave myself a full-body shudder, then raised the toy mallet.
"Right. Enough of this pointless uproar. Shall we begin the real trial now."