I May Be a Virtual Youtuber, but I Still Go to Work

When Maru starts crying, the best thing to do is wait.

If I, a textbook capital-T type by other people’s standards, were to say anything now, I’d only get a “Are you f**ing T-brained or what?”* thrown back at me.

Not that Maru has ever actually said that.
But there was a time when I cautiously asked what was wrong, only to push her dangerously close to getting genuinely angry.

[Hic… sniff… hic… sob…]

She cried for a solid fifteen minutes before finally calming down enough to speak.

[I’m sorry!!]

…Wait, she’s apologizing?
After all that crying?

* * *

When the first-gen members had just joined, the team leader once told me that Maru was one of the hardest members to provide emotional support for.

Maru?
But I’ve never seen her cry on stream.

In fact, on stream, she was rock solid—so much so that she was famous for handling chaotic chats as well as Komari.

But now I was being told that she was emotional and difficult to console?
From a viewer’s perspective, that made no sense.

And yet, about six months ago, I saw it for myself when I visited her place to help with something.

"Waaaaahhh!! What do I do?! WHAT DO I DOOOO!! Huuuuaaaahh!!"

All because she had spilled a single glass of water and fried her streaming PC.
The way she wailed over ruining that day’s stream, you’d think someone had died.

But the moment I told her to wait an hour because the company would send a temporary PC…

"…I will wait. Thank you!!"

She immediately stopped crying and calmly went back to preparing for the stream.

A classic hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside case.
Honestly, it was almost comically fitting for her hedgehog beastman persona.

Of course, being too spiky would be a bit much, so her design kept the sharp parts to just a few accents—a sharp collar, shoulder decorations—making her closer to a rat beastman in silhouette.

She’s the type of person who cares a lot about others, looks after them, and is genuinely kind-hearted.
Yet, at the same time, she comes off as loud, strong-willed, and someone who never backs down in an argument—a hedgehog through and through.

Even during collabs, she’d happily give gifts, only to later worry, “Did they not like it?” if the other person didn’t react much.
And if she ever got carried away and said something rough in a wrestling bit, she’d always go back and apologize afterward.