I Might Be Destined to Become an Internet Ghost

In the blink of an eye, a full day had passed since I'd become Nia's body.

Twenty-four hours by the clock; fourteen hundred forty minutes if you counted that way. Enough time, you could say, to run a decent game all the way to its ending.

Which raises an obvious question: what exactly had I done with all that time?

Heh… I'd spent it productively enough, I suppose. It wasn't as though I'd come away empty-handed.

"Creation!"

I declared it while picturing the exact position where the doll should appear and the precise form I wanted to produce. A faint flash, and a teddy bear materialized at the spot I'd chosen — remarkably stable. Arms and legs unwarped, button eyes firmly in place: a proper teddy bear. Of everything I'd made so far, this was hands-down the highest quality.

Of course, it was still ugly as sin…

"Hrmm… Why won't the quality go any higher than this?"

I more or less understood how to use this Creation ability at least a little better. Clearly picture the structure, function, and form of the object you want. Decide on a location. Focus, and bring it into being.

That way, I'd managed to raise those shriveled dried-radish disasters up to the level of genuinely, spectacularly awful dolls.

But that was as far as it went.

As if telling me I'd left out something important, the Creation ability simply refused to let me advance to the next stage.

"What am I doing wrong…!"

Faced with a situation that sad, I had no choice but to flop flat on the floor and lament my lot in life. How was this fair? It wasn't like someone had dangled the hope that I could do anything, then stuck their tongue out and said psych…!

That was the truth of it. Roughly twenty-four hours since first grasping Creation, and I was completely stuck. Claiming I'd spent the time productively had been a bald-faced lie. How was producing this ugly teddy bear supposed to count as a harvest?

"Give me more! I want more cheats! One yawn equals one Nia video — pay up!!"

Like a child throwing a fit, I flailed and thrashed on the floor, hurling spoiled demands at the empty air with no one there to indulge them. I poured out every scrap of frustration and self-pity I'd been holding in, stretching like someone working out a full-body yawn against the ground.

But that little performance couldn't last long.

…This is way more mortifying than I expected.

Pulling a tantrum I'd never once thrown in my life had summoned a baffling shame from somewhere deep in my chest. Sure, the body I was in was identical to the transcendentally beautiful girl Nia, so maybe it was almost forgivable on looks alone… but my consciousness as a twenty-five-year-old adult man felt like it was slapping me across the face and telling me to get a grip.

It was absurdly embarrassing. Embarrassing enough that my hands flew up to cover my face before I even thought about it.

"…Haa. That's enough."

A sudden crash of self-awareness snapped me back. I put a light bit of strength into my legs and core. Perhaps Nia's body simply had exceptional balance — with barely any effort at all, I bounced upright from the floor as if springing into place.

Ah. Come to think of it, even if Creation itself hadn't progressed, it wasn't as though I'd learned nothing. Nia's beautiful-girl body, in particular, had quite a few surprising features.

"I haven't eaten a single thing this whole time. And I'm not hungry."

That was the first one. Despite having eaten nothing at all, I felt not the slightest hunger. Roughly twenty-five or twenty-six hours had passed since I'd come to, and in all that time I hadn't so much as drunk water — yet I felt no emptiness in my stomach whatsoever. That was definitely strange.

"Do I not have internal organs…?"

I carefully hiked up the loose T-shirt and bared my stomach. Soft, flawless white skin and a dainty little navel came into full view.

…Yeah. Maybe don't stare quite that hard.

A full day had already gone by since I'd turned into this body, and I still couldn't get used to it. Accepting that I'd become Nia was one thing. Actually adapting to it was another story entirely.

To be honest, I still hadn't looked inside my own underwear. Part of that was pure embarrassment — I simply couldn't bring myself to face it — but it was also tied to the second feature I was about to explain.

"Maybe it's because this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠body doesn't need to eat. There's zero human physiological activity. …Idols don't use the bathroom anyway. I always figured as much!"

The second feature: I performed none of the bodily functions a human ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠being was supposed to. No food going in meant no bathroom trips — fine, that tracked. But I didn't sweat either, not unless I deliberately rubbed my body raw. No oil rose from the skin. Hair never fell out on its own unless I pulled it. It was less like being human and more like being a robot shaped like one.

…From my perspective, that was an absolute godsend. The psychological hurdles on that particular front were still far too high for me. Of course I hadn't forgotten that she was a person before she was an idol… but as one of her most devoted fans, I had absolutely no desire to know how smoothly her digestive system operated. I could respect people who were into that sort of thing. Really! But that person was not me.

"Stop! No more weird thoughts."

I shook my head hard, flinging the tangled mess of ideas out of my skull. Then, as if changing the subject, I used Creation over my open palm ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and produced a thin needle. I took that needle and jabbed the tip of my finger.

Blood welled up drop by drop from the wound… and then, as if the injury had never existed, the cut vanished in an instant.

"…Skin regeneration is weirdly fast. Mm. Ugh, fishy."

And the crowning third feature was this: just like the finger wound that disappeared in a matter of seconds, injuries healed at a bizarre, unnatural speed. The blood was aggressively fishy, as if insisting it was the real thing — but that wasn't enough to change the conclusion I'd finally reached.

"I'm pretty sure I'm not human, right?"

That was it. The conclusion I'd drawn.

Not human — some other kind of life-form entirely. I, who had already died once… seemed to have become the sort of existence you'd only ever find in novels or movies.

Well… I'd kind of expected this from the moment I realized this place was a cyberworld.

Still, there was something I had to keep in mind. This was a cyberworld — a realm of the virtual and the electronic, built by the combined efforts of countless scientists and engineers. Thinking about it that way, it might have been more reasonable to call my identity an avatar or a virtual personality rather than a living being.

So why had I insisted on calling myself a life-form? The reason was simple.

"I… have a beating heart, and blood flowing through me. I'm different from the other people moving through the cyberworld."

According to what I'd found online, humans basically needed to move around the cyberworld inside shell-avatars. Naturally, those avatars had no heartbeat and no blood. Implementing either would have burned resources for nothing.

So I was different from them. No — of course I couldn't be the same. I was… alive.

Right. While I was at it, I might as well define myself here and now.

Perhaps the only living thing in the cyberworld that was truly alive and aware of its own self. A being born from Virtual O-Tube, and at the same time a life-form that was not human.

In that case… the name should go something like this.

"Virtual Lifeform… Does that cover it?"

Virtual Lifeform. The ring of it wasn't bad. It felt rather fitting, actually, for locking down my own identity.

Good. Confirmed. From now on, I would call myself a Virtual Lifeform. And if anyone tried to reject that fact, I would reject their rejection. No matter what anyone said, I wanted to believe that I was alive.

…Huh. Wait a second.

Out of nowhere, as that train of thought rolled on, inspiration burst open inside my head like a firework. If my identity truly was a Virtual Lifeform rather than a human being, and if this place was unmistakably a cyberworld… then the secret to taking my Creation ability to the next stage might just be…

"On the internet, maybe?"

It might be on the internet.

Of course, it wasn't as though I hadn't been using the internet actively this whole time. I'd searched, dug through materials, cross-checked anything ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that might be wrong — all in the name of understanding this world a little better. Everything I'd learned so far had come through the internet; that much was undeniable.

But there's still one thing I haven't tried.

Gathering information online was fine. Great, even. But the internet wasn't only good for looking things up. If that had been its only dull purpose, it never would have become this popular in the first place.

I reconnected to Pioneer, the site I'd found earlier. Then I entered a thread where a perfectly functional conversation was already underway, and — with a thoroughly serious attitude — wrote a comment of my own.

I hadn't exactly lied, but replies declaring they couldn't trust a word of it piled up instantly. Well, that was fine. I doubted anyone was going to believe that someone who'd lived eighty years ago had died, been reborn, and turned into a beautiful girl.

Believe it or don't. Not my problem.

What mattered was this: the exact moment people started posting replies at me.

With a deadly serious expression, I spread my palm, poured every scrap of focus into it, and murmured:

"Creation."

No special sound effect. Just a faint shimmer of light, and in a single instant an object took shape on my palm.

But the result was astonishing.

The teddy bear I'd just made was overwhelmingly higher quality than anything I'd produced before!

"So that was it."

A rush of pure exhilaration rose naturally in my chest. At last, the direction I needed to go had come into view.

"When I draw attention, the ability grows stronger."

…I might just be destined to become an internet ghost.