Another Man...?

So.....

What the hell was this supposed to be.

All I'd wanted was to ego-search the reaction to yesterday's surprise stream. That was it. So why was I looking at this......

What kind of circus was this?

I'm getting snatched?

I was still reeling when I forced myself to actually look at the situation, and I came away with exactly one fact.

A new male streamer.

A guy on stream for the first time in two years, and I — the recent streamer who was only guy-adjacent — kept getting dragged into the conversation right beside him.

"What a pain..."

I didn't particularly care if someone showed up to threaten my spot. The fact that I'd been enjoying streaming at all had just been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me slipping into enjoyer-mode, and if my viewers drifted over to this new person, that was fine too.

Click.

"The name is....."

Elmil?

The follower count was already almost on par with what I'd had after my first stream. And unlike me, this one looked like a proper VTuber — actual character, actual RP, the whole package. I was still just a no-cam streamer.....

Well. I could do the VTuber thing if I actually committed. I just didn't.

"Hmm...."

I stared blankly at the stream page.

"Debut's in two hours, right?"

Might as well check out the debut stream.

"Time."

I refreshed the page and hopped into the broadcast that had just appeared. A waiting screen sat there for a few minutes before it rolled over into a loading screen, and a voice started to come through.

Didn't most VTubers have high-quality waiting screens, though?

"Ah, hello......."

A few people in chat seemed to be thinking the same thing I was, but the moment that voice came out, those comments died on the spot.

"Hwah.... there's a lot of people........"

I tilted my head.

"The voice is kind of... girlish.... ah."

I realized what the déjà vu was.

Voice fetish stuff.

Back when my curiosity about sex had been at its stupid peak as a kid, I'd mashed a bunch of vaguely dirty-sounding keywords into a search bar and landed on a video. The rating hadn't even been that high, but it was packed with the kind of sexual innuendo anyone could clock — that video, with that sultry voice. And then the last line. I'm actually a guy, big bro♡ The shock of it had killed my appetite for two straight days.

"Gaaah!"

I clutched my chest and went down on the spot. The internal damage was too much...!

..........

"......Ahem."

I sat ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠back down.

Anyway. This person was the type that dragged that voice — and that way of talking — up out of the deep end of my old memories. Masculine and feminine, all at once.

"Y-yes....... should I introduce myself....?"

In a timid little voice, he pulled up a self-intro slideshow.

Were all the guys in this world like this? I'd happened to watch videos of a few other male streamers before, but they'd all either died or graduated, so I'd just felt a little uneasy and moved on.

No. More importantly.

Why was this so normal.

Wasn't the normal thing for them to go into heat and throw themselves at any guy they saw? They'd been giving me a pass for being guy-adjacent, hadn't they? The treatment was way too different.

I focused on his stream with a look of complete disbelief.

"So for now..... my name is Elmil........."

"My species is puppy! I came from the Puppy Kingdom..."

Just a dime-a-dozen VTuber RP. Honestly, it felt so half-assed it was almost insulting.

So why was the reaction this good.

I stared at the chat again, dumbfounded. They never even did this for me......

"........"

Come to think of it, they kind of had treated me like this too, fussing over me like a bunch of Young-Forties. Just with a little sexual harassment mixed in.

.....But thinking about it that way, that was just garbage. I'd never put it in those terms before, but mapping it onto my original world, it was definitely just garbage.

Donations were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠off?

I opened the donation window. Yep. Locked.

"D-donations..?"

"Ah..... th-that's just..... I feel a little weird about taking money."

To be fair, living as a man, unless you were a eunuch there was no real reason to be short on cash. And even if you were a eunuch, you could probably still marry rich.

"And my favorite color is yellow."

"My hobby is watching streams."

"And last! The reason I started streaming....."

Did people usually put this kind of thing in a self-intro? What I knew for sure was that I had no memory of doing it myself. Not like I could say some god-adjacent thing that dumped me into this world told me to stream.

What the fuck. Wasn't that the kind of thing you were not supposed to say. What had I even done?

No — more than that. Why was my name coming up here all of a sudden?

My thoughts started backing up like a clogged drain. If I'd had a mouthful of orange juice I definitely would have spit it out.

"Honestly I'd finished all the stream prep and was agonizing over whether to actually go live......"

"But I happened to watch Miren's stream, and I thought, I want to stream together!"

"That's my goal. I really hope I can make it happen."

A collab offer. On the debut stream. Wasn't that a move people didn't even pull on a nice-to-meet-you stream?

My head started to hurt. I'd only hopped in out of a little curiosity, so why was I watching a headache unfold in real time.... The fact that I'd find out sooner or later the moment they mentioned me was one thing. Having it slammed straight into my brain like this was an annoying kind of headache.

I pressed my fingers to my temple and went back to watching the stream. Even after saying all that, he carried on like nothing had happened. He did just-chatting for a few dozen minutes and then ended the broadcast.

I stared blankly at the dead stream. And the aggravating part was that the entire just-chat, he ignored every single question about me. Sure, you were supposed to hold back on mentioning other streamers — but he was the one who'd brought me up first?

"Haa......"

Drained, I let out a rough sigh and scrubbed my face with both hands.

Might as well go live.... I had a lot I wanted to say, and nothing else to do right now. I was going to stream today anyway. Separate from the surprise stream, that is.

I hit the go-live button.

The moment I went live, chat started rolling in.

Ah. Right.

I'd forgotten my own viewers had been sitting in Elmil's chat too. Come to think of it, we were both pulling aggro as guys, so of course the viewer pools would overlap. Which meant from these people's perspective, Elmil had mentioned me on a debut stream, and I had gone live the instant that stream ended.

.....Anyone looking at this would think we knew each other.

"....Hello."

"What..... no. Yes. I watched."

"I just happened to see it, and to be perfectly clear, I don't know this Elmil person at all."

"They mentioned me one-sidedly."

They weren't listening.

And what did they mean, I was a girl after all? The way they were talking, it was like I was gay.

"No, more than that — why is your attitude so different when you talk about that person versus me?"

"You're always going on about how I'm like a guy."

"Wow. Garbage...."

Yep. Garbage. I didn't even need to map it onto anything. Just garbage.

I felt a strange sense of superiority toward him..... no. Envy. So this was the kind of chat a normal guy didn't get.

I recoiled.

And the even more shocking part was that chat was gradually slowing down. What were these people doing.

I sighed inwardly. Well. What could you do. It didn't matter anyway, so I decided to play along.

"No, this actually really pisses me off....."

......Was that the right call?

I regretted it instantly.

"....Hello."

I was speechless at how chat ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠snapped back to normal.

".....Yeah. Let's do it together sometime."

What were they even talking about.

"Ugh. Forget it. My fault for going live."

"Forget it. I streamed yesterday anyway. I'm tired."

I hit the end-stream button without mercy. According to that thing, a stream under an hour counted as a day off, so doing this today didn't really matter.

"What a shame...... it's over."

"But I still got something out of it."

Click.

That voice started playing from the computer again. All thanks to hitting the record button without missing that moment.

"Ehehe....."

"Transfer the recording to my phone..... done."

I headed for the bed. Then I pulled the blanket over my head and hit play on that voice again.

"Hnn..... I really think I did well..."

Hearing it from under the covers, it was like it was whispering just to me.

I really was lucky.

Meeting her had been a complete accident. I hadn't even been on the community boards. It was literally just chance. And I fell for her in a single instant.

I liked her. I loved her. Even if she was a woman, that was fine.

But I didn't want to cross that line. So it was actually a relief.

I'm really glad.

"The male voice I practiced....."

She started looking up the rest of those videos too. Apparently one wasn't going to be enough.