Dinner was as uneventful as always. It seems father still hadn’t cheered up, so there was no conversation, let alone an interrogation. The only words spoken throughout dinner, was me greeting him. Well, it’s not like I’m going to complain about it. The less I speak to him, the better my day tends to be. I’m looking forward to the next time he has a business trip. Those trips of his tend to be the only times I have days, sometimes even weeks, where I don’t have to speak to him. The household servants will still report what I do to him every day, but acting correctly becomes a lot easier when I don’t have to constantly hold in frowns as a result of talking to father.

For now, I just got back to my office and I am wondering what I should do. Having had time to think about it during dinner, I am slowly starting to have some regrets about the way I applied to ViLS. I’m not regretting the actual fact I applied - no, that felt great to do - but more so the fact I applied without having done any preparation beforehand. I didn’t know anything about VTubers apart from the very basics before today, and now I’ve applied to become one myself. Well, my application was done on a whim, and it’s not like doing things on a whim usually involves a lot of thinking about what exactly it is you’re doing..

The motivation I gave for applying was probably not something they really look for, so I’m not exactly expecting all too much out of my application. Even so, “Always prepare for every result your actions might cause, no matter how unlikely they might be.”, father once said. No matter how unlikely it might be, if I somehow do get accepted, I will need to know what to do. Preparing for results can not be done when you have already gotten said results. But how do I even prepare for this? Should I-

“Young mistress, excuse my rudeness, but are you alright? You seem somewhat distracted.” Helga pulls me out of my thoughts. Ah, right, Helga was here too.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I reply to her. That’s right, I am still fine. If, hypothetically speaking, I were to be invited for an interview, then that interview would at its earliest be planned for the day after tomorrow. In other words, I still have a full day to prepare. I’ve worked with tighter deadlines before, so I shouldn’t have a problem with this.

I’m preparing for a job interview about becoming a VTuber, so I should first find out what exactly such a job would entail. If that’s the case, then there should be no better way to learn about it than to watch people who’ve been doing this job for half a year already. So, to start, I should just watch some VTubers.

“Helga, I have finished my work for the day, so I’ll be spending some time reading before preparing for the night. You can retire for the day,” I tell Helga. If I’m going to be watching VTubers, I can’t have a witness. I can’t say for sure that Helga would report what exactly I’m watching to father, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Helga looks somewhat surprised by the dismissal, and doesn’t respond immediately. Well, of course she’d be surprised. I wouldn’t normally dismiss her if I’m just planning on reading, after all. Either way, I don’t want her to see me watching VTubers. After a moment, Helga regains her composure and gives a final bow for the day. “I understand. Have a good night, young mistress.”

After Helga leaves, I wait a few more moments, before starting up my computer again. Now then, time to watch some VTubers. I open the internet browser and go onto MyTube. I think for a moment about how I'm going to do this. I guess the easiest way would to just search for 'ViLS', so I type that into the search bar.

A lot of results show up, so I start to look through them to see if there’s any that stand out. After a little bit of scrolling, I notice that one of the results has a red icon saying ‘Live’ next to it. So one of the ViLS members is currently streaming, then.

[Local Wickedness] Mom come pick me up I'm scared [ViLS]
Ava Le Son Ch.
3.3K watching

I recognise the name of the person streaming from the list of members on ViLS's website, one of the members who had a foreign sounding name. Local Wickedness is probably the name of a game or something? I'll have to admit I don't know much about gaming, so the name doesn't ring a bell with me. Let's just see what it's about. I click to open the strea-

“IYAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! AAAAAGH, I HATE YOU!! YOU STUPID-”

I close the stream. Out of reflex, mostly.

I think she just got scared there, but I have to say, I didn’t know humans could make such a sound.. such an ear-piercing screech. Thank god I’m wearing headphones. With a sound like that, even with my office being soundproof, Helga might come running back thinking I’m getting killed or something…

Let’s give this another attempt, hopefully without deafening myself this time. I click the stream again, and this time I see what looks like a pause screen of sorts. On the left side of the screen are messages from the stream’s chat, scrolling by at a fast pace, and on the bottom right of the screen is Ava Le Son’s VTuber avatar. A young woman with dark maroon hair, and similarly dark green eyes. She’s wearing a hood, which is covering most of her hair. With armor that seems to be made out of leather, and shoulder pads of the same material, in addition to the cloak and hood, it seems she’s supposed to look like your stereotypical fantasy rogue.

“Guaaah.. I hate jumpscares. Who ever thought those were a good idea..” Ava complains, her avatar currently showing a displeased face, “This is the last time I’m betting a punishment game on anything…”

Oh, so she’s not playing this voluntarily, but as punishment for losing a bet? But.. why would you ever bet on something if you’re not sure you will win..? Isn’t it just your own fault at that point?

Aside from that, though. I do have to say, this Ava certainly has an accent. I can’t say for sure where she’s from, but she certainly isn’t a native Japanese speaker, so perhaps that really does mean that foreign members have a similarly foreign name. Then again, I haven’t watched any other VTubers, so there is no way I can say for sure.

I watch a bit more of the stream, up until the point she comes by another jumpscare, at which point I decide I’ve seen enough of this stream. I can understand why this Ava hates jumpscares..

I go back to MyTube’s homepage, and- ..there seems to be a lot of ViLS-related videos being recommended all of a sudden..? I can’t say I paid too much attention to the recommended videos before, but I could swear there weren’t this many..

In between all the recommended videos, I see one that’s named in a similar way to Ava Le Son’s stream. In fact, after taking a glance at the length of the video, it seems to actually be a full stream, just as a video. Does MyTube automatically save any past livestreams as videos?

[Q&A / Freetalk] Answering Gummies and Talking Trash [ViLS]
Alvie Sofos Ch.
311K views • Streamed 5 days ago

I click on the stream, and am greeted with an animation of what is probably a chibi version of the VTuber herself. If I have to guess, this is probably a loading screen or something similar. I’m not planning on watching the entire hour and a half of this stream, so I skip to somewhere in the middle of it.

On screen, front and center, is the VTuber avatar. A girl with wavy pink hair down to her shoulders, and bright blue eyes. In contrast with those bright colors, she’s wearing a dark purple kimono, decorated with sparkling stars near the bottom. The most peculiar part of her design, though, are the fox ears on top of her head. The avatar is a lot bigger than Ava Le Son’s was, but that’s probably since it’s the main focus of this stream. 

On her right side is her chat, but on the left side of the screen is a textbox with a question in it.

[I saw you superchat in Kara’s stream. Does that mean you’re one of us?]

“What do you mean by “You really give money to your colleagues huh…”? What’s with the ellipsis?! Are you judging me?” Alvie Sofos suddenly shouts in an exasperated voice, “As if you wouldn’t do the same if you had the money to spend!”

I’m confused for a moment by the strange answer to the question, before I realize she’s probably reacting to a message from the chat. I guess she’s already answered the question that’s being shown on screen. 

I follow the chat while she talks, and enjoy the back-and-forth between Alvie Sofos and the chat for a bit. When I look at the clock after what felt like a few minutes, I notice that a good 15 minutes have already passed while I was watching. Time flies huh..

I can see why people like these kinds of things, though. Just watching someone enjoying themselves and being unapologetically themselves, while being able to directly interact with them through the chat. I assume this kind of content makes you feel much closer to an online personality than something like a scripted video would. It almost makes you feel like you’re just talking to the person directly. And since they’re just being themselves without holding back, you probably get to know them better too. What kind of things they like and dislike, what they do in their life. Especially to those who don’t have people to talk to in their daily life, someone like this probably feels like a friend they’ve never met.

Though, that’s just an assumption. I don’t exactly have any friends myself, nor have I ever had any, so I can’t really say with certainty that this is what a friend would be like.

I continue watching for a bit longer, before I go back to MyTube’s homepage, and open another recommended video that looks interesting. This one seems to be a short clip of not even 5 minutes, taken from a past stream. I assume it’s something for people who don’t have the time to watch entire streams, but still want to see the highlights.

After watching the short clip, I see another one recommended on the side of the screen, and decide to check it out. After watching it, I repeat the process and watch another clip.

Then after that, I watch another clip.

Another one.

And another one..

After a short while, I take a quick glance at the clock.

“Huh..?” I can’t help but let out a sound of surprise.

What do you mean, 1:24 am..? Didn’t I start watching around 9 pm? 

That’s- ..how did that even happen? This barely felt like a single hour, let alone four times that amount… 

Oh god, I should’ve been sleeping hours ago. I can still get a decent amount of rest, right? Helga is not going to be happy if I have bags under my eyes tomorrow when I have to go to school…

Senpapi

TIL you can just press shift+enter to not get the space in between lines... Would've been nice if I had that knowledge, like, 2 chapters ago. Oh well.

So as you've probably noticed already, brand names in this story are not exactly the same as they are in our real world. For some of these names (MyTube, Googol, etc.), the real world equivalent is easy to guess due to a very similar name, but there's a few that might not be all that obvious at first glance. For these, I haven't really mentioned what their real world equivalents are since I think the context around them gives enough of an idea to be able to reliably guess it. If there are any names that do really confuse you, please do ask in the comments. A lot of them will make frequent appearances in the story, and I would hate for them to ruin your understanding of what's happening.

Either way, I hope you enjoyed reading.