Something Feels Off About Yuri Business With Her (4)
The thing I suggested to Serin was a fighting game. It wasn't one of those hardcore titles where you shave off infinite combos, though. It was more like the Mash Brothers from my previous life—a casual brawler that still had real gameplay depth. But it definitely wasn't something to take lightly. No matter how casual it looked, the genre was still a genuine fighting game. The gap between beginners and veterans was like heaven and earth. A wall so high that even after a hundred matches, you'd lose all hundred of them.
“Puhahaha! Wolf Princess, you're completely hopeless!”
“Khh… You're pretty good.”
“Of course! I smash the CPU at home whenever I'm bored to blow off steam!”
“So you're using all that training to mercilessly beat up a beginner like me.”
“Hehe, correct!”
The first match was an overwhelmingly easy win. Not a single moment of danger. A complete victory with such a massive gap that I didn't even need to use the sure-win tactic I'd prepared. It was like a grown adult twisting a child's wrist. …Well, I'm too physically weak to actually do something like that, but the feeling was the same.
Now it was time to use the winner's privilege. Since we were just getting started, I made her wink at the screen. She obeyed the command without hesitation. I guess she was willing to accept her loss gracefully. That part of her was refreshingly straightforward.
“…Snow, how long have you been playing this?”
In the waiting room while we set up the second match, Serin suddenly asked. Was it simple curiosity? I thought back for a moment and recalled when I'd first started this game.
“Hmm… About six months, I think?”
“I see. So you're not some super serious veteran after all. Got it.”
“Huh? What, are you planning to actually try to beat me for real? You should give up on that idea. I came here today fully intending to turn Ria into a complete mess!”
“Well… we won't know until we play, right?”
Ha. Six months was roughly four thousand three hundred and eighty hours. There was no way someone with that much experience would lose to a total beginner on her first day!
I let out a small, dumbfounded laugh at how seriously Ria was taking this. And just like that, the second match ended in another one-sided beatdown from me. She seemed a little more used to the game than in the first round, but she was still nowhere near my level.
“What should I make you do this time…? Okay. How about ending every sentence with nyang for the rest of the stream?”
“T-that's…”
“If it's not embarrassing, it doesn't count as a punishment. Come on, let's hear it from our little Ria-nyang.”
“Ugh… I'll remember this… nyang.”
“Weak? This is only the second round. Come on, let's go to the next match right away. If you're upset, just beat me and make me do whatever you want. If I lose, I'll really do anything. Or is that too hard for a beginner like you, Ria?”
I was having so much ridiculous fun that the words poured out of me like bullets from a machine gun. Being able to torment Serin this much felt incredibly refreshing—like a weight had been lifted off my chest. A few comments in the chat window seemed surprised by how I was acting, but… well, I did usually put on a bit of an act during my solo streams.
Maybe she had figured out why I was being so exaggerated. Her tone grew noticeably calmer as she spoke to me.
“Snow… I've been thinking this for a while, but are you provoking me on purpose… nyang?”
“You noticed? It was a strategy to break your composure. Guess it's not working anymore?”
“No, it's working pretty well. Honestly, I'm actually really, really pissed off right now… nyang.”
That's right, isn't it? Even a princess would get mad if you pushed her this far. Still, I was never going to lose. I came here to make today a permanent black mark in her history!
The third match, the fourth, the fifth. Naturally, I won them all. She was getting more used to the game, so I eventually had to pull out my sure-win strategy, but even a talented prodigy like her couldn't break through a tactic that gamers had spent ages perfecting. Every time she lost, she had to act cute, and it eventually led to this.
“Big Sis Snow, Ria-nyang wants to play just one more round… Is that okay, nyang?”
“Ahahaha! Big Sis? You called me Big Sis! Of course! Big Sis can play at least one more round for you!”
“…This is humiliating, nyang.”
Riding the momentum, I casually accepted Ria's suggestion. Still, this was already a five-win streak. I was running out of cute punishments… Oh, maybe if I win the next one I could make her say a classic cute line.
I was already thinking about what to order before the match even started, but Ria's unexpectedly strong performance caught me off guard and I ended up losing a set. Of course, if you looked at the actual gameplay… it was less a pure skill loss and more that I got a little unlucky. But since I hadn't dropped a single set until now in this best-of-five, the chat exploded instantly.
“Phew. That's one set for me. I'm starting to get the feel for it, nyang.”
“N-not bad… But it was still really close. You just got lucky.”
“Do you really think that, nyang?”
…What was she trying to say? Feeling a slight sense of unease, I asked Ria through the call. But she just chuckled and said we should finish the game first. The results that followed were win, loss, win, loss. The match went all the way to a full set and ended three to two. A clear defeat for me.
“H-huh…?”
“I finally won. That sure-win tactic was annoying, but after losing to it a few times I figured out the solution. Relying too much on simple patterns is a bad habit, Snow.”
I was staring blankly at the computer screen with a dazed expression when Ria's voice, sounding like a teasing whisper right next to my ear, reached me.
“I won, right?”
“Eek?! D-don't do that! What are you doing!”
“Hehe. I thought so last time too… Snow, you're weak to ear stuff. Anyway, it's time for me to tell you my wish, right?”
“S-sure, go ahead…”
Shut up, shut up, shut up. Too many people talking from the sidelines! I'm scared over here because I have no idea what this girl is going to demand! Of course, since it's a promise, I'll obediently do whatever she asks. But what if she makes me do something so horrible it destroys my humanity and dignity…? Or maybe she'll make me do something just as bad as all the embarrassing stuff I made her do! She's probably planning to create the ultimate black history moment that will live forever on the internet and get brought up for the rest of time!
While I was trembling, clutching my mouse with those terrifying thoughts running through my head, Serin—who had been silent as if thinking—spoke in a perfectly calm voice, as if she'd made up her mind.
“My wish is to erase all the cute acts that have piled up until now. I'll go with that for now.”
“Huh? That's really all you want? You could make me do something more…”
“Yeah. I'll win the next rounds anyway.”
“Ugh…! It's five to one right now!”
You really know exactly how to piss someone off!
My spirit had taken a hit for a moment, but the heat rushing to my head made me sit up straight. I had just let my guard down earlier. If I got serious, there was no way I'd lose. I stared hard at Ria's avatar on screen.
“Bring it! I'll show you the difference in our skill levels!”
“Okay. You should be nervous too, Snow. From the next wish onward, I won't let it end like this.”
“Ugh…”
M-maybe I should have held back a little? The thought flickered through my mind, but I shook my head vigorously to shake off that weak thinking. There wouldn't be any problems if I just didn't lose. I'd make her regret wasting that wish ticket so easily!
I even forgot for a moment that I was streaming and focused entirely on the match against Serin… and the result was one win and three losses. An obvious defeat no matter how you looked at it.
“U-um, everyone, thank you for watching the stream today, nyang. Ria, I mean, B-Big Sis worked hard too, nyang…”
“Yeah. That was fun. Frans, thanks for coming even though it was a sudden collab stream.”
“Snowflakes, goodbye, nyang… And forget everything that happened today, nyang. I'll kill you if you remember, nyang.”
The two things Serin had demanded with her wish ticket were simple. First, to erase the extra cute acts I'd added as a comeback. And second… to make me take on every single cute act I'd forced her to do until now.
Therefore, my current state was utterly miserable. I had to end every sentence with nyang, call Priya “Big Sis,” refer to myself in third person with a lisp, act cute whenever I asked for something, and on top of that, I still had to record videos of myself saying whatever lines the other person wanted and post them on Outstar.
What the hell had I been doing this whole time? I felt like going back in time to beat up my past self. Wait, wasn't there still one wish left? I'd only used two out of three.
“W-wait a second, nyang. Big Sis Ria, what about the last wish, nyang?”
“Hmm… I'll use it whenever I feel like it. There wasn't a rule saying I had to use them all, right?”
“Khh…”
She's saving the wish ticket. Usually when people save wishes like that they end up forgetting about them, and later they treat it like it never existed, but… for some reason I had a strong feeling this particular wish ticket was going to grab me by the ankle at the worst possible moment.
I became even more convinced that I should never get involved with this girl again.
“That concludes the stream… Good work today, Snow.”
“Ah, yeah… Good work…”
“Hehe. You're not going to call me Big Sis?”
“Shut up! The stream's over! I'm never doing it!”
I had been completely in control when the stream started. So how had it ended up like this? Everything felt like a complete mess.
Still, this should have been enough to destroy the image Serin had built up. Yuri business? Never doing that again. From now on I'd just go back to normal streams…
While I was collapsed over my desk, body and mind completely exhausted, Serin—who hadn't ended the call yet—spoke to me in a somewhat cautious voice.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Hm? You're still there? …What do you suddenly want to ask?”
“When would be good for the next collab stream? Maybe we should leave about a week in between? There's scheduling to consider, and doing it too often might affect our solo streams…”
“Huh?”
“Yes?”
Next collab? We'd literally just finished one and she was already thinking about the next? When I gave a dumbfounded reaction to her sudden words, Serin let out a puzzled sound, as if she found my response strange.
No, no, wait. Something was off between us right now. In times like this, it was better to throw a fastball instead of dancing around the subject. After quickly organizing my thoughts, I asked Serin the question that had immediately come to mind.
“Next collab? Can I ask why you're already thinking about that?”
“Because we have to keep doing the Yuri business…?”
“What the… Oh.”
I'd been tilting my head at the incomprehensible sentence, but I finally understood what she meant. It seemed Serin had interpreted Yuri business as some kind of long-term project. Like a dating sim—once you start, you have to see it through to the end.
But in the VTuber industry, Yuri business was nothing more than seasoning to make the main dish taste better. It was a type of performance done by mutual agreement, not something that should ever become the main focus. Besides, I'd already achieved my goal of ruining Serin's stream. There was no particular reason for me to keep pushing the Yuri business with her.
In that case… I needed to clear up the misunderstanding she seemed to have.
“No, what I said yesterday… I just meant we should try it once as an experiment. From tomorrow you can just stream like usual.”
And if I kept doing all this Yuri business with the princess and my identity suddenly got exposed? How was I supposed to know that a vicious fan club of inquisitor-like princess fans would show up at my house? Of course, VTubers rarely get their identities exposed, so that was probably just needless worry… But if that happened, wouldn't the agency itself be in danger? They were the ones who accepted her knowing who she was.
While I was thinking that and fearing a future that might never come, Serin, who had been quietly silent, spoke in a voice whose intentions I couldn't quite read.
“Do we… really need to stop?”
“H-huh?”
“The viewers seemed to like it, and I actually had more fun today than I expected. I was thinking it might be okay to keep going like this…”
Her words had a persuasive tone, as if I had to continue the Yuri business. Ah, maybe this girl… had fully realized the power of Yuri business?! Today's stream alone had drawn about four times the usual number of viewers. Even considering it was a collab, the buzz it created was definitely significant. I was honestly surprised too.
So if she was greedy about streaming, it would be a shame to give up a cheat key like this. That must be why she was asking to continue the Yuri business with me. What a calculating princess.
But no matter how delicious the food is, if eating it is exhausting, you won't reach for it. It was like how I loved eating king crab but hated the process of cracking it open.
After humming thoughtfully for a moment, I tried to convey my refusal in a roundabout way.
“Yuri business doesn't have to be done with just one person. You could do it with someone other than me…”
“…I'm using the wish ticket.”
“Excuse me?”
…The wish ticket? Did she mean the one she hadn't used earlier during the stream?
While I was panicking, feeling like I'd been smacked in the head with a giant tray, Serin spoke each word clearly in a somewhat earnest voice.
“Please keep doing Yuri business with me.”
I'd stepped on a landmine. Is this why people say you shouldn't do things you'll regret? My brain completely froze at the sudden situation.