The Test
Becoming a VTuber requires a wide range of skills.
It wasn't for nothing that the company had picked four first-gen members and then spent months drilling them relentlessly without so much as letting them debut.
Which meant that I, too, ought to have needed time to cultivate my abilities, just like the first-gen members who had been preparing all along—
"Unfortunately, we don't have time."
"That's right. We test you first, then fill in the gaps starting from your weakest areas. What matters is clearing the minimum bar."
"Good. Then let's get started."
The time remaining until the first generation's debut: one month and a half, and not a day more. Mirage Live Company had no time to spare.
The very day after it was decided that I would debut in Daon's place, the tests began the moment I walked through the door.
First up: how to operate the streaming equipment.
"You do it in this order. I'll walk you through it a few more times, so take your time memorizing it."
"No need. Showing me once is quite enough."
???
"You simply do it—like this, no?"
"You memorized all of that from a single look?"
The basic setup had already been completed, so picking up the equipment took me all of a moment. Even so, that alone was enough to send Jungsoo rubbing his eyes in shock and making me run through it again and again, acting for all the world as if he refused to believe what he'd seen. Just what on earth had happened during the first-gen training process...?
Second: how to check chat in the middle of a broadcast.
"Heh heh. Streaming gear you can pick up in no time with a little sense, but this? This won't be easy."
That one, after all, was the weakest of the Four Heavenly Kings.
Wearing that exact same expression, the boss smirked a sly, scheming smirk and started up an unofficial stream. Then she launched a famous rhythm game.
"From now on, you play the rhythm game while answering the questions we send through chat. You do remember every last detail of Meido Mei's profile I gave you yesterday, right?"
"Of course."
"Hah. Your confidence, at least, is in ample supply."
The test began.
The moment the headset went on, raucous music came screaming into my ears. Bars rained down the screen in time with the beat, and I struck the keys to match.
The combo piled up at a blistering pace. She'd chosen a song of considerable difficulty, but for someone already counted among the superhuman, it was simple.
About a minute into the game, questions began appearing in the chat window at the side of the screen. The first batch was easy.
"My name is Meido Mei. I am seventeen years old. As for how I came to join Mirage Live Company—I lost my job and was drifting from place to place when I found employment at the boss's house. What I like: the boss, and bread. What I dislike: bugs."
I finished the answers without so much as a stumble, and the questions climbed in difficulty.
"The game I am playing is Rhythm Fast, and the song is Red Rain. One through ten adds up to 55. I have three teammates: Akatsuki Luna, Kiba Akari, and Amamiya Maho."
The second round, cleared to perfection. The song, too, was sliding into its final highlight.
"The distance from home to school is four kilometers. The soy sauce factory manager is a factory manager, the soybean paste factory manager is a factory manager, and the soy sauce factory manager's factory and the soybean paste factory manager's factory are different."
Not a single miss from start to finish—the game ended on a full combo.
"The answer is 200,168. And since you have used profanity, you are banned for three days."
Click.
Evil boss vanquished, I pulled off the headset. From behind me, the manager—who had been firing off questions alongside the boss—came over.
"A perfect clear on the rhythm game, plus everything from simple Q&A to mental arithmetic. Truly an overwhelming display of talent."
"It was nothing."
"No, it was very much something. Even the other first-gen members, with months of preparation behind them, were never at this level."
"Thank you for the compliment."
"Still, if I had to point out a single flaw... is there no way to change that stiff manner of speaking? Going by her profile, Meido Mei is a clumsy maid brownie. That way of talking hardly suits her."
"My speech..."
Hmm. Honestly, it was a somewhat difficult request.
This manner of speaking of mine had hardened over the course of more than twenty thousand regressions—less a simple habit than a compulsion, born of the conviction that if I do not speak this way, I will be forced to regress. I knew full well that nothing like regression would ever happen again. But what the mind knows and what the body knows are two different things.
"Is it too difficult, then?"
"One moment."
I closed my eyes. And I called to mind the me from before this speech pattern had set into habit.
'Why you son of a—#$%^&@#$!'
No. That one went much too far.
Ah! Of course!
Back when my regression count had passed one thousand and I was half given up on everything—the way I spoke then was—
"Should I talk like this, eh?"
"Huh? What's that suppo—"
"This way it's neither formal nor casual, so it's fine, eh?"
"Th-that's not exactly wrong, but..."
"Don't 'but' me, eh?"
"Is... that really the best you can do?"
"You got a problem with that, eh?"
"Please just go back to your original speech style."
"Phew. Thank you."
Perhaps because it had been so long since I'd used my old speech, my old personality had nearly come spilling out along with it. The me of that time was... yes, nothing short of my dark history.
My mind had already half let go of the leash by then, so whenever anyone crossed the line, I would shout 'Don't you get cocky with me, eh!' and simply clobber them before regressing.
Of course, I never struck the young lady. No—perhaps it's more accurate to say I couldn't.
"We can still rework your RP at this stage, so it may be better to steer it toward the cool, composed head maid type instead."
"Then I'll leave it in your hands."
"Yes. In any case, that clears stage two as well."
And with the manager's pronouncement, the second test was passed. What would come next?
Just then, the boss—until moments ago slumped in her chair, pale as death—rose from the dead.
"H-heheheh! Fine, I admit it. You... you've got VTuber talent. No—broadcasting talent."
"A compliment I can't say I'm glad to receive."
"But it ends here! The third test won't go easy on you—not even on you!"
"Entirely apart from my own feelings on the matter, I can't stand the sight of the boss looking so smug—so I will face you at full power."
"Ha! That confidence of yours will be short-lived. The third test is the free-topic talk test!"
"The free-topic talk test?"
"That's right! VTuber or otherwise, for a broadcaster, communication, conversation, and the gift of gab are as good as essential. So let's see—can you make it past the haters and the trolls and keep a conversation going, safe and sound, for one full hour?"
Oh ho. So she meant to put to the test a mentality that had been tempered by force under that precious young lady?
"By all means—come at me."
"Behold the trolling power of an eleven-year veteran broadcaster!"
Eleven years, is it? On this side stands a devotee who spent several hundred years in the service of a wicked woman.
Dum-dum! Dum-dum!
Ha Siyeon—the one in charge of the manager division at Mirage Live Company.
She had quietly withdrawn to the back to watch the two of them in their battle of the century (not really).
A free-topic talk test with no conditions of any kind attached.
Done by the book, a first attempt should come with a topic provided and no malicious-troll role in existence whatsoever, measuring simply how long a person could carry a conversation naturally on their own. But time was short, and the boss—her pride scraped raw—had stepped into the ring personally, sending the test's difficulty rocketing straight into hell.
Yet even so, Lee Seha opened her mouth with an air of perfect ease.
"Now then—what do you all think a maid is?"
"The duties of a maid are more varied than one might think. At the foundation, there is cleaning and laundry, preparing meals, running errands, and so forth—"
"Yes. Maids of the past certainly bore that image as well."
"I said that was how things were in the past. The modern maid is closer to a housekeeper than a maid, strictly speaking. That said, the difference between a maid and a housekeeper is this: a maid assists with every aspect of her master's life."
"Fufu. Everyone seems quite interested in my virginity. As a single hint—never once, to this very day, have I ever had a 'male' master."
"Now, let us return to the topic at hand. I am a house brownie—one who proclaims herself, personally, to be the perfect maid."
"As such, housework in its entirety is both my specialty and my hobby."
"And among those, the field in which I hold the greatest confidence is cooking."
"In fact, if I show you photographs of dishes I have made... like so."
"If you find that hard to believe, then next time I shall set aside a day and hold a cooking stream."
"Yes—because I am exactly that confident."
"Of course, cooking aside—so long as it is a task my master assigns, I am confident I can carry out anything to perfection."
"Attending to my master's safety is likewise one of a maid's sacred duties."
"I am rather fond of conversation myself."
Watching the exchange between Lee Seha and the imaginary troll (the boss), Ha Siyeon caught herself nodding along.
The boss, who had talked as though issuing a challenge, seemed to come to her senses the moment the test actually began, keeping to a reasonable line.
And Seha's handling of her was seamless beyond measure.
She never handed the boss the initiative, nor was she ever grabbed and shaken by it. The way she handled it all with room to spare—circling back to the topic, or better yet, steering the viewers themselves—was enough to make Siyeon suspect this woman had worked in the industry before.
A full hour was still a long way off, but in Ha Siyeon's heart, the passing stamp for this test had already come slamming down—THUNK!