I could hear him steaming from outside my room. He was in the kitchen and had what seemed to be his entire streaming setup with him. There was only not one, but TWO monitors next to the oven, along with a computer on an ironing board, a microphone that was clamped onto the countertop, a mouse and keyboard, AND a camera set up. All for one stream–after today’s stream was over, he would pack it all up for next time. To be fair, all he had to do was move everything into the spare bedroom, which was only down the hall from the kitchen, but it still had to be a hassle to move all of that junk back and forth. He had been at it since like 11 AM. Thankfully I already knew this and had my breakfast (a bowl of Froot Loops, a hot pocket, and coffee) ready well before he started his stream.

In most kitchens, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but our kitchen was a bit ‘special’. Our microwave was right above our stove, which made it hard for anyone to use one while the other was in use and vice versa. He was currently cooking pancakes for his stream. Somehow he had never cooked pancakes before this–that is, if he was telling the truth to his audience.

I was about to go–I had to mentally prepare myself for my upcoming shift. It wasn’t going to be hard or anything…it’s just…was this what I was really put on this Earth to do? What was the point of going to school and getting a degree if this was the best I could do? Was it that I was bad with networking, or was it because most employers realized how worthless a Political Science degree was, and that all it meant was that I knew how to read boring books and write boring papers on boring topics? Then again, was that most of the humanities? Maybe it had more to do with the location I was in–unless I went to law school, which I didn’t want to do, I would probably have to move to Washington D.C. to fully utilize my ‘expertise’, if you could call it that. With five-figures worth of student loan debt over my head, moving to one of the most expensive areas in the country was a stupid move in my opinion. Yes, I was more likely to get a job, but it would more than likely be either an unpaid internship or something that was barely above the living standards of the area. I couldn’t fall back on any benefactors to supplement my journey being an errand boy for a do-nothing congressperson or niche cause. Why couldn’t I have just gone to school for engineering?

To avoid spiraling out of control, I decided to go ahead and get a move on. Walking outside of my room, I noticed that my roommate had a virtual version of himself as his computer wallpaper. I’m not surprised, considering his line of work, but it still…

*SLAM*

“Ahh fuck!”–before I even knew it, I ran my pinky toe into the corner of the wooden cabinet next to the living room couch. The pain was so sharp that it made me lose sense for a moment. I fell to the floor in pain, groaning like I just got hit with a baseball bat. I’d hit the cabinet so hard that the lamp on the table tipped over as well, falling onto the carpet below. Thankfully it didn’t shatter, or even turn off. After the sensation started to dull, I realized that I potentially made a huge gaffe…

Really bad drawing of our living room and kitchen. The dresser I ran my foot into is more to the right than in the drawing, but I’m too lazy to fix it. Not drawn to scale. Kitchen is extended to be twice as long as our dining room is seldom used and not relevant. [https://i.imgur.com/U8NjmuZ.png]

Really bad drawing of our living room and kitchen. The dresser I ran my foot into is more to the right than in the drawing, but I’m too lazy to fix it. Not drawn to scale. Kitchen is extended to be twice as long as our dining room is seldom used and not relevant.

Looking back startled, my roommate Michael said “Hold on guys, I need to go to the toilet real quick.” Known more famously online as ‘Francis Fukuyama’ (no relation…really, no relation. He doesn’t know about the other guy. Apparently his ‘antis’ labeling his surging popularity ‘The End of VTubing’ was lost upon him for months. The VTubing community also took Fukuyama’s famous thesis at face value.)–a ‘Virtual YouTuber’ who was streaming himself making ‘Valentine Pancakes’. If you counted everyone currently in his chat as ‘in the room’ with us, there were thousands who heard my outburst. I was the only one who knew him by ‘Michael’ though. I had enough sense to know that anything from real life was a no-go on his streams. It was the norm for VTuber streams at his level. He had probably disclosed to his chat that he had gotten a new roommate by now, but my existence might as well have been a phantom. An apparition. At least, it was, until my cry of pain leaked through his microphone into the virtual world.

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Michael’s–I mean, Francis’s design, all things considered, was fairly basic. His model was a standard ‘bishie boy’. Tall, slender, having semi-long straight black hair, and an acutely pointy chin. Just like in your shoujo anime and manga.

His outfit was rather dapper, meant to imply that he was a gentleman. A three-piece suit that was supposed to look classy and fancy. In my eyes, he looked more like a magician than a ‘gentleman’. More like a hitman than a dream man. He seemed to not really put that much effort into playing the role too. No dry shaken martinis, just tea stirred. He was just himself–a reclusive gamer.

I thought that him not ever sticking to the bit would be a problem, but it turns out that most VTubers don’t. Sometimes their ‘persona’ could be an extension of their real-life personality, but in Michael’s case, Francis was really only a face-tuned version of himself. Other than occasionally going a few days without shaving, Michael was also tall, skinny, and had straight black hair. He kept his pretty short though. Not as luscious as well.

As for his content, he mostly did ‘variety streams’, which meant that almost no stream was like the one before. His weekly schedule was functionally the same each week–he streamed MOBAs, whatever ‘streamer-bait’ game was hot at the time, ‘zatsudan’ (live-chatting with viewers), and the occasional ‘hand cam’ stream. More irregularly he did cooking streams, like the one he was doing now. He also did ASMR streams. You can figure out what that entails for yourself.

As his roommate, I didn’t really see the appeal of watching him play games–he could be pretty funny, but watching your roommate’s stream wasn’t all that appealing to me. I’m sure you understand. Not like he needed the support either, since he cracked into the four-figures easily every time he streamed. I didn’t even have to subscribe to him as moral support.

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I’d only moved into the house a month and some change prior. Desperate to get out of my mother’s place, I jumped at the first vacancy out there. While my new job at Hobby Lobby paid well, my choices of where to rent were quite limited. You would think that with all of the construction going on, rent would be relatively low. Or at least be stabilized. Guess that’s my fault for trying to use conventional logic when it came to the housing market. Rent from where I was living at was at average about $1200 a month–ridiculous considering that Greenville was only a mid-size city. I heard that rent in Chicago was lower, and that place actually probably had non-retail employers that would hire me. Maybe I should’ve moved there instead…too much effort.

I was about to lose all hope when I found this place. It was the best deal around. $600 a month is a steal these days! I get my own master bedroom, my own bathroom, and my own office! Not to mention that it was on a pretty sizable plot of land. Big enough to host any party you wanted to, but not too large. It even came with all of the furnishings. The landlord even bought a new mattress for the bed I was going to be sleeping on…she was a bit eccentric, going on about how often I should wash the sheets and what detergent to use. She was way better than the stereotypical shitty landlords that most people seem to have, even if she was rather peculiar with how she did things.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

There was one caveat to where my domain was though...it was in the middle of nowhere.

Well, not exactly in the middle of nowhere, but it’s pretty out there. To put it in one way–the nearest restaurant is the gas station a mile away. Anyway, it took about fifteen minutes to get to the nearest town, which was about the same time it took me to get to work. The drive was roughly the same every time, although there were occasional tractors that got in the way. It made for a great excuse whenever I was late for work. Early morning driving can be great if there’s no fog around. Driving around at night was a different story. You always had to watch out for deer. Not that I’ve ever hit one, but there have been close calls.

Work was where I was headed. It was 2:30 and my shift started at 3. I was leaving a bit early, but I knew with Michael’s cooking stream I might need to get out of there when I have the time.

You see, the way out was by the kitchen. The laundry room, where the back door was, was right next to the stove Michael was using to make his pancakes. I could’ve used the other door, but that would’ve meant that I would have to walk through the grass. Considering that it rained just this morning, I would get my shoes dirty if I walked through the grass to my car. I hated to do it, but I had to interrupt Michael’s stream to get through.

It wasn’t the first time I had to do this. Two weeks ago, I had to ‘pause’ his stream to get to work. He was only using the microwave to test every Hot Pocket they had on sale at Kroger, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to squeeze by. This time it would be more difficult though. Michael had told me that he had a plan for cases like this. He would simply pause the stream. It really wasn’t a big deal to him apparently. I guess he saw it as an opportunity to take a breather.

That was the way it was supposed to go, but that was before I bashed my toe at the most inopportune time…

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“Jesus Christ man, are you okay?”

“Ahhhh…I think so…”

I was looking down at my pinky toe, now lying bare on the carpet. You would think that a sock would shield toes from this sort of pain, but apparently not. To be fair, my pinky toe did hit the dresser at full speed. From the blood that was forming around my toe, it was apparent that I would need a bandaid. It would only be sanitary, plus my sock was bloody enough as it is.

We had all of our medical supplies in the kitchen, away from where Michael’s streaming stuff was set up. I hobbled there to get the bandaid my pinky toe sorely needed. I found it rather odd how calm Michael seemed to be considering I barged in and interrupted it a bit rudely.

“Is it really alright?”

“What’s alright?”

“Your stream.”

“Oh, that.” He looked back at the stove. From the fact that nothing was sizzling, I guess his stream was about to wind down. “I wouldn’t worry about that…”

“Sure, the chat heard you, but just barely. You scared the living daylights out of me, but my chat only heard you from a distance. I’ve yelled from that distance at mics on stream multiple times.“

“These mics,” Michael said while pointing to a huge ass microphone that was clamped to the counter “drown out background noise very well. If anything, all this confirmed that you existed.”

He did make a good point. It wasn’t like his audience had never heard of me before. The only thing that was added was a voice–albeit a very muffled one, according to him. None of his ‘fujis’ (what his ‘more enthusiastic’ fans call themselves) had found any of my social media, and the Venn diagram of ‘Francis Fukuyama Watchers’ and ‘Hobby Lobby Shoppers’ was more than likely two separate circles. I see his fans as more of Jo-Ann Fabric’s shoppers. Or perhaps Michael’s. Now that I think about it, it would be pretty funny if they were. Either way, according to Michael, it would be near impossible to pin a voice to a face from what I let slip. That’s good because it’s in our best interest to not reveal who we are on a stream being watched by thousands of people. My identity being revealed would only lead to Michael’s also being revealed, and from what I’ve read about VTubers, concealing your identity is vital in most cases. He could be fired for a mistake like this if it caught back up to bite him. If he was an ‘indie VTuber’, then this wouldn’t matter so much, but Michael was a big-league corporate VTuber. He was part of ‘AnyClover’, which was one of the biggest ‘VTuber Agencies’ on the internet. They had enough Virtual YouTubers on their roster to field a football team. Michael was a relatively newer addition, debuting around a year and a half ago. He’d been a VTuber under a different name before, but his legal name was never disclosed. Needless to say, his confidentiality was an important part of his employment.

I was done taking care of my throbbing toe. I rubbed alcohol on it and wrapped like three bandaids around it just to make sure no more blood leaked out. I went ahead and put my shoes on. The kitchen and the laundry room shared the same linoleum floor, which made it less gross to put them on while still in the house as compared to carpet. I was never aware of how gross many people found wearing outside shoes indoors until I started watching anime. After the pain I experienced, I don’t know if I’ll take my shoes off ever again. I didn’t care how much dirt and germs I dragged throughout the house. My little toe can’t handle much more pain.

“All right, I got everything sorted. I’ll go and let you continue your stream.”

“It’s really not a big deal…I’ve been up here non-stop for about four hours now. I could use the breather.”

Yeah, you’ve been at it since like 11. “Well I’m glad I could be in service then. I bet wearing those gloves are a pain in the ass to cook in.” Michael had to wear gloves whenever he did a stream that involved his hands. These were called ‘handcam’ streams. Apparently, it’s sort of an unwritten rule for VTubers for them to never show their hands. I guess for women VTubers, if they had intricate nail designs, they could accidentally dox themselves if they were revealed on stream…well, technically the same could be said for men as well. That issue didn’t matter to Michael though, considering he had ‘regular’ nails. His model had roughly the same skin tone as him, so it wouldn’t break that much immersion. Nonetheless, he wore gloves every time he showed his hands. Better safe than sorry I guess. He temporarily took off his gloves, his hands looking like they just got out of a sauna.

“Making those pancakes has really worn you out huh.” I remarked.

He looked back at his creations, “All I can say is that making a heart-shaped pancake is harder than you think it is.”

‘Not really, you just suck at cooking’ is what I wanted to say, but I held my tongue. “Still don’t see how that takes three hours' worth of cooking though.” Okay, I barely held it.

“Well…I’ve been talking with chat for the last hour. The superchats won’t stop coming in!”

“Well aren’t you lucky.” I can’t lie, I was envious. He probably made as much in the last hour as I made in a work week.

“What can I say? The people love me and my pancakes.”

That was Michael’s charm. He could be serious one moment, but then lighthearted the next. I’d say that his ability to not take himself seriously is what made him such a good streamer and VTuber. It also helped that he was typically quick on the draw to drop a joke, which kept the chat engaged. There was also the fact that he was willing to ASMR streams, which thankfully took place in his room, far enough away from me to hear any of it. His ‘fujis’ loved it, but I didn’t personally want to hear my roommate roleplay as my boyfriend.

Being a ‘nerd’ myself, I already knew what a VTuber was before I moved in with Michael. I never was really interested in them, but living with one has made me start to watch some clips from YouTube. Many of his fellow VTubers at AnyClover are actually quite funny. Michael can be hilarious himself, but considering I live with the guy I didn’t really watch his content. I got it straight from the tap. I’m not that into streamers in the first place, but I understand why people like VTubers.

Altogether, I didn’t regret moving out at all. Sure, Michael can be loud as hell sometimes. That’s the nature of VTubers. But he’s considerate enough to keep it down at night. His usual streaming room is across the house anyway, so it would take a banshee scream to wake me up if I was sleeping. And these types of streams he does where he takes up half the kitchen is only a once or twice-a-month thing at most. It’s not like I cook most of the food I eat anyway. I could deal with an occasional roadblock if it meant having blazing-fast internet and cheap rent.

“...Are you gonna go? I do need to come back from the ‘toilet’ soon or they’re going to think I fell in.” He had been away for about ten minutes at this point. Chat probably assumed he got lost on the way back.

“Oh shit, sorry yeah. I’m going.” I didn’t want to move, but I had to go eventually.

“Alright, I’ll save the pancakes that aren’t eaten for you.” He pointed at the tupperware bowl filled with the pancakes he already made. It was about filled to the brim. He had used a lot of pancake batter, which left a huge mess. I sure hope he was going to clean up after this–I assumed he would, but this was the first time I ever saw him do a stream like this. If Miss Landlord saw her kitchen in this state, then she would probably flip out and clean the whole place in frustration.

“Sounds great.” I said as I finally got off the counter and walked towards the door.

I still had twenty minutes to go until I had to be at work, and twenty-six minutes before I had to clock in, so I wasn’t in a hurry. I guess Michael had some more superchats to read though. He had only made a few good heart-shaped pancakes, with his other attempts resembling something more of a kidney bean. Either way, he only burnt half of them. Nothing butter and syrup can’t fix. He made enough pancakes to feed a whole extended family–I already knew that I was gonna probably be eating breakfast for dinner tonight. I was going to be home at midnight and probably staying up for a few more hours–I’ll be honest, I can’t hide it–I was excited at the prospect of having some late-night pancakes. So excited that it almost made me forget that today is Valentine’s Day.