A Hidden Master Is a Guy's Dream, Isn't It...
I had only ever drawn for my own satisfaction.
So the only person the old me ever showed a picture to was, at most, Mom. Only in the past year had my sister, Aunt Sia, and the StarsFlow members been added to that list, and even then my art was still nothing but self-satisfaction. The pictures I did for the culture festival were only because the work had to be done, and they were nothing like the style I usually drew in.
So how had someone like that ended up as Blank, the illustrator who'd gathered a cult following?
The reason was absurdly simple.
It was three years ago, no question. My first year of middle school. My sister had already started living on her own, and Mom, citing my age, still wasn't leaving on business trips very often. That was the season.
Back then, too, the moment school let out I went straight home and spent my hobbies alone. I watched manga and anime, read light novels, browsed Ontube, drifted from one indie VTuber I might like to the next, and once dinner was done I played games, then drew. In the middle of a life that amounted to a routine, Mom suddenly called for me.
"Mina. Could you talk with Mom for a minute?"
"Ah, yes, Mom."
I'd been happily drawing fan art of a character from an anime I was into, but I was a good daughter, so I set my stylus down at once, went out to the living room, and sat beside her.
"You called?"
"Mm. Mina, do you remember me saying the company was making a new game? The one you helped with for the closed beta."
"...Ah. The title was Rhapsody of the Shining Sky, wasn't it? I think that was it...."
"You remember well. ...The release is coming up, and since this one's a subculture game, we were going to prepare celebratory illustrations for the launch."
I couldn't help the sense that something was off. Preparing launch-celebration art for a subculture game was as good as custom. So why was she telling me?
"The illustrator we'd asked for the piece the day right before release had an accident, and we can't get the work."
"Ah.... Th-then isn't that a pretty big problem?"
It wouldn't affect the release itself, of course. But in subculture circles, unveiling a launch-celebration illustration was a fairly important event in its own right — the least you did to hold the interest of players who'd already decided to buy, all the way up to release day. I'd heard the illustration alone carried a pretty serious promotional punch.
"Mm.... It is pretty big. But the people handling the other dates are scheduled too tight to ask, and there isn't enough time to find someone new. ...So, Mina, would you draw it for us?"
"...Eh?"
For a moment my head went pure white.
...She wanted to use my drawing as the launch-celebration illustration for the company's game?
"Uh, th-that.... M-my drawing?"
"Mm. Rather than hunting down other skilled people and reshuffling the schedule, asking you is much easier and faster. Oh, and of course I'll give it to you as an allowance, matched to commission rates."
"But I'm not skilled enough... and I'm not even famous...."
A launch-celebration illustration got used for promotion, too, so it was only natural to hand it to an illustrator with some name to them. Giving that kind of job to me, who didn't touch social media or communities at all — wasn't that strange? At the meaning folded into those words, Mom smiled gently.
"Mom thinks your art is better than most professional illustrators'. Well, it's true you don't do anything separately online, but even taking that into account, if it's an illustration you draw, there won't be any problem at all."
"Mmm, even so...."
"If you really can't, then it can't be helped, but...."
Honestly, I knew I was better than most professionals. Accepting this request was still a different matter. My art was mine, and only for me. I had no thought of making drawing a job and earning money off it, and no thought at all of getting famous, and Mom clearly knew that. But if she was asking me now, then however lightly she'd said it, things had to be pretty desperate.
"...Okay."
"Hm? Really?"
"Yes. When do you need it by?"
"Uh, uh, by next Saturday ought to be fine...."
"Okay."
Besides, it had been a genuinely fun game when I played the closed beta, and this was the first time Mom had ever asked me like this. However little I wanted to get famous for my art, I wasn't going to refuse my own mother's request. And anyway, skill or not, an unknown illustrator in the subculture scene was forgotten in no time. There wouldn't be a problem.
That was what I thought, back then.
"Mina. What should we do about a pen name?"
The question came from Mom after I'd finished the illustration and sent it over. I thought for a moment, then answered.
"It's fine if you just don't write one."
"You sure? I could put down that you're staff at Mom's company."
"No. Please just don't write anything."
A pen name, an affiliation — either one might turn into some other problem later. That was the thought behind the decision.
…And it was kind of cool, wasn't it.
Tremendous skill, and not even a name attached. A hidden master. That was, literally, a guy's dream.
"Heheh...."
And then.
"Mina. Last time, your picture got incredibly popular, didn't it...?"
"...Yes."
"So people have been begging like crazy for you to draw an end card for this anime, too...."
"Okay...."
By the time I'd taken about two more requests from Mom, I had become the illustrator under the pen name Blank.
…Huh?
Well, honestly, it wasn't as if I felt bad. A lot of people had recognized my art, and that felt good no matter how I looked at it. That was why, even after the name Blank started drifting around the internet, I accepted Mom's requests two more times.
Of course, that didn't mean I meant to start social media or communities. That was a line I'd drawn for myself: I will not do anything with my pictures. So I intended to be satisfied with occasionally granting Mom's requests under the name of Blank, an illustrator whose identity nobody knew.
But after I became a third-year in middle school, I met the worst opponent of my life.
"Miss Kayano. That personality of yours is what's wrong."
"Wouldn't it be better to get along with your friends than to sit alone drawing every single day?"
And somewhere along the way, even drawing had stopped being fun.
"Mom. I think the name Blank has gotten too famous. I want to stop now."
"...I'm sorry. I think Mom put too much of a burden on you."
"It's okay. I'll see you next week."
"Mm. Rest well. If anything's wrong, contact me right away."
"...Yes."
And so I stopped drawing until Nanase's debut, and Blank's activity ended right there.
It went without saying. On the stream the day after suspicion rose that I was Blank, chat like that poured in without end.
Ordinarily, a viewer being the first to bring up anything about the Person Inside on stream was close to taboo. However blurred the line had gotten, RP still sat at the foundation of a VTuber. But this, just as I'd expected, was a special case, and it didn't feel like anyone was touching that taboo. Blank was only an illustrator who had drawn a handful of celebration pieces, and not one scrap of a private life had ever been exposed, so quite a lot of people thought it was hard to treat this as sensitive information — not about a past life, and not about the Person Inside. And more than anything, the fact that I was Blank even had pieces that could fold neatly into my RP.
"Mmm...."
So once I'd reported it properly, checked in, and talked the whole thing through with my manager, I decided to use it instead.
"Th-that thing everybody's curious about. You know."
"N-no, no. I-it's not on that level, no matter how you look at it.... Well, anyway, I-I am that famous Blank, yeah.... They're things I drew back in middle school, as r-repayment for help I got from a benefactor...."
My RP was a Water Avatar enjoying her high school life. And saying she'd enjoyed high school naturally meant there had been a middle school, too. In other words, I was adding the "setting" that Kaino Izumi, before she debuted as a VTuber, had actually been a famous illustrator...!
…No. Well, it wasn't a setting. All of it was true.
In real life, a shut-in loser of a pretty girl with a communication disorder. Online, a once-famous illustrator and a VTuber with 193,000 subscribers?
The kind of situation you'd only ever see in a web novel.
"S-since it's out now anyway, if you've got questions, go ahead and ask. I'll a-answer as best I can."
"...Mmm. I just didn't have any thought of getting f-famous for my art, or of m-making money off it."
Of course, I'd ended up making money doing drawing streams like this anyway, so a person's life really was impossible to figure out.
"A-and it's cool, right? Having tremendous s-skill, but nothing else known about you. A h-hidden master...."
"And h-honestly, I wanted to h-hide the fact that I was Blank, you know? So I kept putting off a drawing stream last year, figuring I'd get f-found out right away if I did one.... I never thought I'd be c-caught in two days...."
"Hehe.... I'd only just f-finished the line art, and you figured it out immediately. D-don't you all like me a little too much? You're way too interested in m-my info."
"Ngh...."
"...Sh-shut up. A-and the name Blank, isn't it insanely c-cool? Like I wouldn't lose, no matter what."
And so, fortunately, the stream where I revealed I was Blank came to a successful end.
And I learned one more new fact.