It Was Handmade?
Even if tomorrow was the first day of school, some things still had to be done.
And what had to be done was, of course, Ruru's stream.
Despite it being Independence Movement Day, Ruru had a broadcast scheduled, so she was streaming as usual.
And for the first time in ages, she was doing a chatting stream — gleefully tearing into her viewers without mercy.
"Neeeh~? Don't tell me some of you have university starting tomorrow~? No way~ would any of my Ruru Corps be like that~? Our Ruru Corps are always~ total scrubs, right? Ah, why aren't the people going back to high school speaking up? Because compared to starting university, it just sounds worse somehow, doesn't it?"
Ruru kept her mesugaki succubus RP locked in with terrifying precision as she started messing with the chat, and sure enough, the viewers immediately closed ranks for a counterattack.
"Why would I go to a human school? I'm a succubus!"
Ruru fired back with absolute confidence — but the viewers' assault was only just getting started.
"Huh?"
That unexpected line of attack left Ruru looking genuinely flustered.
Not that the chat cared. The pile-on continued without pause.
Before long, Ruru had acquired brand-new nicknames: Preschooler Ruru, Lua-ya, and the like.
"Uuuuugh…! All of you get ouuuuut!!!"
Ruru immediately brought the hammer of wrath down on chat, and the viewers slapped with a ten-second ban promptly surrendered.
Just another ordinary WWE match in Ruru's room.
Naturally, the viewers absolutely loved this kind of back-and-forth with her. Beyond loving it — you could honestly say this was the main content of Ruru's chatting streams.
That was how much affection packed into every one of Ruru's ten-second chat bans.
"Dammit… Ah, right. Want to do a cafe tour for the first time in a while?"
With nothing particular planned, Ruru floated a cafe-tour segment, and the viewers agreed without a second's hesitation.
There was only so far you could go just roasting Ruru for fun, after all. The chat wanted new dopamine and fresh entertainment too.
Humming under her breath, Ruru hopped straight into the cafe and started browsing posts of every kind.
There were daily-life updates and humor threads, and Ruru and her viewers started laughing along together as they read.
"Whoa, right. This meme's been going around lately, hasn't it? Ahh~ can I go do a tanking meetup too?"
"Why! Ruru's confident she can tank just fine!"
In the rapid-fire exchange with chat, Ruru lost yet again and immediately switched her model to a full pout. The viewers scrambled to soothe her.
"I don't care, I'm sulking, I hate all of you, I'm banning everyone. Hmph!"
She said that — and then didn't ban a single person.
That kind of behavior was exactly what made Ruru the VTuber so charming. And we, the Ruru Love Corps, knew that better than anyone.
"I'm not doing it with you guys! I'm doing it with Aris and Elia! I'll call Mei unnie and everyone!!"
Ruru rattled off the names of every VTuber she knew and declared she would absolutely never game with her viewers.
Which was, to be fair, the correct call. Casually running a viewer-collab stream at Ruru's current scale was just asking for unnecessary drama.
The chat clearly understood that too, and fell right into step with her.
Nodding contentedly at the chat's response, Ruru moved on to other posts on the Ruru fan cafe.
And among them, the one that jumped out most was a chocolate verification thread.
On Valentine's Day, Ruru had handed out chocolate — distributed through a comment event.
I hadn't won, unfortunately, but I was still curious what the gift chocolate other people had received from her was actually like.
The answer turned out more ordinary than I'd expected.
The chocolate Ruru had sent as a gift was high-end gift-box chocolate, the kind that ran about fifty dollars a piece.
The lucky viewers who'd received it had been so thrilled they'd immediately posted proof on the cafe.
"Ruru Corps, after eating that you'll support Ruru even harder, right?"
"Absolutely not~"
Ruru kept teasing the chat like that, but I found myself feeling petty for no good reason.
The chocolate Ruru… no, Lua had given me wasn't chocolate like that.
It was the plainest, simplest kind of chocolate imaginable.
Of course, I'd also gotten a letter from Lua written in the cutest little handwriting, but that alone still left me a little wanting.
I know how to eat expensive chocolate too, you know.
Thinking that, I took one of the pieces of Lua's chocolate I'd been carefully rationing and tasted it.
Savoring the flavor, I stared blankly at Ruru's stream.
"You asking if I can't make handmade chocolate? Ruru can make it just fine, you know? I can make it like store-bought stuff, okay!? Ruru is amazing at that kind of thing, okay!?"
The chat had asked whether she'd given them expensive chocolate because she couldn't make handmade ones, and she'd immediately fired right back.
Which only invited another wave of attacks.
"Ruru's handmade choco isn't something the Ruru Corps get to eat!"
Then someone suddenly asked whether Ruru had a boyfriend.
Ruru — Lua — having a boyfriend?
There was no way. But even if she did…
……Honestly, I didn't think it would be that big a deal.
Most female VTubers stimulated their viewers' parasocial romantic feelings to grow their audience. That much was true. But Ruru was a little different.
Ruru's viewership hadn't ballooned from parasocial romance. It had ballooned from the combination of her punchable mesugaki succubus character, her catastrophically bad gaming skills, and the pure sandbag charm that came from those two streaming attractions fused together.
I could say it with certainty. If Ruru started dating, some viewers would drop off, sure — but she'd still be hugely popular.
Still, losing viewers would sting, so Ruru pushed back hard(?).
"A boyfriend for Ruru? Mmm~ there's no guy I like?"
The chat's reaction amounted to even if you don't know it, there's no way a guy would like you.
At that moment, Ruru changed her model's expression.
Wearing a truly terrifying look, she said with absolute firmness:
Smiling at that terrifying reaction, I took another bite of the chocolate Lua had given me.
It was a flavor I'd tasted somewhere before. But the shape was a chocolate shape I didn't recognize.
Hmm…
……Did they even sell chocolate like this?
Just in case, I took a photo of the chocolate and ran a reverse image search. And the result was rather shocking.
"……Why is there nothing?"
No chocolate matching the shape of the one I'd searched for existed anywhere.
No way. Come on, no way.
Curious enough that I had to check, I sent Lua a casual message after the stream ended.
Lua read my messages and replied without even a moment's hesitation.
Lua's messages felt truly flustered — and a little disappointed, too.
I felt so sorry toward her, and even more grateful than that.
So I left her a reply.
Even though Lua said she was sulking, I stubbornly kept expressing my gratitude, and in the end it seemed like she'd decided to forgive me a little.
To my question, Lua sent a reply that made me want to laugh out loud.
Apparently, if I wanted more of Lua's handmade chocolate going forward, I'd have to keep treating her well.
Eating another of those cleanly shaped heart chocolates, I found myself grateful to Lua all over again.