If Heaven Exists
If heaven exists, it would be a place where you can play a game like this… right?
There is something called the marshmallow experiment.
It was a study run by Walter Mischel, a psychologist at Stanford University, and the setup was simple: give a child one marshmallow, and promise them a second if they could last fifteen minutes without eating the first.
The children who held out, the results said, went on to earn better grades than the ones who couldn't, and they scored far higher on the SAT besides. From findings like those came the conclusion that a child with exceptional patience and self-control stood a much better chance of succeeding later in life.
Of course, rebuttals followed. Newer studies argued that what actually shaped those children's success wasn't patience at all, but the homes they grew up in, and the marshmallow experiment's tidy little moral took its share of hits.
Anyway. Staring at that VR headset, the whole story came back to me.
There was a segment I'd meant to save for the stream celebrating two hundred thousand subscribers, and I failed to hold out. I decided to pull it forward and run it as healing content for the broadcast commemorating my server-wide First Clear of Techsecular—and the picture of me doing it overlapped, rather neatly, with those kids who couldn't last fifteen minutes before eating the marshmallow.
…I was genuinely relieved the new research had come out.
So. What was this content I'd planned for the two-hundred-thousand celebration—the thing I couldn't even wait that long to do?
Right here, right now……!!!
A get-yourself-a-virtual-girlfriend project—the fruit of ultra-high technology!
Up until the very moment she heard Märchen declare that Part One would be a VR dating sim, Jeon Gyeoul had not expected the broadcast to turn out like this at all. Which was only fair. To Gyeoul, a VR game meant the driving simulator Märchen had shown on stream, and a dating sim meant the Tortoise and the Hare visual novel from the hundred-and-fifty-thousand celebration broadcast. She had enjoyed both. Something fun, plus something fun? Obviously that ought to produce something extremely fun. So she had been looking forward to this segment a great deal.
And Märchen blew straight past those expectations. In more ways than one.
The protagonist's line appeared on the screen.
"…What? You're saying you'll sleep over at my place?"
Märchen pitched her voice up and poured—brilliantly—every drop of the shock the dating-sim hero must have been feeling straight into the line.
…It would have been perfect, if only she hadn't snorted so hard the mic picked it up.
Mina, the game's heroine, said it in a bright, lively voice, and gave him a peek at the clothes she'd packed in her bag. The force of Märchen's snorting immediately got much worse.
"Whoa…. Crazy girl…. Seductive little demon…. Acting all pure while speedrunning the route like a maniac…."
"…B-but my parents aren't home today…. Will you be, okay?"
Even as she said it, Mina stepped in close and made a little gesture, as if she were tapping the tip of his nose.
"…HWOOOOOOOP!!!"
At the same instant Märchen shuddered head to toe, like she'd been shocked. The snorting, of course, got even louder.
In the end, even Gyeoul couldn't hold back, and she typed into the chat.
Not a shred of a lie in it. That was Gyeoul, sincere to the bone.
Dizzy or not, it was fun, so she kept watching.
Before she knew it, the game had reached a scene of the two of them eating dinner alone. Then Mina accidentally dropped her food, and it splattered all over her T-shirt. Looking like she was about to cry, she turned to the protagonist.
In that instant, Märchen started jabbing a finger at empty air.
"Th-th-th-that, that, THAT was a setup! So she can wear my clothes! Next she'll put on my T-shirt and sniff-sniff and go, this is senpai's scent…. She's gonna say iiiiiit!!!!"
Honestly, doing all of that with a VR headset strapped to her face, she looked genuinely insane.
It was funny, though, so the viewers were taking it pretty well.
And just as Märchen had predicted, Mina ended up in the protagonist's T-shirt, bringing the loose, sagging collar up to her nose. Her line, too, was almost exactly what Märchen had called.
Except for one phrase even Märchen hadn't seen coming: every day.
The destructive power packed into those two words was beyond anything anyone had imagined.
The chat started flying past at a brutal speed.
Gyeoul understood exactly how they felt. The moment she heard Mina's line, she had clapped a hand over her own mouth.
And Märchen, who had predicted Mina's reaction almost perfectly? How did she take it?
"If heaven exists, it would be a place where you can play a game like this… right?"
She was losing her mind harder than anyone.
The small fortune I'd spent on the VR headset had been worth it. A VR dating sim has a magic that makes you think so whether you want to or not.
But anything that starts has to end. Before I knew it, the game was racing toward its highlight.
The festival was over, and the protagonist and Mina were walking, just the two of them, down a street dyed in sunset. That strange atmosphere. A distance between them that had closed, unmistakably, since the moment the game began.
And a beautiful view.
Ten years of otaku experience were screaming it. This was a confession flag.
"…Mina, I like you."
And then, at last—finally—the protagonist went in for the confession.
But Mina, hearing it, only smiled the way she always did: bright, easy, innocent as anything.
…What?
Don't tell me—
"HOLY SHIT I thought my heart just stopped!"
If she had rejected him there, I am not joking—I might have hurled that expensive VR headset across the room out of pure rage. For real.
Anyway. Today's true protagonist, Mina, a girl who knew how to toy with a person's heart right up to the very end, went on.
The face she wore as she said it was the same as always. Her voice, though, was nothing like usual—it trembled, just a little. The kind of voice you could hear a feeling overflowing through.
"Th-then, the confession…?"
One step. She comes closer.
Mina softly closed her eyes.
I knew exactly what that meant. There was no way I wouldn't.
Which is why, before I even realized it, my eyes slid shut, lips hovering a breath from meeting.
Slowly. Slowly…….
"Ah."
And only then—far too late—did I remember I was live.
…Yahoo! NewTube archival, confirmed!