Know Thyself
"It's all right, Izumi. It's only a little scary at the very start. If it's you, you'll get used to it in no time."
"N-no! Miss Koga, p-please, just this once..."
"No. A promise is a promise."
How had it come to this?
If anyone was to blame, it was her, and she knew it. Even so, this was not what she had wanted.
"Come on. Give up quickly, and accept it."
"Eeeeeek!"
And Miss Koga, saying it, looked rather as if she were enjoying herself....
"See! I-I can do it too! Hurry up and praise me!"
The chat was thick with suspicion, as if no one could imagine her ever being the one to offer a collab first.
"N-no, actually. I-I was the one who suggested it."
"Izumi asked me for a collab first thing this morning, so I said I'd love to."
"Heh."
Miss Koga's words dissolved the doubt, and praise began to pile up in the chat. The sour mood left over from that earlier Mycaron had all but vanished with it.
Are you watching, other me? This scene was bought with your sacrifice. I will never forget it....
"So, Izumi — is today's collab just a chat?"
"Huh?"
"Hm?"
...This was bad.
She had decided she ought to use the chance and do a collab. She had not, however, prepared a single thing to actually do in it. B-but that Mycaron had been hard on her. All her thoughts had gone into getting a collab to happen, somehow, no matter what.
"You didn't think of anything at all, did you?"
Unease was starting to seep into Miss Koga's voice.
"Th-that's...!"
...Image training. Picture yourself as the eternal mood-maker...! Become a super-extrovert in your heart, and overcome this crisis!
"That is, um... I didn't. I'm sorry...."
If disaster struck before they had even started, maybe she simply wasn't cut out for collabs.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν
Know thyself.
Greek for know thyself. People called it a saying of Socrates, but in truth it was only a line carved into a pillar inside the temple at Delphi.
So that was it....
She had not known herself. She had imagined she had become an extrovert, a mood-maker, and that was why she had lost....
"Haa. When I asked about the plan earlier, all you said was that there was a Mycaron like this, so you'd book me and turn the mood around. Then you trailed off, so I had a bit of a feeling...."
Miss Koga's sigh rang huge in her ear. It felt like the wrath of a god. No one else was in the room, and still her shoulders drew in of their own accord.
What if she simply ended the collab right here?
The thought crept up, slow and cold.
"Well. It's you, Izumi, so it can't be helped. Why don't we just keep reading the Mycarons from earlier? If they're things I can answer, I'll answer them. And once people realize I'm here, live Mycarons will start coming in too."
By some true mercy, Archangel Lady Koga had not given up on her.
Was this woman a god...?
"Th-thank you...."
"Don't mention it. I should have expected something like this, since it's you. In exchange, the next time I have a wish, will you grant me just one?"
"Huh? Ah, all right...."
Miss Koga's avatar was clearly smiling. And yet, somehow, Izumi had the distinct feeling of being stared down by cold eyes.
Well, even if that were actually the case, there was nothing she could say about it now....
S-still, it was Miss Koga. She wouldn't wish for anything outrageous, would she?
"A-all right! Then let's get back to the Mycarons!"
Hizumi!
Which genmate do you talk to the most?
"Miss Koga!"
That, she could say without flinching.
Miss Koga, Miss Utsumi, Miss Akabane, Miss Aki. All of them were kind genmates who talked with her at least a little, but the one she was in contact with most was, of course, Miss Koga.
"Huh?"
Miss Koga, however, looked at that fact as if something about it were strange.
"I-is there a problem, Miss Koga?"
Did Miss Koga keep in touch with the other genmates more than with her?
Well, of course th-that was possible, but it was information she truly did not want.
"No, it's just... The genmate I contact most is you too, Izumi. But can you really call that a conversation?"
"Huh?"
This time the question jumped out of her. She tried to think it over, but Miss Koga did not stop.
"Aside from the collab offer today, you've never once contacted me first."
"Th-th-that's..."
It was true, but it had been consideration. If someone with her communication disorder spoke first, wouldn't the topic of conversation turn strange...?
"Well, I know your personality, so I'll let that go. But even when I start the conversation, almost every answer is one word. Unless I ask something that forces a specific reply, what you send usually ends in 'yes' or 'no.' Lately it's gotten even worse."
"Y-you're right."
"Can you really call that a conversation?"
The words went in like a knife, and Izumi could say nothing at all.
What was this?
This stream was hers. Why was she the one being punished here?
The chat, of course, was already fully ablaze.
Thinking about it, though, this was a little unfair.
"...is what I was going to say, being a bit spiteful to Izumi for not preparing properly today—"
"Oh, so earlier, when you said talking every day was n-nice, that was a lie?"
"...Huh?"
"When the two of us were on the phone, you said you were glad you could talk every day! You said you were happy!"
"H-huh?! Wh-wh-what are you saying! I said it's been a while since we called, but we talk every day, so it's fine!"
"No you didn't! You definitely said it was n-n-nice! E-even if your mouth only said it was fine, I heard your heart say you liked it!"
Her delusion was the proof!
"What kind of nonsense is that, Izumi!"
Good. The current of the chat had swung her way.
"It's not nonsense, it's s-sincere!"
"Sincerity packed inside nonsense, you mean!"
In the end, the fight that had gone on for about ten minutes was declared a draw.
"Good match, Miss Koga...."
"Could you not wrap it up in weird words...."
Or don't, then.
That aside, Miss Koga seemed to have given up on something. She had slipped into the same casual speech she used in DMs.
"Just as planned...."
"Stop saying weird things and move on to the next Mycaron."
"Mkay."
Checking the queue, she found a considerable stack of Mycaron questions had piled up in those ten minutes.
...Well, a lot of them were useless nonsense born of the fight just now. For the moment, she would skip every one of those.
Hizumi! Suzuhai!
Do Mei-chan and Suzuhachi like movies?
"Mmm, movies? I-I don't really like movies...."
And no wonder. A movie was something you had to leave the house and watch in a theater, wasn't it?
And a movie theater was a symbol of the extrovert.
If she set foot in one, her extrovert-death beam might trigger a mass casualty event....
In other words, by not going to the movies, she could be said to be protecting world peace.
Well, you could watch films at home, of course. She just almost never felt like going that far for one.
"The movies I watch — the ones at home, anime films — are p-plenty."
"I like them quite a bit. Dramas, especially."
"M-Miss Koga, you're a total extrovert...."
Drama movies.
Was that not the genre optimized for extroverts, the one that moved you by showing the protagonist grow?
An outsider like her would burn to death the moment she looked at it, a vampire dragged into sunlight.
"I don't think this is something you get to call me an extrovert over...."
"I-I said it last time too, I am not a shut-in! Next!"
She was merely a healthy outsider, one who was perfectly capable of going outside like a normal person.
No — now that she had Miss Koga for a friend, and the Iztomo besides, she was a super-extrovert.
Slandering someone like her as a shut-in was more than her pride could allow.
Wait. Did that mean she could die to her own extrovert-death beam?
Hizumi!
Do you like horror games?
"Oh, wow, I hate them. Completely."
She could say it without a shred of doubt.
Horror games were the worst genre there was, because she had absolutely no immunity in that department. How bad was it? Even the broadcast of There Is Absolutely No Ending — the very stream that had been Nacchan's stepping stone — she had watched while holding her breath and shaking. If the one playing hadn't been Nacchan, she never would have looked at it at all.
She was an omnivorous otaku who didn't sort by genre, but of course there were limits. Why throw away your time for the sake of suffering?
That was just being a masochist.
"Me, I neither like them nor dislike them? Oh, but I do like watching other people play."
"As if!"
"Oh. That actually sounds like a good idea...."
Huh?
"Then that wish ticket from earlier — Izumi plays a horror game."
"...Huh?"
Her thoughts stopped.
She was fairly sure she had just heard something deeply wrong.
"I'll pick the game and tell you later over DM."
"W-wait! Y-y-you're joking, right, Miss Koga?"
Cry? Was she actually going to cry?
Did she want to see someone with the mental age of a forty-year-old ugly-crying?
"It's all right, Izumi. It's only a little scary at the very start. If it's you, you'll get used to it in no time."
"N-no! Miss Koga, p-please, just this once..."
"No. A promise is a promise."
How had it come to this?
If anyone was to blame, it was her, and she knew it. Even so, this was not what she had wanted.
"Come on. Give up quickly, and accept it."
"Eeeeeek!"
And Miss Koga, saying it, looked rather as if she were enjoying herself....
In the end, it was decided. Two days before summer break ended — on August 30th — she would be doing a horror-game collab with Miss Koga.