【150k Celebration Stream】Thank You, Everyone! ─(≧▽≦)>
"I-I'm sorry...."
"I am s-sincerely reflecting...."
When she woke, her phone screen was plastered with messages. Not only her peers—Koga, Akabane, Aki, and Utsumi—but the manager, Senior Kurokami, Senior Namikawa, Nacchan, and even Aunt Sia and her sister. Every one of them had been worried something had happened to her, and of course Nater and the usual communities were full of posts asking where she had gone. Her name had even climbed onto Nater's real-time trending searches.
So the moment she got up she posted an apology notice on Nater, and now—still a little sleepy—she had turned the stream on at nine in the morning.
"N-no, it isn't.... If I do it at this hour, a lot of people w-won't be able to watch, so for now I'm planning to end it as an apology stream."
More than anything, it was a guerrilla stream that hadn't been on the schedule at all, so the viewer count was thinner than usual. If she ran the celebration on a pop-up like this, the people who missed it would probably be heartbroken.
"Anyway, I really am sorry.... For making you worry, I truly am s-sorry...."
"Yeah. If nothing comes up, th-that's probably how it'll go?"
If it were only up to her heart, she would have wanted to do it right this second—but the moment she said so to the manager, she got scolded. In Izumi's opinion, the manager really ought to learn a perfectly good phrase: while we're at it. Of course, she had known from the start that it wasn't allowed.
"I-I'm really sorry...."
In the end, of the hour she stayed on, nearly forty minutes were nothing but apologies before the stream came to a close.
"Haa...."
Dotsumachi, depending on how you looked at it, was a double-edged bit of content. Think about it. She would be sitting in a Misscode server waiting for calls, and if nobody showed up before the stream ended? That would be unbearably awkward, wouldn't it? Of course Koga had promised she would definitely drop in if Izumi ran Dotsumachi, so that particular disaster wasn't going to happen—but if nobody came except Koga, that would be awkward in its own way.
Still, it was also true that nothing suited a celebration stream quite like Dotsumachi. In the VTuber business, collabs with the other members mattered, and Dotsumachi was one of the ways you showed just how close those members really were.
"...Yeah. I should do it, right?"
Having made up her mind at last, she started writing out the Dotsumachi invitations.
And so the 150k celebration stream was suddenly right in front of her. Strange, though. Was it because she had already caused a disaster of that size yesterday? She didn't feel so nervous she couldn't do anything. No—that wasn't it. She was someone with a new goal now: she was going to do a live. Kaino Izumi, the 150k-subscriber owner VTuber who had cleared Arcana Shooter: Purgatory, the girl who had gone and acquired a new goal, had become a body that simply did not get nervous...!
"Hehehe...."
A mood so strong that the sturdy, white-haired man in his forties living inside her felt ready to burst out on his own. But for the sake of the Iztomo, who believed she was a pitiful, pretty high-school girl, she would have to keep him sealed. The clock, before she knew it, stood twenty seconds from seven in the evening. Like a general stepping onto the field, she quietly closed her eyes and steadied her breath.
And the instant the hour struck seven—
"Ko-Konzumi.... The a-atmosphere maker who dreams of a world where everyone can s-smile. Kaino Izumi, at your service...!"
She declared war on the world, head held high.
Red Hyperchat burst loose like a dam giving way, but it wasn't enough to rattle her all that badly. Yesterday's endurance stream alone had already been on another level, and for a celebration stream meant for congratulations, this much was only natural. I-I absolutely was not flustered. Really.
"F-first of all, I'm truly sorry for f-falling asleep in the middle of yesterday's endurance stream...."
There would be Iztomo who had missed the morning apology stream, so she began by bowing her head. She had actually considered a thumbnail of black text on a pure white screen—I'm sorry—and the manager had torn into her for it.
Fair enough. In the VTuber business, that kind of thumbnail was built to poke a viewer's trauma. If tomorrow Nacchan's stream thumbnail were a blank white screen stamped with something like Important Notice... the thought alone was awful enough that she swore never to pull a stunt like that again. She might actually cry.
"Anyway, thanks to all of you Iztomo, I hit 150,000 subscribers.... Thank you, everyone...!"
"Heheh...?"
Th-the viewers were being kind. She had been sure everyone would still be furious over yesterday.
"R-right? I mean. I-I worked really hard too.... So I'm the amazing one, right?"
Thinking about it, 150,000 was hardly a small number for an internet broadcast, was it? She was the one who had worked her way this far, so the one who deserved the praise ought to be her, too. As expected—she really was a TS pretty girl. Incredible!
"Today I'll let you praise me as much as you want!"
"O-on a day like this, couldn't you be a little kinder...?"
"I am not that bad!"
The debate that had sprung up out of nowhere—If a suspicious middle-aged man praises Kaino Izumi, does she smile and follow him? Or does she not?—finally came to an end. Nearly ten minutes spent yammering about something this useless. They didn't know it, but her mind was a man in his forties. There was no way someone like her would trail after a shady old man just because he complimented her.
"Phew. Anyway, for today's 150k celebration I was thinking of doing D-Dotsumachi...."
"H-how rude. Of course I p-passed it along properly...."
Starting with Nacchan, she had told every one of her peers. It was the end of the year, so calling every member of Stars Flow had been impossible, but thankfully—Koga included—quite a few had answered that they would join. If nobody but Koga had written back, she might have cried.
"Then, sh-shall we start?"
Please, let nothing go wrong in the middle of a call. Hoping for that, she switched over to the screen that could bring up the members who had joined the Dotsumachi.
And the first person to come in was....