It's Common Sense That Famous Heroes Are Often Actually Girls

A first anniversary. If you wanted to say it with a little style: a 1st Anniversary.

It went without saying, but for a VTuber and her fans, it was an event with enormous weight. A year was no brief stretch to have spent together. The VTuber offered her thanks to the fans who ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had watched her all that while, and asked them to keep looking after her from here on, while the fans sent their congratulations to the VTuber they had cheered for so earnestly.

And the time left until the VTuber Kaino Izumi's first-anniversary broadcast was now a mere three weeks.

"Nice work. Here — a cola."

"Th-thank you...."

Miss Akabane, who had finished her own work first, held out a cold cola.

"I mean, Izumi can't even buy cola by herself~."

"I-I... usually buy it on my own at the convenience store, you know...? A-and we promised that story was b-banned on stream...."

"Hm? I never made a promise like that."

"Th-that's... t-true, but...."

The clip uploaded under the title Izumi's Cola Order, as Told by Yukari had already, she was told, blown past three hundred thousand views. What about a story like that was funny enough for so many people to watch it? It was only natural that what a person could and couldn't do differed from one person to the next. All she did was struggle to talk to strangers, and people enjoyed watching that. The world was far too full of people with no manners. As expected, this world is wrong....

"Well, it was an episode somebody was going to tell eventually, wasn't it? Isn't it easier if you just think that somebody happened to be me?"

"Th-then wouldn't it have been best if n-nobody had said anything in the first place...?"

"...Heh."

Faced with her perfect logic, Miss Akabane had no choice but to shut her mouth. Not that a video already loose in the world would vanish just because of that. What a sad reality....

"Anyway, I hope everyone likes it. Right?"

"Hehe. Yeah...."

They'd all be shocked when they heard the news, wouldn't they? She had been truly shocked herself when the job first came in.

"Y-yeah."

The last time she'd done a drawing stream was something like three months ago, she thought. Well, she'd been busy — the 3D debut broadcast, then the birthday broadcast, then preparing the first-anniversary broadcast. More than anything, there simply hadn't been a chance to draw on stream in the first place.

"Mmm.... For today I was thinking I'd draw a character from Fate's Battle... which one should I draw?"

Opinions drifted back and forth through the chat, and the name that caught her eye was that character's.

"Mmm. Should I go with Okita-chan...?"

Okita Souji. A figure who had served, in the last years of Japan's Edo shogunate, as captain of the First Unit of the Shinsengumi, an organization charged with keeping the peace. The most famous things about Okita Souji were, of course, the sickly constitution and the genius with a sword, and naturally Fate's Battle's personal story spent a great deal of time on exactly those parts. And of course, she was a girl. You could tell easily enough from the nickname alone — Okita-chan, couldn't you? Well, as she'd said before, it was common sense that famous heroes were often actually girls, so there was hardly any need to explain.

A sickly genius swordswoman, and a beautiful girl besides. Whose head had a combination that fearsome even come out of? Every time she looked, she felt a moved little seal-clap coming on....

Once she'd settled on Okita-chan as the subject and set her pen moving, a thought suddenly flicked through her mind.

"Hey, um...? I suddenly g-got curious about something...."

"My first anniversary is soon, right...? So I've been p-preparing all sorts of things.... A first-anniversary live — do I r-really have to do one...?"

"No! Of c-course I'm going to do it! Just h-hear me out to the end...."

Think about it. In the last two months alone she had already done two live broadcasts, starting with the 3D debut and then the birthday stream. Throw in another live for the first anniversary, and that was live broadcasts three months in a row. Didn't that make her lives feel a little too common? These were the lives of a super-beautiful girl. She thought it would be perfectly fine if they stayed a bit rarer. She gathered those thoughts up and said them.

Not a single Iztomo in the chat took her side.

"Wh-why won't you understand me?!"

She had even argued it logically. Even if she was wrong, they could at least pretend she was right!

...Well, put like that, she didn't have a comeback.

In truth, the 2nd Generation's first-anniversary broadcasts sat in a slightly awkward spot. It was bound to: Miss Utsumi, Miss Aki, and Miss Koga had all debuted on the same day, and she and Miss Akabane had debuted on the same day as each other.

Look no further than the 1st Generation seniors. Senior Kurokami had debuted on October 21. Senior Namikawa on October 22. Senior Amatsuka on October 23. Senior Yuzuki on October 24. Senior Minazuki on October 25. The point was that their anniversary broadcasts wouldn't overlap, so each of them could have the best possible day.

For the 2nd Generation, though, a company schedule had gotten a little tangled at the time, and this was how it had turned out. Of course, even with anniversary broadcasts, some companies simply let the VTuber and the fans celebrate on their own and move on. Even at the very height of the VTuber golden age there had been quite a few companies ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like that, and for those companies it caused no real trouble if their talents' anniversary broadcasts landed on top of one another. Sometimes they even ran collabs with each other on the anniversary itself.

StarsFlow, though, tended to push anniversary broadcasts at the company level and hold them in grand style. M-chan had sighed and said that overlapping debut dates like these were pretty troublesome. Even so, they could hardly cancel the anniversary lives. In the end the company and the 2nd Generation sat down together, talked for nearly a week, and the conclusion they came to was....

"...Th-there's no way."

Honestly, saying she wasn't sleepy would have been a lie. During the school term she always fell asleep by one in the morning at the latest. On average, it was around eleven. But she had nodded off in the middle of the 150,000 endurance stream, and if she did that again it would be a one-hundred-percent ultra Calamity. So she absolutely could not fall asleep. She was a growing, growth-type VTuber: Kaino Izumi.

"That thing back then...? Actually... M-chan scolded me... r-really badly...."

She had gotten to see M-chan genuinely furious, demanding to know what on earth she thought she was saying to the viewers. The excuse that she had thought it through and meant it seriously had not worked in the slightest. If she was thinking something like that, she was told, the correct course was not to say it on stream first, but to bring it to the company first. As expected, reporting, contacting, and consulting really did matter.

Of course, because she had been scolded so thoroughly then, she had already gotten M-chan's permission for tonight's topic. "If an Iztomo asks later, is it okay if I say M-chan scolded me a ton?" She still couldn't forget how hollow M-chan's voice had sounded through the phone....

Well, she had properly reported, contacted, and consulted, so she wasn't in the wrong at all!

She chatted on with the Iztomo about things like the first-anniversary emotes, and before she knew it the clock on the screen read 11:59:51.

"I-it's almost here...! ...Five!"

"Four!"

"Three!"

"Two!"

"One!"

"Hehe...! K-Kaino Izumi... has s-safely reached her f-first anniversary...! C-congratulations! Waaah!"

"Everyone, th-thank you...!"

Firework emotes packing the chat, Hyperchats, and membership alerts on top of them. All of it was announcing congratulations for her first anniversary, and still it didn't feel real.

"So this is... the first anniversary."

When she said it over once more, everything that had happened across her streams flickered through her mind. Shattering her RP the moment she began. The next day, playing TLQ, failing to hold her temper, and landing a two-week hiatus only two days in. Monetization going through, and the 2nd Generation group collab. And the rest. It still didn't feel real, but she could tell she had spent a year with them.

"E-everyone, really... really, thank you...!"

"Heh, heheh...."

She gave one last thank-you, chatted a little longer, and then, at the end, she finally did the thing so many people had asked for.

"I r-really don't want to...."

"Haa...."

And, slowly, it began to play. Her debut broadcast.

"I-it was my first time, so I was n-nervous...."

"Auuu.... B-be quiet!"

"I-if it's just one person, I can meet their eyes...."

"...."

Something.

"...."

Something — she was starting to get embarrassed. All of a sudden it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠felt like heat was rushing into her head.

"Hnn...."

"I-I'm n-not crying...?! Hic...."

"I-I'm not crying...! Nngh."

These weren't tears. They were sweat, from working so hard today. Crying because she was embarrassed? There was no way the her who had grown would do that. Absolutely not.

And so her debut broadcast from a year ago came to an end.

"...."

...She quietly ended the stream as well.

"Waaaaaah?! Am I an idiot?!"

And because that fact embarrassed her, she had no choice but to kick at her blanket until the moment she fell asleep.