On the Matter of Opening My Eyes to Find I'd Become an Ultra-Gorgeous Silver-Haired, Purple-Eyed Beauty
The world had always been unfair.
Those who had something always got one more piece of the pie, while those with nothing were thrown out of the gambling hall before they could even place a proper bet.
The law of the jungle. Survival of the fittest. Winner takes all.
Some people called that the natural order of things… but I never particularly wanted to agree.
Then what hope were the weak supposed to live on? It was just too damn unfair.
"I hate this world where the talent freaks take everything."
Of course, that wasn't something I had any right to say — not when I fit snugly into the category of thoroughly worthless human being.
The only people allowed to blame talent were the ones who had carved themselves down through effort and still slammed into a wall they couldn't climb.
Someone like me, who had never once put in a real effort, didn't even have the qualifications to put those words in his mouth.
Even a pathetic guy like me could admit that much.
"Haa… Not that it matters. Even if every talent freak vanished tomorrow, that chance would never come around to me."
Damn it. Why did the walls of reality have to be so high?
No matter how hard I hopped and jumped, I couldn't see over them. It was a miserable feeling.
It was so sad, so unbearably sad, that I felt I wouldn't survive unless I diluted the misery with alcohol.
And so, today as well, I drank. A cheap cocktail with no flavor to speak of, only a high alcohol content.
The kind people called chuhai — one can of it, with my favorite girl glowing on the monitor as my side dish.
"Khh… Tastes like garbage…."
As expected of something designed purely to get you drunk on the cheap, the taste was viciously nonexistent.
Still, as the alcohol climbed through me, my face burned hot and my head went pleasantly fuzzy, and it felt like all the bad feelings were being rinsed clean away.
"If I hit the booster at exactly this angle and punch through the wall, I can shave off about forty seconds! Catch me if you can— AAAAH! W-Wait…! Who the hell is going the wrong way and blocking the path right from the start?! Hey, quit messing around!"
On the monitor I was using as my drinking snack, a silver-haired, purple-eyed beautiful girl character was throwing an absolute fit.
She even let out a scream so indignant her voice cracked at the edges. From the viewer's side, of course, it was pure entertainment.
Her name was Nia.
She had debuted under some no-name virtual idol agency and, on pure ability alone, rocketed to a million subscribers in no time — the VTuber on everyone's lips.
Her streams were defined by game sense sharp enough to earn her the label of "actually cracked at games," paired with a catastrophic streak of bad luck that somehow outstripped even that talent.
And as if to prove the point, Nia had just carved open an absurd shortcut and massively cut her time… only to collide head-on with a viewer driving the wrong way from the starting line and go flying off the course.
A broadcasting genius blessed by the heavens themselves. This was the kind of fun you couldn't imitate even if you tried.
"AAAAH! How far back am I going?! Stop, stop! Enough! Ahh… now I'm way farther behind than if I'd never taken the shortcut at all…!"
Nia, launched off the track, was carried all the way back to where she'd been before the shortcut, voice thick with pure injustice — and I used the scene as an excuse to slurp down another chuhai.
"Still… watching Nia's stream does heal me a little. Yeah. This is what they mean by life's little joys."
"'Just take the normal route, lol'? So this is my fault?! How was I supposed to know that guy would reverse from the start and block the whole path?!"
Yeah. There was no denying it — Nia was exactly the kind of talent freak I envied with every fiber of my being.
A voice so comfortable you could listen for hours without getting tired.
Game talent sharp enough to casually land in the top one percent of whatever she touched.
And an observational eye so keen she could find the funny angle in any content and spin it into pure entertainment.
Just some internet streamer. Just a virtual YouTuber.
But looking at her that way was impossible — not when someone with zero foundation had broken a million subscribers in a matter of months. Her presence was not something you could dismiss.
But that's not why I like Nia. Not even close.
Talent? Sure, talent was great. But Nia had something that shone far brighter than even that ridiculous gift.
"Ghh… I was in overwhelming first… and now I'm tenth…?! But I'm not the kind of girl who gives up here! Just you watch! I'll show all of you a spectacular comeback!"
The real charm of Nia, as far as I was concerned… was a heart that never broke, no matter what. A will that absolutely refused to bend.
Like the time she poured forty straight hours into a game the developers had clearly designed to be unbeatable, refusing to quit until she cleared it.
Or the time a fellow VTuber got caught in a fabricated scandal, and Nia refused to fold under outside criticism and pressure, standing by her own convictions without flinching.
It went beyond the relationship of streamer and viewer. As one human being looking at another, you couldn't help but feel respect.
Even someone like me, who preferred not to meddle in other people's tastes, found himself automatically wishing this incredible person would become known far and wide.
Not that I have any friends, so I've never actually tried to recruit anyone.
As a first-generation member of Nia's official fan club, the Parang-dan, I felt endlessly apologetic about that.
"Nngh…! Sixth, fifth… third…! You, the one going the wrong way — move! Second! If I can just pass the one up ahead…! Kyaaah! First place! I got first place! Everyone! I won! Praise me!"
"Haa… How can a person be this cute? She's so cute my heart hurts…."
Was it the alcohol? Or some sudden swing of emotion?
In the end, after every twist and turn, Nia had taken first in the race.
Watching her beam with happiness in a daze, I felt a tight, aching fullness in my chest, as if something had seized my heart and refused to let go.
It was a lot like the helpless, dopey smile that rises on its own when you look at an unbearably cute animal or a baby.
"Ah, I'm gonna run to the bathroom real qui— wait, no! I'm just going to briefly reconnect my avatar! Whew, maybe I was gaming too hard — there's some lag! No funny business while I'm gone, okay?"
…Or so I thought it would stop there.
Strangely enough, even after Nia stepped away for a bathroom break, that painful tightness in my chest showed no intention of letting up.
Had I been hit with some kind of curse?
Clutching a head that refused to work properly thanks to the booze, I dragged in a few rough, shallow breaths… and then all the strength drained out of me at once, and I collapsed across the desk.
Only once my body had completely stopped obeying me did I finally realize something was wrong with my heart.
Call… 911…
But my smartphone was too far away.
The habit of tossing it wherever because no one ever called me had finally come back to bite me.
In a state where I couldn't even sit up properly, reaching that phone was realistically impossible.
Which meant that I, alone in this apartment…!
Yeah. There was no way out of this one.
…Good thing I never got a pet. No family either. So I guess there's no one left behind.
No parents, no friends, no one to love — just an ordinary guy who had drifted through twenty-five years without any particular purpose.
And so, the same as always, I drank while watching Nia on the other side of the monitor… and died a hollow little death.
…I really wanted to see Nia's solo concert, though.
The last thought that crossed my mind was of the birthday solo concert she was scheduled to hold before long.
If I had to die, I would have preferred to die after seeing that.
Holding onto that regret, I let go of consciousness in an instant.
Why do people dream?
Science hadn't fully answered that question… but I subscribed to the hypothesis that the brain enters a kind of rest cycle and reviews the information it has stored.
The gist went like this: sleep clears waste that has built up in the brain, and dreams bleed off stress that has piled up in the mind.
In the end, a dream was nothing more than the brain yanking stored information at random and assembling it into something clumsy.
Which was probably why dreams so often careened off into plots with zero coherence and even less sense.
"…So then what kind of dream is this supposed to be?"
I muttered the words while staring into a mirror.
Or, to be more precise… while staring at the ultra-gorgeous silver-haired, purple-eyed beautiful girl on the other side of the glass. That would be the more accurate way to put it.
A long-haired girl so cute and so beautiful that even looking at her felt like a burden.
Mid-teens, maybe? Somewhere between the freshness of a middle schooler and the brightness of a high schooler.
Cute enough to short-circuit the brain. That much, at least, was an undeniable fact for anyone with working eyes.
"Whoa. What is this skin. Soft like a baby's. And my neck and shoulders don't even ache anymore…."
When I prodded my cheek with a finger, the beauty in the mirror prodded hers the exact same way.
When I carefully pinched with two fingers, a sharp little sting bloomed in my right cheek.
Right. So this was a real mirror. I offered that somewhat stupid observation to the situation in front of me and arrived at a single conclusion.
This is one of those TS reincarnation things, isn't it. Come to think of it, I died. Straight into rebirth as a beautiful girl? That's actually pretty persuasive.
Granted, I hadn't met anyone claiming to be a god while floating as a pure consciousness in a pure white void.
And the idea that some science organization had scooped up my unclaimed corpse and rebuilt me as a beautiful girl, or that I'd awakened superpowers the moment I collapsed and transformed into a girl… none of that felt right either.
So after spinning in circles, I had no choice but to settle on the conclusion that at least made a little sense.
Of course, "died and reincarnated as an ultra-gorgeous beautiful girl!" still feels like a stretch. But it's the explanation that holds up the best, I guess.
…All right. Let's call that good enough for now.
But more importantly — where even was this?
A studio apartment? Bigger and cleaner than the place I used to live. Feels weirdly stifling somehow, though…
I poked my head out of the bathroom for a quick look around the interior, then turned back to the mirror.
Normally, when you ran into a situation this incomprehensible, the rational move was to rush around gathering information…
But strangely, I couldn't pull myself away from this mirror.
Someone inside my chest was whispering that I was missing something huge right now.
Pure white silver hair and purple eyes. Just looking at that color combination, I feel like I've seen it somewhere. For example, on my absolute favorite…
Huh.
A thought flashed through my mind, and my head locked up like stone.
With hands that had begun to shake, I gathered the loose hair spilling down my back and lifted it high.
Ah. Now I understood completely. Why I hadn't been able to leave this mirror since the moment I woke up.
"This is… Nia."
Reflected in the glass was a beautiful girl with pure white silver hair gathered up and purple eyes.
The hairstyle was a little different in the details from the one I knew… but this was unmistakably, beyond any doubt, Nia's face.
Dying, coming to, and finding myself in a body that looked like my favorite VTuber had been lifted straight into reality.
Faced with a phenomenon my understanding couldn't keep up with, all I could do was stare blankly into the mirror.