Halt the New Semester...!
In the end, a summer break that had been far too short came to a close.
Everything I'd done over it amounted to streaming, or streaming, or... streaming.
Take away the one time I'd gone out for Nacchan merch, and I was pretty sure I hadn't left the house at all. I knew it had been short, and still—a whole month, and nothing to show for it but streams. Then again, my job was being a VTuber. Streaming steadily meant I'd been living diligently, didn't it?
A truly difficult subject.
"...Mmm."
Summer break really needed to be longer. Give me about one more month and I could probably bring this profoundly deep anguish to an end.
"Hey, long time no see~. You guys been good?"
As if to drag me out of a useless daydream, a high, clear voice rang right by my ear. I turned my head a little, and there she was—Tateyama, the biggest social butterfly in our class—waving as she came in and greeting everyone.
The classroom that had been quiet when I first stepped through the door had already warped into a noisy dungeon of popular kids. All of them clustered together, trading summer memories: a page straight out of a youth anime. There was, of course, no seat for me in that scene.
God, I want to fire an In-Crowd Death Beam...
Well. I had a mission to protect world peace, so this time I'd let it slide. But the moment they ruffled my mood again...
"Kayano?"
"Eh?"
Startled by the sudden call, I hunched my shoulders and turned—and there was the class president. Wh-who was she again. Her name was definitely Mi, Mi, Mi...
"M-Miya...uchi?"
"Yes. It's been a while."
So that was right. Thank goodness. If I'd gotten her name wrong, it would have put an enormous crack in a reputation that already wasn't great inside the class.
"How did you spend the break, Kayano?"
Whether or not she'd noticed my profound inner torment, Miyauchi smiled and asked.
"Ah, um."
No matter how I turned it over, the only thing I'd done all break was stream. Say that outright, though, and she'd ask what kind of stream. The so-called person behind the VTuber was information best kept as unknown as possible. So I needed an answer that wouldn't lie to Miyauchi, and also wouldn't give away that I streamed.
"P-personal investment... t-toward revitalizing the F-Fourth Industrial Revolution..."
"...Mm. I... see."
I wasn't sure Miyauchi had understood a word of it, but she nodded, thankfully, and headed off toward the other classmates.
"Haa."
The classroom buzzed with people showing off their memories. I alone couldn't mix into it. Well—if it was familiar, it was a familiar everyday. And yet, inside it, an emptiness I'd never felt before came over me hard.
"Ah..."
Right. When I thought about it, all through break I'd had the stream on, talking to someone. Ask me whether that counted as conversation and I wouldn't have much of a defense, but it was true that hundreds of people answered the moment I went live. And there was the first friend I'd ever made: Koga. Which meant I had more people to talk to than anyone in this room. I was a super socialite.
And that same me had to live at school as an outsider with not a single person to talk to. Which meant that at school, I had to hide my true power...!
"...Haa."
More than three months until winter break. This world really was broken....
"Haaaa..."
Early evening. On the way home, Tateyama let out a long sigh.
"She didn't show today either."
The one on her mind was her classmate, Kayano. When Tateyama had suggested they all get together and hang out for the first time in a while, most of the class had come. Kayano, as if it were only natural, had not been among them. She'd gone home before Tateyama or Miyauchi even had the chance to invite her.
"Did I... mess something up?"
Tateyama thought back to running into Kayano in Akihabara over summer break.
"I thought we'd gotten kinda close back then..."
Blushing just from a light linking of arms, staring at otaku merch with sparkling eyes—an unexpected side of her, the exact opposite of the Kayano from school. Of course, Tateyama hadn't told anyone else that they'd met that day. Kayano had looked like she wanted to hide the fact that she'd gone to a merch shop in Akihabara. Which meant that day was a secret no one else would ever know. Just the two of them.
Maybe that was why. The wish to see Kayano's face when school started had begun, little by little, to grow inside her. It made sense. Kayano was always named the class's number-one object of interest.
A face cuter than a doll, and yet she only ever breathed cold air into the space around her; she belonged to no club, and the moment class ended she was out of the room before anyone could catch her. That was Kayano Mina, the living landmark of Class 1-A at Shiodome Private High School—or so Tateyama always insisted. Sharing a secret with a girl like that was more than enough to plant expectations in Tateyama, a high-school girl still full of dreams.
"...Or was I just being a pain that day, too?"
So the doubt was inevitable. When she'd walked into the classroom, she'd been hoping—what if Kayano secretly said hello, just to her? But Kayano had only glanced at her for a second as she came in, and after that sat alone in her usual cold atmosphere. Miyauchi had talked with her for a moment, but that had been brief too. The instant closing homeroom ended, Kayano left the classroom just as she had all first semester, and Tateyama could only watch her go and sink.
"Thinking about it, I was the one who chased her down that day, too..."
Maybe getting closer was impossible. Tateyama, whose motto was the more friends, the better, fell into anguish as she pictured Kayano walking out of the classroom without a moment's hesitation.
"S-so, speaking as a JK on active duty, there's something I want to know."
After wrapping up some light chatter, I finally said the thing that had made me turn the stream on today.
"...Summer break is a whole m-month off, right? Which means for a month you d-don't see your classmates at all? So how are you supposed to just t-talk normally the second you see them again?"
"I'm right, aren't I? If you haven't seen someone for a whole month, the relationship r-resets. You have to build the whole thing over from the start, don't you?"
"Seeing someone after a month and just b-bluntly saying let's hang out. I think you have to s-start over from getting to know each other—but our class is nothing but total insiders, don't you think...?"
"Hhk..."
I'd known it, in theory, but hearing it like this was somehow shocking. I'd thought everyone watching would be otaku outsiders like me, and would understand.... What. Was I the only real outsider otaku on this stream? Betrayal shook my whole body.
"The world really is too cruel..."
"Haa. I-I've already talked for almost an hour, so I'll wrap the m-members' stream here. See you all a little later, this evening."
In the end, the riddle I'd wanted answered on today's members-only stream went unsolved. The relationship talk had been my attempt at a joke, so I could let that go—but I hadn't expected them to reject even the point that a summer break ought to last through September.
"Life really is a lonely thing..."
...That one. I kind of want to ban them. Would that be okay?
I'm the kind of otaku who digs wide and shallow, so of course I have a lot of hobbies. But since I'd started streaming, my downtime had mostly turned into watching other VTubers. Nacchan's streams were still what I watched most, but even Nacchan couldn't be live twenty-four hours a day. Edited clips were fun, and so was rewatching a stream I'd already seen—but a variety of broadcasts would help me more.
Which was why the stream I had on right now was—
This was the stream of Kurokami Hikari-senpai—the name I'd given back when the question came up, and the VTuber I kept up with most after Nacchan.
What Kurokami-senpai was playing was a visual novel called Like Life. A classic of the form: a heroine enters Like Academy and grows through the people she meets....
And yet, declaring she would see the worst bad ending, Kurokami-senpai picked a bizarre answer every time a choice came up. Asked What did you have for dinner tonight?, for instance, she selected Something better than the trash you eat, at least.
The problem was—
She'd picked nothing but choices like that, and the story was heading for a happy ending anyway.
...Why?
Still, Kurokami-senpai's eccentric behavior made a certain kind of sense. Her RP was the villainess-lady otaku who looked down on anyone and crushed them underfoot. Keeping that RP even in a game like this was, quite literally, a professional's attitude.
The real problem was that Kurokami-senpai was a person who didn't suit a villain at all. No matter what she did, people looked at her warmly, and even when she tried to grind someone down she only came off cute. That, especially. You could tell just from the way the game was griefing her right now.
In a way she was like me, and in fact she felt completely different. My personality ruins my RP. For Kurokami-senpai, the situation ruins the RP. And the gap—her insisting, all the while, that she was a proud villain—had done a lot for her channel's growth.
...Huh?
Why is my name suddenly coming up there?
"...Why?!"