I wriggled the hand I was looking down at.
I moved it this way and that, pressing my thumb into empty air.
…This was hopeless. There was nothing to feel for.
“…Hmm.”
The fact that I had pressed the code and come in was perfectly clear.
But how I had pressed the code and come in was hazy.
Just in case, I went outside and tried experimenting in front of the door lock, but nothing changed.
“Remember… remember… remem… nothing. Not a damn thing.”
No matter how hard I racked my brain, it did nothing.
The back of my head tingled. It wasn’t as if I’d been hit, either.
I must have been so startled that even my buzz had vanished.
Maybe that buzz was the problem?
I clenched and unclenched my fist again.
The keyboard and mouse that had felt awkward.
The physical control that had gradually improved, as if I was adapting.
And, on the other hand, vocal cords that had felt awkward because they moved too well.
The songs I’d been able to sing better than usual.
“Is this that muscle memory thing or whatever?”
I blurted it out in frustration, but of course no answer came back.
…Ah, whatever. Screw it.
First, I put the cola in the fridge.
Instead of the fridge that should have been full of ingredients I’d bought thinking I’d cook over the weekend, what greeted me was something closer to a liquor cabinet.
When I bent at the waist, the bothersome hair that brushed my cheek fell forward, so I swept it back.
My lower back, which I’d had to punish with a foam roller whenever I got the chance, was absurdly fresh and limber.
My shoulders, on the other hand, felt more knotted than before.
“Ah… way too much happened.”
I’m seriously so exhausted.
How long would it take for this feeling to settle down, and for me to get used to this house?
***
Hanami was a veteran broadcaster.
She had started streaming a very long time ago.
Back when she was still eating school lunches, before she had ever eaten a university cafeteria meal.
It was even before foreign platforms had entered the country the way they had now.
It would be quite some time after that before she properly devoted herself to streaming, but in any case, that was when she could be said to have started.
Since she had begun broadcasting when the still-clumsy early platforms were springing up all over the place, she had every right to call herself a veteran among veterans.
Among the digitally weathered old photos out there, one could even find her streams alongside the first-generation giants.
She wasn’t on the same level as those people, but even so, calling her a living fossil wouldn’t be an exaggeration.
These days, people called that era ancient history or the primordial age, but to her, it didn’t feel all that long ago.
Because separate from the fact that she had been there at the beginning of the internet broadcasting scene, the scene itself wasn’t a market with a long history.
Had it been about seven or eight years?
Looking back, it had been a time of upheaval.
As many connections as had brushed past her, there had been all sorts of people.
There were people who were so ingratiating, calling everyone hyung-nim and noona, that she’d thought, That kid will survive no matter what he does, only for them to suddenly fall straight into the abyss.
On the other hand, there were people she’d worried about because they were so shy, only for them to suddenly enter the pro scene and skyrocket all the way to the heavens.
People who floated away on controversy, people who made dramatic comebacks, people who flew past the clouds and all the way to Mars.
In any case, she had survived.
Which meant she was strong.
Because she was confident she would survive, she had even quit the perfectly decent university she had been attending, and she had never regretted that choice.
That certainty had been rewarded.
But VTubers…
This, she wasn’t so sure about.
If a close older friend hadn’t sung the same refrain over and over while coaxing her, she would never have started.
Even if she did do it, her personality was the sort to reluctantly follow along later, after time had passed and it had become common, and she also believed that was the secret to lasting a long time.
“Ah, wait. My food’s here.”
“Yeah, go get it, go get it.”
“It’s not ‘go get it,’ unni. So what are we doing for the next collab?”
That person was the root of all evil.
That person, gathered with them in a voice chat room right now, chattering busily even though they weren’t on stream.
“Don’t call me unni!! We’re all seventeen!!”
“…Do we really have to do that seventeen-year-old concept? It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“You punk!! It’s not a concept, it’s RP!! This kind of thing is seriously important!!”
“…No, I mean, there’s no need to go that far off-stream.”
“We have to be on casual terms!! RP is a matter of grave importance!!”
Florence’s first generation… Though in truth, calling them the first generation was just for appearances.
After all, there weren’t even plans for a second generation, let alone an actual launch.
Her business, which she had started in Korea, a barren land for VTubers, was ad hoc in every way.
Everything was improvised, and the broadcasters themselves had to figure out the work.
It felt like a small company president handling development, marketing, and distribution all on her own.
Thanks to that, she was a president who was busy every single day, yet she was still so full of energy.
Did that unni never get tired?
“Your usual conduct shows itself outside, too.”
The president said it firmly.
Hanami lay in her chair like a piece of gum stuck to it and thought.
Was that really the sort of thing to say in a situation like this…?
“It’s the same reason we try not to call each other by our real names off-stream, in case we slip up. If it gets too natural, we might leak it.”
“Is that how it works…?”
“They say if you meet often, you might call someone by their real name outside and make a mistake.”
“That does sound possible…?”
She was good with words, if nothing else.
Hanami was more or less used to it and let it go in one ear and out the other, but Ruka, who was relatively new, was already being bewitched.
Well, if she thought about it, it was technically true.
But when you had just ended a stream, only to be summoned under the pretext of a meeting and spend an hour Just Chatting, even the most correct statement would lose its persuasive power.
“Fine. I’ll go get food too.”
“Ah! My tteokbokki’s going to get cold!! …But how long are we going to stay on this call? If we’re doing this, just turn on the stream.”
“Am I annoying to you…?”
“Ah, here we go again.”
“Is that true? Are you sick of me?”
“Then turn on the stream! Why are you doing WWE off-stream?!”
Within just a few lines, Ruka was already being tossed around by them.
Hanami got up from her seat as if fleeing and went to fetch her dinner.
She took out some frozen lunch box and heated it up.
It was a slow-aging healthy meal box she had bought online.
Since broadcasters tended to eat poorly, living off deliveries and the like, they had to look after their health with things like this at least.
When she heated the lunch box in two minutes and returned to her seat, the president was taking her employee to the cleaners.
Hanami felt grateful for the development of technology.
While thinking that if that unni hadn’t been a broadcaster, she would have made a living as some kind of scammer.
“I heard other people are quiet and calm off-stream, so why are our unnies like this…”
“Maybe this is why we can last so long?”
“…My tteokbokki really is going to get cold. I’ll go get it.”
In the end, the meeting only managed to begin after going in circles for quite a while.
While Ruka went to pick up her delivery, the others rummaged through their libraries.
Still, starting was the hard part; once they started, things tended to move quickly.
Their president—roughly speaking, according to the RP—Yuuri was also a veteran when it came to experience.
If one went all the way back to the WooriTV days, she was a veteran who wouldn’t be lacking anywhere.
“So what are we doing for the next collab? Second try.”
“Hey, why don’t you find something, then!!”
“Because when I do, you reject it saying we already did it!!”
“So, seriously, what are we doing? Third try.”
There was some commotion here and there, but the meeting proceeded quickly even as they ate dinner.
How about this? The algorithm is like this.
How about that? The trend is like that.
In the end, they narrowed it down to two candidates and agreed to download them in advance.
“No, seriously, if we’d done this properly, we could’ve finished three times over.”
“It’s better to eat together than alone.”
“If only you weren’t so good at talking… What are you eating, unni?”
“Hmm? Nuts.”
There was a crunching sound.
Ah, seriously, here we go again.
Nami placed her palm against her forehead and shouted.
“Ah, seriously, unni!! If you live like that, you’ll die!!”
“Why? This is a meal to me.”
“Meal, my ass!! What are you, a hamster?!”
“You’re just opening one of the things piled up next to your desk and munching on it, right? That’s a meal? Unni, I’m saying this because I’m seriously worried about you.”
Ruka, who had been munching on tteokbokki, added a heavy blow.
“You really do seem like you’ll die if you keep that up.”
“No, casual terms don’t mean you can just say whatever—”
“Forget casual mode or whatever, your body weight’s going to go into half mode!! Eat some proper damn food!!”
“They say there are a lot of streamers like this, but unni, you’re a pretty severe case.”
Iruka and Hanami joined forces and nagged her for quite a while.
The two of them did not calm down easily.
Only after they forced her to go into a delivery app and order poke—which the picky president at least ate decently—did they finally quiet down.
The meeting was more or less finished, and the two younger ones had long since finished their meals.
Just as Hanami was wondering whether she should slowly leave, Ruka threw her a question.
“Come to think of it, Nami unni.”
“Yeah?”
“That Odin Doti video did really well.”
The gloomy president brightened as well and chimed in.
“That’s right, that’s right. The views have already popped off.”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“What do you mean, yeah? The tide’s coming in and you’re not going to row? And you call yourself a VTuber?”
“Honestly, I’m still not sure if I’m a VTuber…”
“Hey, then are you done streaming? Are you not a broadcaster?”
The president began her counterattack.
If I had an old-timer like that, I’d do about three guest segments, pull about five special YouTube videos out of it, and then… (omitted)… I’d even call the other kids and run raid content with them, so on and so forth.
But Hanami let it go in one ear and out the other.
“I already deleted Odin Doti.”
“You idiot!!!”
Seriously, this unni’s vocal cords were needlessly made of steel.
Off-stream, there wasn’t even an editor to lower the decibels.
It was right before the two of them were about to start bickering.
Ruka, who had been quiet, cut in with a serious voice.
“Unni.”
“Y-yeah. What is it, Ruka?”
“Did you see the view count on this?”
“No, I know the views are good too, okay? But if I install this again, I feel like I’ll end up running all the way to the ending, and that scares me. I barely managed to appease the viewers, but if I do this, it’s like I’m giving them an opening, right? Like I actually want it, right? They’ll come charging in like that. You know how it is too. Even the kids who accept it if you give them absolutely no room will get so clingy once you give them even one opening—”
“That’s not it.”
Ruka denied it in a troubled voice.
“No. Something’s weird.”
“…What is?”
“The views are copying themselves every time I refresh?”