Competition Always Creates Winners and Losers

Competition, after all, was always destined to produce winners and losers.

By the general common sense of the twenty-second century, that statement was, as far as I could tell, a complete mess.

Surprisingly, concepts like scientific technology and mathematical theory had advanced in places beyond what the twenty-first century had managed. But the closer you moved toward culture, the more contaminated the information became.

Why had the world ended up like this? If I sat with the question and thought it through carefully, I could point to one cause: the loss of the classics.

What were the classics? In English you could call them classics — a concept used across music, art, literature, and more. Their meaning was simple: works that, even after long stretches of time, still offered lessons and significance society could fully accept. People only bestowed the title of classic on the rarest cases — works that had endured hundreds or thousands of years and still reached the present intact.

So why did losing the classics lead to cultural decline?

Because those supposedly outdated classics had been the wellspring of the countless creative works that poured out in the modern age. Even in the twenty-first century, there had been pieces that reinterpreted stories from the Bible or the classics, music that sampled classical compositions, and little games of wit only people who knew the classics could catch. Losing the foundation of culture meant that rebuilding it would take enormous effort and time.

Knowing the classics counts as high culture, huh. Back when I streamed under the name Fiora, people called me grandma. I never realized this was why.

Back to the matter at hand: deciding, by my own standards, where this era's common knowledge actually ended was genuinely difficult. Even if I brought something up thinking, Everyone knows this, right?, the odds of it actually counting as common knowledge were roughly fifty-fifty.

So the questions I chose for the OX quiz were, inevitably, mostly based on stories and information that had come out of my own Olive channel. Which meant that even with this many people flooding in, the ones who had been watching my streams with real devotion held a one-sided advantage.

"Uh… I didn't expect the first question to split us this hard…"

But this, I had not seen coming. Who would have thought the first question would land at a five-to-five split on O and X? Or had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the question simply been that tricky?

I glanced toward the outgoing feed and checked the question floating on screen one more time.

…Thinking about it, I had heard that line dozens of times in my life, so of course it felt familiar. But it was one of the Ooparts I had pulled out during a recent reading stream — which meant that to the people of this world, it must have felt like a completely alien sentence.

Still, the result was unexpected more than it was bad. Thinning the numbers this fast also meant I could save the questions I had prepared that much more easily.

"The correct answer is… O! It is a line from the famous tragedy Hamlet, spoken by the protagonist as he pours out his anguish while meeting Ophelia. If you are not familiar with Hamlet, please check the reading stream video on my Olive channel!"

The moment I cleanly declared the answer, the pieces on the X side were sucked up toward the ceiling as if a vacuum cleaner had swallowed them whole. On the screens of the participants linked to those pieces, a message announcing their elimination would already be floating. Truly a pity. There would be more chances — I hoped they would aim for the next one.

"All right, even on the first question we already have nearly half the field eliminated! Compared to a moment ago the stage looks awfully spacious, so… shall we make the pieces ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a little bigger so they are easier to see?"

Clap, clap.

Two light snaps of applause using only the wrist, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as if in answer, the pieces tumbling on the O platform swelled to roughly twice their size. Stones that had been no bigger than a fingertip now looked as if they had all puffed up at once. Even so, the size that showed on camera was still tiny.

The chat reactions were all over the place. But thanks to the correct-answer tags in front of the usernames, it was easy enough to see why each comment had appeared. Some bragged about guessing right. Some, having gotten it wrong, complained about the difficulty. Others — clearly regular viewers — were already mocking the people who had been eliminated.

Overall, though… people did not seem particularly unhappy with the questions themselves. That was a relief.

Slapping Nia's name in front of an OX quiz event had apparently tipped a fair number of people off about what kind of questions would be coming, and they had studied ahead. Good. I was not streaming for the public good — I streamed for thoroughly personal reasons. I could give everyone the same chance, but I still wanted the results to lean toward the people who liked me. Someone who wandered into my stream for the first time today and lucked into a few correct answers would never make me as happy as a regular who had been enjoying my broadcasts all along walking away with the prize.

"All right, then — straight into the second question…!"

All I hoped was that, across these five rounds, the people who truly deserved it would be the ones left standing at the end.

In the end, an OX quiz was the kind of game that, if you kept going long enough, left only one survivor. Running that game five times meant producing five final survivors.

Five chances. Five winners. After nearly an hour and a half of hosting, every protagonist who had seized both luck and skill had finally appeared.

"Waaah! That wraps up all five rounds of the OX quiz! Congratulations to all five of you who made it to the end!"

Of course, the appearance of winners meant the simultaneous appearance of losers. Competition was a structure that could only ever create light and shadow at the same time. But what could you do? No one had rigged anything. They had simply competed on pure skill and lost. There was no room for excuses here.

"Then first, let me bring out the five who survived from Round One through Round Five. Yap!"

Snap!

The finger-flick I had practiced over and over while the stream was off produced a clean, crisp sound. The ceiling above the O and X platforms slid open, and five pieces wearing crowns dropped from above, landing lightly on the floor.

These were the glorious protagonists who had each survived as the final one standing. The pieces had already grown into forms like massive stone statues, large enough to rest on my shoulders. But each one looked completely different — because I had given the winners free rein to customize their pieces however they liked.

Hmm… every single one has a pretty distinctive customization going…

One piece had taken the shape of a giant robot straight out of a movie. Another had an aesthetic form that called to mind a religious idol. Another had not changed at all. Wait — and in the middle of all that, someone had customized theirs to look like me? And at a pretty high quality, too…

Anyway, it was a relief that every round winner was still watching the stream and had not left. From here I needed to introduce the Ooparts and run a final quiz to assign priority — if anyone had already gone, the whole thing would have become a genuine mess to run.

"All right, then…. The person on the far left is our Round One winner, and the far right is our Round Five winner. Shall we hear a quick victory comment?"

I said it toward the camera and walked over to the Round One winner — the first to become the final survivor. Their piece was a gleaming giant robot, handsome enough that even the man I had been in my previous life found himself quietly impressed.

"Uh…. TinaTina? Are you there?"

At my words, letters floated up into the air along with a speech bubble. It looked fairly magical at a glance, but the technology was not that hard. I had simply linked each user account to their piece and, while I was at it, linked their chat as well. Type something into the chat window and it transmitted straight over here. Implementing it had not been especially difficult. Looking back, the hardest part had been begging Manager Visk for the API access.

"Could we get a self-introduction, and your thoughts on winning Round One?"

"Heheh…. Ahem. I see. A longtime devoted viewer of mine! Thank you, TinaTina."

Ah, I slipped. Looking at TinaTina's chat — which somehow gave off a distinctly young vibe — a laugh had escaped before I could stop it. I quickly and casually managed my expression and kept the show moving, then asked what kind of Oopart they wanted and wrapped up the interview naturally.

When I snuck a look at the chat consensus, the reaction to TinaTina winning Round One was basically that it made sense…. So it seemed there had not been any major error in setting the difficulty. With no real worry of getting tangled up in problems later, I could only call that a genuine relief.

I continued the interviews with the remaining four.

The Round Two winner was a man in his thirties who worked an office job under the username DrunkOnAWhim. The Round Three winner was a woman under the username Raiki. The Round Four winner was a freelancer of unknown age and gender under the username NiaFanNo42. And the grand finale — the Round Five winner — was a user under the name Visk.

…Wait. Is this that Visk?

Wondering if this Visk might be the same person as the Olive management team lead, I hurriedly checked the user information. The result was startling. This Visk was, in fact, the same Visk I knew!

How she had ended up joining this event was a little bewildering — but given that I had put Ooparts up as prizes, she had apparently joined out of a genuine desire to win one.

…There shouldn't be any favoritism controversy. Thinking about it, she barely missed out across the first four rounds.

In that case, there was no real reason to panic. From what I had seen, she had truly earned the win through pure skill, right at the very last moment. If some strange controversy flared up, I could explain it somehow. I had not actually given her any help.

"And that introduces the five winners who became the final survivors across five rounds! Now — shall we see what prizes are waiting for them?"

I gave a slow nod as a signal to Noise, who had been staring blankly at me as if waiting for my order. As if she had been waiting for exactly that, Noise typed something into the computer. The lights went out with a sharp click…

Then the thick darkness that had spread through the room vanished under newly lit lights, and at last the true identity of the hidden Ooparts was revealed.