If you’ve never tried to set up a VTuber stream at two in the morning while crying into a keyboard and googling “what is a bitrate,” I don’t recommend it.

  There are less emotionally damaging ways to rebuild your life.

  Like interpretive dance. Or taxidermy.

  I had no idea what I was doing. None. Zilch. Nada. I watched six tutorials, opened OBS, immediately got overwhelmed, and closed OBS. This repeated three times, like a sad time loop powered by caffeine and self-loathing.

  My avatar—Ketsusaki, demon queen of mild inconvenience—was also not finished. At all. I’d slapped her together using a free character creator and maybe 10 minutes of effort. She looked like someone’s edgy OC who’d been rejected from a mobile gacha game. Her bangs clipped into her eyes. Her mouth didn’t track properly. At one point, her rig glitched and her left eye drifted off like it was trying to escape the horrors of my webcam setup.

  Perfect. On brand.

  I hit “Start Streaming” before I could psych myself out again, then stared at the screen with all the panic of someone realizing they had accidentally gone live with their camera on and no pants.

  “Testing... one, two,oh god, is this thing working?” I muttered, tapping the mic like it owed me money.

  No one was watching. Thank god.

  I hadn’t tweeted anything. I hadn’t told a soul. I didn’t even name the stream, just left the default title: New Streamer Please Be Nice. Which, now that I think about it, sounded like a cry for help. But hey, it was accurate.

  “Ketsusaki here,” I said, trying to sound confident and totally not on the verge of tears. “Demon queen. Harbinger of inconvenience. I come bearing chaos, caffeine breath, and crippling debt.”

  Still no viewers.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I exhaled.

  “…Cool.”

  To fill the silence, I booted up that goose game everyone loved. It felt right. A goose was the perfect spiritual animal for my rebranding. Petty. Loud. Unapologetic. Constantly stealing things it didn’t need.

  About five minutes in, right as I was honking at an old man’s ankles, someone joined chat.

  [User12345]: honk honk!!

  My soul left my body.

  I panicked so hard I accidentally threw the goose into a pond and paused the game.

  “Ah! Uh, hi! Welcome to—this... whatever this is.” I scrambled to sound normal, but my voice cracked like I was going through a second puberty.

  [User12345]: lol this is chaotic I love it

  “Thanks,” I said, staring into the abyss of my screen. “It’s... my brand.”

  Then another message popped up.

  [SaltyShrimp69]: Is your mouth tracking okay or are you possessed

  Listen. I didn’t ask to be roasted this early in my streaming career.

  “I prefer the term spiritually unique,” I shot back, and tried to laugh it off. My avatar glitched again. Her head twisted forty degrees to the left. I looked like a cursed Funko Pop.

  Five more people joined the stream.

  Five.

  And I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but to me? That was five more people than I expected to watch my digital breakdown in real time.

  I kept going. I honked. I stole sandwiches. I gave mildly unhinged commentary on goose physics and whether or not the goose deserved a spin-off series where it became a detective solving bread-related crimes.

  And weirdly… it felt good.

  It was the first time in weeks I wasn’t thinking about the silence of the apartment, or the fact that my ex had posted vacation photos with his new cat (he named her PowerPoint), or that my therapist had politely told me I needed a hobby.

  Well. This was a hobby now.

  Halfway through the stream, someone donated five bucks and wrote:

  [MidnightSoba]: ur like if a toaster had anxiety and started a YouTube channel. subbed.

  And honestly? That was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me.

  I ended the stream two hours later, sweaty, emotionally wrung out, and weirdly exhilarated. I had ten followers, three donations, and one new parasocial relationship forming with someone named “EggsInMyWiFi.”

  Progress.

  Then I looked at the time.

  It was 5:17 a.m.

  My jobless, newly-divorced self had been up all night yelling into a microphone in anime voice. I had no plans for the morning, no savings, and half a pudding tub still floating somewhere in my digestive tract.

  But for the first time in a while, I felt… okay.

  Not fixed. Not whole. Just okay.

  I dragged myself to bed, face planted into my pillow, and whispered to the ceiling:

  “Ketsusaki will return…”

  Then I passed out for 12 hours.