Preparing For A Post-Exam Stream

Right in the middle of final exams, I uploaded a video of myself playing the piano.

Studying for exams? Fwahaha, magic is the best.

Making and editing the video took overwhelmingly more time.

Video editing really did take quite a while in the end… Before I knew it, several hours would have passed.

For the piano video, I ultimately took inspiration from other streamers and showed both my hands and feet while occasionally talking during the performance, making sure to emphasize that I really was the one playing.

I didn’t want people claiming somebody else was doing it for me.

Judging from the comments on the video, most people seemed to accept it normally.

I’d wondered whether there would be a lot of haters, but somehow things seemed to have died down considerably.

That said, I did not need comments about how thin my arms were.

I wanted to ask what exactly they were looking at.

Why would a Vtuber be happy about having her physical appearance complimented?

Next was the drawing video, but I was thinking I might do that one as a livestream after all.

There was a game where you drew pictures and sold them to NPCs, so I figured I could just use that.

There was no point drawing anything too elaborate anyway, and I could stick to stylized drawings. Anything that took a long time, I’d just upload to Monology instead.

Things at school had also begun settling down now that all that remained was moving up to the next school year, but that boy called Tojo still kept trying to talk to me, and the girls who were after him were obviously treating me like an enemy, so I had a feeling something might happen before the year ended.

If they were going to try something, they’d probably have to do it before the classes were reshuffled anyway.

Well, I’d already laid a trap of my own, so I supposed I could leave things alone until something actually happened.

Just as she’d said before, Mom was currently away on an extended filming job.

I’d also taken a little trip farther away to test whether I could use my magic, and while I didn’t have as much power as in my previous life, I could still use magic more than well enough.

I’d even set the school rooftop as a teleportation destination, so if necessary I could sleep until the very last possible minute.

Yep, wonderful.

There was also such a thing as flight magic, but obviously I wasn’t going to fly through the sky.

Flying around in this world would attract far too much attention.

I could manage it by making myself invisible, but I didn’t want to fly badly enough to go that far.

Anyway.

At the moment, I was trying to escape reality by staring at the words displayed in front of me.

『Would you collab with our Effie??』

…Yep. That.

It was written in a chat message from Yuzu-neesan.

Personally, I had absolutely no problem with it, but I couldn’t help wondering what to make of the proposal.

The other party had more than 1.5 million subscribers and was one of Gem Pro’s representative Vtubers.

Meanwhile, I had thirty thousand subscribers… Wait, I was at thirty thousand now. Well, setting that aside, I was still just an independent Vtuber with relatively little name recognition.

I couldn’t understand what possible benefit there would be in the two of us doing a collaboration stream together.

Especially since, if I said so myself, I’d already caused my share of controversy.

『Um, I’m fine with it, but what’s the reason?』

『Effie says she wants to collaborate with you.』

That reply came surprisingly fast.

Ah, right. Technically, this was part of Yuzu-neesan’s job too.

Well, I didn’t have any reason to refuse.

Come to think of it, my monetization had finally been approved too, so I was planning to do a stream to thank everyone for that.

『I’m okay with it. I’m just a little surprised collaborations can get approved that casually.』

『Normally, it is hard to arrange one unless there’s a proper benefit involved. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.』

『Oh? There is?』

『Yes. It motivates Effie.』

…Was that… a benefit?

While I froze at the unexpected answer, the chat showed Yuzu-neesan typing, and then another message arrived.

『That girl has emotional ups and downs, so keeping her motivated is important. It isn’t unusual for things not to go the way she wants, depending on the situation.』

『Sounds kind of difficult?』

『…Well, that’s why it isn’t as though Gem Pro gets nothing out of this. You can think of it as a request from Gem Pro.』

I see. A request from Gem Pro.

In other words, Yuzu-neesan was approaching me and negotiating with me in an official work capacity, or something along those lines.

It wasn’t exactly about repaying a favor, but Yuzu-neesan had been the one to recommend becoming a Vtuber to me and had even helped me choose my equipment, so I wanted to help her out as much as I could.

Yeah. I thought I’d accept.

『All right, I’ll do it. When? And have you heard what she wants to do for the collaboration?』

『Thank you, that really helps! We’ll arrange it for sometime during your spring break. I’ll have Effie put her ideas together by the day after tomorrow, and I’ll come over again that evening.』

『Got it. I’m fine on my end, so don’t push yourself too hard.』

『Thanks. Seriously, that helps a lot. I’ll contact you again if anything comes up.』

Hmm. What should I do?

Ephir-san’s streams were mostly FPS games.

She was apparently famous for being extremely good at them, appeared in all sorts of tournaments, and was supposedly considered one of the strongest Vtubers around.

I’d never played those kinds of games before, but if I were going to play something with Ephir-san, would it probably be a game like that?

While watching Ephir-san’s videos, I went through several of her gaming streams.

Hmm. Apparently the game she’d been playing recently was an FPS called 『OFA』.

It was a team survival game where players formed teams of four, and the last team left alive won.

Apparently, you fought using guns, knives, grenades, and other weapons you picked up, while each character also had something like a superpower as a special ability.

I’d planned to do a monetization thank-you stream tonight, but if all I did was thank everyone, it would end too quickly, so maybe I’d combine it with trying out the game for a bit.

I immediately started downloading the game while watching a beginner’s guide from one of Ephir-san’s videos.

So different weapons had different recoil, range, and power.

The abilities seemed pretty different too, and the maps were huge, so it looked like you’d have a hard time unless you knew them thoroughly.

If it were me in my previous life, I’d probably have blown away the buildings along with everything else…

If I had to fight without destroying the buildings, then I’d need to understand their layouts or I’d end up getting outmaneuvered.

Maybe I should practice for a while before tonight’s stream.

No, maybe it would be more entertaining if I wandered around like an obvious beginner?

It would certainly make it easier for people to tell that I really was new.

《—For curved throws like this, grenades are easier. All right, got a hit! Did you see that, you camping bastard?!》

…Yep.

Well, it was that kind of game.

Apparently people got excited and started swearing when they played.

I’d seen plenty of videos where streamers suddenly became incredibly foul-mouthed, slammed their desks, and generally went completely wild, so I knew that sort of thing was practically a tradition.

It looked like you had to pick up items scattered around the map and gradually build your loadout, but were the locations of most things more or less fixed?

I was watching at double speed, and from what I could tell, if you didn’t understand elevation differences, the insides and outsides of buildings, ledges—in other words, where enemies could move and how—you’d constantly find them in places you hadn’t expected.

For now, I’d announce the monetization thank-you stream plus gaming stream on Monology, then make a thumbnail.