"I'll be straight with you. Roumaru, your voice sounds like an old man's, and it doesn't sell."
Over the monitor in the meeting room. Shinozuka, my manager, stifled a yawn as he said it flat out.
Me: Daichi Morita, twenty-six. VTuber "Roumaru."
Signed to an agency, thirty-two hundred subscribers. Bottom tier.
"What's taking off right now is the high, clear type. You seen Leo Renjo? Your genmate. Four hundred thousand in six months. Four hundred thousand."
In the corner of the screen was one of Leo's stream thumbnails.
A sparkling, silver-haired pretty-boy avatar. Four hundred twenty thousand subscribers.
My natural voice was low. Ever since I was a kid, people had told me I sounded "like some guy on the radio."
When I forced myself to put on a higher voice, my throat cracked, and apparently that made it even more painful to listen to.
"This isn't something effort can fix. It's talent. A voice is talent."
I put a hand to my throat.
For the past year, I'd gone to voice training. How to use my throat to hit high notes, how to let the breath out—I'd practiced all of it exactly the way I was taught.
Every time I played back the recordings, the voice I'd forced upward sounded thin, flimsy, and even to me, a little creepy.
"Look, Roumaru, I know you're a hard worker. But effort's pointless unless you put it where you can grow, you know?"
Shinozuka slid a document across to me.
Notice of Contract Termination.
"End of the month. The agency's taking back the rights to the avatar, so go ahead and do a 'farewell party' or something on your last stream. With three thousand subs, a few'll probably show up out of obligation."
Obligation.
That word stuck in my chest in a strange way.
"Um, Mr. Shinozuka."
"Hm?"
"My cooking streams, and... when I talk about cooking for myself in chat streams, the comments actually pick up a fair bit, so—"
"Can a stir-fried bean sprout recipe pull in four hundred thousand?"
I had nothing to say to that.
That night, I got a call from Leo, my genmate.
It wasn't like we were close. We'd never even grabbed a meal together.
"Daichi, I heard. You got canned."
Leo's real voice, without the act, was flakier than I'd expected.
"Not to be a jerk, but it's kinda obvious, right? You're a VTuber and your voice is way off from your look. A wolf avatar with an old-man voice? That's a horror movie."
"...Yeah, I guess."
"Here's some advice. In the end, being a VTuber's all about how well you match the avatar. Listeners wanna dream. They don't need the smell of everyday life or whatever."
"The smell of everyday life, huh."
"Yeah, yeah. You talk about cooking for yourself a lot in your chat streams, right? Behind your back, people say that stuff's way too boring, it's painful. Like, what's a VTuber doing talking budget recipes?"
"...I see."
"Honestly, I've thought so from the start. You can't hide how old the guy inside is. Good work out there, man."
The call ended.
I stood in the kitchen and opened the fridge.
One bag of bean sprouts, ninety-eight yen. Two eggs.
Same as every month.
Being a VTuber was a pipe dream.
Convenience store shifts by day, streams by night. Even so, my savings only kept shrinking, and every time rent day came around, my stomach hurt.
Even so, I couldn't quit.
Because only when I was talking did I feel like I was any use to anyone.
I heated the frying pan and tossed in the bean sprouts.
A sizzle, and the steam rose.
That sound, at least, I loved.
No matter who laughed at me, I still got hungry, and food still tasted good.
Standing in the kitchen steam, strangely enough, that groveling feeling faded just a little.
One DM from a listener on my phone.
It was from "Cat-Rice Sis," an older listener who hadn't missed a single stream in six months.
She always came late at night and quietly watched until the stream ended.
"Roumaru, I'm definitely watching your last stream. I love your voice. It calms me down."
"I work night shifts, you see. When I get home and hear your voice, that's when I finally feel like my day is over. I just wanted to tell you that."
I read that message over and over.
Come to think of it, people like her had been slowly growing in number lately.
They never posted anything flashy. But every night, like clockwork, they came, and quietly stayed until the stream was over—regulars like that, few enough that I could count them, but they were definitely there.
Even if it was just one person, someone was saying that to me.
Then at least at the end, I'd go out properly, with a smile.
I brought the bean sprouts to my mouth.
Seasoned with nothing but salt, they tasted awfully salty.
Tomorrow was my last day streaming as Roumaru.