Maybe I've Grown
Maybe I've grown.
I stopped counting the days since I'd last left the house.
It must have been months by now.
...Because I was living a life so broken that keeping track of the date had become meaningless.
Those first few days, I couldn't even look in the mirror properly. Flip on the bathroom light and a strange girl would be staring out from the glass over the sink; shut off the monitor and that same face would surface in the black screen. The computer hadn't gotten a break in weeks. Even the apartment manager tilting his head at me when I went out to take out the trash felt like an accusation, as if I'd committed some crime. All my energy went into avoiding people, so I couldn't spare any for anything else. I could feel myself getting dumber by the day, but living like a rat in a hole, I didn't need to be smart.
Growl.
"...Think it's gone cold by now?"
On my phone screen, a delivery-app alert was flashing the signal for battle to begin.
I'd been cooking whatever was left in the fridge, living on nothing but instant ramen—and eventually I'd broken down and ordered delivery.
I know that already.
Food that hasn't gone cold tastes better. Hot food that still feels like it was just made tastes better than something reheated. I know that!!
According to the notification history, today's gacha pull had arrived seventeen minutes ago.
Kind of a gray area?
If the odds of it going cold rose by one percent per minute, that was... seventeen percent. Not high, not low either....
No!
Thinking about it carefully—seventeen percent? Wasn't that actually a total steal? Six rolls and it was basically a guaranteed pull!
...Yeah, right.
My thoughts had gotten endlessly shallow, and I seemed to be spouting nonsense without a filter a lot more than I used to.
"No. Still... I've grown a lot."
The first time I ordered delivery, I'd spent a full hour frozen in panic with my hand locked on the front-door handle. The food I finally managed to retrieve that day was closer to a meal kit than takeout—stone cold, the kind of mysterious object that would make even the microwave shake its head and ask whether I shouldn't just reorder. I'd reheated it until it was warm, then teared up over tough, hard rice. That version of me was completely different from who I was now.
Assuming, of course, that I actually managed to bring the food in without incident....
Humans are animals of adaptation.
Today was only seventeen minutes. And me right now? I'd grown since last time, so a five-percent buff to the success rate!
All right.
Challenge accepted.
"Hoo..."
The sigh that slipped out, smaller than the thought behind it, sounded ready to snap at any second.
"Ugh?!"
It was only a few seconds of exhaling, and yet those damn breasts floated up into the air and dropped back down with a soft thud, reminding me of the terror of gravity. If they were going to get bigger, they could at least have grown my height along with them. I resented this cursed body that couldn't even reach the top shelf of the cupboard without a chair. I couldn't even sleep on my stomach anymore....
"Hah. I can't put this off any longer...."
This was it. For real.
I was going to rescue the spicy pork rice bowl waiting for me!
Open the door.
Reach out.
Snatch the food hanging from the handle.
Pull my hand back while shutting the door fast, grip firm on the bag so nothing shakes.
No loud bang.
Close it carefully, and quickly.
Then open today's gacha.
The plan was perfect. Any more planning would only raise the failure rate. Execute fast. Any later and our poor spicy pork bowl would be found as a cold corpse.
Beep, beep, bee-ree-ring—.
The door closed.
Once I actually opened it, the whole thing was over so fast that all that careful planning felt embarrassing. Time spent rescuing the spicy pork rice bowl: twenty seconds flat.
"...."
I... I did it....
I succeeded.
Perfect!!
"Yeah. I'm almost there. No, I mean it, I'm almost there for real."
"...Hieek?!"
A voice from down the hall froze me solid at the front door. Footsteps, and the sound of the neighbor's door lock sealing shut.
"Why don't you ever believe me? No, seriously, I'm almost there."
You just left your apartment....
If you're going to lie, at least pick up the call late enough that people can't hear your door lock, buddy.
You're scaring people!
If he were just going to the convenience store downstairs, sure. But where on earth was this guy always going that he was forever "almost there"? Waiting for the elevator, still almost there. Sometimes you could even hear him putting on his shoes, and he'd claim he'd already arrived. By his standards, where did "almost there" even start?
"...."
The neighbor's phone call faded, and the sound of the elevator arriving snapped me back. Through the plastic bag clutched to my chest, a faint warmth still lingered.
"...Oh?"
It was still warm.
Not completely dead.
At this stage, resuscitation was possible.
"...Nice."
I put only the spicy pork in the microwave. Steam was still rising gently from the rice.
That low whiiir always put me in a good mood. Sitting in a chair, waiting at my leisure, I found a foolish little smile bubbling up out of nowhere.
Maybe I've completely grown now.
All I'd done was bring in one delivery order. Opened the front door, reached out, closed it again. And how many times had I failed at even that—how many bowls of cold broth and bloated noodles had I eaten?
"Hmm-hmm-hmm."
I hummed under my breath and tried to shrug my shoulders, only for the hoodie to slide off to one side and tickle the back of my neck.
I should buy clothes soon.
The hoodie from when I was a guy hung on this body like a dress, so I'd thought it would be fine. But leave it hanging loose and before long one whole shoulder was bare—deeply inconvenient clothing. The urge to buy something new sharpened a little more.
I roughly tied up the hair tickling my nape with a rubber band and, not bothering to hide the smile that kept breaking free, tidied the desk. No need to reheat the rice today.
It was still warm!
Maybe I should declare today a holiday.
Ding.
Almost the same instant the microwave stopped, a short notification chime sounded from the computer. Familiar profiles stacked up one after another in the messenger alert window.
I moved to close them in a hurry, then froze with the cursor hovering over the X.
At the top was the rookie VTuber I'd given feedback to last.
The kid who'd fretted over every little thing right up until debut, asking every question under the sun. The one whose avatar I'd stayed up reworking until dawn that day.
Underneath that, messages from VTubers I'd known longer had piled up too.
To them I was just the rigger who'd made their first avatars. Nothing more, nothing less.... And yet plenty of people still reached out from time to time, even after years of streaming. Sometimes someone who'd been broadcasting for years would send a question that sounded like a total beginner. I could see they were just fishing for a reply, and I'd even drafted answers—then never hit send.
—I'm not busy.
My body's actually too good. I don't get short of breath, and the dizziness is almost gone.
I don't know how to put what happened into words, but I went from a guy to a girl.
Whether I'm okay... I don't know either.
I got younger all of a sudden.
I can't even go to a hospital.
Every time I step outside the door my whole body locks up, so I just barely stick my fingertips out to grab delivery food.
I've gotten so scared of going out that I have to treat that like an achievement and declare it a holiday.
...How was I supposed to send something like that?
Even if they believed me, that would be its own problem. First thing I'd probably have to do is drag that person to a hospital myself.
"...No."
Me, who couldn't even go to a hospital—who was I going to take anywhere?
I was moving the mouse—which looked unusually huge now—to close the chat window when the other notifications stacked underneath caught my eye.
"...Ah."
Reactions on the rigging sample I'd posted under a new account.
"...Did a commission come in?"
Taking work on the old account would mean explaining too much. Why I'd gone silent. Why I was trying to start working again now. I still didn't even understand what I was running from—but I couldn't just starve to death like this.
So I'd made a new account and put up a sample. The response had been faster than expected.
"Uh...?"
In the brief time I'd looked away, the comments and mentions had ballooned. I hurriedly opened the Y alerts.
"...."
I scrolled a little further.
"Ah...."
I couldn't breathe.
My old username was already right there in the comments. And of course, not a single person thought that name was me now.
The model I'd released for free back then. An avatar I'd just put out there because I felt sorry for rookies who couldn't even debut for lack of money. It had spread too far, stayed around too long, been used by too many people.
Now even when I worked with the same structure, it looked like I'd stolen someone else's work.
Back then my username was embedded in the files, and I'd uploaded from my own account, so authenticity had been a given, but...
"No.... I really didn't steal it...."
My fingers were shaking. The corners of my eyes burned.
I made it. It was my model. My avatar.
I lowered my head, and a single tear dropped onto the rice with a soft plop.
I made this. I'm Link.
I poured the words onto the keyboard, wanting at least one line of a rebuttal, then deleted every last one of them. All that would do was add one more impersonator to the pile.
Should I log into the old account and verify it? Then they'd ask why I'd disappeared. Why I'd cut contact. Why I'd come back on a new account. I didn't think I could handle a single one of those questions as I was now.
In the end, I set the post to private.
"...There."
It wasn't fine at all....
I took my hand off the mouse and scooped up a spoonful of cold spicy pork.
"...."
It was good.
It had still been alive until a little while ago.
But maybe because of the comments I'd just read, even the meat tasted too dry.
Rigger work.
Didn't look like it was going to happen.
That feeling of having conquered the world with a successful delivery quietly shriveled up before a single hour had passed.
Because of who I used to be,
the person I am now was suffering.