It Must Be Nice, Having So Many Mothers
In the VTuber industry, there is a word for it: mama.
It is what you call the illustrator who designs a VTuber, and of course I had a mama of my own. An extremely famous one, at that.
Yukino Toka. The illustrator who designed and drew Kaino Izumi, the avatar of my VTuber. In other words, my mama.
Wait. Counted like that, exactly how many mothers did I have?
The mother from my past life, and the mother I had now. I denied it all I liked, but Miss Koga and Kurokami-senpai were, for the time being, also parked in the mom position. Add Toka Mama on top of that, and—
Mothers. Five of them.
Waaah. I'm baby Izumi. Please cherish me.
Anyway, Toka Mama was an absurdly famous illustrator in the art world. Famous to the point that one of the reasons I became a topic after debuting was simply that I was Toka Mama's first child. The first VTuber design ever taken on by the very top of the illustrator industry had come out at a staggering level of quality, and that was as good as hard proof that the stagnant VTuber market was starting to breathe again. There was no way it wouldn't draw eyes.
At that, the chat drowned in laughter.
It was true that I was already friends with Toka Mama on Misscode, and that her DMs arrived often. Honestly, I thought a relationship where we simply talked like ordinary people would have been fine. I was going to keep using Toka Mama's art regardless.
But I had a reason for avoiding Toka Mama's messages. A reason that even the me of now, grown as I was, could do nothing about.
See? Look at that. It was terrifying. This was absolutely not on the level of just trying to say hello. She sent DMs like these nearly every day, and chatting back as if nothing were wrong was out of the question.
No matter how much I liked cute girls, a yandere was a bit much. She had been sending messages like this almost from the moment I debuted, and the fact that I still hadn't reported her was honestly impressive, wasn't it?
"...Eh?"
That was her being careful?
...Did I actually have to block her?
"Wh-what am I actually supposed to do...?"
"Mm, honestly, I'm not sure. In my case I'm pretty close with my mama, but it doesn't go as far as the two of us clinging to each other. That sort of thing is abnormal to begin with."
"S-so it really is, right? M-my situation right now is w-weird, isn't it?"
Was reporting her the only option? Did I really have no choice but to report my mama...?
"Hard to say. If we go only by what I've heard from you, it's definitely strange, but I can't take what you say at face value."
"...Eh?"
Miss Akabane's words caught the breath in my throat. I had no reason to lie about something like this, and yet a friend wouldn't believe me. It hurt.
"S-so that means y-you, Miss Akabane, are e-eliminated from the m-mom position...."
"There is no such position, and I wouldn't take it even if you handed it to me. And I'm not saying I don't believe your words. I don't believe your communication skills."
"I-I've grown a l-lot too, you know...?"
Of course, talking to several people at once was still a little much, and meeting someone's eyes in real life still turned my stomach and made my head spin. But at least I didn't dodge conversation entirely anymore. And the most important part, the stuttering... that was one of my trademarks, so I would be leaving it as it was.
"But she might have said it simply because she wanted to get closer, and it isn't impossible that you would take messages that aren't even anything and go, 'Eek! Th-this person is scary...!'"
"..."
My communication skills. Was their credibility really that low? Miss Akabane seemed to think I was the sort of outcast who had no friends at school whatsoever and got frightened just from someone talking to me. ...It didn't seem entirely wrong.
"A-anyway, th-this time I'm not in the wrong, okay?"
Even if I were an outcast on that level, Toka Mama's DMs were abnormal. If that was what passed for conversation among ordinary social butterflies, then I wanted no part of being one.
"Just how bad is it, that you keep going on like this?"
"Th-that's...."
Even so, I balked at showing someone else's DMs outright. So when I explained it to Miss Akabane, I had only gone about this far:
"Well, I'm not asking you to show me the DMs. But think it over. Did Toka-sensei really cling to you like that from the very start? Right after your debut, you barely even talked with me or Suzuha. It could be that you messed something up back then, and that's why."
"Mmm...."
...She had a point. The me of back then might simply have been afraid of talking to a stranger, and avoided her one-sidedly. Maybe I should check.
"I-it feels like she was i-insanely obsessive from the v-very start, though."
It came back to me. The reason I had felt something wrong in Toka Mama's DMs from the beginning and turned the notifications off — I remembered it clearly now. Look at that. Even the first DM, that boldness of calling me by name with no honorific at all, as if it were nothing. Mama or not, wasn't that frightening?
"...For real?"
"Y-yeah. R-really...."
So I hadn't been the strange one after all.
"I see. ...But there's one thing I'm curious about. What kind of answer do you actually want right now?"
"...Eh?"
"Think about it. If the situation really is uncomfortable, you can end it just by blocking her. A Calamity might blow up later, but that can be handled by showing people what's in the DMs. Honestly, we call her mama, but at the base it's a business relationship, so it wouldn't even be a big problem."
Miss Akabane was right. There were plenty of VTubers who didn't get along with their mamas. It was a story I could end simply by blocking her on my side.
"But the way you are now, it looks like you still want to keep a relationship with Toka-sensei somehow. You aren't blocking her. You seem to be looking for a way to dial down only the obsession."
She had struck the mark, and I had no choice but to shut my mouth. I really had wanted to avoid going so far as blocking Toka Mama's DMs. Needing to keep using her avatar was one reason, but the fundamental reason lay somewhere else.
"Um, w-well, a-as you know, Miss Akabane, d-drawing is my h-hobby."
"...Ah."
"S-so I don't want to c-cut the tie by blocking her, I g-guess.... That's what it is."
I like drawing. I liked it in my past life, and I like it in this one. Even before I remembered that past life, this life had me loving to draw as if it were fate. In the last one I had been too busy just staying alive to touch the tablet I had finally managed to buy, and in this one, until the memories returned, I was only at the level of doodling in a notebook. Even so, now I drew on a tablet whenever I wanted, and I liked drawing enough to have studied it quite seriously. Not that I had any thought of making it my job.
Anyway, that was why I wanted a good relationship with Yukino Toka, the top illustrator in the industry. And more than anything—
"I-I've liked Toka-sensei's art an enormous amount s-since way back."
Familiar somehow, and yet something I wanted to keep looking at — Toka-sensei's illustrations were one of the destinations of the art I was aiming for.
"You really are complicated. Then isn't this actually an opportunity? She's the one coming on to you first. If you get close now, it'll be easy, won't it?"
"Th-that part is true, but s-scary things are s-scary, I'd say...."
"...Right."
Please don't sigh, Miss Akabane. This was an incredibly important problem to me. Social butterflies like her really couldn't understand me, could they. Lonely....
In the end I hung up with Miss Akabane without ever finding a solution. Was there really no answer except actually blocking her?
I was staring at the ceiling with that thought when, from outside, I heard the lock on the front door open.
"...Huh?"
Today was Saturday, and the time now was two in the afternoon. Mom's business trip was definitely ending today, but a text had already come earlier.
There were still four hours left. It couldn't be my sister, either. She had said she was so busy lately that she might not even make it at the end of the year.
Then who on earth...?
"Eek...."
The moment a bad thought flashed through my head, a chill crawled up my spine. Then, step by step, footsteps rang through the house.
"Hmm, is nobody home...."
An unfamiliar woman's voice, and then my door opened.
"Ah, found you...."
"KYAAAAAAAH!!!"
"WAAAAAAAH?!"