Suppression of the Refugees
Hah… hah…
My breath had climbed all the way up to my throat. Both hands braced on my knees, I gulped down air in ragged heaves. The clothes I'd shed lay crumpled across the floor, and the mirror reflected me drenched in sweat.
No—more precisely, someone who wasn't quite me from a moment ago.
Black hair, golden eyes. The fox ears that had sprouted atop my head and the four tails that had swayed behind my back were all gone. Going by appearances alone, I was a perfectly ordinary human woman—at the very least, one who could walk outside without worrying about getting arrested by the police and hauled off to some national research institute to be dissected.
Panting, I lifted my head. "Speak, Shiroha. How—how many seconds was it?"
You have maintained the Metamorphic Art for exactly 12 minutes and 43 seconds.
"A new record… hoo… hoo… I can… do no more…"
Celebrating my freshly broken record, I collapsed face-first onto the bed. Then, as if it had only been waiting for the chance, four fluffy tails sprouted out and draped over me like a blanket, and my fox ears gave a perky little shiver.
What I'd been doing was, of course, training the Metamorphic Art. My number of worshippers—or subscribers, rather—had quietly passed two hundred, and my divine power had climbed past two thousand as well. The moment Shiroha mentioned I could now learn to transform, I'd hurried to receive her instruction.
"Hide your tails, conceal your ears, and forget the body you were born with. Transformation is not an art of changing your shape—it is an art of believing in the shape you desire."
That single, baffling cryptic phrase was the entire lesson. And yet the moment I heard it, I found I could use the Metamorphic Art without any further teaching at all—simply by intending it, as naturally as if I'd always been able to. Just like that flash of foresight into the future I'd experienced before.
"Mmmnngh… is my divine power still lacking, then…?"
"Your divine power is running short for sustainment, yes, but I suspect the real issue is practice. Keep at it, and one day you'll use it as naturally as breathing, Junior."
"Hnn—understood! This is simply a matter of my own effort, is it not!"
And just like that, Lize bounced back with swagger to spare. Watching her, Shiroha asked, [Forgive me for asking again, but what exactly do you intend to do with your tails and ears hidden?]
It was a perfectly reasonable question, given how Lize was preening like she planned to march out the door that very second. She'd already quit her job, she could order food delivered, and she could gather worshippers through her stream—so what reason was there to go out at all?
"Why, to go watch baseball, of course! The season is drawing to a close, or have you forgotten!"
[Ah… I see.]
Shiroha, who had half expected some special reason, asked nothing more.
But more than anything—
I suppose I've become a burden to my Junior… Shiroha, you wicked fox, leeching off her kindness like this.
If I hadn't chosen you, you wouldn't have needed to stream at all. You could walk freely out of this room whenever you wished.
"Hm? Did you say something, Shiroha?"
[Nothing at all.]
Hiding the gloomy message in the smallest possible letters, Shiroha quietly deleted it before Lize could see.
"Let's be honest with each other, Team Leader Lee Do-hyun."
"And what would that be, ma'am?"
"Do you like fox girls? Should I cosplay one for you and go yip yip? Or a cat? Meow meow?"
She planted both hands on her head to mimic animal ears, and Do-hyun exhaled a small sigh before delivering his rebuke. "People will hear you. Please have some shame."
"So what if they do? My boyfriend says he wants to turn into a wolf at night, so why can't I turn into a lady fox for him~?"
Shall I really do it? she teased, leaning her chest in close. It was a familiar situation, so Do-hyun simply flicked his index finger and rapped her on the forehead, pushing her back. Ahan-yeon recoiled, clutching her stinging forehead.
"There is no boyfriend, ma'am. I will report you for workplace sexual harassment."
"Boo, you snitch… fine, then I'll report you for assaulting your superior."
Do-hyun gave silent thanks that the general manager's office was soundproofed. If this conversation ever leaked, it could deal a serious blow to the Asung club's image. Besides, she wasn't even his real girlfriend—this was entirely her one-sided pursuit. But since he knew that pursuit was at least half a game, played to enjoy watching him squirm, he no longer took it seriously the way he once had.
When he responded with nothing more than a flat so what do you want me to do about it look, Ah-yeon pouted, apparently bored now, and got to the point.
"Well, jokes aside. So? Is she really that good? Better than you, Team Leader Lee Do-hyun?"
"I hate to admit it, but I believe her instantaneous analysis is superior to mine."
Her analysis had read both the psychology and the condition of every player at once—it was practically divine. Do-hyun could manage a certain level of weakness scouting, but could he produce a different approach for each individual hitter? He had a gut feeling that if the woman in that video willed it, she might even know how to attack a pitcher into throwing the exact pitch she wanted.
"Then fine, good enough. Coordinate with the marketing department and reach out to her. You know, if she really is a fox goddess, who knows—she might just become our team's mascot of victory."
That was what marketing was, after all. Even when the actual effect was negligible, if you gave fans some symbol to latch onto, they'd move heaven and earth for it. Just look at SG, another club: they'd randomly plopped a dog down as their mascot and caught endless flak from fans for it—yet now that dog had settled in completely as the face of the team, and merchandise sales were quietly propping up their annual revenue.
Asung Giants Fox sold oversized fox plushies too, but…
Sales are down from last year. Naturally, I'd guess it's the shrinking home crowds as the team's record tanks.
Barely two seasons ago, the club had been bouncing between second and third in the regular season, averaging twenty-three thousand fans a game—first in the league. Then several players got mixed up in drugs, and "Asung Giants Fox" became synonymous with "junkies." That image drove away prospects and sponsors alike. Events got canceled. To cover operating costs, the club started selling off its bullpen. In the span of a single season, the team had plunged from second in the league to seventh.
Lower rank meant lower-quality baseball, which meant the once-frenzied home fans dwindled. Most of them came as families—no parents, no kids. No kids meant the plushies and children's uniforms just piled up in storage.
A literal chain reaction of disasters.
Which was why General Manager Lee Ah-yeon practically lived with her phone glued to her hand, pounding the pavement from one end of the industry to the other.
A fox goddess, huh. Please, please become the goddess of victory for our team.
And if she genuinely helped with strategy analysis along the way, well, that was just a bonus.
The next day, Lize flipped her stream on without a care in the world—
I glanced at the viewer count. And then—
Viewers: 1,542
Lize has ended the broadcast.
I turned the stream right back off.
Those experiencing a rage-quit for the first time were dumbfounded.
"…Haah."
And those who had already been through it could only bow their heads at the familiar taste of this cursed nonsense.
The reason Lize's stream had suddenly flooded with people was, of course, Lee Kang-il's doing.
"I told you all in advance, right, folks? I'm taking the family to watch the Asung game live at the stadium."
"Heh heh, you little rascals. What, why won't I take you? You want me to get sued over broadcast rights and ruin my life?! I'll come back and tell you every gory detail from the stadium later, so just hang tight a little. It's not like I sprang this on you out of nowhere, right?"
Lee Kang-il was a major solo broadcaster, averaging a thousand viewers for his baseball text-commentary streams and around five thousand whenever he did joint gaming sessions with others. Most people watched for his mouth and his reactions—gasping at the players' plays or getting so frustrated he looked ready to die on the spot. But plenty of the fans who actually attended games in person also kept his stream running in real time, because the commentary of a retired pro's trained eye was entertaining in its own right.
And now the man was saying he happened to be off stream because he was going to watch an Asung game in person?
"Right, then. I'll just send you all over to that young lady in one go instead."
"Go on then, I won't stop you. Take care out there. If you get bored later, come back and play."
"I don't cast out my little brothers and sisters just because they stopped by somewhere else for a while. That's what family is."
He was idly chatting away with his viewers as usual—WWE-ing with the chat, killing time until he left for the stadium—when—
Lize has started a broadcast!
The stream alert for her channel, which he'd set up on his phone long ago, went off.
"Alright, everyone go have fun out there! Anyone at the stadium today, come say hi, no pressure—I'll buy you something to eat! See you later! Bye now!"
"And with that, truly, goodbye everyone—see you next time!"
⊳ Lee Kang-il has hosted Lize with 1,245 viewers.
Chat restriction enabled: Followers of 6+ hours only
And so, of the roughly 1,245 refugees who had poured into my stream, the 1,150 of them watching my channel for the first time were left gaping, jaws on the floor.
Even so, it was still pretty rowdy—but compared to a flood of over a thousand at once, it was downright civilized.
Lize has started a broadcast!