“Right,” Chami-chan nodded. “Then here goes... I think you owe it to yourself to find where you truly belong, where you shine brightest. For me, that’s Live-On, and I think, maybe—just maybe—that’s where it is for you too? I don’t mean to presume, but when you stream, when you talk about the things you love, that’s when you seem happiest, like you’re truly shining. Yeah. Anyway, that’s all from me.”
Tadasu’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “I see. Thank you.”
The call ended there. Tadasu stared at the now-inactive call screen, then squeezed her eyelids shut. She could almost feel the electric pulse of her synapses firing, scattering in different directions, diverging, trying to make sense of themselves. But they all led back to point toward one inescapable truth.
When she opened her eyes again, her mind felt crystal clear. The ticklish ache in her chest, that vague discomfort she had never wanted to name, had vanished. It wasn’t unplaceable; she had just refused to see it. It was her true self—caged for too long—ready, at last, to take flight.
Meanwhile, Churiri was engaged in her own second round of soul-searching. This time, she had reached out to gen four’s Alice Soma and Ehrai Sonokaze.
After Churiri gave a quick recap of the circumstances, Ehrai fell into a pensive silence, and Alice groaned like she was mulling over a hard test problem.
“Mmm... Sorry. I don’t think I’ll be of much help here,” Alice finally said.
“I see,” Churiri replied. “That’s all right. It’s sudden, I know. Sorry for putting you on the spot.”
“Mmm...! Ah! Wait! If I think in terms of me and Awayuki-dono, I might be able to come up with something!”
Churiri’s eyes lit up. “Oh! Like you’re me and Tadasu’s Awayuki-san? That works! So what would you do in that scenario?”
A brief moment of silence.
“Nope, still got nothing.”
“...Feels like finally finding a forum thread with your exact question, only to find everyone else is just as confused as you.”
“I mean, even hypothetically, I can’t think of a situation where I wouldn’t accept Awayuki-dono’s decision with grace.”
“Really? Even if she decided to quit VTubing? That would be it for you and her.”
“If Awayuki-dono wasn’t in the right state of mind, I’d do everything I could to calm her down and hear her out. But if it was a choice she made with a clear head, I’d accept it, even if it was hard.”
“Why, though?”
“Mm... I’m not sure if there’s a concrete reason... It’s just respect, I guess? She’s my idol. I’d do anything for her—even if that means accepting that she wants out.”
Alice-chan ended with an awkward chuckle. Churiri found herself unable to come up with a follow-up.
“Okay! Well, I’m ready over here~.” Just as the silence started to feel endless, Ehrai spoke up. “Sensei, I have a question for you. What do you think sets gen four apart from the other gens in Live-On?”
“What sets gen four apart?” Churiri echoed before falling into thought. “Sorry, I’m clueless. About as clueless as the people who like to gossip about their coworkers around the watercooler.”
“Well, the correct answer is that we are kind of...not very close.”
“Ah...”
Even for someone as new and uninformed about Live-On as Churiri, she immediately had a sense of what Ehrai was talking about. Gen four didn’t gather very often. Not that they never had a single collab together, but compared to the tight-knit second or third gens, they were clearly the odd ones out. More often than not, they had better connections with members of other gens than with each other.
“As proof of that, where is Kaeru on this fine day?” Ehrai continued. “I know she went to talk with Tadasu-chan, but still.”
“Do you not get along?” Churiri asked.
“As if!” Alice chimed in. “Just the other day, Kaeru-chan was annoying Ehrai-chan going ‘ane-san, ane-san!’ and Ehrai-chan had to put her foot down, saying, ‘If you don’t quit it with that, this humidifier’s gonna start puffing out Kaeru-flavored mist’!”
“Alice-chan, snitches get far more than stitches where I come from~.”
“You sure are a lively bunch...” Churiri said, half exasperated.
“It’s a young-people thing!” Alice-chan said.
“Ha ha ha,” Churiri laughed. “Yes. But then you see a celebrity younger than you and the realities of aging set in all at once.”
“Oops, sounds like I stepped on a land mine!”
“Hey, the zookeeper’s talking over here!” Ehrai said. “What I wanted to ask you, Sensei, is that despite our disparate natures, do we give off any indication that we are anything but Live-On’s fourth generation?”
“Um... No?” Churiri’s eyebrow quirked.
“Even if we collab with the other gens more than we do with ourselves, the viewers still recognize us as gen four. Furthermore, even if one of us quits, they’ll still be known as the ‘ex’ gen four member.”
“I’m...not sure what you’re getting at.”
“Don’t find yourself too dependent on your genmates,” Ehrai stated matter-of-factly.
Churiri frowned. “I’m not dependent on them.”
“Hold on, let me finish,” Ehrai continued. “Say that Tadasu-chan quits. Just because she’s no longer your genmate, does that mean she becomes nothing to you? And what about everything else? Do the new bonds you form with others mean nothing just because Tadasu-chan is gone? Nothing’s over unless you decide it is. And when something ends, it usually means something else is starting.”
“You’re sounding...pretty heartless right now.”
“But I’m not~! I don’t want anyone to quit! I just want you to understand that life is too short to be dependent on others. Look at Alice-chan—she loves Awayuki-senpai, probably more than anyone else on this planet. But she doesn’t make herself solely a burden to Awayuki-senpai. She’s built her own community of like-minded people. The question you need to ask yourself, Sensei, is what kind of future you want with your genmates. And to reach that future, what kind of relationship you need to have with them.”
With much to consider, Churiri ended the conversation, thanked Ehrai and Alice for their time, and left to reflect on their words.
After a moment to collect herself, Churiri’s thoughts drifted, much like after her last group conversation. But instead of recalling the early days with Tadasu and Dagger, this time her mind traveled even further back—to the years that had shaped her, the foundations of her life that had slowly eroded over time.
It hadn’t been any one event that had sparked her disillusionment, but a gradual unraveling. She had always carried within her a tiny imperfection, one that was unfortunately integral to her existence: her sexuality.
Sexuality is as fundamental to an organism as a staple food is to a diet. To have a flaw at that level meant that everything built upon it was affected. In Japan, rice forms the basis of every meal. It’s the foundation with which every other flavor is meant to harmonize. But what if you couldn’t eat rice? What if you were deathly allergic to it? That would be terribly inconvenient. But realize that Churiri wasn’t allergic to just rice—she also couldn’t stomach wheat, or potatoes, or maize, and so on. Every staple the world depended on for sustenance was something she could not accept. And the only thing she craved, the only thing that felt right to her, was something others found repellent.
Indeed, she was like an alien, crash-landed on a world with nothing she could consume. Alone, isolated—though every person she encountered had the shape of someone like her, an outward resemblance that suggested belonging, they were utterly different beneath the surface.
If she absolutely had to pinpoint a single moment that felt like the final straw, it would be an episode from her early days as a new graduate, stepping into the harsh realities of adulthood. She had thought she was on good terms with her boss, had believed in the connection they shared. But when she turned to them for advice in a moment of vulnerability, she was met with nothing but cold indifference. It might have been a small thing, something that happened to countless others every day, but for Churiri, it was the moment she’d realized she might never truly belong.
It was as though humanity had cast her aside. And it was at that moment that she swore she would never again struggle just to win their acceptance.
“And yet...here I am, doing exactly that.”
A bittersweet smile touched her lips. She stood, crossing the room to the curtains that were always drawn tightly over her window—and pulled them open. Sunlight flooded in, almost overwhelming her. She stood firm, squinting against the sudden brightness, refusing to close her eyes against the light.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but...”
She gazed out at the view beyond the glass.
“I need them. This ridiculous company full of wackos, the two brats I met there. I need them more than I ever realized.”
It was the same old view from the same old apartment. Nothing had changed. Yet it now seemed to sparkle with a vibrancy and life Churiri had never noticed before.