After what happened with the stream and my impromptu confession I decided it would be best for me to purposefully hit my head in order to forget what happened.

After watching that stream Val immediately wanted to delete the recording, but after talking to Big-Tuber-San for a bit, we decided to keep it up. The stream recording had already been reuploaded all over social media and would be deleted from Twitch in time anyway.

“Most of all, however, it would draw suspicion if you deleted it immediately afterward. People would notice, theories would spin out of control. People would try to hunt down that recording. Basic Barbra Streisand effect,” Nadeshiko explained to us. Thank God she called to check on us, because I never would have thought of it like that.

Only other problem was that just a few days after that, I conveniently went on hiatus. I made a quick service tweet, because I thought that would be better than just straight-up ghosting my viewers. Let social media spiral out of control for a week or so, and by the time I came back, things should have calmed down. I also already posted a date for the next stream, so my followers wouldn’t go apeshit when I made another post in a few days.

Speaking of followers ...

Guess I reached my goal of a thousand followers a lot earlier than expected ...

Not sure what to think of that though.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I had so much fun streaming, especially when I had Val and Big-Tuber-San join. But it all spiraled out of control.

Well, guess I’ll have a week at my family’s to figure all that shit out.

As for Crush ...

He didn’t text me anymore after all that. Of course, I saw he was online from time to time. But there weren’t any more interactions between us.

I was sitting on the train, on the way to my hometown. Staring at his username.

I tried composing a message for him, but I didn’t even know what to talk about. I didn’t know where we were standing. Did I actually meet him at that party? Was he pissed at me for lying to him? We were still friends/mutuals online...

Did he watch that stream? It was still up, after all. Did he too think me and Val were dating? Did he think my confession was silly? Stupid? Did he think I was an idiot, having feelings for some guy from the internet, who I haven’t met once? Or was it all just some dumb V-Tuber roleplay for him?

From the very beginning, it has all been a fake. Just a fantasy based on the ramblings of a bunch of nerdy college students.

None of my irl friend group had said anything yet. Most of them aren’t in the V-Tuber game anyway, so I doubt it even reached their online circle. And even then, would they be able to tell it was all about me and him?

It didn’t matter in the end. I wasn’t close enough to any of them, for them to reach out to me about something like that.

When the first lockdown hit, one of the first things that happened, was that Discord server. Everyone was like “we’re gonna get through this, together!”

I barely talked to anyone privately.

Most of my messages were just about joining the call for a game.

And then there was Crush.

I sighed and looked out the window. I had used up 40% of my phone battery, just staring at our chat.

My station was next.