Persuasion by Hand

"What are you looking at so intently?"

"I was checking the community's reactions."

"Ugh! You shouldn't be reading that stuff."

The CEO had crept up behind me for a peek at my smartphone screen, and now she staggered backward, aghast.

I knew exactly why.

"Well, you do have a gift for blundering the moment everyone's forgotten the last blunder, so I can hardly blame them."

"I don't do it on purpose! You think I want to screw up?"

"If I weren't here, this project would have seen someone carted off to the hospital before debut ever arrived."

"Ugh, I get chills just thinking about it. So — this time wasn't exactly trouble-free either, was it. What are people saying?"

"Do you truly want to know?"

"J-just a little?"

"It's been written off as a system error, and since it touches on the red pill, nobody's saying much. Beyond that, the overwhelming consensus is that the debut was a success."

"Really?"

"Yes. So I'd say you can stop fretting over the community's reactions. And you can stop apologizing over my red pill leak while you're at it."

"Uh, yeah... does it show that badly?"

"Immensely."

The system error that had detonated during my very first broadcast, and the do-or-die 0.3-second red pill leak right after it.

Ever since, the CEO had been looking at me with a face full of guilt, as though every last bit of it were her doing.

Honestly, I couldn't follow the logic of pinning it all on herself over some supposed jinx.

And I'd had quite enough of her strained, sunny little smiles whenever our eyes met.

"It was a momentary system error. Nothing more. There was no jinx."

"I know, I know."

"The leak itself lasted less than a single second."

"Hoo... fine. I can't manage it overnight, but I'll work on shaking it off."

"For now, that is more than enough."

A sliver of the guilt receded from the CEO's eyes.

Whittle it away like that, little by little, and we'd get there in the end.

"Oh — wait, that wasn't what I came here to say."

"Then to what do I owe the visit?"

"Seha, how long do you intend to keep streaming from the office?"

"Is something the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter, exactly... it's just that you've got better gear set up at home than our practice room ever had. I couldn't figure out why you'd bother streaming here."

"There's no special reason. If I had to account for why I stream at the office... it is, in every respect, for the employees."

"The employees?... Oh."

"I take it you've grasped it?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I have."

VIVID's first generation going live had not, as it turned out, lightened the employees' workload one whit.

If anything, with viewer reactions pouring back in real time and no telling when or where the next disaster might erupt, life after debut was busier in certain respects than life before it.

So while the 1st gen members had gained a measure of breathing room, the employees were still being fed into the grinder.

And I was devoting myself to their care so that not one of them would hit the wall and be hauled off to a hospital.

But suppose I streamed from home instead of the office?

Suppose that meant no one was left to help them, to look after them?

I couldn't swear to it, but I'd wager that within a week someone would collapse, and someone else would collapse covering for them.

The vicious cycle would feed itself, over and over.

I hadn't declared "without me, you'd have wrecked this project too" on a mere hunch.

Daon had dropped out to a sudden cancer, granted — but the Mirage Live of today had blown straight past "black company" and become the abyss itself.

"I've said this before, but start hiring people. Soon."

"Whew... I suppose I must."

"Money was the sticking point because the startup costs were nothing to sneeze at, but you've scraped together a little slack now, haven't you?"

"True enough... the problem being that the moment I hire more people, that slack evaporates all over again."

"You must hire them all the same."

"All right, all right. I'd already told Yuseon to get on it, as it happens."

So that explained it. No wonder Yuseon over in management had been looking brighter these past few days.

I'd half wondered whether the workload had finally driven the woman out of her mind; a relief to learn otherwise.

"And how many do you intend to hire?"

"...One per department?"

"Are you not also about to recruit a 2nd generation?"

"Well, yes...?"

"Then if your employees bolt, you will accept it as only natural."

Judging by the growth curve the 1st gen was riding, the smarter play was to take out a loan if need be, hire a few more staff, and keep the operation from catching fire.

Did it truly take my saying it out loud for that to register?

I elected ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to skip persuasion by mouth and demonstrate persuasion by hand instead.

"W-wait, hold on. Why are you coming closer?!"

"So that you may feel your employees' suffering with your own body."

"Wha?! UGYAAAAAAAAAAAH!!"

Broadly speaking, my massages came in two versions.

One was the mana massage, which melted fatigue away in waves of supreme pleasure.

The other was the curse massage, which coiled mana through the body and forced it into a state of utter exhaustion.

The technique had been born of a simple line of thinking: if I already possessed Meridian-Chasing Bloodflow, then surely Bone-Splitting Tendon-Snaring wasn't beyond me either.

I had never imagined I'd find a use for it here.

Struck down by the curse massage, the CEO lay sprawled across the floor, moaning of full-body muscle aches and a splitting migraine.

"Well? How does it feel?"

"Urrrrgh... w-what iiiis thiiiis?"

"Do you not feel a mighty, irresistible urge to hire two per department, starting this very instant?"

"I-I'm s-sorryyy! I'll hiiiire a loooot of theeeem!"

"Very good. You seem properly repentant, so I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shall release you."

"Hnnnnnnngh..."

The moment her body returned to normal, the CEO let out a long, ragged breath.

Perhaps because she'd been felled by a technique beyond human comprehension, the eyes she turned on me carried a distinct glimmer of fear.

"Boss."

"Hyaak?! U-um, y-yes?! What?!"

"As I mentioned before, I will be taking my day off next Thursday."

"Ah, right, yes. Understood. You've been grinding for months — go enjoy a proper day of rest."

"We shall see. I doubt I'll manage much resting..."

"Hmm? What was that?"

"Nothing at all. My stream begins shortly, so please see yourself out."

I ushered the CEO out of the streaming room.

And, quite naturally, my thoughts drifted back to the call that had come in last week.

A lively voice, brimming over with unmistakable delight.

One of the precious few people who could be called an acquaintance in Lee Seha's memory.

Next week, I was due to meet that rare acquaintance in person.

Vacation was one thing, but with the debut barely behind me, I had to keep sprinting right up until the day off.

The first stream had been light conversation and a self-introduction.

The second, a cleaning game to show off a maid's skills, during which we settled on a fandom name.

The third, a bit more of the cleaning game before I yielded to viewer requests and turned it into a singing stream.

And today, already, marked my fourth.

The moment I went live, the viewers came flooding in.

Perhaps because the last stream had leaned so heavily on singing, a respectable crowd had turned up.

"Thank you all for joining me again today, my dear Bdeungi."

"Unfortunately, today is not that cleaning game."

"Instead, I have brought a different cleaning game."

"It wounds me deeply to see how much you all despise it."

The cleaning game had first entered my rotation two streams ago.

It was, by design, a co-op game requiring at least three players — which was presumably why clearing every last map had taken ten full hours.

The game I'd brought this time was a knockoff of that one.

"And yet I kept up a perfectly good conversation while cleaning, did I not?"

How did they know?

Honestly, from where I stood, there was precious little upside to the stream growing any bigger.

Left to my own preferences, I'd have happily seen every last one of them migrate over to the other 1st gen members' streams.

Of course, saying so out loud would have been an incident, so the sentiment stayed strictly internal.

"Since you all despise it this much, today I shall do something special instead."

It wasn't a reaction I hadn't anticipated, so I closed out the game and, in its place, opened a different page I had prepared in advance.

"Ta-da."

"If you'd rather not, we can always return to the cleaning game..."

"Very well. Then let us begin right away~"

"Ah."

Perhaps it wasn't too late to simply go back to the cleaning game...