[Stream] A Minor Controversy — Surface

“Welcome, my subjects. We are Verchera Merisis. We, the one and only Queen of the Demon Realm, have graciously set aside time for you again tonight. Consider yourselves honored.”

“Hm, ‘liege’ is not quite right. Well, no matter. Now then, this is Our second stream. Tonight’s theme is casual conversation… but are Our channel subscribers not increasing far too quickly?”

Indeed, tonight marked my second stream as Us.

After making friends at school and thinking I might finally escape being a loner, I somehow ended up frightening everyone because of a teacher, so aside from Yuika and Tomo I barely spoke to anyone before coming home and deciding to do a chatting stream.

The reason I had hastily added a stream like this to my schedule was that despite doing no streams and uploading no videos since my debut, my channel had somehow surpassed four thousand subscribers.

I certainly hadn’t expected it to grow this much. I’d originally figured I could take things easy and stream two or three times a week, but with so many subscribers now, I couldn’t exactly leave the channel untouched, so I decided to go live without setting any particular theme.

“Mm, very well. We had no time to decide upon any particular subject tonight. As We already posted on Monology, We intend to accept questions and answer them one by one. We are using the anonymous submission tool ‘Bubble.’ Though We did promote it on Monology as well.”

The comments had become considerably more casual, giving them a very different flavor compared to the debut stream.

Apparently, my debut had been so impactful that many people had been left speechless, resulting in surprisingly few comments during the actual broadcast.

There were even people in the archived comments mentioning that exact thing, which made it clear just how much of an impact it had apparently made.

“First is this one: ‘Please tell us your age, height, weight, and measurements.’ Mm. There is a self-introduction slide in the description of the previous archive, is there not? Go look there, fool.”

“They’re being selected automatically in order. Still, ending it there would be rather dull, so We shall answer. We do not know Our age, though it exceeds one thousand. Our height is 163 centimeters. We shall not tell you Our weight or measurements.”

“Well, refusing to answer everything outright would hardly do. That said, We have no intention of explaining the same thing repeatedly. If something can be found by looking it up yourselves, it would be helpful if you did so.”

As new viewers joined and longtime viewers accumulated more knowledge, catching up on old archives would only become harder the longer I continued streaming.

Even after finding a favorite streamer to support, people often didn’t have enough time to catch up on everything. Treating what longtime viewers knew as though all viewers naturally knew it too wasn’t very welcoming to newcomers.

On the other hand, there would be no end to it if I answered every single thing people asked me to explain.

So it was better to establish from the beginning that “I generally won’t answer things you can easily find out yourselves.”

If I later became busy or stopped having enough time, having people complain, “But you used to answer us,” would be far too troublesome.

“Now then, next is: ‘Your introduction video was a voiceless PV, and your debut stream began with “Hold your heads low,” Your Majesty, but what kind of streams do you plan on doing going forward? Personally, your voice is so clear and beautiful that I’d love to see singing streams.’”

The first video uploaded to my channel had essentially been a promotional video for myself.

Because my appearance had made me withdrawn from a young age, I had tended toward solitary hobbies. I spent my time on music such as piano, drawing with a pen tablet, and both 2D and 3D modeling—things I could quietly work on alone at home.

Perhaps because I had dabbled in all sorts of fields during my previous life as the Demon Lord, I also possessed a decent amount of artistic knowledge.

Maybe there had already been signs of that even before I remembered my previous life. Looking back, I had learned music and drawing at a speed that ordinary people simply couldn’t compare to, and because I had always been the obsessive type, I had also thrown myself strangely hard into learning modeling and digital illustration.

Being a lonely introvert had at least left me with plenty of time.

“Ah, that music was something We composed as a pastime. Both the composition and arrangement were Ours. Incidentally, We also drew and created the PV itself.”

“What would We gain by lying? This very body of Ours was also drawn by Our own hand. Thus, We have no ‘mama,’ as they say in this industry.”

It had been Mom and my aunt, Yuzu-neesan, who suggested that I become a Vtuber.

But I hadn’t hired an artist or outsourced the character art or modeling. I had handled those myself.

Of course, that was also why it had taken nearly half a year from the moment I decided to do it until I actually debuted.

I suspected that even before the stream where I fully regained my past-life memories, back when I first decided to become a Vtuber, I had already been faintly beginning to remember my previous life.

“Of course not. In this world, We are currently a high-school girl, you know? We are hardly making a living as an illustrator or musician.”

“Kukuku, this much is fine. We have no intention of openly broadcasting Our identity, but neither are We particularly hiding it. However, We dislike being pestered. If you forcibly try to identify Us and do something foolish—We shall crush you.”

It wasn’t as though I absolutely refused to let my real identity become known.

In my case, the person inside and the illustration looked almost identical anyway.

The differences were that my current human ears were not pointed like those of my demon race in the previous world.

I didn’t wear the earrings depicted in the model.

And because I wasn’t wearing eyeshadow or eyeliner, my real face looked somewhat younger than the illustration.

“Well, this too is part of Bubble’s charm. We had no particular desire to go around announcing such things to you.”

“Kakaka, do not concern yourself with it. We had time and passion. If you possess time and passion as well, then not only could you stand beside Us—you might even surpass Us.”

“Hah! Talent, you say? Do not disguise your own immaturity—your inability to maintain passion until your heart breaks and you throw everything away—by calling it a matter of talent. Only those who have spent their time and passion to the absolute limit may speak of talent, fool. Do not casually invoke talent unless you have pursued something to its furthest reaches, struck a wall, and still continued struggling against it.”

“Kuhah! How utterly… amusing. You mean to tell Us that because We are young, We know nothing, and that reality is not so kind? Kukukuku. No matter the age or world, those most accustomed to giving up are always the quickest to pretend they have achieved enlightenment. Will you then insist that makes you wise? That you simply know your place? Kuhaha, ridiculous. Those who cannot even take pride in themselves and merely yelp from the sidelines are called losers.”

As I watched the comments grow hostile, I smiled—and yet anger rose within me.

But it was not anger toward the people complaining about me.

It was anger toward the nature of this world, where people had to become accustomed to killing their own hearts, too ashamed to say such things openly, covering up the fact that they had been left smoldering like defeated dogs.

“Kukuku. If Our words merely anger you, and all you can do is spew irritating complaints, then We have no interest in you. As We said during Our debut, begone.”

—However, I added, smiling.

“But if Our words made you think, ‘Damn it,’ if they made you feel frustrated—why do you not realize that this is proof that what once burned as passion within you, all the feelings you poured into it, are still smoldering there? Why can you not understand that the very thing you covered up and tried to forget still remains within you strongly enough that mere words from Us could reignite it?”

If someone had truly forgotten, then their heart would never tremble again.

It would quietly rot away, turn to ash, and disappear on the wind.

But if my words made them feel something, then it had neither been forgotten nor erased.

It was merely still smoldering somewhere inside their heart.

Was forgetting something admirable?

Was giving up somehow noble?

When society told people to throw away their dreams and become adults, when their passion was denied, where exactly was that rejected passion supposed to go?

To have the passion they had poured themselves into denied, then cover up the wounded heart it left behind and pretend not to see it—as though that were somehow the correct thing to do—was simply wrong.

So if my words made them angry, I wanted them to remember.

And then—to reclaim that radiance once more.

“Those who hear Our words, grit their teeth in frustration, and possess enough spirit to wish to prove Us wrong—those are the ones We look forward to. Take that passion of yours, that smoldering thing you have allowed to rot inside you, and set your heart ablaze so that it may finally be sublimated. Cast aside your worthless pride. Even if you must crawl through the mud, if you possess the spirit to astonish Us, then show it to Us. Show Us that this is your radiance. Whenever you are ready. We shall wait as long as necessary for the brilliance you have to show.”

“Kukukuku…! We are the Demon Lord, Verchera Merisis, the one and only Demon Lord who rules the Demon Realm! Make the skills you have polished, the techniques you have honed, reach Us! Set your hearts ablaze! Kindle your passion! We shall not permit Our subjects to live their lives merely smoldering away! Deliver your radiance unto Us!”

“Incidentally, as for the direction of Our streams, We may do chatting streams, singing streams, perhaps even release original songs. We intend to try various things. Ah, and We may play games eventually as well.”

————That day, clips from my stream spread online in a way that bordered on a minor controversy.

However, while those clips certainly circulated in something close to a flame war, a strangely large number of the reactions ended up being positive.

Completely unaware of any of that when I went to sleep, I woke the next morning to discover that my channel had surpassed ten thousand subscribers, causing me to spectacularly spit out my tea first thing in the morning.

…Wait, why?

I’m not even trying to flatter anyone, and I’m practically insulting people left and right. Shouldn’t my subscribers be going down instead??