To Me, a Collab Is Murder
"Can't you come with me?"
"S-school starts soon, a-and I have streams, so..."
Five days under the same roof with my sister had made one thing painfully clear. She was, as it turned out, an outrageous siscon—so much so that I could no longer understand why she had avoided me all this time.
Well, she insisted she had her reasons. I couldn't really follow them.
She had watched my very first livestream, of course, and she was even an Iztomo with a paid membership. The wordless red Hyperchat of fifty thousand yen from the stream where monetization unlocked—the one sent by someone named Blank—had been my sister too, she said.
Hold on. What? That was terrifying.
If that was true, then she had seen every ridiculous stunt I had pulled on stream until now.
Heh. So humiliating I could just die....
"You only have to send her back before school starts. She can stream on the computer at my place."
"Th-that may be, but..."
The sirloin steak she had made me the other day was the same story. She had heard something I let slip without thinking, mid-game, on stream.
...Which meant I now had one more reason to watch my mouth while broadcasting. Not that watching my mouth was the sort of thing that happened just because I wanted it to.
"Jia. Mina must have her own reasons too, so don't push her so hard. Friends, for example?"
"..."
...At least it wasn't anything to do with friends. My sister knew that, which was why she couldn't get a word out. No—Mom had known from the start too.
Huh? Why were my eyes stinging?
"...All right. I'll probably be too busy to come for a while again, but I'll get back as soon as I can."
"Good. Travel safe."
"T-take care."
"Mm."
"Eep?!"
As if it were the most natural thing in the world, my sister pulled me into a tight hug and smiled.
"...Yeah. I'm taking you with me after all."
Huh. Maybe going with her wouldn't be so bad?
If I could feel this softness every day, well.... The Iztomo would understand, wouldn't they?
"That's enough—go, quickly! And Mina, stop spoiling your sister so much!"
"Okay."
"Okaaay..."
Today, August 24, is a little special.
Because there is exactly one week of vacation left.
Everyone's like that, aren't they? Once a week remains, a strange urgency sets in—you feel you have to finish everything you've been putting off, and you want to make memories while it's still break.
So I decided. If I didn't borrow the magic of this last week, I would never in my life manage the feat I was about to attempt.
Miss Koga's reply came back less than five seconds after I sent the message.
...What was this. Scary.
I had a reason for being the one to suggest a collab. After we officially became friends, Miss Koga kept saying we should do another one, and until now I had dodged her with one excuse after another. But if I used the magic of a break with one week left, maybe even a collab with Miss Koga would be manageable. That was why I had brought it up.
"Y-yeah."
...Could you really call that talking?
H-had I grown without noticing, and been answering Miss Koga without any memory of it? The thought sent me back through our messages. That theory did not survive contact with the log.
...Was this really a conversation?
No. I was saying things too, so it had to count, right? I was simply the one listening.
"Um, w-well, v-vacation ends soon, so the time I can s-stream is going to shrink, and I thought it would be g-good to do one before that..."
...How did she know?
I could feel it in real time. Suggesting the collab to Miss Koga first, on nothing but the magic of one week of break left, had not been courage. It had been pure recklessness.
Chatting and actually talking really were worlds apart in how much stamina they burned. We hadn't been on the call for five minutes, and I already felt finished....
Miss Koga's extrovert aura was mellllting my brain.
"Yes..."
Miss Koga looked genuinely happy that I had been the one to suggest a collab this time. I knew she got along with every genmate and every senior, so I had assumed the invitations she always extended to me were only polite noise. But of course not. Miss Koga was my one precious friend. She would never hand me an empty line like that.
Miss Koga really was a perfect angel.... I was going to cry....
"Uh, f-first of all..."
I hadn't asked her to collab with an empty head. I explained my plan slowly, and Miss Koga said it sounded like a good idea and accepted.
See? Maybe I really had grown a little.
"Uh, l-like I previewed on Nater yesterday, today I'm thinking of r-reading a few Mycarongs."
"Sh-shut up! Starting!"
"Drawing, I guess? If I g-get the chance later, I want to try an art stream too."
Drawing was a hobby in my past life, and it still is. When something wears me out, just putting my hands on the tablet and thinking of nothing lets my head heal.
"Next!"
"...So the day has finally come when I get a question like this too."
I had expected it, more or less, so I wasn't all that shocked. Questions like that were common in this industry, and I myself had hidden behind anonymity and asked them of VTubers other than Nacchan. I could answer. Knowing the intent, though, I didn't want to.
They wanted to see me flustered by sexual harassment, didn't they?
Sorry, but I may not have weathered every storm there is. Mentally, I am still a forty-year-old adult.
"Do you r-really want to know the color of my p-panties?"
"You call me RP trash, a loner with a communication disorder, g-gloomy—and you still want to know my p-panty color?"
That might actually be true....
N-no. I could not let myself be talked into this.
"But I'm n-not telling.... Go t-talk about your own p-panty colors instead...!"
"W-wait! I'm sorry! I'm sorry, so please stop!"
I had been sure the Iztomo would get offended. Instead, in a flash, the chat turned into a contest to show off their own underwear....
What? Were these the only kinds of people in the Iztomo?
A slightly sexy white pair of lucky underwear, of all things. Why were they watching my stream in panties like those? If even the girls among the Iztomo were like that, it hurt. It hurt my heart quite a lot....
"I'm n-not telling! Next!"
"Ah, r-right. I did mention that."
I wasn't sure how far I could go. Was it all right to say that my sister was, in fact, a tremendous siscon? She was probably watching this stream herself. Then I ought to keep it short, right?
"Mm, it s-somehow worked out. We ate delicious things together, too...."
"It is not! N-next!"
"Mmm."
...Even on a second read, it was a bitter stab that went right through me.
Still, wasn't it strange for a loner with a communication disorder to be collabing all the time...? Of course I knew that was an excuse. I knew what this person wanted to say. In the end, they meant I had no talent for streaming.
Human malice really is frightening. Even when it belongs to someone whose face I don't know and whose personality I don't know, the fact that they think badly of me closes around my mind.
This wasn't the first time I had seen writing like it, obviously. A little ego surfing through the communities turned up plenty of comments in exactly this mood. But those were only people freely posting whatever they felt like saying. A Mycarong like this one was malice that wanted me to see it and be hurt. To me, it was no different from a curse.
A curse that was frightening just to look at, and that hurt.
The first time I read it, honestly, I cried a little. My self-esteem was already on the floor, and having it stepped on felt like the worst thing in the world. And the worry about whether I ought to graduate, the way the message said....
Huh? Now that I thought about it, I worried about that almost every day anyway.
Then this wasn't a message I had to hurt over, was it? It was true that I didn't collab because I was a loner with a communication disorder, and I already thought about graduating every single day.
Right. You wrote that to grant me enlightenment. Another me....
Th-thank you!
"Aaah. And just like that, I've grown yet again...."
It's fine. I scare myself too.
"A-anyway! In the end, what this person wants to say is 'Please collab, Mei-chan!' Th-that's it, right?"
"And so, I have p-prepared something! A surprise collab! The guest is M-Miss Koga!"