[Stream] Parents And Children

“I am Verchera Merisis, the one and only Queen of the Demon Realm, the Demon Lord. You have done well to gather here again tonight, my subjects.”

Mixed in among the viewers who immediately started commenting from the moment I gave my opening greeting was a little remark like that.

I couldn’t tell whether it had been said mockingly to get on my nerves or affectionately as a bit of teasing. Still, it really drove home how important it was to think about whether your emotions and intentions actually came across when all the other person could see were written words.

Something you meant as encouragement could end up hurting the other person instead, so words really were surprisingly difficult things.

“Now then, I was unable to pop all the Bubbles last time. Tonight, I would like to get through as many questions as possible, but as I posted on Monology, I have also been compiling a list of piano pieces. I have not narrowed them down yet. So for today as well, I suppose I shall answer questions picked automatically.”

Yep, that was some obvious bait.

Since it would be a prerecorded video, I supposed it was technically possible to outsource it if someone really wanted to.

But even if I outsourced something like that, I’d inevitably slip up sooner or later, and more importantly, I didn’t have the money to outsource it, nor was there any reason for me to spend money on something I could do myself.

Yeah, might as well ignore it.

They could just watch the video and see for themselves.

If I stopped to care about every little thing, I’d never get anywhere.

“With that, let us get straight to the first one. ‘Good evening, Your Majesty. I am one of your subjects. By the way, Your Majesty, you said you are a high-school girl in the flower of youth, but do you have any friends at school?’ Hmm, I fail to see what is so interesting about asking such a thing… I do not know whether we are close enough to call each other friends, but I have people I talk to.”

“Hmm. I do not know what exactly qualifies someone as a ‘friend.’ If you mean people I go out and have fun with, then no. Or rather, I do not particularly feel the urge to go out and spend time with someone. I might go if invited, but I doubt I would ever be the one to invite them. There are simply too many things I wish to do, such as making videos and the like.”

Truthfully, I thought I had been a loner.

After all, until recently, nobody had ever really gone out of their way to talk to me.

But now that I’d recovered the memories of my previous life, I’d started talking normally with Yuika and Tomo, and through those two, I’d begun chatting a little with some of the other girls too.

Hmm. Philosophical.

Calling me a loner didn’t feel quite right anymore.

This was complicated. I was stuck somewhere in between.

“All right, next. ‘Are there any Vtubers you respect?’ Hmm, in my case, I am not exactly a hardcore fan of any particular person. I simply watch various people and enjoy myself. So I suppose there is no one specific person. Next, ‘What made you decide to become a Vtuber?’ That would be the recommendation of someone close to me.”

I answered the harmless, inoffensive questions one after another without pausing unnecessarily.

The comment section had been about eighty percent ordinary reactions so far, with the remaining twenty percent seeming rather anti-ish.

Just as Yuzu-neesan had said, they apparently really were searching for anything they could attack me over, occasionally tossing out baiting remarks, but unfortunately for them, I wasn’t the sort to get irritated by every little comment like that.

If anything, I was more likely to look at them with a little pity and think, Wow, they’re really desperate.

As I kept following the flow of comments and answering various questions, that particular submission came up.

“Next. ‘I’m in my second year of middle school. I’m being bullied at school, and going to school is painful. My parents seemed worried about me, but I couldn’t tell them anything. Recently, they’ve stopped asking me about it too. I don’t even want to leave my room. What should I do?’ Hmm…”

Well, it was true that it wouldn’t.

If the current me were bullied, there was almost no doubt that my one and only response would be, “Hit back until they were sick of it—until they were crying and begging on their knees.”

Now that my magic had returned, my physical abilities had been enhanced by magic as well.

During PE, I had to try extremely hard to hold back—in a completely different sense of the phrase.

“First, allow me to apologize for taking so long to answer. I am sorry. It took me far too long to notice the voice you must finally have managed to squeeze out.”

“You wrote that your parents had been worried about you, but if your family is saying nothing now, then perhaps they themselves do not know how you wish to handle this or what they should do to help you. A person gives birth to a child and becomes a parent while raising that child. Parents are anxious too.”

Even including my previous life, I had never been anyone’s parent.

But some of my former subordinates had parents, and some had children of their own.

There were parents who lamented that they’d failed in raising their children, children who hated their parents, children who comforted their parents, and parents and children who got along so well they were practically friends.

But every one of them had always said the same thing.

—No one became a fine parent from the very beginning.

They felt they had to protect their children, so they stiffened their resolve, taught them, sometimes scolded them, and kept walking ahead so their children would never see how weak or pathetic they could be. They walked together, yet believed they absolutely had to remain in front. That, they said, was what it meant to be a parent.

“Some parents may be unable to stop walking because they are determined never to show their children an undignified side of themselves. Others may forget how to reach out a hand. And some, after walking in front for too long, may begin behaving as though they rule their own tiny world. In the end, even a parent is still merely one human being. Every person is different, and no parent is an absolute being.”

—I found myself wondering how I ought to deal with my child, you see.

The subordinate who had said that with an awkward smile had ultimately come to understand his child by getting into a full-blown fistfight with them.

—I didn’t want them to see me looking pathetic, and before I knew it…

The subordinate who had looked away with a bitter expression had despaired after his child left home.

I had never had a child of my own, but even so, I knew.

“The fact that they stopped asking does not mean they abandoned you. Your parents likely do not know what they should do for you or how they should help, and are hoping you will tell them what you want. You are probably such a considerate, kind child who rarely causes trouble for your parents that they have never had much reason to struggle over how to deal with you before. And so now, when something like this has happened, they themselves are troubled because they do not know what they should do.”

Being a parent did not mean they never struggled.

Being a parent did not mean they understood everything.

Being a parent did not make someone an absolute existence.

“You are still a child. Worrying that telling your parents will cause them trouble is nothing more than an adorable concern. Why hesitate to trouble them? Why hold back? Be as selfish as you please and make them worry. After all, there is only so much time in one’s life when one is allowed to be a child.”

Calling me an angel was disrespectful. Want me to curse you?

“If you tell your parents and they still do nothing, offering only empty encouragement about willpower and telling you to tough it out, then you may leave home. However, I am not telling you to run away without a plan. Properly research organizations whose purpose is to protect people, explain your circumstances honestly, and consult them about what you must do to reach them. Do not rely on some faceless stranger you met somewhere. Find an organization that can prove it is genuinely active. Choosing to separate yourself from your parents also means acting under your own responsibility and learning to manage your own life properly. So the first thing you should do is begin by finding such organizations.”

“…The world one sees in their mid-teens is so small that, once grown, one may look back and think it was barely anything at all. But to the person living through it, that small world is the only world they have. The real world is vast, and countless ways of living are scattered throughout it. Though I suppose it is strange for me, an active high-school girl myself, to be saying such things.”

“Hmm. If you can begin moving forward quickly, then that is certainly for the best. But there is no need to force yourself to hurry either. The heart is an exceedingly troublesome thing. It is not uncommon for something to look intact while being riddled with cracks beneath the surface. If you are wounded, then you need time to rest your wings. Life is not about flying without pause. Rest as much as you need, and then shine brilliantly once more. For seeing you shine is what brings me the greatest pleasure of all.”

I thought leaving things on such a somber note would be a little much, so I deliberately brought back the very phrase that had nearly gotten me canceled before, and the comments predictably accelerated at once.

And buried amid that rapidly flowing stream of comments—

Yet unmistakably there—

I noticed one short message saying, “Thank you,” almost as though it were hiding within a thicket made of words, and the corners of my mouth lifted into a small smile.