A secret is revealed.

A… A video game streamer?” I echoed, jaw half-hanging.

Noelle nodded slowly with a meek and nervous smile.

I felt my body chilling, and I had to bet my face was going pale.

“H-How!?” I asked. “How do you do it?”

“Eh?” Noelle seemed a little startled.

“I… I’ve been thinking about uploading my guitar covers to the internet, but I’ve never dared! But you go live to play games? That’s… amazing…” I praised, toning down my own excitement by the end.

Noelle blushed deeply. “It’s really not. I don’t use a webcam. I use a V-Tuber avatar. I also go by a fake name and change the pitch of my voice so no one will recognize me.”

I raised an eyebrow, making Noelle flinch. “That’s really smart,” I told her.

She blinked. “Y-You think so?”

“Yeah. I watch more video essays than streams, so I don’t know a lot about it, but I always imagine that it must be tough to be well known. How many viewers do you have?”

Noelle smiled. “It depends on the game, but enough that I got a partnership with the platform. I average around 100 to 150 viewers for random streams, and around 300 for the more popular games.”

From 100 to 300? Certainly not up there with the most well known streamers, but averaging 5000 people was the exception, not the rule. A hundred people was already an insane number. A hundred people watching you?

I laughed nervously. “Makes me feel tense just thinking about it. How do you handle it?”

“It was SO awkward at first!” she told me with an excited smile. “I didn’t know what to talk about, and I kept thinking that nobody would watch. Very few people did at the beginning, too. But then I realized… ‘Hey, I’m playing a video game. Might as well talk about the video game.’ I started going on and on about the things I liked about the game, or criticizing the things I didn’t like. Slowly, more people started watching. I bet plenty of them watch because of the jiggle physics of my avatar, though.” She giggled.

I laughed. “Hey, whatever brings them in, right? If you were boring to watch, no amount of jiggling would make them stay.”

“You think so?”

“Of course. People aren’t lacking on streamers to watch, nor when it comes to V-Tubers, either. Yet people are choosing to watch you, right? That means something.”

Noelle pursed her lips to stop her smile from widening. Her eyes were getting watery, too. I’m not as dense as I was before, so I understood she was happy to hear someone say that.

“Thank you. I don’t think it’s that big a deal, though. People are just killing time…”

“Most ways of entertainment are meant to kill time,” I told her. “I mean, it’s not like I’m getting much out of playing 100 long hour RPGs, right? And it’s not like everyone’s gonna have life-changing experiences from watching the latest superhero movie.”

She giggled. “I suppose.”

“But more importantly, this is what helped you start talking more, isn’t it?” She nodded. “Then even if no one was watching, it’d still be worth it, right?”

She swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, it would be. I’ve grown comfortable doing it. It’s fun and… even rewarding. At one point, I started talking about other things and I mentioned I liked building plastic model kits.”

“Oh? Aren’t those kinda difficult to build?”

“Not at all. Well, it depends on the kit and manufacturer, but most of the time they’re pretty simple. My… My chat started asking me about the kits I built, so that led me to… start a channel for it. I make videos reviewing model kits. You know, letting people know if they’re good and worth the price.”

“Seriously? You do that, too?” I chuckled. “Are you sure you’re not lying to me when you say you don’t like talking to strangers?”

“I’m not lying!” she insisted, laughing. “I know it’s weird, okay? But doing stuff like this, thinking that none of my audience know me, is a huge weight off my shoulders. If… If people at school knew, it’d be a different story.”

“I don’t think Isabelle and Alice would think ill of you if they knew.”

“...” Noelle swallowed. “Sometimes I think so too, but… The possibility that they’d find it weird… scares me. Alice doesn’t understand video games at all, and she barely uses social media or the like. Isabelle sometimes tells me I should go out more with other people instead of playing so many games, too. Sometimes… I think they wouldn’t approve of me being a streamer.”

When friendships are hard to come by, you’re more scared of losing them. It would be easy to tell her ‘To hell with what they think’. I could almost hear Sarah saying something like that. But to Noelle, Isabelle and Alice were important friends she didn’t want to risk losing. I could understand that oh so very well.

“Isabelle could stand to party less often and be in the house more to do her chores,” I told her. “Mom bought her a camera because she was really into photography at one point, then never touched the thing again. She has a bike that she doesn’t use anymore. I can’t say much about Alice, but you’ve heard Grace teasing her over stuff, too, right?”

“Y-Yes?”

“The other day Thomas was giving me crap because, apparently, I always need to have the last word.” I chuckled. “But he also tends to get me into a headlock to tease me, and I find that really annoying.”

I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m far from an authority, so really take my words with a fistfull of salt, but I think real friendships last not because of the things you share, but despite the things you don’t. If you can accept the things you find annoying in someone and still enjoy being with them, then… I think it’s fair to call each other friends.”

Noelle looked at me with wide eyes, and that made me extremely self-conscious. “Dammit, what am I even saying?” I shook my head. “I’ve had that thought in my mind for a while and I just blurted it out. Sorry, I didn’t mean to tell you how to act or anything, I just…”

See what happens when you get too comfortable, Oliver? You start getting preachy! God dammit! I need to watch out for that. The last thing I want is to act like I know better than others.

“You might have a point.” Noelle giggled. “I tell Alice that she’s too hard on social media all the time. It’s like she hates it.”

…She might have a reason for that.

“Still, I… don’t know if I’m ready to tell them. I’ll think about it.”

“Again, I’m not pushing you to do it, okay? Not even suggesting it. But I do think that they won’t stop being friends with you just because you stream games. At least, I know Isabelle won’t. Hell, she’ll probably think it’s really cool.”

“I… I hope so. Thank you, Oliver. I'm glad I got to talk about this with someone.”

I smiled. “Anytime.”

“Would… Would it be okay if we got together again some other time? Y-You know, just to hang out?”

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. DAMMIT!

I wanted to!

Have you been paying attention!? She’s so easy to talk to! Even with my girlfriends, it took me way too long to be able to talk to them freely, and even then I can’t really talk about stuff like this with them.

That’s it. I just want to make a new friend, one I can talk to about games. There’s nothing wrong with that, right? Noelle and I can simply be friends.

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

I had the faintest feeling I was lying to myself.

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