When Crisis Comes, Train
That is not "how it went"! ...I did not have anything like the courage to actually shout it.
The person on the other end of this Misscode DM was, of course, Kurokami-senpai. A declaration of challenge from her was, put simply, the same thing as announcing a collab, and on yesterday's stream she had challenged me. That was how I had ended up trading messages with a senior I had never once held a conversation with.
Put like that, I had nothing to say.
Open Nater this very moment and search Kaino Izumi or Kurokami Hikari, and the hashtag #Hikazumi had already been born and was turning up in the results. Senpai's remark had been cut into a clip and was making the rounds of every community. Even so, this was a collab I had been locked into from one side, with no say of my own.
A protest of about this size ought to be allowed, shouldn't it?
So much for objecting. I couldn't even break even. Was this what they called a senpai's majesty?
It was true that when I had gone ego-surfing after that stream ended, I seemed to remember a few Nater posts along those lines. But the far bigger story that day had been my accidental yuri declaration, and I had assumed the collab talk would be buried without a trace. Apparently it had only been buried down to the level of cropping up here and there.
If it had already reached the company, then I had no choices left.
I hate the world....
"D-do they call something like this the butterfly effect?"
"You brought it on yourself, obviously."
"Mmm."
From Koga-san came the exact same answer the manager had given me. I knew, in my own way, that I had brought it on myself. I had only asked because I believed that if it was Koga-san, she would take my side. After the offline collab she had felt somehow much gentler, and in exchange we had ended up on the phone like this once a day.
Thanks to that, my ability to communicate had improved to the point that I could get through a stream almost without stuttering. Calling her directly, though, still left me just as nervous as ever.
Can I really change...?
Wouldn't it be better to live as the king of shut-in losers? There's something cool about chasing solitude on purpose.
"Quit the weird thoughts. So what is it you want help with?"
Koga-san, who now read my mind as if it were nothing, was terrifying. Still, I had to answer the question first, didn't I?
Wait. This thought is being read too, isn't it?
"S-so first I need to know wh-what to watch out for when I c-collab with a senpai, don't I?"
"Things to watch out for when you collab with a senpai."
My collab record, as of now, came to four in all: one 2nd Generation group collab, two collabs with Koga-san, and one offline collab with her. Every one of those partners, though, had been a peer of mine. The mistakes so far had at least happened among peers, so they could be laughed past, more or less. A mistake in a collab with a senpai—no matter how I turned it over, that moment would be a one-hundred-percent, ultra-large Calamity.
"Hmm. And yet I've been in every collab you've done so far, haven't I?"
"Th-that's right?"
I had thought I ought to collab with my other peers too, but I still hadn't managed so much as a proposal. A collab offer from a peer I couldn't even hold a proper conversation with—they would look at me with nothing but disapproval. Obviously.
So is Koga Mama really my only hope?
Waaah. I'm baby Izumi. Koga Mama, help meee....
"All right. Then how about this? When you collab with Hikari-senpai, I come along too. I've collabed with Kurokami-senpai before, so wouldn't that make it easier to coordinate? I could help during the stream, too."
"Uh..."
It certainly didn't seem like a bad idea. Koga-san had experience collabing with senpai, and among my peers she knew me best. But.
"Even so, I... I think I have to do it j-just the two of us with senpai, first."
Bringing Koga-san into this collab felt like something I must not do.
"A c-collab that came out of K-Kurokami-senpai's challenge has n-never once been a group collab, and if you j-joined in that situation, K-Koga-san, th-there's a real chance it would set off an even bigger Calamity."
I didn't need to try it to know. The instant Koga-san joined this collab—
—opinions like those would come pouring out in an explosion. I really don't need to test it to know, all right? I'd take that bet. The simulation running in the brain of someone who has spent nearly half a life in internet communities is perfect.
"And m-more than anything, I can't collab with Koga-san every single time, and I sh-shouldn't be a burden on you, K-Koga-san, whenever something like this happens."
A newbie clear as spring water, no matter that they had only just started a game, still couldn't draw on someone else's oil for a whole lifetime. I couldn't spend forever hoping for nothing but Koga-san's help, either. In the end, the reason I was streaming at all was to raise this communication ability—so much garbage it was almost a waste of breath to mention it. If I could recover some self-esteem along the way, all the better. Keep receiving nothing but Koga-san's help, though, and actually achieving that would be truly difficult.
"...Tsk. You don't have to think of it as being a burden."
"...What?"
"I said you don't have to think of it as a burden! We're friends."
"No, I—I heard that part, but..."
I was not some dense protagonist out of a romantic comedy. Words whispered that openly, I could hear just fine. What I had questioned was whether there was any need to click her tongue while saying something kind....
"Aaah~. It's nothing. I was only saying it, anyway. Senpai made a proposal like that, and showing up with a peer in tow really would be ridiculous."
Why, though. It felt as if Koga-san were angry. The voice was plainly smiling, and yet the air itself was cold enough to raise goosebumps.
Why? Let me think. If I had to set it out properly, it had the feel of a five-point question: why is Koga-san in a bad mood right now?
Inferring from a combined forty years of life experience....
...As if I would know.
If I knew that, I would have had plenty of friends....
Not that a twenty-four-year-old Koga-san would be having the sort of thought an elementary schooler might—I'm annoyed my friend is playing with someone who isn't me. It had to be my own misunderstanding, right? Well, of course. In forty years of life, my friends, all of them put together, came to barely two. There was no way I had the sense to read someone else's mood.
"Then for now, I'll send you the things to watch out for when you collab with senpai in a DM a little later. Is there anything else I can help with?"
"Hmm. Let's see. T-talking on the phone every day?"
"We already do that for twenty minutes every day."
...Right.
"Ah.... Then maybe p-point out the p-problems you notice in me wh-when we talk like this?"
Of course, having a problem pointed out on the spot didn't mean I could fix it quickly. Still, I thought the difference between knowing a problem and not knowing it was fairly large. At least I would be able to watch out for it.
"Pointing out problems. That's actually a pretty good idea. Then, would it be all right to start right now?"
"...What? N-no. Th-that. Couldn't we s-start tomorrow...?"
It wasn't as if a date with Kurokami-senpai had even been set. I figured I had a grace period of a week, at least. Was there any need to begin this very moment?
"The thing I feel the most is still the stuttering, I suppose?"
But Koga-san ignored what I had said and simply went on.
"Th-that part is a little... something I can't help, I guess you'd have to say..."
"This isn't a question of whether you can help it or not. Knowing the problem comes first, I think. Looked at that way, the stuttering is still what stands out most. In my case, it got to the point where I felt like you were forcing yourself to endure something you hated. Have you actually thought that, maybe?"
It was true that I had looked at my classmates and thought, even so, do they really need to talk that much?
"B-but stuttering isn't for a reason like that..."
"The second thing is exactly that. You pick out a part that isn't important and try to talk about it. What I wanted to say just now was this: seeing you stutter, I felt that way once. Whether you think like that or not doesn't really matter. It doesn't even matter if that isn't why you stutter. But whenever a situation like this comes up, you always latch onto that part."
"I-I'm sorry..."
"You don't need to apologize. I don't particularly think you have to fix it. I'm only saying it because you asked."
"No, I didn't m-mean tell me r-right this sec—"
"Oh, and shouldn't you fix being so negative, at least a little? Other things, you can let pass as differences between people, but a negative personality is just unpleasant for the people around you to look at. You don't have to think wildly positively. Even if a bad thought shows up, just don't put it in your mouth."
And so it was not the usual twenty minutes, but more than two hours of being scolded, before I was finally let go.
"Yes.... I-I'll t-try to fix it..."
She was angry, wasn't she...?