"So this is it. All by myself."
This life of mine is over. My name is Misaki Tanaka.
Thirty-six years old, officially closing in on forty.
Occupation: part-timer at a publisher (and, sometimes, guarding the house).
Never had a boyfriend, not once in my life. A textbook loser, the kind you could draw from memory.
Three days ago.
"That's it! I'm done! I am never doing VTuber stuff again!"
My little sister, Yui, screamed that and bolted out of the house.
Big backpack on her shoulders, and a parting shot of "I'm going around all of Japan! Don't expect me back for a while!"
For the record, Yui is twenty-nine.
Seven whole years younger than me, and yet she has all the polish, and a soft, pretty face men fall for.
Permanently in demand, with roughly a hundred times my romantic experience. One of those people whose actual life is going well.
And two years ago that same sister suddenly announced "I'm going to get famous as a VTuber!" and started streaming.
The results were... dismal.
Nothing but regulars for viewers, ten at the very most.
A few thousand yen of Super Chat in a good month.
And she still streamed every single day. Honestly, I thought that took guts.
But something in her finally snapped.
"Haaah..."
The parents who left us this house are both gone.
So now I really am on my own.
Come home from the shops and there's nobody there. Dinner for one. It hit me all at once, how lonely that was.
[Saturday, 8:00 p.m.]
I was looking at the bookshelf in my room. After I started working, wrecked my health, and quit, I spent several years shut in this house completely. The manga and novels and self-help books I collected in that period are packed in there wall to wall. As a result I have more trivia and general knowledge stored up than anyone I know. Which has never once been useful, but still.
"I really should sort this out one of these days."
That was when I noticed several volumes missing from a romance series.
A gap in the numbering jumps out at me. I may not look it, but I am fairly particular about these things.
"Oh, right. I lent those to Yui."
Better retrieve them from her room before they get lost.
She isn't here anyway, so nobody's going to complain if I let myself in.
"Wow... this is bad."
The instant I opened the door, what hit me was something like a battlefield. Clothes flung off wherever they landed, books and CDs scattered across the floor.
I know she was rushing to pack, but even so...
"Nodame should be around here—oh? What's that?"
On my way to the shelf I spotted a whole array of unfamiliar equipment on the desk. An expensive-looking microphone, several monitors, and an enormous desktop PC.
"Huh. So this is what VTuber streaming gear looks like."
I remembered Yui telling me happily, "You can make money with this!"
She said the equipment alone came to several hundred thousand yen.
And apparently she spent as much again having the avatar made.
And the result was... two thousand subscribers, was it?
From what I hear, a VTuber scraping by on it needs subscribers in the tens of thousands. At the top of the industry there are monsters with millions.
Hmm. As an investment, this is a total write-off.
What went wrong, though? Yui is cute as she actually is, so wouldn't she have been better off as a YouTuber showing her face? Why did she need to put on a mask to stream?
"A VTuber is just an illusion, when you get down to it."
Thinking about it that way, I started to get curious about what kind of "avatar"—the character a VTuber performs as—Yui had been using.
"Well, while I'm here. Let's have a look."
Curiosity won, and I pressed the power button on the PC.
Whrrrrr.
The sound of the fans filled the quiet room.
One side of the case was transparent, and the components inside lit up in a shifting gradient of colors. It absolutely looked like a high-performance machine.
After a moment the desktop came up.
Among the many app icons lined up there, I found something called "VTube Studio."
"This is the one, I'm pretty sure."
I clicked, and—
"Whoaaaa!"
A pink-haired girl appeared on the screen.
"So this is Yui's avatar. And her name is... YUICA♡, apparently."
A two-dimensional character, but the impression she gives is a lot like Yui.
Though the eyes are slightly... more like mine. Well, we are sisters.
I waved, and the avatar waved.
I tilted my head, and she struck the same pose.
I smiled, and she smiled too.
Fun.
It seems she moves along with my movements and expressions.
"Wow, that's lifelike. Okay, this really is impressive technology."
I was genuinely moved despite myself.
With this, the job title "virtual idol" actually makes sense.
"Let's see, there are other buttons here too. Can I change her outfit?"
A row of assorted buttons ran along the bottom of the screen.
Clicking at random changed the background, or set off an effect. It felt like playing a game.
"What's this one? ...Hm?"
I found a large red button, with several smaller ones beside it.
"Well, no idea what it does, but let's press it."
A light-hearted click.
And then—
"Huh? What is this?"
The display changed without warning.
A small window appeared in the top right with a number in it. And beside it, text that looked like a chat feed began scrolling past, faster and faster.
YUICA♡, welcome back!
been a while since you streamed!
huh? something seems off today?
"W-wait. Hold on. Don't tell me..."
With a very bad feeling, I looked at the screen properly.
In the window at the top right, the words ★LIVE★ were blinking in red.
And the number showing the viewer count—
Five... seven... ten...
"AAAAAAAAAH! I'm streaming!"
you catch a cold? your voice is colder than usual
are you in a bad mood today? you okay?
feels like the voice is different somehow...
The regulars, or so they seemed, were sending worried comments.
But I was in a complete panic.
"What? What? How do I stop this?!"
I clicked frantically all over the screen. It would not stop.
YUICA♡? what's wrong?
is this like a beginner roleplay bit
don't tell me it's someone else...?
Oh no. At this rate they're going to work out I'm not my sister!
The viewer count was creeping up. Fifteen... twenty... twenty-five...
Bottom-tier VTuber or not, she apparently has a decent core of regulars.
Oh no. Oh no oh no.
My heart was pounding hard enough that it felt like it might stop.
What... what am I supposed to do here?!
(To be continued)