But I'm an Outcast, Okay? Yeah, I'm Trash
"Ugh."
The group collab was set for five in the afternoon. It was two. Three whole hours still remained, and already the pressure had climbed so high in my chest that my stomach turned.
I asked my manager, honestly, whether there was any way at all to get out of the collab. I was told, in perfect seriousness, to stop talking nonsense, and scolded until giving up was the only choice I had left.
The stream would go out on Stars Flow's official channel. The content of it? I didn't know. I truly didn't. Word had come that knowing ahead of time would spoil the fun, so they'd explain once the collab had already started.
A lie.
A Calamity sparked more easily, and the bait landed harder, if I didn't know a thing. That was what they were aiming for. They'd surely already told every other gen-mate. Stars Flow, you people were the axis of evil, so it was entirely plausible.
"Ugh..."
I knew it. This was the persecution complex peculiar to outcasts. But if I didn't rationalize it somehow, I really was going to throw up.
My brain had locked solid even when it was just me and Miss Koga, and now I had to hold a conversation with four people at once? That was like ordering an ant to talk to a human.
Just kill me instead....
Looking at Nacchan's DM, my heart seemed to settle a little. It didn't last. Anxiety rushed back in a blink and soaked my back in cold sweat.
...Should I call her my first friend, after all?
I was looping through the same ugly paranoia, my head on the verge of going pure white from hyperventilating, when Miss Koga — who had, at some point, started speaking casually with me — sent a DM with perfect timing. She must have noticed I was panicking alone again, the same as last time. Miss Koga really was my precious friend.
Ta-da-da-dan, ta-ra-ra-ran~.
The instant I sent the reply, a private Misscode call came in from Miss Koga, as if she had been waiting.
"Ah, h-hello, M-Miss Koga."
"Izumi? You sound really out of breath."
"I-if I say it straight I can't do this I feel like I'm going to throw up I want to turn the computer off right this second but the manager scolded me and said I can't so what do I do I'm really completely..."
"Hey, hey, hey, hey? Izumi? Hold on, you can talk slowly, it's fine!"
I had dumped my real feelings in one breathless burst, not even pausing to breathe, and Miss Koga, flustered, cut me off and tried to settle me down.
"I definitely get that you're really scared, so let's think of a way, you and me. Either way, we've already landed on the conclusion that skipping the collab is impossible, right?"
"R-r-right?"
What I'd just done could not have been pleasant to watch, and yet Miss Koga carried the conversation on as if nothing at all were wrong.
...She really was an angel, wasn't she?
"Then, Izumi. There's something I want to ask."
"...Yes?"
An ominous hunch crawled up my back. Instinct screamed at me to hang up this instant and run. But why? Miss Koga was my precious friend. There was no way she would do anything bad to me. A useless worry. My instincts weren't right about everything.
"Izumi, um... do you maybe hate us?"
"Huh? Th-there's no way..."
If I had to sort it into like and dislike, I liked them. Aside from my family, they were the only bonds I was properly tied to in this life. Classmates at school were bound to a limited three years anyway, and even if I weren't an outcast with a communication disorder, I couldn't be close with all of nearly thirty people.
The gen-mates at Stars Flow were different. Unless someone among us graduated, we could stay tangled together indefinitely, and there were only four of them. Widen the circle to every VTuber at Stars Flow and Nacchan, or the first-generation seniors, might fit inside it too, but the feeling carried by the word gen-mate was special. It meant I liked them as equals, in a different sense from Nacchan, the oshi I adored.
...Ah. Maybe that wasn't quite it either.
"I'm really glad it isn't that. Oh, and you don't hate us specifically — you don't hate people in general, or anything like that, right?"
"Th-there's no way I would!"
"But on stream yesterday you did say that every bad thing that happens is because of humans..."
"Th-that wasn't what I, meant..."
"I know. I'm joking. Joking."
"Right..."
Ever since Miss Koga had dropped the formalities with me, she pulled this kind of mischievous prank now and then. These days I could picture her avatar giggling to herself without even trying.
"Then would it be all right if I asked why you're so shy around people?"
The reason I shrank from people. Setting aside whether shy was even the right size for it, anyone looking at my situation would be curious. That much I understood. Unfortunately, telling Miss Koga was a little difficult. This story held my past life, and that was something I couldn't reveal to anyone.
In my past life, I was a fairly lively boy. People were always gathered around me, and everyone cherished me and liked me! ...Or so I had thought.
When was it. Fifth grade? I had overslept and shown up about thirty minutes late to a meetup. I was sure they would all be angry, so of course I meant to apologize, sorry already heavy in my chest. But the moment I reached the meeting place, what I heard was this.
"That kid's way too full of himself, isn't he?"
"I'm about ready to stop hanging out."
"He still thinks he's one of the little kids."
"Don't invite him next time."
The price of being late for the first time was the true feelings of people I had thought were my friends. My stomach turned. I could have walked out with my usual wide smile and pretended I hadn't heard. I didn't want to. In the end I turned around and went home.
And that was the start of my isolation.
The next day, it went without saying that I went to school and did not speak to them. They treated me as if I weren't there to begin with. At first a few people still came up to me, but I pushed them away myself. I decided they had some hidden motive, that the whole thing was a scheme cooked up to make fun of me. In the end, all that remained around me were my family and a single childhood friend I had known since I was small.
Come to think of it, I wondered how that kid was doing. Had they grieved, hearing I was dead? I didn't know. Honestly, after that day I had put a certain distance between us too.
Anyway, from that day on I avoided people. Looking back, I had been truly stupid. They were only kids I had known since second grade — a relationship of a little over two years, at best. But to the me of back then they were precious friends, so the loss was too enormous to put into words, and the wound I took then did not close even after I understood how stupid I had been. It had already become a perfect part of me, and so, to the very end, I never made a new relationship around myself.
And now, reincarnated. The me of the present was simply shy by nature. No — I had blown far past a level you could call that, hadn't I? Just looking at the situation, it was much worse than my past life. At least back then I hadn't stuttered, and I could meet someone's eyes while we talked.
Even when I reached for those old memories and tried to hold an ordinary conversation, I still curled in on myself. What, exactly, was wrong with the me of now...?
Well. The conclusion was that my present was a tangle of several things at once. On the inside I was still bound to that past life, and on the outside an inborn problem had hold of me. The worst had met the worst, and the person that made had transcended your ordinary loner outcast....
Heh. I was starting to fear myself.
"Then would it be all right if I asked why you're so shy around people?"
And so, to Miss Koga's question, all I could say was this.
"I-I was just born this way..."
"If... if that's really true, that was a pretty difficult question to ask. I'm sorry."
"N-no. I probably would've been c-curious too."
"Thanks for thinking of it that way. So the conclusion is, Izumi doesn't hate her second-generation gen-mates. That's how I should take it, right?"
"Y-yes! If I had to say like or dislike, I-I think I like you."
"I see. Then we'll be fine, right?"
"Huh?"
Ding! Ding! Ding!
The words had barely left her when notification chimes rang, one after another, through the headphones.
"Huh? What? You two were on a call?"
"Hmm. Invited without warning. How startling."
"Yaaawn..."
"Huh?"
"It's okay, right, Izumi?"
"What. The two of you are already speaking casually?"
"I wanna talk all casual with Miss Izumi too!"
"I'm sleepy. Is it okay if I go to bed...?"
"Eeeeeeek!"
The voices crashed over me like a storm. I let out that pathetic sound, yanked the headphones off, and fled the room.
Too cruel, Miss Koga. Using a person's honest heart like this!
Betrayed!
Not an angel at all. A little devil!