Guest Lecturer Debut (3)
Mio sighed and sent the reply on Misscord.
As if Coco weren't enough, now Seika was causing trouble too.
At this point, the only one I can still trust is Big Sis Tia.
She opened BarTalk and typed into the company announcement channel.
Who from their team was going on. Who the other party was. Which team needed support where.
As she kept explaining, the read receipts dropped off in rapid succession.
So the head of PR finally saw it.
The typing indicator flickered on and off several times before a reply came through.
Weird, right?
Seika collabing with a VTuber who had only been around for two days.
…But… what was she supposed to do?
It was already done.
"Haaah."
In all the years she had entrusted work to Seika, she had never once worried about the result.
Back when Team Lilac was less a company than a four-person collab project, Seika had insisted on entering a Nupe-sponsored tournament packed with pros, calling it a chance to put their team's name on the map. Mio had tried to stop her more times than she could count.
They had been streaming on Switch at the time; they didn't know a single soul on Nupe.
…Only later did Mio learn that Seika was playing at a tier that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the pros. Even if she had known then, she probably still would have tried to stop her.
…Either way, she had broken a sweat trying to talk her out of it for a while, but there was no stopping Seika once she said she would prove it with results.
And in the end, Seika had done exactly that, right in front of everyone.
"Ahh, Team Nuke Punch's chances are looking grim!"
"Emeeeergency!!!!!"
"Ah. Emergency call is out. Team Waterfist Race has seized the momentum and is cutting across the ravine like they're running a race!"
"But we still don't know! Seika absolutely flipped a situation this bad in the previous tournament!"
"Huh? Why isn't Seika returning to base?!"
"Ahh! Is she scared?!"
"At this rate she'll be surrounded by all five before she can even recall!!"
"Ohhh. She's crouched in the brush using a deployable stun item!"
"Don't tell me she's going to fight them alone?!"
"Waterfist Race's tank is heading into the brush. Stuuuun!"
"Wow. While both tanks are disabled, she snaps up their DPS with her ultimate in a single stroke!"
"Seika takes both enemy DPS with her ultimate and a reset ultimate in one go! She's toying with their frontline!"
"Team Waterfist Race's all-or-nothing strike!"
"Ohhh! Seika!"
"She's still alive!"
"Only 24 HP left!"
"Yaaa! She walks out of that!"
"She keeps kiting both tanks while lifestealing, then barely dodges with her mobility skill the second it comes off cooldown!"
"Ah. Even the support can't hold on now!"
"Triple kill!"
"Waterfist Race was riding high, but the moment the tide turns they start running!"
"Two tanks alone can't handle a main DPS with lifesteal and health-scaling damage!!"
"Quadra kill!!"
"Uwaaah!"
"She's chasing!!"
"Can she do it?! Seika! The single flower that bloomed from Team Lilac in the barren wastes of Arena Crown!"
"PENTAKILL!!!"
"Aaagh!!! It's a pentakill!!!"
"Seika! A pentakill in the final stretch of the grand finals, and she's hammering their base!"
"Ah! Just like that, Waterfist Race's nexus health is…!"
"Broken!"
"Yaaa! Jijijik!!"
"The champions are Team Nuke Punch!"
The girl who, with every teammate already dead, had single-handedly cut down all five opponents and claimed the championship trophy.
Naturally, Seika took MVP. And in the post-ceremony interview—
Seika pointed at the replay screen and walked through the order in which the enemy had crossed the ravine. Why she had planted the stun item in the brush. The damage calculation that let her close on the DPS the moment the tanks entered and delete both of them at once. The prediction that even at 24 HP, her lifesteal would carry her through.
"Running would have been easier, but if I got caught holding the line inside our base, it was over. I also wanted to buy as much time as possible."
"Wow. So you even calculated past the fight itself."
"The way you calmly set up the battlefield looked like a special forces operator. There were five of them! Weren't you afraid?"
"Both of their DPS had used their ultimates to take our tanks. Before vision dropped I saw both tanks blow their mobility, and their support burned five radar charges in a row like it was a little ceremony. So no, I wasn't afraid. The only thing that scared me was the thought that I might not be able to play the way I'd planned."
Everything had gone according to calculation, and Seika's cold, precise mind had shone for it.
After that, her face was everywhere for a while—shorts, analysis videos, nonstop.
"So you predicted that entire sequence and just waited?"
"Yes. Though luck played a part in finishing the tanks."
"Humble on top of everything! Thank you so much for the interview. That was Seika of Team Nuke Punch, our MVP!"
Analysis and calculation.
The two abilities Seika handled with effortless mastery.
And beyond even that meticulous analysis and calculation, what made Seika shine brightest was the composure she held onto in the most extreme situations.
That was the Seika Mio had trusted enough to greenlight an approach that might have been a little dangerous—
If Rion wasn't Link, Seika would come back with the evidence. If Rion was Link, she would arrange a chance to talk with the benefactor she hadn't seen in so long, or at least find out what had happened.
That was what Mio had believed.
"Ugh. How did I not think of this?"
Seika, who focused on game streams. Big Sis Hestia, who ran advice-style just-chats and large RP collabs built around tarot and fortune-telling. Mio herself, who mostly just-chatted. Kokoling, who centered on cover songs.
Four people with almost nothing in common. One single shared thread.
VTubers who had each received their first models through Link, and who had already made names for themselves in their own fields.
Back when they had formed the team and gathered offline, passing drinks around, Seika had pulled out her phone and shown them a short recording.
The title was something like "First Stream," I think.
"Look at this."
She hit play, and Seika's awkward voice spilled out.
"Link? Did you just come in?"
On screen, Seika moved exactly as Link told her to, running through motions that bordered on performance art.
She closed her eyes, opened them, and cupped both cheeks in her palms. Even the tension locking her face came through perfectly on the avatar.
"We're good now, right?"
"You're going to keep watching?"
"…."
Without answering, Seika launched the game.
For the first few minutes, there was nothing but the sound of mouse clicks and keystrokes. Once she started focusing, the quiet Seika muttered under her breath every so often.
"If I drop bottom right now I could take them…."
"I was talking to myself."
In the recording they had watched that night, Seika took Link's advice and started briefly calling out the enemy's movements as she played.
Even when the victory screen came up, her eyes went straight to the chat window on the right side of the screen first.
The recording went black, and a thoroughly tipsy Seika opened her mouth.
"After that, I got a call."
Seika slowly pieced together the words she had heard that day, bragging the whole way. That even though Link didn't know the first thing about the game, the fact that she could still follow along meant Seika's real strength was analyzing what she knew and explaining it well. That her sharp voice actually made the analysis sound more credible.
Mio had always wondered how Seika managed to stream while being so quiet.
But the moment Link came up, Seika turned into a full-blown devotee.
How Link had shared a screen with every fix that needed making and told her without hesitation what she wanted changed. How Link had readily offered to stop the sleeve from flipping no matter how big her hand movements got, and to make her gaze track smoothly even when it darted. How whenever Seika lost confidence in streaming and started wondering if this path was even hers, Link had breathed courage back into her. How when Seika fretted over not having the money for revision requests, Link had just fixed things first and said she could use them as portfolio pieces—
She only ever talked like that when it was about Link.
After Link vanished, the four of them had agreed to each message Link on their private chats. The next day. The day after that. And the day after that.
Mio had known Seika was the only one who kept trying to make contact.
And yet she had completely forgotten how unusually attached Seika had been to Link.
…Maybe she really was getting old.
She was in no position to tease Big Sis Tia.
…Was she actually losing it.
She had even forgotten to reply.
There's no point holding back now.
Seika's official account was already logged in, so she had almost certainly already contacted Rion.
If they suddenly tried to rein her in, there was no telling which way Seika would bounce.
If Coco was normally a bouncy ball, Seika was a bouncy ball with several times the elasticity—and no one ever knew where she would land.
Better to lay the board for her, so she would have no lingering regrets left.
"Haaah…. Nothing else for it. Time to work."
Whatever her reasons for starting as a VTuber had been.
Now that things had come to this, they might as well do it big.
…She would repay the kindness she had received, in kind.
The collab offers that had come Seika's way over the years were beyond counting.
Outside of the four streamers she had lived and worked with on the same team, Seika had refused every collab, and coordinating around that had been a nightmare—
They had only barely gotten her to start collabing by adding related clauses during contract renewal season.
And now she was the one stepping forward first.
As expected, this VTuber named Rion…. had to be Link, right?
…Ah. She still had to deal with that, too.