Vlogs Are Like Sashimi — Anyone Can Make Them
VLOG. A word that fused video and log, it commonly referred to posts where people filmed their everyday lives and put them online for the world to see.
And surprisingly enough, even in the twenty-second century — where the Great War had left culture thin and shallow — it remained one of the more frequently encountered kinds of content.
The reason was simple: as long as you had a recording device, you could make one anywhere.
“Hmm, but is that really something to be surprised about? Aren’t all vlogs pretty much the same?”
But that very ease of access also meant anyone could churn them out without a second thought.
Which was precisely why the vlog format itself was hard to call something with real magnetic pull.
What mattered in a vlog was always who stood at the center of the frame — and how unique a life they were living.
“That’s because you don’t know Nia well enough, Anju! Nia’s a twenty-first-century virtual idol living in the virtual world, you know? She’s insanely smart, overflowing with sense, and… first of all, her face is gorgeous! Want to watch with me while we’re at it?”
“…Where do I even start with that.”
Anju pressed her fingers to her forehead as she looked at Kristina, who was spouting opinions about Nia with the fervor of a full-blown convert.
After wearing an expression that suggested a headache was climbing up behind her eyes, she eventually let out a deep sigh and spoke in a calm, measured voice.
“Sorry, but I’m not particularly interested in that sort of thing. A twenty-first-century… whatever idol?”
“Virtual idol!”
“Ah, right. Virtual idol or whatever. Broadcasts with that kind of concept feel too artificial — they give me this strong sense of rejection, I guess.”
As she said it, Anju briefly dug through her memory, recalling the flood of fake videos that swarmed the internet.
In the underworld, it wasn’t uncommon for people to take cheap salvaged data, cut and stitch it however they liked, synthesize it into fake data, and then distribute and sell the result.
The most beautiful thing about relics of the past was leaving them untouched, exactly as they were — and yet twenty-second-century humans would mess with them at will, violating that purity.
That was one of the things she hated most — she who was known by the cringeworthy nickname the Marksman of the Magic Bullet in the salvager industry.
And so she couldn’t help but feel an instinctive discomfort toward this Nia who claimed to have been resurrected across time.
She’s probably just someone from the twenty-second century clumsily imitating after salvaging twenty-first-century data.
And that was the most common-sense first thought anyone with even a little knowledge of salvaging would have.
The virtual O-tuber Nia who had been active before AI personalities had properly developed would naturally have had a person performing her.
So the idea that the original herself had picked up the mic again after decades was extremely hard to entertain.
In other words, even if the person broadcasting claimed it, there were those who simply couldn’t accept it as fact.
And though she hadn’t revealed it on stream, the truth was that the person calling herself Nia in this era and the Nia of the past were different people.
“Anyway, sorry. Separate from Tina liking it, I just don’t feel any interest. Manufactured stars are a bit…”
“Ugh… No! This time it’s the real thing!”
Thud!
Kristina shot up from her seat and shouted at Anju, who was delivering her refusal in a distinctly skeptical tone.
Anju’s eyes went round in surprise at the sudden reaction. But Kristina only sent her a look that said she would not forgive anyone calling Nia a fake.
“This is your problem, Anju! Every single time I say let’s watch something, you just say it all looks suspicious!”
“…That’s because you’re a gullible little airhead who falls for even the most obvious fake videos.”
“Ugh…! Still! C-can’t you just… watch with me once?!”
Tears welled up unbidden in Kristina’s eyes.
She was fifteen this year. If you followed the old regular education system, she was only about a third-year middle schooler — still young.
Maybe that was why. When Kristina got upset and anger started boiling up, the tears came first.
She wanted to huff and get mad, but the tears arrived first and choked her breath — an infuriating body.
In reality, she resented how fragile her own body was.
“Anju… together… *sniff*, I just wanted to watch something fun with you… is that… so awful…?”
“…Tina.”
Looking at Kristina crying even more pitifully than when she’d been scolded seriously earlier, Anju thought to herself.
Maybe this time she really ought to listen to her.
…Haa, maybe I was a little too insensitive? Well, even if they call Tina a genius salvager girl, she’s still only fifteen.
Not that Anju was without excuses. How many of the past’s brilliant Ooparts had she encountered while working as a salvager?
The sheer volume of that content was several times — dozens of times — what Kristina had seen in her whole life.
So she was reasonably familiar with the culture of the past, and her ability to spot the fake videos of sense-starved twenty-second-century humanity had naturally grown with it.
But you can just tell at a glance… Ooparts and the content coming out these days are fundamentally different.
But if she said she wouldn’t watch here, Kristina might take a real hit to the heart.
In the end she folded, and had no choice but to say she’d watch with her this once.
Sitting beside her and looking at a screen wasn’t that hard, and for Kristina’s sake, enduring a few minutes was something she could manage.
“Fine. Let’s watch.”
“*Sniff*… I hate you, Anju… Huh? Wait?”
“I said let’s watch. I’m curious now how fun this Nia you keep talking about really is.”
“F-for real?!”
It was a lie. In truth Anju still wasn’t the least bit curious about this person called Nia.
But if it would soothe Kristina’s feelings, she could say whatever pretty words she needed to.
“Hehe…. Then the PDA’s too small. Let’s use the beam projector! The one we use for mission briefings!”
“Ugh…. Do we have to go that far…? Fine. I’ll go get it ready.”
Had she made a mistake saying yes? Watching Kristina’s face light up with a pure, sunny smile as her energy skyrocketed, Anju sighed inwardly.
In the living room of the penthouse — a space wide enough you could pitch a tent on the floor — the blonde beauty Kristina bounced around before plopping onto the sofa.
Grinning so hard her mouth threatened to split from how happy she was, she laid her head on the knee of Anju, who was sitting a little awkwardly beside her, and thrust both arms up.
“Perfect…. Connection complete! Want me to start it?”
“Yeah… whenever.”
The beam projector was casting the video onto a huge screen — a full 150 inches.
It looked like they’d rented a lecture hall for a movie screening… when in reality the only purpose was to play a single video uploaded to Olive.
Do we really need to go this far?
While Anju, who had sweated through adjusting the screen and projector positions, muttered that to herself and felt a kind of existential emptiness set in—
Kristina, using her knee as a pillow, pressed her finger firmly on the PDA screen linked to the projector.
The video that had been frozen on a dark screen began to play, and a title announcing it was a vlog slowly appeared along with fitting background music.
“Let’s gooo!”
“I’ll be looking forward to how fun it is.”
Anju’s words had a bit of an edge to them. But Kristina only answered with a laugh.
At that look of pure confidence, Anju gently furrowed her brow — but then a delicate, captivating voice that seemed to pierce straight into her ears turned her head toward the screen.
The screen showed what her streams always did: a cam fixed somewhere above the monitor, looking down into a studio apartment.
A barren one-room with nothing but a bed sitting alone, as if it had been made for this purpose. Anyone would think it was a dedicated studio — a bleak, empty space.
“Oh.”
“Kyaa! She looks even prettier blown up big!”
But a small sound escaped Anju’s lips, and a gasp of admiration from Kristina’s.
Because from the hallway that seemed to connect further in, a devastatingly charming beauty had just peeked into view.
A transcendent beauty with silver hair and purple eyes — carrying both a mature air and an immature loveliness at once.
Her features held a fatal allure that could captivate people simply by existing, standing still in place.
She really is pretty. How much did they spend on the modeling? A hundred million? Two hundred? Or maybe that part was actually salvaged.
Anju found her mouth hanging open at Nia’s appearance even as she naturally started running those financial calculations.
It was the kind of thought that treated her existence as something unreal, a phantom — but from Anju’s perspective, thinking that way was far more realistic than believing someone who looked like that actually existed in reality.
“Mm-hmm, good, good.”
Step, step.
Nia put a finger to her lips with a truly mysterious air, tilted her head, and gradually approached the camera.
And before Anju and Kristina watching could fully grasp the meaning of her words….
Suddenly Nia grabbed the camera filming her with her hand and lifted it right up!
“Ooooh?!”
“A handheld cam… or what they call an action cam? For that, the image quality looks pretty good…”
Kristina felt her immersion break for a moment at the blunt voice from beside her.
But the movement that followed on screen left her with her mouth hanging open in pure admiration.
Nia’s face is so much closer than usual…! Kyaa! Unnie, I’m dying!
It was the kind of reaction… of a girl who had fallen in love.