Connections from the Past
October 7th was a rest day.
October 8th was a light VRChat map exploration stream.
The transfer virtual streamers who could be called my competitors were making massive leaps forward, but I never overextended myself. As a rule, I kept my scheduled rest days without fail, and conscious of the fact that I was only a month into this, I limited my broadcast time to five hours a day.
Viewers sometimes asked me to stream a little longer, but I refused firmly. For a streamer, the body was everything. Hadn't I already experienced it in the early days—how quickly a throat could go bad? Thorough management was essential.
It's not like I'm only going to stream for a day or two. I have to play the long game.
The Wooga-dol audition was right around the corner. Getting carried away by the virtual boom and the decent viewer numbers and stretching my broadcast hours would be a classic case of penny-wise, pound-foolish. I'd watched the audition footage from before my regression—there were people with outstanding singing ability who couldn't perform because they hadn't taken care of their voices. Even the audition shows on TV said it all the time: voice management was part of the skill set.
In that sense, I was looking after my health with thorough professional discipline. Just as my vocal coach advised, I managed the humidity at home, drank throat-friendly tea without fail, and never skipped stretching whenever I had a free moment. For this kind of care, steady consistency mattered far more than hoping for a lucky break.
"So Lucy, don't forget to get up from your chair every now and then, move your back a little, stretch your arms out—that kind of thing."
"R-right. Got it. Haa…"
October 9th, Sunday. The day of the announced "Immigration Screening" content. We gathered beforehand for a brief rundown and got our stories straight. As the "immigration officer" and something of a host, I might end up asking questions the guests found sensitive. That kind of thing needed to be coordinated in advance.
Talking with Lucy a lot lately, I could say our sense of closeness had deepened another layer. It still wasn't at Blueby's level, but she seemed to trust me quite a bit. The proof was that she'd started speaking casually with me.
There was just one problem. Ever since that day, Lucy had been hoping to hear me call her "unnie." Damn it. Calling someone younger than me "unnie"? That day, I'd only used the title because I was trying to cling to her somehow and talk her around—doing it in my right mind was not easy. So I deliberately ignored Lucy's wishes and kept calling her Lucy-nim.
That aside… I really didn't expect this person to actually reach out…
"Lucy and Seo-a must have been close from the start. I'm so jealous."
A voice that tickled the ear in a peculiar way. Sweet, yet carrying a dizzying fragrance that made you feel you shouldn't reach out carelessly. If you put it bluntly—sex appeal? Sultry? Whether it was deliberate or just her natural voice and presence, I couldn't tell.
"Seo-a's just so nice…"
"Ahaha. Actually, this is our first collab too."
Lucy, shy at the first meeting, subtly put me forward—and I couldn't help smiling. It was because her still going "uh-uh-uh" and radiating pure awkward-nerd energy the moment she collabed with other streamers brought back old memories.
"So both of you are collab virgins, then."
"Eh?"
"Huh?"
"…"
A crushing silence hung for a moment. And then I realized—it wasn't only Lucy's behavior that could dredge up memories.
"Ah! That was Miho's mistake!"
Aegyo and a voice that could charm a man in an instant. The one responsible was Miho—who, before my regression, had been a member of V-mellodi alongside Lucy and Blueby.
The Immigration Screening content drew interest not only from viewers but from countless streamers. My profile was higher than I'd expected. The first pure-blood virtual to debut on Pangea TV. On top of that, from my debut stream I'd built recognition with massive stock purchases and solid self-PR, then capped it off with the Zero Two dance and Grand Theft on Ssa-yo's content. Setting aside Rena-ttang and a few popular members of the Rena Universe, I was, for all practical purposes, the hottest commodity on the Pangea TV virtual scene.
Saying that about myself felt like shameless self-praise and was pretty embarrassing—but that was the reality. Thanks to it, DMs poured in from virtual streamers who wanted to join the Immigration Screening content. Roughly fifteen of them?
The moment I spotted the nickname "Miho" among them, I couldn't help sinking into memory once more. Unlike with Blueby, I held no particular grudge against Miho. If anything, like Lucy, I'd felt a shared sense of being sidelined within the crew—so I'd watched her streams and occasionally sent Candy donations.
Thinking about it, our chemistry was surprisingly good.
Lucy, with her ten-out-of-ten scholarly temperament, and Miho, who tossed out unfiltered 19+ talk without hesitation. A combination that shouldn't have worked at all—and yet the back-and-forth was excellent. Lucy flailing in panic, trying to shut down the 19+ remarks Miho casually dropped. Miho, on the other hand, teasing her as if she found Lucy adorable—and that little-devil behavior was seriously charming.
Thinking about it, Miho was a victim too.
Maybe even that thought came from my personal dislike of Blueby. Miho had been steadily building her foundation with a seriously spicy 19+ mouth and sexy dance content using full tracking—then after joining the crew, her position became awkward. Under the pretext of protecting the crew's image, everything that made Miho appealing got shackled. Whenever there was high-intensity 19+ talk or overtly sexy dance content, posts targeting Miho would inevitably appear on the fan café, telling her to be mindful of the crew's image. Every time it happened, Miho had no choice but to shrink back, and naturally she turned into a middling streamer who couldn't play to her own strengths.
Miho was one of the members Blueby gathered, too. She might have done better if she'd joined some other crew instead of V-mellodi. Sure, there are fans who shy away from a sexy lane—but there are fans who prefer it, too.
Honestly, the future I was drawing didn't include Miho or the other V-mellodi members. I had my own problems, and just looking after Lucy was already more than enough. Even if we had a connection from before the regression, I couldn't take care of them as well. That said, as I'd mentioned before, I believed a streamer needed a "crew." The streaming scene was already a red ocean, and to survive in a place where the fight over scraps was this fierce, you needed solid allies somehow.
And the easiest way to secure those allies is to build a crew. The problem is, you still can't trust a crew a hundred percent.
Hadn't I already seen the proof of that before the regression? In the form of Blueby, whom I so thoroughly despised. And it wasn't only V-mellodi—historically, plenty of crews had problems. Viewers only saw the packaged surface of people laughing "haha, hoho" and getting along on stream. But what about the hidden underside? Streamers were people in the end. Wherever people gathered, envy, jealousy, and conflict were inevitable. That was why crews dissolved, and in worse cases, why one crew member would call out another on stream.
So even if I make a crew later, I want to thoroughly vet the members and only take people I can trust.
And into that situation, Miho—someone I could call a connection from the past—had suddenly appeared. Was this a twist of fate? I'd been surprised, but my resolve hadn't wavered. My standards for crew members were still rigid, and I wasn't going to give bonus points just because we knew each other. Still, I could at least give her a chance.
Come to think of it, there's no need to shut Miho out completely. Before the regression she was a middling streamer who was neither here nor there—but in an environment where she could spread her wings without restrictions?
No one could know how the future would change. So rather than the future, all I could do was give my best to the present…
"Thirty minutes left. If anything comes up, contact me right away, and please be here waiting at least five minutes early. Any questions?"
"Nah, I'm good. See you in a bit."
"I'll rest a little and come back too."
Both of their Discord status messages switched to Away. They said that, but they were probably busy practicing with the materials I'd sent them ahead of time. Lucy especially. My own newbie status—only a month since debut—had overshadowed it, but Lucy was also a streaming novice of under five months, and this was her first collab content, so she couldn't help being nervous.
"…"
Truthfully, I was nervous too. I'd done plenty of content so far, but all of it had been on solo streams—this was the first collab content I would show viewers. First impressions were always the most powerful. Depending on whether today's stream succeeded, my image going forward would be decided. How much planning ability I had when it came to content.
"I'm here."
"I'm back."
While I was mind-controlling myself to settle the nerves, the two of them returned.
"Lucy, Miho… let's really kill it today."
The die was cast.