First Experiences Are Always Heart-Pounding and Dizzying
I was mortified.
That single, simple feeling was the only thought filling my head right now.
Well — of course it was embarrassing. What grown adult wouldn't be, standing there shouting something like Heaven above, earth below, I alone am supreme? And not in front of one or two close friends, either, but hundreds of complete strangers…
Ugh… I'm so embarrassed my eyes are spinning…
But there was no running from this. Every bit of this situation was of my own making. That meant the responsibility for it was mine to carry, start to finish. And if I just thought of it as a short little performance, it wasn't really anything to be that ashamed of.
"…Hello, everyone. Quite a few of you showed up, huh?"
As if nothing at all had just happened, I walked over to the computer with a perfectly composed face and spoke into the camera. The important thing here was to act shameless. If the person running the stream looked embarrassed, the people watching would only feel awkward themselves.
Just like Nia used to — chest out, head high.
I repeated the resolve to myself, then flicked my eyes over to check the viewer count. The last time I'd looked, it had been hovering right around the mid-thousands. Now, though, the number had climbed all the way to three thousand.
Huh. That's more than I expected.
Three thousand viewers on a first stream. Even accounting for the buzz I'd managed to stir up on the internet communities, this was a far hotter reaction than anything I'd planned for. And with the vast majority of those three thousand hammering away in chat, the window was scrolling so fast you could barely read it without concentrating. If the start was this strong, I could already call more than half the plan a success.
…Good start. But the real question is how I keep this momentum going.
I couldn't afford to get the wrong idea, though. Every single one of these people was a visitor drawn in by curiosity — temporary looky-loos. They weren't the kind of long-term regulars who would actually help me down the road. So my job right now was to hook as many of these floating viewers as I possibly could.
"This is my second debut, but… thinking back on when I was active, I figure a lot of you probably don't know me. So let me start with a quick introduction."
I drew a deep breath, settling my nerves just enough, then looked straight into the camera the way I'd practiced in the mirror a dozen times over.
"I am a virtual idol who was active before the Great War… My name is Nia!"
I made a V with my index and middle fingers, held it up beside my eye, and shot the camera a cute little wink. If the whole Heaven above, earth below bit earlier had been Nia's signature greeting line, this was her signature pose. Official name: the Kiraring greeting… I think? It hadn't originally been part of the character — Nia, being a huge fan of Japanese anime, had apparently come up with it herself. Personally, it was one of my favorite poses. It suited Nia, the icon of positivity, perfectly — and the fact that even the person who invented it sometimes got embarrassed doing it was just adorable.
Ah. So this is what it felt like…
I finally understood exactly how Nia must have felt getting flustered on stream. It was just too much cuteness for a full-grown adult to pull off. The whole situation felt like something only a mid-teens kid should be allowed to do, and cold sweat prickled down my back of its own accord.
Surprisingly, the reaction wasn't bad at all. Thank god. If it had gone cold, I might have actually lost heart… Being Nia's face really was a lifesaver. A good-looking face could cover for even the more over-the-top bits, apparently.
Right. If the response wasn't bad, then the correct move was not to shrink back — it was to push confidently into the next beat.
"Ahem. Ahem. But just saying that is a little boring, isn't it? So I brought a light little presentation."
Still standing a short distance from the camera, I said that to the viewers and casually set my hand on the floor. Instantly, a thick, broad wall rose up behind me and completely hid the bed from view.
"PinkRabbit in chat — this is live. I told you earlier, didn't I? I'm the strongest virtual idol there is. Which means… the place I'm standing in is a virtual space, wouldn't you say?"
I plucked one of the fast-scrolling messages that had caught my eye and answered it directly. If people started suspecting this stream wasn't live, that would be a real problem for me. The whole appeal I could sell right now was that I was a virtual idol living in the cyber world. If someone wanted a recorded video, they'd just watch it on a video site — why bother hunting it down on a live streaming platform? So any doubt I could kill with words needed to be pinned down and settled fast.
That said… a lot of people don't seem to buy that I'm virtual, just because I look too much like a real person.
I swept the chaotic chat with superhuman visual tracking. Mixed in among the flood, I could pick out a few messages carrying that note of disbelief. …And honestly, it was a fair point. Originally, Nia had been a VTuber with a 2D anime-style appearance who only occasionally streamed in 3D. So a face with eyes, nose, and mouth that all looked fully human — no matter how perfectly the features matched — was bound to make people question the identity.
But that didn't mean I had any reason to just roll over and accept it. Instead, I was going to meet that claim head-on — my way.
"As proof of that… I can do things like this!"
I shouted at the camera and flung my arm out to the side as if casting something off. In time with the motion, Nia's default outfit flashed with a dazzling light. When the brightness finally faded, the clothes I was wearing had become… a women's business suit that practically screamed Office Lady!
Apply Creation cleverly enough and you can change outfits on the spot like this. The wall that just rose up was Creation too — just styrofoam pushed up out of the floor… but still.
Put into words, it wasn't anything that impressive. I'd simply used Creation to materialize clothes over my skin and produce a hollow styrofoam wall. But for this one brief bit of stagecraft, I'd had to practice for over ten hours. Getting Creation to produce exactly the shape you wanted, exactly where you wanted it, was surprisingly finicky work.
Still, it was necessary. I figured someone was going to start doubting me sooner or later.
Personally, I didn't think anyone who could keep moving without eating for over twenty days counted as human. But setting aside the unrealistically beautiful face, it was the kind of body that could theoretically exist in the real world. This little performance was prepared specifically to shut that argument down.
Of course, people who don't want to believe won't believe even after seeing this…
I didn't need everyone's goodwill anyway, so there was no point fretting over those types. What I needed right now was simply to hand trustworthy evidence to the people who were already willing to believe me. In that sense, changing clothes like magic and conjuring walls at will was a performance aimed squarely at them.
"Alright then — time to start the detailed self-PR! Don't run away. Stick with me to the end!"
And creating the opportunity — that started now. How many people I could take prisoner was entirely up to what I did from here.
About an hour after kicking off the stream I'd billed as a re-debut broadcast, I collapsed onto the bed with every last drop of energy drained and let out a pathetic groan.
"Hwaaah… I-it's finally over…"
Stream uptime: one hour eleven minutes. Peak viewers: 4,300. And the chat count — a staggering thirty thousand messages. It had been a success. No — past success and into full-blown jackpot territory, more accurately. Word of mouth had clearly started spreading once I showed my face; from that point on, the viewer count had climbed at a steep angle.
As for why the chat had been heavier than expected… well, with no one free to moderate, people had basically started a war in the chat window, going at each other hammer and tongs. That probably accounted for a lot of it.
"Ugh, picking fights in someone else's stream chat like they own the place…"
I scrolled through the chat log with the mouse, banning every single person who'd thrown out aggressive language, personal attacks, or demeaning comments, muttering as I went. This kind of aftercare mattered in its own way. Let people like that trash the chat, and the decent viewers would get fed up and leave.
After casually banning a few dozen IDs in total, I leaned back in the chair and let out another exhausted sigh.
"That aside. Thirty thousand chats means the things I can do right now just exploded. Dump all of that in at once and I might be able to force-create just about anything…"
Thirty thousand chats alone was a mountain of Attention that made everything I'd gathered so far look like a joke. And the possibility that the stream could grow even bigger from here — that was an extremely positive sign. Of course, the hype could also just fade and bury me naturally, so I needed to start thinking about the next move somehow.
"The next plan, huh…"
I closed my eyes for a moment and replayed the somewhat chaotic stretch I'd just lived through. A clumsy stream where I hadn't even properly registered what was coming out of my mouth — just force-fed the audience everything I'd prepared. Even so, the chat reaction hadn't been bad. Looking back, though, I couldn't shake the feeling that a big part of it was simply how fresh the whole concept of a "debut stream" was in this era. Plus the intriguing hook of a pre-Great War broadcaster coming back to life. That had to have played a role too.
Which meant settling into something safe and ordinary from here — like taking a breather — was clearly the wrong call.
I can't stop here. I need to hit the floating viewers with an even bigger jolt. Lock down a core audience somehow — and only after that can I start playing it stable.
So how was I supposed to deliver a bigger jolt? There probably wasn't a clean, correct answer. But at the very least, it wasn't something I could solve inside this studio apartment. What was even in here?
In that case…
I slowly pushed myself up and looked seriously at the front door — the one with nothing but bad memories attached.
"Maybe I should give it a try."
Beyond that door lay a dark space whose nature I still couldn't begin to guess. Maybe the clue to the next stage… was closer than I thought.