Breaking Prejudice Requires a Powerful Shock
"She's even prettier up close… How can a person even look like that? Nia's face is mathematically perfect…!"
"You suck at math."
Kristina didn't even notice her own thoughts spilling out between her lips as she stared blankly at Nia on the screen.
Perhaps the gushing was a bit much. Anju, looking somewhat flustered, had said as much to her.
But Kristina, already half gone, just sat there with her mouth hanging open, eyes locked on the screen as if Anju's voice hadn't reached her at all.
…Is she really that good-looking?
Anju glanced at Kristina with mild bewilderment, then shifted her gaze back to the screen, muttering the thought to herself.
It was a kind of pushback. She'd already been carrying a preconception about Nia long before she ever saw her.
Faced with Kristina's over-the-top reaction, Anju had deliberately taken a step back, trying to watch the situation with a more objective eye.
People swept up in emotion tended to magnify whatever was right in front of them, after all.
What she failed to realize was that the rejection already rooted deep in her own heart was making true objectivity impossible.
If Nia showed even the slightest crack or flaw, Anju would seize on it as a disqualifying offense and hold her to an impossibly harsh standard. That much was obvious.
And so, while Anju finished preparing to pounce on any opening and tear into it from the inside, Nia's voice drifted out from the screen.
"Alright, today we're going to take a little walk with Nia. We'll tour the house, stroll around the neighborhood — how does that sound? Fun, right?"
"Yeah…! Yeah!"
…Tina's completely absorbed.
What followed was an opening line that laid out the video's purpose.
It was a deliberate device — promising a look at her living space, something she never usually showed, plus a shared walk — designed to raise the viewer's expectations.
Which meant… for an audience used to Nia's half-mysterious, content-first streaming style, this was bound to feel fresh.
Her devoted fan Kristina was already nodding along, eyes sparkling with total immersion.
A walking vlog, huh. Pretty standard. I can roughly guess how this is going to go.
But to Anju, who barely watched Nia's streams, it didn't feel particularly novel.
Vlogs? Didn't everyone make those? The only special thing about this one was that the person making it was a beauty beautiful enough to leave you speechless…
That was certainly eye-catching — but it wasn't an element that really landed for Anju.
"…That said, well, the house looks like this, so there isn't really that much to look at."
On screen, Nia slowly panned the camera so viewers wouldn't get dizzy, sweeping across a room that held nothing but a bed and a computer.
A streaming studio, maybe? The bare, empty space filled Anju and Kristina's view — not a single piece of furniture in sight.
An open-plan studio… I guess. That door over there is probably the bathroom. And that side's the entrance? Living room and bedroom combined, so it looks bigger than it is.
Anju took in the view on the screen and turned the thought over in her head.
She'd wondered why the place felt so spacious — it was the open-plan studio layout, living room and bedroom flowing into one, plus the total absence of furniture making the space feel larger than it was.
"Ahaha… other than the bed and the computer, there's really nothing to see here. Okay then — this way is… the bathroom slash bath!"
Had Nia noticed the same thing? She gave a slightly awkward laugh, framed the bed and computer once each, then walked toward the door beside the entrance.
When she opened it, a bathroom appeared — walls and floor finished in clean, dark, somewhat luxurious tile.
"Ooh…. It looks like our bathroom!"
"That would cost a fair bit. To finish it like that… roughly thirty million — no, closer to forty million credits?"
Kristina let out a small gasp of recognition at the strangely familiar sight, while Anju quickly scanned the high-end interior and roughly estimated the price.
As the two of them reacted in opposite ways, Nia on screen walked steadily inward with the camera, reaching out to show the viewers something further in.
"And… ta-da! There's a bath in here too! See, there's a door, so it feels separate from the toilet?"
"Huh, there's a bath inside the bathroom?"
"You wouldn't know, Tina, since you're First Class — but in small places like this, people often combine the toilet and bath to save space. Especially with a wet-room setup like that."
"Heh…. That's neat."
Another new fact for the day. Kristina glanced at Anju's profile as she calmly delivered the explanation, then turned her head back and fixed her eyes on the screen again.
It had been interesting, genuinely — but right now she wanted her attention on Nia, moving so vividly on the screen.
"Of course, this isn't just for show — if you press it like this, water actually comes out. I use it myself whenever I've worked up a real sweat."
"Oh my."
When Nia turned on the shower to prove it actually worked, Kristina unconsciously pressed a finger to her lips, conjuring an imagination she couldn't quite voice out loud.
After all, taking a shower meant taking off clothes — so the direction her mind went was, perhaps, only natural.
"…Works up a sweat, huh."
But Anju, beside her, latched onto something else entirely — a suspicious turn of phrase Nia had let slip without thinking.
According to Kristina's explanation, Nia was a streamer whose whole concept was living in the virtual world…
And yet here she was, dropping a detail that seemed to contradict that concept outright.
Is she an idiot? You can't sweat in the virtual world.
Anju felt a tightness in her chest as she muttered the thought to herself.
At present, there was only one way for humanity to access the virtual world — the repository of all knowledge.
You connected to the virtual world's servers indirectly, through an avatar.
But the resources available to those avatars had clear, hard limits.
Now that humanity had lost Management Authority, people could only approach the virtual world as intruders — or at best, as guests.
So most salvagers became obsessed with packing only the truly essential functions into their avatars as efficiently as possible…
And something like sweating? That was pure resource waste — a completely useless feature.
For Nia to casually talk about working up a sweat now and then…
From Anju's perspective as a working salvager, it could only mean she didn't actually understand the virtual world.
Tch. I had a feeling, but she really is a fake. Figures. What kind of virtual idol 'lives' in the virtual world? Sorry, Kristina, but I'm going to have to tell you to stop watching…
She carried the thought forward, staring at the screen with something close to contempt.
On that screen, Nia was still filming herself, still talking — but Anju felt only the disappointment and faint disgust that came with watching a cheap fake video.
Had she really gone to all that trouble setting up the projector for this? Even the small flicker of expectation she'd allowed herself now felt foolish.
"Alright, that about covers the house tour… shall we head outside? …Ah! Before that, there's one thing I should mention first. Right."
Nia opened her mouth as if she'd just remembered something, then fixed the camera with a suddenly serious expression.
At the abrupt shift in tone, Kristina — fully immersed in the video — swallowed hard.
"The scenes from this point forward may require caution for children, the elderly, pregnant individuals, or those of a sensitive disposition. Please brighten your viewing environment, or watch together with a guardian. Thank you!"
"Huh?"
"Eh?"
At the completely out-of-nowhere viewer advisory, question marks appeared on both Kristina's and Anju's faces at once.
Anju blinked a few times, processing — then quickly picked up the PDA playing the original video and paused it.
She whipped her head sideways to look at Kristina, who was still wearing a blank expression.
"Tina… it says kids aren't allowed to watch!"
"W-w-wait! It said it's fine if you're with a guardian! Put it back on!"
"Pfft — okay, okay."
Anju had been hoping for at least a little shock. Satisfied by Kristina's wide-eyed, frantic reply, she let out a small laugh and resumed the video.
But a viewer advisory, all of a sudden? So this wasn't an ordinary vlog after all?
Mildly intrigued by the apparent genre shift, Anju narrowed her eyes and focused on the screen.
"Alright then — I'll open the front door."
As if trying not to make her viewers too tense, Nia swung the entrance open with a calm, natural air.
Kristina and Anju both lost the ability to speak.
Because beyond the screen… beyond that front door… there was nothing. Only a disorienting expanse of darkness, like a sheer cliff with no path at all.
"Why can't I see anything outside? Something's… off."
"…Is it a set?"
But the surprises weren't done with them yet.
As if driving a stake straight through their confusion, Nia opened her mouth again.
"Wow, it's still dark out there. No idea what'll come jumping out. Ah — come to think of it, none of you would know what that place is… so I should explain before we go any further."
Nia casually angled the camera so the deep darkness beyond the entrance was at her back, a thoroughly mischievous smile on her face.
"This is the out-of-bounds zone at the deepest layer of the virtual world — the Abyss. A place where every kind of data refuse and dangerous monster hides…"
She dropped a bomb that might yet shake the world.
"…and the world I live in."
At her words, Kristina and Anju both stopped breathing for a moment.
Perhaps it was because she stood with that dense darkness at her back — looking for all the world like the only star shining in that entire void.