The Japanese VTuber
“Phew—! Thank you! Yui made it all the way to the semifinals! It’s thanks to everyone’s support!”
The Japanese VTuber Kurogami Yui twitched her pointed blue wolf ears and wagged her tail with a bright, silly grin.
“Hah, thank you YuiClub for the fifty thousand!”
Cheers and donations poured in celebrating her advance to the semifinals, and she burst into a peal of laughter—yet the closer her own turn approached, the more anxious the real girl behind the monitor became.
She couldn’t stop worrying her drying lips under the mounting tension.
Of all people… of all the times for my slot to be…
In the corner of her screen, the live broadcast of the first semifinal match of Virtual Voice Fight was still rolling. The one currently singing on stage was the heavy favorite for the championship, the so-called “Truck” herself—Sion.
Goodbye——!!
Sion’s explosive high note ripped through the speakers hard enough to shred them, and Yui’s shoulders flinched.
Sion’s semifinal stage was, in a word, pure shock. Through the round of sixteen and the quarterfinals she had merely felt like “a singer who sings well.” The moment she stepped into the semifinals, it was as if she had finally released the parking brake she had been holding down the whole time and simply ran wild.
Clean yet overwhelming volume, pitch that never wavered even while she sustained the highest notes. Even Shin Se-young was caught on camera with her mouth hanging open in admiration.
The audience reaction was brutally honest. Kurogami Yui swallowed her own despair while listening to Sion sing.
Her weapons were belted rock vocals and a sticky mid-low range. Of those, sheer explosive volume was the one thing she could confidently claim as her own. But Sion was the exception. She possessed every bit of that same explosive power—and on top of it, her detail and stability were on another planet. A complete package.
On the community boards people already mocked Yui as “Sion who rolled a two” and “inferior clone unit #2.” Even Yui herself felt the skill gap in her bones. To her, Sion was something close to an idol, a towering wall she wanted to climb over at least once in her life.
And my stage is right after Sion’s…?
Sion was the second performer of the first semifinal match; Yui was the opening act of the second. After Sion had completely scorched the stage and the audience’s ears had been raised to their absolute peak, she was supposed to grab the mic…
Comparison was inevitable. She could already picture the comments: “Still a long way from Sion, huh.” Just imagining them made it hard to breathe.
“Next up, the second semifinal match! Kurogami Yui versus Lunari! Yui, are you ready?”
At the MC’s call, Yui took a deep breath and lightly smacked her own cheeks.
“Hai! Ready!”
She could not walk out drowning in defeat. Her weapons were strong too. If precision left her behind, she would simply pour out stupid, overwhelming destructive force.
After a brief moment of thought, Kurogami Yui changed her song. It was still only half-practiced, but it was fierce.
The accompaniment began. A track by the JPOP band she loved most. Distorted electric guitar slammed into the space around her, and the blue light in Yui’s eyes bled red.
The cheerful wolf was nowhere to be found. She poured sound into the microphone as if she meant to devour the song itself.
Itsumo no michi o——!
Thicker and more desperate than usual. At the chorus highlight she scraped her vocal cords raw and spat out a powerful hard-rock scratch technique. A roar that felt like it would tear her throat apart punched through the band sound and soared. Explosive force that abandoned perfect control—closer to a howl than a song.
When it ended, Yui gasped for breath and checked the monitor. The chat was heating up again.
“Hehe.”
She had seized the atmosphere with pure, primitive energy. Her throat throbbed a little, and because it was still a practice piece the details left something to be desired—but this much counted as a huge success, didn’t it?
At least she had avoided being buried under comparison with Sion. She still didn’t believe she could actually beat her, but the impact alone might have been stronger. She hoped, at the very least, that her own fans would feel that way.
Phew—what am I even supposed to do if I reach the final…
The problem was that reaching the final still meant facing Sion again. If this stage had been a direct matchup against Sion, she could have at least gone out in an honorable death.
Kurogami Yui judged her own odds of advancing higher than her opponent Lunari’s. And it wasn’t only her. Even the communities that spoke for the broader streaming audience were dominated by the expectation that the final would be Sion versus Kurogami Yui.
Charming vocals, brilliant arrangements, the freshness of original songs. No one would deny that Lunari and her composer were excellent artists. But the public ear was weak to stimulation. With that delicate, careful vocal style of Lunari’s, she would never erase the afterimage of the high notes that Sion and Yui hurled into the sky. Yui was certain of it.
There was just one possible variable.
“Lunari! Your quarterfinal stage was already stunning. What song do you have for us in the semifinals?”
“Ah, yes! Once again… an original written by Yeong-il, called Broken Clock.”
“Eeh? Another original?”
Would there really be another witty, addictive original like the one from the quarterfinals? But Yui shook her head almost at once. Freshness as a weapon only carried meaning the first time.
No matter how well someone writes songs, the same style won’t work twice. People get bored fast.
The moment the accompaniment began, however, that certainty cracked clean down the middle.
Zzzt— zzzzt—
The scrape of an old LP needle, then an electric guitar cutting in. Astonishingly, the same kind of band sound Yui herself had just performed rolled out. But the texture was different. If Yui’s band had been lava that burned everything, the band supporting Lunari was stable. String sounds that ruled the entire track tapped gently against Yui’s heart.
Band sound can be this soft and beautiful…?
Instead of the pounding intensity that made the heart race, she felt the comfort of walking a road together. It reeked of something analog and literary, yet it was unmistakably the ensemble of a band she knew.
I stare at the clock that has stopped
White dust dances in the air
The languid, dreamy tone Lunari had shown until now had changed. She pulled every bit of the huskiness she normally restrained and released a voice thick with texture. That deep, gravelly huskiness created insane synergy with the vintage band sound.
Mmm— whee—
She played with the accompaniment. It felt as if the enormous string section waited at her feet for her cue.
If time starts turning again, back to that place—
Confidence restored, Lunari’s voice completely dominated the stage—even without a single high note that could pierce the sky.
I’d rather it stay broken forever—
She simply entrusted her body to the drums and the band’s beat, raised her voice, and ran free. Every husky whisper of hers carved straight into people’s hearts.
“……Uso desho. (No way.)”
Kurogami Yui murmured the words under her breath. A few viewers noticed the tiny unusual behavior and sent worried messages, but only her tightly sealed lips twitched in answer.
The vocal skill Lunari had shown in the round of thirty-two, sixteen, and eight had clearly been excellent. But it had not been like this. The more she sang, the more she seemed to evolve. True flowering.
The emotion Yui felt watching Lunari was not simple defeat. She had never been the type to obsess over winning or losing anyway.
I thought ear-splitting high notes were all it took.
You could make a sound this beautiful without clinging to high notes at all. She felt like a complete idiot for never looking at anything else. Singing was not a contest of who could raise the octave highest.
That freedom of Lunari’s, that melody that shook the heart—Yui loved it. Even for a girl who adored JPOP, the beat suited her perfectly.
Yui’s red eyes wavered.
If dazzling high notes were not the only answer… if, just if, someone made a song that let her own tone shine in the most perfect way… if someone placed a weapon meant only for her into her hands…
Then maybe even in front of Sion and the other monsters she wouldn’t shrink. Maybe she could enjoy it the way Lunari did.
When the song ended, Lunari was smiling happily. The wolf pajamas her cat character was wearing looked terribly cute—cuter than Yui’s own wolf-tribe RP, even. For a cheap avatar, something about it really rubbed her the wrong way.
Yui’s gaze locked onto the bottom of Lunari’s personal broadcast screen, next to the song title, on the two characters of the composer’s name: Yeong-il.
Injustice, inferiority, and a tangle of emotions she couldn’t name coiled together with a fierce possessiveness inside her chest.
Yeong-il… Yeong-il-san.
Kurogami Yui began to form a plan to learn everything she could about Lunari.
Whoa, what the hell. She’s insanely good.
I had been lying down to watch casually, but I sat up in front of the work computer so I could hear the singing with better sound. Stage after stage that made me glad of my choice kept coming, and I was thoroughly satisfied—until now.
“She’s way better than in practice…? What is this, seriously?”
Lunari had just torn the semifinal stage apart. I had thought she was already renewing her peak during practice, but that wasn’t it. On the actual stage she digested the song even better than anything I had seen.
Yu Nari had run herself into the ground during the one-week practice period. I had been dragged along by the hair under the title of “composer” and spent entire days doing nothing but listening to her sing. Imagining how much more she must have done when I wasn’t watching made it clear she was a genuine practice maniac.
I remembered her voice laughing that it was fun because the song kept getting better. If she hadn’t latched onto me and refused to let go, I would have been genuinely happy for her too.
What I was personally grateful for… well. Getting used to phone calls, and receiving money?
Talking with Yu Nari no longer felt as uncomfortable as before. Maybe because we strangely never brought up each other’s private lives, listening to her voice was no longer as hard as it had been at the start. If I kept practicing like this, maybe I could eventually hold a normal conversation even with a woman I didn’t know.
During the short break after the stage ended, a message arrived from Lunari.
Persistent, isn’t she.
First place was twenty million won or an unannounced benefit; second place was a million. Since she had already come this far, wouldn’t it be better to aim for the twenty million?
Hmm…
Or maybe Lunari had already given up on winning. Looking at it, that VTuber Sion who would be her final opponent was on another level entirely. Just a monster. The kind of vocal that got even stronger live, I guess. Lunari’s peak had risen a lot too, but still…
Singing the song she wanted and going out might not be so bad either. It was a song I made in my darkest period, so honestly I hadn’t wanted it performed in front of people—but I had sold it for money, so there wasn’t much room left to argue. If she liked it, what could I say.
I sent the last message with the quiet wish that she would at least finish beautifully.
Ding—
The reply came back as if she had read my mind.