Ruru vs. the Challengers
On the last day of the holiday, Ruru fired up her stream like always.
"Everyone! I brought a game for today!"
She said she'd brought a game, so of course I wondered what it could be…
It was way more outrageous than anything I'd expected.
What did she bring, you ask?
"Today is none other thaaaan~ viewer-participation Omok!"
Viewer-participation Omok.
Yeah. She'd brought Omok.
Lua had challenged her entire chat to a battle of five-in-a-row.
"The rules are simple! Every move has to be within twenty seconds! And everyone who comes in has to use an anonymous nickname! I will absolutely not allow any nickname that breaks stream rules!"
"Alright! Come take a swing at Ruru! Because Ruru is going to crush every last one of you~!"
For reference, beating Ruru earned you a VIP badge for her stream.
Stream VIP was, put simply, a membership perk that let you skip the ads and watch right away.
Viewers who already had VIP would get snacks instead.
Those snacks were almost certainly going to be hamburgers. She'd handed out burgers before, after all.
More than anything, stream VIP and a burger cost about the same. Neither even hit ten thousand won.
"Come on in! All of you, come on in! Ruru Squad, Ruru's gonna thrash you good!"
Seeing Ruru look that full of herself, the countless Omok experts lurking in the Ruru Squad queued up to get into the room she'd prepared.
And the moment Ruru opened the Omok room—
someone dove in almost instantly.
"Ooooh~ are you part of the Ruru Squad?"
The user who'd entered Ruru's room answered her question right away through the Omok room messenger, as if to confirm they were indeed Ruru Squad.
"Quick interview before we start! You're about to get completely wrecked by Ruru—any thoughts beforehand?"
A viewer with fire in their blood. Personally, I was glad to see someone challenge Ruru with that kind of energy.
Not that the outcome wasn't already pretty obvious.
What was the outcome?
…Ruru was probably going to win.
Imagining Ruru losing was hard.
The person behind Ruru was Lua, after all. Lua going all-out in Omok?
Unless you were a serious Omok expert, beating her was not going to be easy.
It's a little embarrassing to say, but even so, I considered myself top-tier at Omok among the guys at our school.
Throw the teachers into the mix and I'd still land somewhere in the top ten, wouldn't I?
And yet against Lua, my win rate didn't even hit ten percent.
I'd beaten her back when we were elementary schoolers, but in middle school… back when I was still relatively close with her, I lost almost every game.
After we got close again, we only played Omok at school every once in a while—and every single time, she shook me down for my soul.
So I felt sorry for them. Sorry for that viewer who'd walked right into Ruru's trap and challenged her with such swagger.
And sorry, while I was at it, for every viewer lined up behind them with the iron will to destroy that trash mesugaki succubus.
You've run into a wall you absolutely cannot climb. It's not too late—run while you still can.
Naturally, that advice of mine was never going to be heard…
"Heheh~ then leeeet's begin!"
And just like that, Kuroa Ruru's Ruru Squad slaughter show kicked off.
"Hmm~ is that all you've got~? Ruru's disappointed~"
"Kyaha~ is that really your move~? I'll give you that one back! Ruru Squad! Hurry up and queue!"
"Is this right~? For real~? Ruru's finishing this! Yap!"
Ruru started toying with her viewers in the most literal sense.
Games never dragged long, and the second one looked like it might, Ruru all but ended it on the spot.
I can say this with certainty. Ruru was sincerely farming her entire audience.
In about an hour she'd cleaned out more than twenty viewers. Was this even allowed?
"Heh-heh-heh~ Ruru~ can't~ be beaten by anyone~!"
She was far too smug about it. Which made it even more irritating.
Was there truly no hero left in this world who could defeat Ruru—who could defeat Lua Im?
Just as I was about to sink into despair, the next challenger walked in.
And that challenger was no ordinary challenger.
Nickname: Inori Kamishiro.
Inori Kamishiro—a second-generation member of Fantasy Live's Happy Heaven.
"Hmm~? Is that really Inori-chan~? My little junior-chan~??"
Riding high on her winning streak, Ruru asked, and the opponent under the name Inori Kamishiro answered immediately.
At that extremely polite tone, I nodded.
"You're really Inori-chan, right~? Not an impersonator~?"
Proving she wasn't an impersonator was easy enough.
She sent Ruru a Concord message.
"Ooooh~ it's real~? Everyone! It's really Inori-chan! Inori-chan, are you seriously picking a fight with this heavenly senior of yours~?"
For the record, Inori Kamishiro's concept was a pigeon beastman who loved chatting, food, and games.
Maybe because of that, her brainier side had never really come out before.
So this time, too, I expected Ruru's easy win…
Apparently that was a miscalculation on my part.
"Hmm~?"
As the game went on, Ruru's expression started to sour little by little.
How to put it—Inori Kamishiro's Omok had this strangely subtle feel to it.
It wasn't the kind of play that crushed you for breath or came at you with raw ferocity.
It was just that, the longer it went…
…the more it felt like Inori was pulling ahead.
"…Whoa, Inori-chan. Not bad?"
Coming from Ruru—who hadn't praised a single opponent all day—that was saying everything.
Before anyone noticed, the chat had switched from rooting for Ruru to rooting for Inori, and the second Ruru saw that, she started scolding them.
"Hey, Ruru Squad! You're my fans! You're my fans, so why are you cheering for Inori-chan instead of me!? That's so mean!"
As if answering that, Inori dropped a message into the Omok room chat.
"No it's not, you pig pigeon!"
Ruru leaned hard into her usual concept to tease Inori, and Inori—apparently a little scraped by that—started attacking Ruru even more fiercely.
Yeah. Up until then she'd been playing Ruru with a half-serious, half-playful feel, but now it wasn't half-anything—she was going after Ruru for real.
Watching that, I could be almost certain of one thing.
Inori had walked into it too.
Right into the trap Ruru had laid.
"Inori-chan~ I'll give you one last chance. Is that really your move?"
Ruru answered in that supremely smug, supremely annoying voice, and Inori fired back with a reply that felt a little snappish.
Yeah. If she didn't block there, she lost. That much was true.
But…
"Nice try~!"
There had been one more move besides that one.
Another move that could end the game.
Inori gave that short little reaction, then hit resign exactly three seconds later.
"Kyahahahaha~! Ruru, total victory!!!"
Ruru snapped straight into smug mode, and the chat started flooding her with messages that were half protest, half irritation.
The chat was starting to edge a little over the line, but Ruru reined them in with zero effort.
"It's Ruru's~ victory, you know~! Still! Inori played the beeeest out of everyone today! If it hadn't been me, she totally would've won, you know?"
True to her usual concept—boosting herself while praising Inori at the same time.
Sure, it felt like she was bragging more than anything, but that much was already enough to neutralize the mood to a degree.
And then came the one punch that fully killed the controversy while hammering home both Ruru's genius and her villainy.
With that, Inori herself proved that the Omok match just now had been pure play, pure WWE—something everyone was supposed to treat as a show.
After Inori's donation, the atmosphere of trash-talking Ruru vanished completely.
Though the mood of teasing her as a "bloodless, tearless demon" was still very much alive.
Yeah. That was exactly the right temperature.
As a side note, Ruru didn't hand out a single VIP pass that day.
Yeah. Across the entire stream, she single-handedly farmed every last viewer.
People even started accusing her of using AI.
Whether that got under her skin or not, in the next game she started answering every opponent move within three seconds, stomping them into the dirt.
As if to say, I'd rather play another move than waste time using AI.
Vicious. Kuroa Ruru.
Vicious. Lua Im.
How do you stomp your entire audience this thoroughly on the last day of New Year's?
A demon. That thing is a demon.