Let's Do Everything We Can. If It Goes Wrong, We Can Regret It Then

I failed. And not just failed — I failed in the most merciless way imaginable.

Failed at what, you ask? At streaming, of course. What else?

"Ugh… damn it…."

A gloom rose from somewhere deep in my chest, so heavy it felt like the tears might come on their own.

Of course they would. I was living in the body of the most talented person I had ever known, and I still hadn't managed to accomplish a single thing.

If I had to put a name to the feeling, defeat would have been closer to the mark.

Out of nowhere, the thought of alcohol drifted through my head. Something strong enough to scrub every last scrap of this feeling out of me — that was the mood I was in.

My stomach burned. My head spun. I felt absolutely terrible.

"Roughly ten days of streaming, and the average viewer count is… two."

What floated on the monitor was the channel analytics page — a full trail of every live stream I had ever done.

Right in the middle of that page, displayed with almost insulting confidence, were the total unique viewers, the total watch time, and the subscriber count.

Those numbers, in order: eighteen people, forty-two hours, six subscribers.

Wow. Truly catastrophic.

Maybe I should have been praising myself instead — for the sheer mental fortitude it took to push past forty hours of streaming in a situation this hopeless….

"In the end I just burned time. None of it meant anything. Heh…."

The gloom ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had gone so far past reasonable that a hollow laugh slipped out between my lips before I could stop it.

Why had I crashed this hard?

There were probably a lot of tangled reasons behind a failure this spectacular, but the biggest one I could put my finger on was this:

"It's just… not interesting, is it."

There was nothing on the stream worth holding onto for a viewer who wandered in by accident. That was the core of it, once I forced myself to be honest.

An unchanging pitch-black screen. A microphone that crackled with static. Clumsy, half-baked chat with whoever happened to show up.

Yeah. If I swapped places with them, I would have bailed immediately too — muttering something about what kind of stream even was this.

But even so, it wasn't as if I had nothing to feel wronged about. Because —

"In a situation like this, what am I supposed to make entertaining?!"

I shouted it as if someone were actually there to hear me, then shot up from my chair with a face full of pure injustice and looked hard around the room.

What met my eyes was nothing but a bare studio apartment — a bed and a computer sitting alone in the emptiness.

No games. No pets. Not even an instrument.

On top of that, I had no camera, so webcam streams were out. The mic sounded so bad that even a singing stream couldn't get off the ground cleanly.

My biological sex being female was an advantage so thoroughly wasted that my current streaming situation was, without exaggeration, close to the absolute worst.

"…Not that I can just keep making excuses."

Of course, I hadn't simply thrown up my hands and done nothing just because the conditions were bad.

I had tried forcing conversations with the occasional viewer who wandered in. I had attempted clumsy little drawings. I had even played some awkward, laggy browser games.

But then another problem I had never seen coming grabbed me by the ankle and refused to let go.

That was it. This place was roughly eighty years into the future from the world I had lived in.

Which meant the culture and the way people thought here… sat at a pretty serious distance from everything I carried around in my own head.

At least the war had stalled progress once, so the gap wasn't quite future-person versus caveman. Even so, huge chunks of my common sense just didn't mesh with this world's common sense.

If I had to put it in a metaphor, it was like this. Imagine present-day me trying to hold a conversation with some guy who lived in an American city in the 1940s.

Linguistically, the difference wouldn't be that big, so the conversation itself would still work.

We'd trade names. Ask how life had been treating us.

Then that guy would say, almost proudly, that the walls in his house had gotten too old, so he'd just repainted them with lead-based paint.

And I would answer, right there: That's incredibly bad for you — you can't use that! Especially not in a house with kids!

…The point being: what one generation treats as common sense does not automatically stay common sense for the next. When the era changes, common sense changes with it. Why had I missed something that obvious?

An old-timer whose conversation never quite landed, streaming with cheap gear on top of it? Who the hell was going to watch that….

In the end, no matter how hard I thrashed around, failure had been inevitable. God damn it. That was just too sad.

Feeling every inch the loser, I sank back into the chair, slumped forward onto the desk, and let the frustration show.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"It's even more pathetic that this is less efficient than just farming engagement with bait posts on the community boards…!"

Thump. Thump. Thump.

My fists hammered the desk in grief, but all the act accomplished was making my own hands hurt.

Why was this body so soft?! Even getting angry didn't help!

I can't… keep going like this. Not really.

If things stayed as they were, my grand plan — gathering people's attention through internet streaming and bringing Nia's broadcasts back to life — would fail without ever even reaching the starting line.

No results in front of me. No growth potential ahead. And even my own heart had already broken.

In other words, I had to find another way. But then… what kind of way?

…Writing bait posts on the community site ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Pioneer the way I've been doing has a hard limit. The important part is that people have to keep leaving comments on my posts — and there's no guarantee the same people will keep showing up to reply.

Farming comments with engagement-bait posts was an act with very little sustainability.

As time went on, site users would adapt to that kind of behavior.

And eventually they would simply start ignoring my posts altogether.

On top of that, the amount of attention I was gathering right now wasn't enough to create the objects I wanted.

In the end, this was work that could only keep me barely scraping by — nowhere near a real substitute for streaming.

I needed a method that could actually fix this mess.

"A method, huh…. There is one, actually."

Creak.

I dragged myself upright, leaned my back against the chair with a face full of heavy thought, and stared up at the ceiling.

It wasn't as if there were no options at all.

No — maybe this was the only method that could actually solve the situation.

Using Nia, for instance.

That was it. Using my favorite — Nia.

Nia, the virtual idol who had existed eighty years ago.

If I leveraged her fame, I might just be able to find a needle's-eye of a gap and break through this mess.

But… I don't want to.

Somewhere in my chest, though, a voice was practically protesting that that method ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠alone was absolutely off-limits.

Probably a kind of pride — the pride of someone who called himself Nia's fan.

But at this rate, I can't do anything.

If I forced the emotions down and looked at the situation calmly, the reality was that I had no room left for that kind of stubbornness.

And besides — what I truly wanted, what I was actually after, wasn't it finding the records Nia had left behind in this world?

At this rate, even if hundreds or thousands of years passed, I would never reach the destination. That much was painfully clear.

Still, at least Nia — even if it was only me, in this world….

"…Wait. What am I thinking right now?"

In that instant, a thought that skimmed through my head sent a full-body chill racing over my skin.

My face went pale. I shoved the chair back, shot to my feet, and bolted for the bathroom.

I slammed the door open, stopped in front of the sink, and cranked the coldest water I could get — then scrubbed my face hard.

"Pffft—!"

The sensation was sharp enough to sting. A dizzying cold, like dunking my head into a bucket full of ice.

In that feeling, it was as if the black sludge that had been sitting heavy in my chest was being rinsed away.

"Hah… hah…."

Water dripping from my chin in fat drops, I looked into the mirror.

And I shouted at the idiot version of myself staring back from the other side.

"Hoo… hoo…. Are you stupid?! Someone like you thinks they can just imitate her and become Nia?! Protect her, don't protect her — hah, hah…. You… self-righteous idiot!"

…Honestly, I was a little embarrassed.

The thought I had been carefully hiding in my heart, the one I had been carrying without even realizing it, was just that childish.

I wouldn't casually use her, for the sake of protecting the purity of who Nia was? Fine. That claim was allowed.

But if the source of that claim was something as ridiculous as protecting a girl who didn't even exist anymore — or wanting to monopolize her all by myself….

Then it was something that didn't need protecting at all.

Blocking your own path for a reason that would make you ashamed of yourself was the kind of thing only a fool would do.

"…Let's try everything we can. And if it goes wrong…. Then we can regret it when we get there."

Putting on a clean act, playing the noble one — that had never been my style.

If I thought about it, I had always been the kind of person who lived by ugly jealousy of other people, hadn't I?

So…. If a method had any chance at all, I would try it.

Even if that method meant freely using my favorite however I wanted.

"Hoo…. All right. Let's try it."

Having steeled myself with that cold-water wash, I sat back down in front of the computer with a face that was almost serious.

I logged into Pioneer at once, set my hands on the keyboard, and —

posted a thread with the following title to every site I could reach.

It was the kind of temptation no one in this world would be able to shake off.