Unpredictable Rua
With the festival over, final exams season was finally creeping up on us.
And once finals arrived, Lulu’s streams naturally shifted away from the ones that tended to drag on forever. Instead she stuck to broadcasts she could cut short at will—streams with a guaranteed clock-out time.
I don’t mean talk streams or anything like that.
I mean the games Lulu was actually good at—and, more importantly, games she could save and quit whenever she felt like it.
In other words, she was playing single-player package titles.
“Today’s game is~ just like yesterday~ UnderStory!”
The game Rua had been running lately was UnderStory, a beloved indie classic famous for its dense story and endings that changed depending on the player’s actions.
Honestly, the hype train had left the station a long time ago. The game was roughly ten years old at this point. Or was it more than that?
Anyway, back in the day UnderStory had been the textbook definition of a “little kids’ game.”
The story was so good—and it hit that perfect middle-school edgelord sweet spot—that people even started making jokes like, “Ah, you know UnS! That game is truly a god.game.”
The fact that kids were spamming drips like that told you everything about how young the player base had been.
These days the popularity had cooled considerably, but that was exactly why Lulu had picked it.
Plus the save system was dead simple, so she could stop whenever she wanted—another major selling point.
“Hmm~ What kind of friends will we meet today~”
Lulu was having a genuine blast with UnderStory.
On the surface it looked like a regular RPG, but it had this unique system where you could show mercy and spare your enemies.
The mercy process itself was delightfully weird. Against a puppy monster, for example, you just kept petting it until the dog was satisfied and ended the fight on its own.
Some enemies were happy if you fought them to the brink of death and then ran; others were content if you simply told them carrots tasted good.
That ability for the player to “voluntarily” refuse combat and spare enemies was a huge part of why the game blew up.
Lulu’s personal approach: she skipped fights with monsters she liked and only fought the ones she didn’t.
And her criteria for that…
“That one started it with me! It started it!!”
…were completely arbitrary.
The moment the chat started roasting her, Lulu fired right back.
“Aaaa, that cat threw the first punch before I even did anything and tried to kill me! That’s going too far!!”
“It was a forced fight and the patterns were easy…?”
The jokes only made Lulu dig her heels in harder.
“Nooo…! And besides, that dog was cute! That cat was ugly!”
“Don’t turn this into a controversy! It’s a forced controversy!!”
Even the jokes that teetered on the edge of going too far—or just being plain unfunny—Lulu fielded like a total pro. Yep, Lulu, you were a professional streamer. May you stream forever.
While I was thinking that, Rua’s words from the festival floated back into my head.
‘Hey… every once in a while, could you pay a little attention to me too?’
…Just remembering a line I never in a million years imagined coming out of Rua’s mouth made my face heat up.
Ugh, that was seriously embarrassing.
I shook my head hard to clear it while Lulu’s game kept rolling along.
—Crack! Thwack-thwack!
…And then, while she was trying to spare a monster she actually liked, that same monster killed her instead.
“No, no, nooooo…! It died?! Why did it dieeeee!!!”
“Ah, where was my last save? Where was it!?”
Come to think of it, our Lulu hadn’t been saving very often.
And if you don’t save often… well, you get to waste a bunch of time, don’t you?
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”
Once again our streamer Lulu delivered peak clip material with absolute certainty. Love you so much.
Thinking that, I decided that tomorrow I should give Rua something—anything.
Right. She herself had asked me to pay attention to her. So I should give her something, at least.
The next morning, when I stepped out of the apartment, Rua was waiting like always. More precisely, we ran straight into each other.
Lately, if I left at the exact same time every day, Rua would just happen to be walking by at that exact same moment.
Thanks to that, our walking-to-school time had basically synced up to that slot.
“Morning. Sleep well?”
“Yeah, slept fine. You?”
“Me… aaah… not really.”
“Why, because you lost your save yesterday?”
“Obviously because of that.”
Rua immediately launched into a full rant—how she never thought that monster would kill her, how she’d wasted so much time, and so on.
It was pure trivial chatter, but it still made me smile.
I held out a stick of gum to her.
“Hm? Why the gum?”
“Just take it. Eat it.”
“…So you want me to shut up and chew this, is that it?”
“No, that’s not what I—”
A tiny “pfft” of laughter reached my ear, and when I looked at her face Rua was still smiling.
“Why take it so seriously~”
“…You’re the one who made it sound serious.”
“Did I~?”
Rua snickered and looked at me with the most shameless expression imaginable.
It was equal parts annoying and endearing, and before I knew it I was shaking my head.
That was when it happened.
—CocoaTalk!
“Rua, sorry. One sec.”
A CocoaTalk message chimed. I asked Rua to wait a moment and checked my phone.
The sender was Jieun Shin—that underclassman from before.
Ever since the festival we’d stayed in occasional contact, chatting about Lulu’s streams.
I hadn’t realized it at first, but this girl… she was a hardcore VTuber otaku.
She knew VTuber history inside and out and had every personality quirk memorized. She’d even told me her dream was to work at a VTuber-related MCN someday.
I didn’t have a single friend like that, so I’d gotten pretty close with her.
And the content of her message…
…was none other than one of my clips.
Of course I had never told this underclassman that I was Mangjjonku. That would only create unnecessary noise.
I tapped out a quick reply with an emoji.
The moment I did, Rua glanced sideways at me and asked,
“…Who is it?”
“Ah… that underclassman from before.”
“Underclassman…?”
Rua’s voice cooled just a fraction.
It wasn’t like the pitch or the actual sound had changed.
But where a second ago it had felt faintly warm, now it felt cold.
How to put it—like the difference between spring and autumn? Exactly that kind of feeling.
It hadn’t gone dramatically dark or anything, yet somehow the voice just felt quietly chilly.
“…What did that underclassman send you?”
“Your video.”
“My video?”
I showed Rua the chat with Jieun as-is. She glanced at it, then immediately went back to glaring at me hard.
“…Planning on dating this underclassman, are we?”
“What are you even talking about?”
“Sure~ go for it~ Sell out your childhood friend and date the underclassman~ Have fun~”
What on earth was she even saying all of a sudden.
“Rua, Rua. What kind of nonsense is that.”
“Nonsense? It’s just facts.”
Facts my ass.
“I have zero interest in her.”
“Liar.”
“I’m serious.”
“Lies~ Hmph~”
Rua sped up her pace. I closed the distance and spoke as sincerely as I could.
“I really, truly have zero interest in her, okay?”
It might sound a bit much to say this, but Rua was prettier than Jieun. Rua was cooler. Rua was more charming.
So how was I supposed to develop “those kinds of feelings” for Jieun?
Still making excuses as best I could, I held out another stick of gum—the same kind I’d given her earlier.
Rua stared at it for a long second, then snatched it and started chewing aggressively.
Watching her chew that gum filled me with a weird, unnameable sense of dread.
But Rua, apparently chewing without any particular malice, just left me with a review of the gum.
“This gum’s pretty good.”
“Th… that’s a relief.”
“…Hmph. I’ll let it slide this once.”
“Yes ma’am.”
I answered as meekly as possible, yet one question still filled my entire head.
Just what, exactly, had Rua decided to “let slide” for me?
That question kept swirling around and making me even dizzier.