You Think VTubers Are Easy?
First, I quietly muted the mic.
“What do I do.”
A quick ego-surf across Nater and a handful of other communities showed exactly what I'd expected. Everything was on fire.
S-still, it didn't seem to be burning all that badly, so I counted it as a relief.
I'd caused a disaster right from the opening, but thankfully the manager didn't pick that part apart. Real working adults really are kind.
“…”
Before I knew it, more than five minutes had passed with the mic still muted. And somehow—
The live viewer count kept climbing. It would have been easier if even a few people had left. I wanted to end the stream right there, but I knew I shouldn't.
The manager was hurrying me, too.
“Hoo.”
Right. I wasn't in the wrong. There was no need to chicken out. Everyone watching this stream was a loner otaku, the same as me. I'd hold my head up.
“Haa.”
I drew one last breath to steady myself, then unmuted the mic.
“S-sorry! There was a problem with the equipment for a second!”
“W-wait, seriously?”
You people are moving way too fast, aren't you…? I don't want a bad image getting stuck on me….
“Ah, r-r-r-right. I'm really sorry!”
Now that I thought about it, I'd killed the mic the instant I finished my greeting. I hadn't progressed a single step.
“O-okay! Then, um, I'll start with a self-introduction.”
I ignored the chat, put my prepared profile up on the screen, and slowly began the self-introduction.
“Ah, please take care of me from now on, everyone.”
“N-nothing happened in the middle, I'll have you know!”
Stop fishing for something to set on fire.
“Th-then, from here, I was thinking I'd d-decide a fan name and some other things.”
I had several fan names in mind, but if people decided they were tacky I'd hate it, so I meant to take suggestions from the viewers. That's the way of a loner: unable to get along with anyone, and yet more conscious of their eyes than anyone else. It would be nice if it landed on something cool, like Nacchan's Eighth Star.
And yet, somehow, a name somebody had tossed off without thinking got a good reaction out of the chat. Why? I'd been picturing something cool, like Vassal of Water.
“U-um.”
There's no reversing this current. Forty years of honed loner instinct told me so with perfect clarity.
“Th-then the fan name will be I-Iztomo. No—I'll go with it.”
Why are my viewers this harsh with me from day one? I wish they'd be a little kinder….
Nearly thirty minutes had passed since the debut stream began.
The manager was saying that, so maybe it was time to wind down.
“Th-then I was thinking of wrapping up soon. A-anything you're curious about? I'll answer a f-few of the ones I can see in chat.”
“Reason for applying, huh….”
Mom told me to give it a try, so I worried about it and then applied on impulse? Say that, and it would definitely catch fire. I had to think. Something that sounded plausible enough for people to nod along. Having no sense for a room is a loner's basic skill, but once you've got about forty years of life behind you, you can at least manage a line that sounds halfway reasonable. …Probably.
“Uh. C-can I be honest?”
“Th-that's not what I meant! Anyway, y-you all probably figured it out after seeing this g-garbage RP from the start of today. I— I mean, me— up to now, in my whole l-life, there hasn't been a single person I could call a friend. I'm a g-god-tier loner, you see? I-I mean, you know? I mean, I c-can't meet people's eyes when I talk, I s-stutter, and I've got z-zero sense for the room, so o-of course that's how it turned out, but…”
“It's not that I don't have p-passion for VTubers. I-I mean, I do. Anyway, um, I was j-just watching Ontube alone like always, and it hit me. Hasn't it been forever since I actually said anything to anyone?”
What was this? The viewers I'd thought were harsh until now were starting to be kind. Of course it was a sad story, if you called it sad—but this felt kind of nice, maybe.
“Hehe…. So I just thought, if I b-become a VTuber, at least a few people to t-talk to will show up, so I should apply.”
“Ah, that—wow, I completely agree. Honestly, I don't think I a-answered a single thing properly in the interview, so I'm s-surprised I even passed. Looking at the setting, I even w-wondered if they were trying to k-kill me.”
“But anyway, I— no. I'm Kaino Izumi, right? Ah, from now on I'll stream with energy, and w-work hard!”
Starting today, my goal was to be a VTuber who grows. They say environment changes a person, and I still believed that—if only a little!
“Ah, th-that's the one thing I really don't want. If I watch it, I'll get so e-embarrassed I think I'll cry….”
Why did you go back to being harsh viewers? I was hoping for a much kinder world….
“Then I'll t-take one last question, and w-wrap up.”
“Oh, I have one. Dark Uncle Survival!”
Dark Uncle Survival follows an ordinary office-worker uncle, Satoru, after he's flung into another world and has to fight desperately just to stay alive. I'd followed the manga from the first chapter, and when the anime was confirmed I was so happy I bounced on the bed.
“Right, right. Seriously, you know the quality of that fight scene in the last episode? You could feel Uncle Satoru's desperate sincerity so hard, and it was moving, I'm telling you. And that's not all—there's a conversation with the heroine in the middle, and honestly the anime took the emotional line the manga had been building and portrayed it beyond the original, and I was insanely moved. I rewatch it about once a week. If there's anyone here who hasn't seen it…”
I was so happy that everyone was going along with me that I kept talking without realizing it—and then I saw the chat.
I saw those messages, quietly closed my mouth, and quietly turned the stream off. Without a single ending line.
And in the phone call with the manager afterward, I got to hear her sigh more than ten times. But no matter how I turned it over, the one most in the wrong was StarsFlow. Everyone thinks so, right?
“…The aggro definitely landed.”
It went without saying, but StarsFlow was the company drawing the most attention in the VTuber industry right now. Of course it was. This was the company Nacchan herself belonged to. To put it in terms you could feel: even before the debut streams, the Ontube channels of the Second Generation—mine included—had already passed fifty thousand subscribers.
And a rookie from a company under that kind of spotlight commits a spectacular mistake on day one? Drawing aggro, a Calamity catching fire—that was only natural. Right now, more than eighty percent of the VTuber community was topics about me. People losing their minds trying to dig up my “past life” was the baseline. A brawl of baseless insults mixed with praise that it had actually been pretty decent, plus the aggro-chasers flooding in from everywhere else. A complete shitshow.
But the company seemed to view the situation in a rather good light.
If I could properly catch the viewers while the aggro was this hot, it would lead straight into channel growth. I thought so too, and in fact, among my Second Generation peers, I currently had the most subscribers. Only by a few thousand, though. Not a difference that meant all that much.
“Maybe tomorrow's stream should be a game….”
If there was a kind of broadcast that suited me best right now, it was surely a gaming stream. I wouldn't even have to talk much, and male loner otaku will praise you just because a pretty girl is good at games. And I was fairly confident in my own skill. All right—so which game?
“…This one looks good.”
Scrolling the list of games I'd downloaded ahead of time, I found it. That very game.