Chapter 105: The Black Star... Has Ended Service...
Nacchan had marched in under the banner of Nobody knows Hikaring better than I do! and, on the strength of that alone, became the only member of Stars Flow to challenge Kurokami-senpai's faction exam twice. Both attempts ended in miserable failure. If there was any comfort to be wrung from it, it was that she had scored 39 the first time and 62 the second — though the moment Nacchan heard as much, she flared right up. "That is absolutely not comforting!"
Objectively, though, a 62 was a staggering score. Consider it with ordinary common sense. On her third stream, Kurokami-senpai had once laid out her plans for broadcasts to come. Of those plans, what was the second thing she named? The answer was I want to run an RPG raid together with all my butlers. ...How was anyone supposed to get that? A reaction like that was only natural, wasn't it? Her third stream, besides, belonged to the long stretch before Stars Flow had found any success, so hardly anyone had even watched it live. And that had been the very first question on Nacchan's second attempt.
The astonishing part was that Nacchan got it right. The still more astonishing part was that the question sat, if anything, on the easy side. The hardest of them had been On the day of your 3D model debut, what dessert did you have for lunch? For the record, the answer was tiramisu. I went back and rewatched the stream just in case, and she had said it in passing, halfway through....
In any case, I had followed Kurokami-senpai from her debut stream onward, and when I tallied a score on my own I managed a mere 27. Calling myself a butler was a little dubious, but judging by the community's reaction at the time, 27 was quite high. Even the truly devoted butlers had hovered around 50. Which meant Nacchan's 62 was an absurd record, and Nobody knows Hikaring better than I do! had been, strictly speaking, the truth.
And those words....
"Question six. When I collaborated with Miss Izumi, what game did we play?"
"...B-Bloody Night."
"Correct! Miss Izumi truly does know me well!"
"...Heheh?"
Reactions like those were only to be expected. Even I, the person at the center of it, was halfway to wondering whether this could really be right.... But if I slid my eyes just a little to the side and looked at Kurokami-senpai's face—
"Fufufu...."
She was laughing as if she were genuinely delighted, and I couldn't bring myself to say a word.
"Then, question seven. Why, exactly, is the fan name of my viewers 'butlers'?"
"Uh, th-that's.... Because Kurokami-senpai is a— a young lady...."
And then the upset arrived without warning.
"Oh my. Miss Nanase has come to visit?"
"Eek?!"
Nacchan, sprung from nowhere, and a chat roaring its welcome. I looked to Kurokami-senpai in a panic, but she was smiling sweetly instead.
"The one who sets the questions is me, you know? Whatever could be the problem here?"
I don't know anything about this.... I don't know anything.... I don't know a thing...!
"Oh my, oh my. I set easy questions for the person I wish to choose. Is that not the very picture of a villainess? In order to become a proper villainess, I intend to keep no one around me but my own side. Ohohoho!"
"Regrettably, it seems so.... You've worked very hard until now, Miss Nanase."
In the end, some ten minutes of squabbling closed like this.
Nacchan typed that, left the stream, and that was the end of it.
"...Life, you see, is forever a succession of choices. Between Miss Nanase and Miss Izumi, I simply chose Miss Izumi...."
"Well then, shall we carry on with the faction exam?"
And in the end I passed Kurokami-senpai's faction exam with a score of 100. It went without saying: the highest mark in history, and the first perfect score there had ever been.
...Is this really allowed?
"A shame... but that, too, cannot be helped."
After a light supper with Izumi, Hikari turned the stream back on, just as she had promised. Izumi, of course, had already gone home.
"A villain requires companions suited to a villain. But Miss Nanase was far too radiant a person to enter my faction...."
"A junior who rudely sat in judgment on her senior's stream in the middle of a broadcast is a bad person, is she not?"
"A reason I like Miss Izumi? Of course there is. Otherwise one is not even granted a chance at the faction exam."
"Hey! Put it that way and you make me look like a dreadfully easy woman!"
Hikari flared at one butler's chat. But—
"Urk...!"
Before butlers who already knew precisely what sort of person she was, words like those were no different from a declaration of self-destruction.
What on earth had pleased her so much that she had run the faction exam utterly unlike every time before? Hikari had already grasped what the butlers were driving at.
"Well.... First, I liked that she judged me so impudently for a mere junior, and I awarded bonus points for the effort she made on my behalf in the collab. I am choosing my own faction, so is it not only natural to choose someone who exerts herself for me? Ohohoho!"
Of course, that was not the whole of the reason. But how was she to say the rest of it aloud, to everyone? That the Izumi she had met face to face at hatsumode — the New Year shrine visit — had been very much to her taste. It was not a matter of romantic feeling. Only that the sight of Izumi set a maternal affection boiling up in her. For Hikari, who loved looking after the people around her, it was an emotion she had no power to resist.
No — wasn't Izumi the one at fault to begin with? A frail personality, self-esteem sunk low; puff up and let out that foolish little laugh at the smallest praise, and of course one's eyes were dragged toward her. At first Hikari had thought every bit of it was an act put on for the stream. Who would have imagined it was her true character, all of it? A doll-like face, a precarious temperament, and the wish to be the one who held her up — Hikari considered that only natural.
"Miss Nanase is my senior, when all is said and done, and Miss Izumi is my junior, so a difference in treatment is only natural."
And in any case, her bond with Nanase was not ending. Hikari knew that, which was why she had only teased a little this time.
"Hmm. Shall we call the unit the Black Sea, then?"
"Ohohoho! If it is a challenge directed at me, I shall take it up whenever you please! Even should my opponent be an insolent junior, I will fight with all my strength!"
By the time mid-April was slipping past, the subscribers on my channel were already closing in on two hundred thousand.
And at last, a message like that arrived from my manager.