Kick Out the Fake Masters Who Won't Mind Their Table Manners!!!
From the moment Märchen, dressed in a maid uniform, held up a handmade sign and announced that she had signed with AY Entertainment, she pulled in a considerable amount of attention.
The industry noticed first. AY Entertainment, which had withdrawn from the MCN business while winding down AY Creator Company, was reaching a hand back out toward an internet broadcaster. Were they planning to restart the MCN venture? Or were they trying to make sure the know-how they'd accumulated running one didn't vanish entirely? Or did a major agency have some reason to heave its heavy body into motion just to secure this particular streamer?
Suspecting parental connections ran aground on one inconvenient fact: she had been left to languish as a nobody caster for over a year. Even to an industry eye, it was impossible to tell what AY Entertainment meant to do with a broadcaster named Märchen. So they watched AY Entertainment's every move, and Märchen's, very closely. That was the industry's reaction.
The general public reacted differently. What caught their interest varied from person to person, and so did the response.
There were people trying to borrow Märchen to snag a little of the internet's attention.
There were people who stirred the pot first and asked questions later.
There were people who let the trolls drag them around.
"Downvote this one... upvote that one... and don't make the comments too obvious..."
There were people rigging the engagement.
"Huh...? A cooking stream? An actual cooking stream?!"
And there were people who, AY Entertainment or otherwise, simply wanted to enjoy a maid-concept broadcast they had no idea when they might ever see again.
The reactions were all over the place, but one thing was certain. They had learned the name Märchen, and they had become interested.
Attention gathered, and gathered attention soon turned into viewers. A maid cooking stream, as it happened, possessed an invisible grip strong enough to hold on to those newly converted viewers. So the instant Märchen announced a new music video, the attention that stream had locked in its fists swelled into something the word typhoon described all too well.
And in the middle of that storm, Märchen was———
"Setup complete!"
Perfectly calm.
Chat was screaming upward, fast enough that you could fairly call it out of control. I'd expected exactly that, so I wasn't rattled. I'd seen the state of the chat when I ended stream yesterday. As if I would have walked in with no mental preparation at all.
No need to clamp down too hard. Three days or so ought to do it, right?
And the result of switching to followers-only chat was...
"...Somehow it doesn't feel all that different."
It'll settle down once some time passes... right?
Thinking that, I sat in my seat—the one placed to face the camera dead-on.
The moment I sat, donation messages came through soaked in desperate sincerity. You could feel the pleading in the amounts alone, so I answered at once.
"This music video was made with help from AY Entertainment. ...Not mine. Miss Märchen's. Thanks to that, a video was born at a quality Miss Märchen never could have reached if she'd challenged it alone! I think I can say that with pride."
I clapped several times right after, then leaned toward the lens with a bright little scold.
"Master? Let's talk while you eat your omurice first! At this rate the omurice I went to all the trouble of making is going to get cold!"
With that, I carefully scooped up a spoonful of the omurice I'd made with my own hands and held it out to the camera.
"Here, have a bite of omurice. Aaahn~! Is it delicious, Master?"
I delivered the line in my best maid voice and kept the spoon in front of the camera for about five seconds. That seemed like enough, so I tipped the scooped omurice into a soup bowl I'd set aside beforehand, to refrigerate and eat for lunch tomorrow. The feeding bit was done. Now it was my turn. I took a spoonful of the frozen omurice prepared as my portion and put it in my mouth.
It was good. Maybe because it had been a while since I'd eaten omurice at all, but the flavor was honestly pretty decent.
"Why, because I have taken on the role of mealtime conversation partner, so that Master need never dine in lonely solitude. I am an eternal seventeen-year-old perfect maid, after all."
I said it, then scooped up another spoonful of my share and ate.
All right. Time to ease into the real question segment.
People had plenty they wanted to know. The questions came in thick.
"The release time is... hang on, let me just finish this bite.... No, a maid has to eat if she's going to live. I cleaned very hard, so I believe I've earned the right! Mm, mmm.... Frozen omurice isn't bad either."
"To answer the earlier question, the music video premieres at six p.m., and the track drops at the same time. A teaser is scheduled as well, of course."
"It's a first release, obviously. This is exactly when you use the premiere feature."
"Miss Märchen did not write or compose this one."
And so I worked through the incoming questions while diligently eating my omurice.
"...Because I'm an eternal seventeen-year-old perfect maid?"
Questions that had nothing to do with the music video included.
At this point I was less an eternal seventeen-year-old perfect maid and more a Magic Conch. Of course I hadn't answered every single question. I'd picked out, more or less, only the ones that wouldn't cause any trouble if I revealed them now.
So how did I dodge the awkward ones?
"I'm sorry, but I don't really know. I'm not Miss Märchen. Why not leave that as a pleasure for when the moment comes?"
"...Who can say? I am not Miss Märchen, the national-treasure-class bishoujo who holds a world champion title. I am Märmärchen, the eternal seventeen-year-old perfect maid.... I know a great many things, but sadly, Master, I do not know everything."
Like that.
I made excellent use of the premise that Märchen and Märmärchen were not the same person. I hadn't built the Märmärchen concept for nothing. There was a reason for every bit of it!
But when an outrageous viewer, failing to grasp my grand design, took aim at a gap in the concept, I smiled sweetly and answered on the spot.
"...Would you like to be banned, Master?"
"You may consider Miss Märchen and me to be of one heart and one body. An insult to me is an insult to Miss Märchen, and a smear against Miss Märchen is a smear against me. Which means that my being on stream is the same as Miss Märchen being on stream! Do you understand?"
"...Hmm."
"Well.... The truth is, Miss Märchen and I are sisters, separated by an accident when we were little...! That premise is actually rather nice. Shall we commit to it?"
"Hey! Eat this and be quiet!"
I said it and scooped up another spoonful of Märmärchen omurice, bringing it to the camera—and the moment I did?!
"Ah."
The camera's screen got dirty. I could have sworn I heard the little chime of a scatterbrain trait being added.
The barrage of questions had quieted to a degree, and at the same time the two plated omurice finally disappeared—one into my stomach, and the other into the soup bowl.
"Thanks for the meal! ...Now that I've eaten, I ought to digest it, shouldn't I?"
"I have to get back to the streaming booth, so I'll end the broadcast for a moment!"
I said that and paused the stream. Then I did not go straight into the booth. First, the leftover omurice had to go in the refrigerator.
"...Omurice should still be decent enough if I reheat it in the microwave, right?"
Once it was stored, what I did was not exercise. Morning jogging was already plenty. Oh, absolutely.
So what did I do, you ask?
"I wish there were a maid skin.... This is a deduction in maid points."
Why, Raider, of course.
Didn't I feel guilty, playing a game in the middle of a maid-concept stream? No. Not in the slightest. Add the trait of combat maid and there was no problem at all, so my conscience wasn't pricked even a little. If anything, shouldn't an eternal seventeen-year-old perfect maid know how to fight—anytime, anywhere—in order to look after Master's safety?
And so the maid-concept broadcast closed out adorned with Raider.
Today's stream was a full one!
And the next day.
"...I'm not even surprised anymore."
I woke up, and my YouTube subscribers had broken two hundred and fifty thousand.
Whoa! A quarter-million YouTuber!