Celebrities, whether they like it or not, live in an environment where they are treated as public figures.
If you think about it, a celebrity is merely a worker hired by an agency—a private company—to perform for pay,
but because they can influence the public at large, they are treated as public figures.
In reality, countless celebrities have had controversies over their character or their past actions dug up and exposed by the media,
leading them to take periods of self-reflection, or even retire because of it.
And after that, it often becomes extremely difficult for them to return to the broadcasting industry.
But what era are we living in now?
Advances in illustration, advances in rendering technology, the declining birthrate, gender conflict, social media, inflated standards, and so on and so forth.
Because of all sorts of factors, non-mainstream culture has continued to grow.
The age of subculture.
Wasn’t it, so to speak, the age of the “weeb”?
This was proven by the ever-increasing number of weeb bait, pretty-girl character gacha games,
and the tremendous revenue of Chinese rip-off game companies.
Riding on this phenomenon, celebrity wannabes…
In other words, internet streamers thought!
“Do I really need to turn on a cam? Can’t I just use a pretty shell and throw it away if controversy happens?”
And thus VTubers were born.
An invincible profession had been born, where even ugly-ass bitches could slap on a pretty shell and have simps offer them money on their own!
It was bullshit.
It was truly fucking brain-dead bullshit.
It was the kind of shit that hate-soaked morons splattered out of their mouths with a wet squelch.
“They’re saying simps just bring you money even if you do nothing? Are they seriously saying that?”
Gang Nari, an active corporate VTuber, struggled to rein in her anger as she took a walk through the park.
It was because, while browsing communities, she had seen a post that scraped her feelings raw.
Of course, even she admitted that becoming a VTuber was easier than becoming most celebrities.
Idols had to work for years as trainees with the resolve to shave their very bones away in order to become idols,
and actors had to endure long, obscure careers with no knowing if there was even an end.
But VTubers? As long as you had OBS—internet streaming software—and a pretty-girl avatar, you could start right away.
The barrier to entry was dozens of times lower than for other celebrities.
To be honest, anyone could become a VTuber.
But… since when had the public ever been fools?
Fools enough to shovel out money just because someone put on a pretty-girl avatar?
The public was already used to beautiful avatars.
An age of VTuber oversupply, where dozens of VTubers appeared every single day.
It was no longer possible to attract viewers’ attention just by having one pretty avatar.
Only by having a special individuality,
or by building a unique character, could you draw even a minimal demand.
Most VTubers failed to do that and disappeared at a rapid pace.
Only those who succeeded at it survived, received the love of countless viewers, and earned money.
Moreover, the broadcasting industry was a winner-takes-all world.
The top one percent earned ninety percent of the market’s money.
Sadly, that logic applied exactly the same to internet streaming.
And Gang Nari… knew very well that she was barely hanging on at that boundary.
That was also why the remark that “VTubing is an easy-money job” had scratched her so badly.
Because she felt keenly that VTubing was not easy at all.
She had nothing that could be called a special individuality.
She had been attending some run-of-the-mill no-name university when, by luck, she passed a corporate VTuber audition,
and after dropping out of college, she became a corporate VTuber.
What was special about any of that?
She lacked a unique character.
This was not referring to the roleplay unique to VTubers.
It was her character as a broadcaster.
To use the variety shows that once ruled Korea as an example,
there was the diligent host,
the petty schemer worn down by reality,
the comedy character packed tight with madness,
the bald guy,
and the punching-bag idiot character.
Variety show cast members did not have outstanding appearances or incredible individuality.
But because each of them had a character they had built, they were loved so much.
However, the current Gang Nari could not do that.
She streamed consistently,
and she often participated in collabs, yet her streams were evaluated as somehow lacking.
Her viewers, dwindling day by day, were telling her that.
In such a situation, Gang Nari felt a growing sense of crisis each day, but the problem was that she had no way to solve it.
Because character—that is, a sense for broadcasting—was not the kind of thing that could be filled in through effort.
“Should I… graduate…?”
That long worry presented the final option most VTubers chose.
Graduation.
A word meaning a VTuber’s retirement.
“Hoooo---”
With that stifling feeling in her chest, Gang Nari let out a long, forceful sigh.
The cloud that formed as the hot air from her lungs met the cold atmosphere was truly impressive.
And the way it soon disappeared without a trace felt truly empty.
As if it were herself, slowly being forgotten.
Just as she kept breathing out white puffs because she hated that emptiness,
“Sniff… sob… hngh…!”
She heard a sorrowful sob.
Startled, she looked around and saw someone sitting on a bench.
The person was crying miserably, her entire body wrapped tightly in a worn-out padded jacket.
“…”
Normally, she would have ignored her and gone back to her one-room apartment.
In modern society, needless meddling often brought trouble instead.
But perhaps because the woman sitting on the bench was crying too sadly,
or perhaps because Gang Nari saw her own state of mind overlapped with hers.
“Excuse me… are you all right?”
Before she realized it, Gang Nari had approached her.
“Ah… n-no. I’m o-okay. I-I’m o-okay…”
The crying woman seemed to be trying hard to refuse her, but…
Honestly, she did not look okay at all.
Her hands were trembling desperately, and her voice trembled even more than that.
The groans and sobs that would not stop, and the sight of her continuously wiping away tears with her hands—
“…At least take this.”
Gang Nari handed her a handkerchief she had in her pocket.
It was a handkerchief with a small moon shape embroidered in one corner.
The woman on the bench took the handkerchief in trembling hands and was just about to wipe away her tears when,
“Tokiwa… Kirene?”
She stopped crying for a moment and uttered a Japanese-style name.
“…Eh?”
Gang Nari could not help but be severely flustered.
Tokiwa Kirene.
That was the name of the second-generation member of “ScalLive,” an avatar with the roleplay of a “vampire who came from the future,” and…
That was the avatar of the corporate VTuber Gang Nari.
“Kirene-nim…?”
The question the woman on the bench uttered.
At that question, Gang Nari felt a severe threat to her personal safety.
===
Red pill.
The origin of this word comes from a masterpiece sci-fi film released way back in 1999.
If you wanted to realize the truth, the red pill.
If you wanted to remain content with reality, the blue pill.
The protagonist of the film took the red pill and learned the truth of the world, and from there the story unfolded…
But that was not what mattered right now.
What mattered was that the red pill had become a metaphor symbolizing the truth of a virtual world.
For the next twenty years, this metaphor was not used all that widely,
but a new profession born from the development of technology and culture distorted the word.
For a VTuber was, by nature, a profession that operated as a virtual character,
and it was customary not to reveal the person behind it.
But perhaps because the main reason humanity had been able to build such a firm civilization was curiosity,
some people began to search for the truth hidden behind the character.
The truth of a virtual character.
And the red pill, symbolizing the truth of the virtual world.
It did not take long for the meaning to shift.
And so red pill had come to mean a VTuber’s personal information.
Therefore, inevitably, VTubers had no choice but to be wary of the red pill.
Because it was personal information.
No matter how much Korea might be a magnanimous country that hands out personal information as charity to pitiful beasts—including Chinese people—
who in the world would want their personal information floating around online?
Therefore, the VTuber “Tokiwa Kirene” had been inwardly wary of red pills,
and she had protected herself by drawing a line between the virtual streamer “Tokiwa Kirene” and the ordinary person “Gang Nari.”
But the boundary between them had broken.
“Ah, um… I-I’m a fan…! I-I donated a lot, too! S-so…”
Thanks to the woman on the bench, who had at some point stopped crying.
The two worlds merged into one, and with a kaboom—her gestalt shattered.
It might have been only natural for a person to fall into panic under such psychological effects.
Accordingly, the action Gang Nari chose was extremely simple.
Running away.
Tak— tak— tak— tak—
She swiftly ran off, striking the path’s pavement hard with each step.
Of course, even if her red pill got leaked, it would not cause anything all that terrible,
and ScalLive itself was not in a situation where it reacted particularly sensitively to red pills,
and it was only natural for a VTuber’s red pill to spread little by little through word of mouth anyway.
So there was no proper reason for her to run away, but…
The instincts of a mammal that had survived for hundreds of millions of years were too stupid to understand such complicated causality.
The simple algorithm of running away when danger arose had been extremely effective for the past hundreds of millions of years, and would likely remain so in the future.
But there was something that made the sprinting Gang Nari stop in her tracks.
“My handkerchief…!”
It was because of the handkerchief she had given to the red-pill leaker(?).
The protective instinct to safeguard something precious was powerful enough to rival the crisis instinct to flee when danger appeared.
It was not as if that handkerchief was especially extraordinary.
It was not a keepsake from her parents,
nor an object containing a childhood friend’s promise to meet again,
nor anything like that—it was just a handkerchief she had liked and bought when she was in middle school.
Even so, that handkerchief was a precious object to Gang Nari.
The proof was that it had stayed with her for such a long time.
“Ha, shit… what do I do?”
Having stopped in the middle of the walking path, Gang Nari fell into thought.
It was the moment she stood at a crossroads, deciding whether to go back or not.
She should have gotten the handkerchief back…
Ah, damn it, why did she hand that over…!
It would have been better if she had just ignored her and passed by…
…But why did I run away?
And the reason that had regained its senses finished its work in an instant.
…There was not a single reason for her to run away.
She could have denied that she was “Tokiwa Kirene” in response to the red-pill leaker’s question.
Even if it was a lie, how would the other person prove it?
If she was reluctant to lie, she could have given some fanservice and asked her to keep quiet.
Even if she did not keep quiet, it would only remain in the community as “a heartwarming story about Tokiwa Kirene,”
so that would actually be beneficial to Gang Nari.
Either way, it would have been fine.
Far more so than running away, at least.
“Ah, seriously!!!”
After hurling all sorts of curses inwardly and struggling to calm her reddening face, she decided to hurry back.
And just as she was about to go back down the path she had run along,
“H-huff… um, excuse me…”
A hand caught the hem of her clothes.
The breath being let out roughly, almost painfully, made it clear that someone had run after her desperately.
“Your h-handkerchief… you l-left it… behind…”
The identity of that someone was, naturally,
the person who had been sitting on the bench, crying miserably.
Even though she must have been exhausted after pouring out such intense emotions,
even though it would have been fine for her to keep an old handkerchief like this,
even though she did not have to chase after someone who had suddenly run away,
she had somehow chased her down and handed it back.
“It’s… precious to you…”
For the sole reason that it was precious to her.
And that… was a fact not written on any wiki.
It was a fact no one could know unless they had truly kept up with her streams.
Unless they really liked her.
Unless they held pure affection for her.
…Unless they were her fan.
At that, complex and chaotic emotions surged through Gang Nari.
Shame, regret, relief—and on top of those, a soft, warm feeling she had never felt before.
Thud—
Perhaps because her legs had given out, her fan ended up collapsing onto the walking path.
“A-are you okay?”
Gang Nari immediately approached her fan,
and at the same time, the hood that had been covering her face slipped off, revealing her face.
“!!!”
And upon meeting her fan’s face from right in front of her, Gang Nari was forced to begin a profound contemplation of her own identity.
“I-I’m… okay.”
The fragile voice, as if it would shatter at the slightest touch, captured her heart.
The clear tear tracks and deep dark circles accentuated a certain ruined beauty.
The sight of her long hair, wet with sweat, clinging to her face was truly… provocative.
Gang Nari had had a male upperclassman she liked in school,
she had had male idols she stanned,
and she even had an ideal type she thought about inwardly.
As such, she had never once doubted that she was heterosexual, but…
When a desire she had never known began to bloom at the god-crafted beauty before her eyes,
cracks of doubt began to form in that firm belief.
“Um, excuse me… if you could help me… stand…”
While Gang Nari was unable to collect herself due to the tremendous shock, her fan,
Seol Yuna, asked her to help her up for a moment,
“Ah?! Um…!? Y-yes!”
Gang Nari somehow clung to her wandering sense of reality and supported Seol Yuna so she could properly stand.
During that time, Gang Nari felt as though something that did not exist between her legs had stiffened and heated up, but…
As the name suggested, that had surely been nothing more than her imagination,
it had surely only been her imagination,
Gang Nari repeatedly told herself.