Casting Off One of the Locks That Bound Me
Seven Nation Army.
The signature track from The White Stripes' 2003 album Elephant.
Supposedly the name came from Jack White — one half of the mixed duo — mishearing "Salvation Army" as "Seven Nation Army."
What defined the song was that globally addictive riff. Even if you didn't know a single lyric, the bassline slammed into your ears with a violence that was almost assaultive.
Honestly, I was convinced that even with no lyrics at all — just guitar and humming — it could set a first-time listener's heart racing all on its own.
"…Tell me, 'Go back home.'"
Of course, my current voice was the soft, kawaii type that melted a listener's ears on contact, so I had to drop the pitch a long way to get something that suited the song.
Even wringing out a low register that bordered on self-abuse, my throat didn't hurt nearly as much as I'd expected.
In my meager musical knowledge, pushing past your low-end limit was supposed to be far worse for the vocal cords than screaming past your high-end limit…
Apparently, somewhere in the process of this body changing, the durability and flexibility of my throat had been cranked up to an extreme.
Come to think of it, as a Virtual Lifeform, even if I wrecked my vocal cords somehow, they'd probably heal right back up.
"Ahem — so? How was that? This bass… well, technically it's a guitar with effects, but still — doesn't that riff make your heart pound just listening to it? That's why, back in the twenty-first century when this song came out, it got used as a cheer anthem at all kinds of sporting events. Makes sense, right?"
Clunk.
With the slowest motion I could manage so it wouldn't make noise, I set the handheld mic on the desk, then flicked my eyes over to gauge the mood in chat.
The reaction wasn't bad. Maybe nothing stamped down a restless atmosphere quite like an overwhelming song.
Music really did have a power that lightly vaulted over language and culture. I wasn't any kind of expert, but I was sure of that much.
…About four thousand viewers fifteen minutes after going live. For turning the stream on with zero announcement, that's a solid turnout.
After checking chat, the next thing I looked at was the viewer count.
It wasn't some obsessive fixation on numbers, or anything born from that kind of feeling.
Comparing myself to other streamers for a hit of superiority — or jealousy — was pointless when my situation was so special there was no comparison group at all.
…Where else in the world would you find someone who'd become the body of their hyper-beautiful favorite girl decades in the future and was doing internet streams?
So the reason I checked the viewer count like this was something else entirely.
If you said the things you needed to say once enough people had gathered, you cut down on the number of latecomers asking the same questions all over again, didn't you?
Before I'd announced the consecutive hiatus to hunt for a new Ooparts supply source, my average viewership had hovered around ten thousand.
When something really built anticipation, it held solid at thirteen thousand; for a nothing-special, low-key stream, it dipped to the low nine thousands.
So for a surprise stream with no announcement at all, most of the people here would be my core audience — the ones who showed up regardless of content.
Which meant that roughly half of that usual number was probably everyone who was going to come.
Having roughly finished that calculation, I watched the chat still riding the afterglow of the song, its pace a little slower than usual — then, timing it for the right moment, I spoke.
"Like the title says, today is Nia Day. Unlike usual, it's a day where I do whatever I want… as much as I want."
"If I had to put it that way… yeah, I guess so. Just talking with you all like this, taking it slow, singing a little…. That kind of vibe?"
I answered the questioning chat with a vaguely noncommittal air, then idly twisted a strand of hair that had settled on my shoulder.
…Something felt off. Normally I kept explanations as short and clean as possible, content-first, so streaming just left me short of breath — I'd never felt this sensation of someone gripping my stomach tight from the inside.
"I-Is it… bad?"
A sudden wave of unease hit me, and I asked the camera with my body slightly hunched in on itself.
And only then did I realize, belatedly, that the feeling I'd been experiencing had a name: tension.
Ha… me, nervous.
It was almost laughable. In the month-plus I'd been streaming, how many hours had I put in? How much had I mixed it up with my viewers?
And now I was trembling like someone going live for the first time? What the hell had I been doing this whole time? Was I an idiot?
…Or so the rational Nia in my mental roundtable — the one wearing intellectual glasses — pointed out with a sharp jab.
She wasn't wrong. In barely a month, I'd become a monster of a streamer with two hundred thousand subscribers and an average of ten thousand viewers.
If I just maintained this growth rate, I'd hit a million subscribers before a year was even up.
That wasn't arrogance or anything else — just a conclusion you could reach with simple math.
So what on earth was I this nervous about?
But that wasn't showing me, was it?
Spin.
The emotional Nia, who'd been sitting with her back turned and quietly listening in the mental roundtable, rotated her chair and put forward her opinion.
What she wanted to say was simple. Everything I'd streamed so far had been about Ooparts — not about me.
Even the outdoor stream I'd done before hadn't been about my daily life; the focus had been squarely on the virtual world. You could tell just how hard I'd been dodging being the subject myself.
…Yeah. Honestly, if I laid it bare — I was still terrified of revealing me.
The ordinary, worthless, run-of-the-mill me hiding inside the shell called Nia.
Changing your outward appearance didn't mean the inside transformed into something dramatic. Especially not for a timid, cowardly specimen like me.
If the real me comes out, everyone will be disappointed.
That was why, like a turtle retreating into its shell, I'd wrapped myself in flashy, entertaining Ooparts and burrowed deep inside.
As if to say that my only role was to be the delivery vehicle that showed off the shell.
Until now, I'd been content to stop right there. Embarrassing as it was to admit — streaming had ultimately just been a means of reviving Nia's broadcasts. It hadn't meant anything more than that.
…But just recently, when a Predator Species made me feel the threat of death, everything changed.
An absurdly powerful enemy no amount of thrashing could overcome. And the fact that the Abyss was crawling with absurdities just like it — I'd learned that with this body firsthand.
To put it a little crudely, I'd gotten thoroughly schooled. Not that I was some bratty little sister type or anything.
Anyway — for my own sake, and for the people who needed me, I couldn't stay comfortable where I was.
I needed power to stand against Predator Species, even a little faster, and this was one of many ways to solve that problem.
Looking back, it was stupid. My main CP income comes from chat during live streams. Thinking about it, the longer the stream runs, the more chat scales up proportionally… that's just obvious.
I'd known that on some level, and still hesitated to take the next step, telling myself this was enough — that was my own will holding me back.
And in the end, unprepared, I'd come face-to-face with a Predator Species…
And nearly met the worst possible ending — for myself, and maybe for the people who'd come to know me.
I have to do everything I can. Even if I think it's embarrassing and inadequate. If it means I won't have regrets.
Obviously, deciding that didn't make the fear and dread vanish clean. If it did, why would sedatives even exist?
Emotion often seized reason by the throat and refused to let go — so maybe the true master of the body was emotion after all.
But the rational Nia, sitting proudly at the mental roundtable, simply looked away from the emotional Nia spinning her swivel chair in a panic of fear, and declared to me like a piece of advice:
Let the people who want to be disappointed go ahead and be disappointed. Or are you going to freeze in place because you're scared of that? There might already be people who like you — not just Nia.
…Was that really true? Honestly, I had no confidence.
Whenever I thought about whether I could become everyone's idol the way the original Nia had been, it just didn't seem possible.
Right and wrong. A question with a clear answer — and the people who could give it to me weren't far away at all.
If I just shifted my gaze a little, I could see what people were saying in chat.
Look at the chat as I was, or ignore it and keep streaming without knowing?
The coward poking its head up in my heart begged me not to, clamping hard on the muscles of my neck — but…
The cold reason insisting I needed to calmly check the reaction gave emotion a sharp rap of the cane.
What are people saying…
A sidelong glance.
In the end, unable to hold out against the sense of duty, I moved my eyes with no attempt at subtlety and looked straight at the chat —
And the cascade of messages pouring down like a waterfall made me flinch in spite of myself.
Positive messages erupting with enough firepower to sweep any bad comments clean off the screen.
For a second I just stared blankly at the wave of chat, half-wondering if the window had glitched —
but then the massive surge of energy flooding into my body made me properly understand that this wasn't some wishful illusion. It was real.
"Uh, um… so…. Today might not be all that… fun…. I didn't prepare any content, either…."
The meaningless back-and-forth between me half-begging them not to get their hopes up and the viewers already declaring themselves satisfied…
came to a forced end the moment I lost my words and bit down hard on my lip.
I couldn't help it. If I tried to make any more excuses, I was going to get swept up by the feelings welling up inside and say something mortifying.
The kind of black history so humiliating it would be permanently stamped into the record — something you couldn't erase even if you wanted to.
So, to somehow shake off the emotions flooding in, I spun my rotating chair half a turn and forcibly removed myself from the stream frame.
Then, in a voice so small it was barely audible, I spoke to the viewers.
"…Thank you."
Had they even heard it? With my back to the camera, I had no way of knowing right then.
You needed to see the chat to tell whether communication had landed or not, after all.
But it didn't matter if I knew or not. I just needed to get those words out toward the people who had forcibly held up the confidence that had been half-melted and about to drip away beneath me.
And… my stream didn't need any more melodrama than this.
With my back still turned, I shook the emotional Nia empty of everything she'd been holding, then spun the chair back around and reappeared in front of the camera with a face no different from usual.
"Alright then! Shall we get right to it! Today I'm doing whatever I want, no holds barred! Try keeping up till the end if you can!"
Showing me was still a truly terrifying thing. As long as I wore Nia's face, escaping this feeling was probably a distant prospect. It wasn't me to begin with.
But if the viewers who watched my stream really wanted the me hiding inside Nia… then I would bare myself, shame and all.
For a dream, what wouldn't I do?
Of course, my dream was restoring Nia's streams. But I couldn't exactly die before that happened, could I?
And so I cast off one of the locks that had been binding me all this time.
What kind of result this action would come back as, I had no idea.
Well. What could go wrong?