Outside the Blanket Is Dangerous

"……"

Age was absolute, and being young was a kind of powerlessness I had no language for. The sticky residue clinging to every line of text, that nameless queasiness rolling in my stomach — I was too ignorant even to recognize it as disgust.

Day after day. I smiled and let it slide, the way I always did. Regret only showed up after everything blew apart. Would it have been different if I'd managed the chat properly? Or if I'd just covered my face? How did they even find my home address when I'd never told a soul? Maybe I never should have started streaming at all. All I'd wanted was to let people hear me play guitar, and somehow it had come to this…

What had I done wrong? I didn't know. I truly didn't.

Thump-thump—thump!

The summer of my second year of middle school. The day a strange woman pounded on our front door. That was the day I quit streaming and ran.

"…A dream."

I must have dozed off for a second while hammering ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at the MIDI keyboard. Somewhere — downstairs, upstairs, next door, who could say — a dull thumping had closed out the dream and helped me claw my way free. The clammy memory from years ago had clawed its way up, and a thin sheen of cold sweat slicked my skin. I scanned the room in a panic, and only after confirming I was somewhere I knew did the tension finally drain out of me.

My dim little room. Even in the height of summer I kept two layers of blackout curtains drawn; the only light came from the cold blue glow of three monitors. I stared blankly at the composition software open on the main screen, then my gaze drifted to the powered-off sub-monitor on the left. My face floated faintly across the black glass.

"Haa… it's hot."

Six ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠years had passed since that day, and I had become a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠half-broken shut-in who couldn't even turn his own doorknob without a fight. Aside from eating and sleeping, I clung to composing like a man possessed. Music had become my oxygen tank. The countless tracks stacked on my hard drive were the scars of my resistance. But composition was only a hobby, and I knew that eventually I would have to go outside. I needed courage — and yet the dissonance between my head and my heart still kept me locked in this room.

I should go out. Yeah. I should go out.

To anyone else it might have sounded like empty talk. But I had made a point of trying something every year, so I at least had an answer ready for myself. Two years ago I left the house to take the GED. Last year I applied to university and even got in. Of course, I never once showed up after enrollment, so a full year slipped by and the tuition was a complete waste — but still. The fact that I'd found the nerve at all was the important part.

What should this year's goal be? Nothing came to mind.

I wiped the cold sweat away and took hold of the mouse. One in the morning. At this hour, out of pure habit, I zombie-scrolled through used instrument marketplaces and MIDI community boards. Sometimes a good piece of gear went up for sale, and eavesdropping on other composers' conversations was its own small pleasure. Was there a new synth out? Had someone dumped a nice pair of speakers for cheap? I browsed like that for a while, and then—

"Huh?"

Buried among the familiar nonsense posts I'd been reading for months, one wildly out-of-place promo caught my eye.

What was this? A promo? Here?

The post was completely alien to a MIDI community. She seemed to be a streamer, but nobody here streamed, and nobody cared. That indifference was spelled out in the zero comments under the thread.

"……"

I was about to hit back like everyone else when the stream link snagged my eye. A long time had passed since I'd quit streaming. In all those years I hadn't watched a single broadcast, hadn't gone near anything even remotely similar… Maybe it was because the old me had just drifted through my dream. Something that might have been courage — or sheer stubbornness — seized my fingers for a second.

Click—

A new browser window opened onto a clean streaming platform UI.

"Ah…"

I stared at the monitor and made a stupid sound. The regret hit the second I clicked. Zero viewers? Was I seriously the only one? Even online, being thrown into a sudden one-on-one conversation was far too big an assignment for me. I prayed it wouldn't happen, but a few seconds after I entered—

One. That was me. I was the count. Thankfully the streamer seemed to be away from her seat. Soft BGM played while a blue meadow wallpaper — like an old Windows desktop — filled the screen. I would leave just like this. Disappear before she could say a word—

Screeeeeee—screeeeeech—!

"Aaagh, my ears!"

I reflexively ripped off my headphones a heartbeat before I could close the browser and flee. I was half-convinced my ears were bleeding. What the hell was that unholy noise? The shredded static of a cheap mic, clipping so brutal it made my teeth ache, and a reverb slathered on thick as a neighborhood bathhouse. Who sets up a stream like this? This wasn't a broadcast accident — it was auditory terrorism. Separate from the feeling of having my wrist grabbed right as I tried to run, I simply could not leave it alone.

Crash, clatter. Something tumbled over in a heap, and then a careful voice floated back out.

"Oh…?"

Without meaning to, I locked onto her voice. With the noise stripped away, what came through clean was lightly husky and strangely languid. She hadn't even sung — just spoken a few ordinary sentences — and already dozens of chords that suited the her in my head were spinning in lazy circles through my mind.

Streamer Lunari chattered without pause. I kept thinking I should type something in response, but her lightning-fast topic changes froze my hands solid. For a hikikomori like me, this bubbly streamer was my natural enemy. I wanted to run. And yet I also wanted to hear that voice sing, just once.

Caught between those two feelings, I typed something that had nothing to do with whatever she was talking about.

Hadn't she said this was a singing stream? She suddenly looked like she really didn't want to. An awkward silence stretched for three full seconds before her bright voice came back.

Maybe I'd thrown off the flow and put her in a bad mood. Then again, with me as her only viewer, she probably couldn't help watching my reactions.

Ba-ba-bam—

A blisteringly fast, crystalline instrumental burst out and cut my wandering thoughts short.

"This song is…?"

The national girl group Luminous's mega-hit, Summer Ocean. A dance track of brutal difficulty that demanded explosive range — including stratospheric high notes — and a crystalline brightness that even established professionals struggled to pull off live.

Then Lunari started to sing.

"……."

I scrubbed both hands down my face. It was a massacre. The further she went, the more the beat dragged a half-count behind and the pitch sagged flat. Worst of all, her voice mixed with that bouncy idol instrumental like oil and water. She forced the high notes until every scrap of that captivating timbre died, and the breathless gasping between phrases grated on the ear.

When the song ended, Lunari didn't seem especially pleased either; she laughed awkwardly.

What was I supposed to say? Whether I told her it was bad or offered some white lie, I just wanted to answer and move on — except the mismatch between the track and her voice was ringing too clearly in my ears to ignore. I wasn't a professional composer, but letting something that obvious slide felt like a waste of that tone.

Of course it fell apart when you dumped a bright midsummer dance arrangement under a voice like hers. What if I slowed the tempo all the way down into R&B and flipped it into minor keys? What if I stripped every instrument out right before the chorus — and made even her gasping breath part of the music?

A freshly rearranged accompaniment began pouring through my head, thudding and reshaping itself. On that imaginary stage, her singing threw off a completely different light. Why was I doing this? Was I losing it? My heart was pounding. Not from fear. A small, sharp hunger was blooming — the desire to dress that voice in my music.

Ignoring my trembling fingers, I typed as if hypnotized.

I couldn't see her face, but the deflated tone made me feel a little guilty. It had been so long since I'd talked to another person that I had zero sense of volume control.

The second I hit enter I sucked in a sharp breath. What the hell was I doing to a complete stranger? Was she going to write me off as a weirdo? I rolled my eyes around the screen hunting for a modern convenience like undo or cancel, and then a voice came through the speakers — markedly smaller than before.

She murmured something about not being worth the track, and a deflated little laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it. I had no idea whether I was about to do something I'd regret, but—

How could someone sitting on a blessed talent be this unsure of herself? To ordinary people this was practically cheating. She asked again five or six more times, to the point I half-wondered if she was messing with me, so I answered with as much conviction as I could pack into a chat box. For a long stretch after that I kept feeding her the same kind of lines — you're good, you can do this — and she brightened almost at once.

My technique was still rough. But I wanted to carve a song that actually fit that voice with my own hands. While Lunari started chattering again in front of me, I was still sorting through my head when—

"……?"

Against the blue grass background, something like a doll appeared. And every time Lunari spoke, that cartoon character's mouth flapped open and shut.

"What… is this…?"

Lunari wasn't human.