It Feels Strange That I Have Two Wives (3)
I never thought the nightmare I’d imagined in the classroom would actually become reality. It felt like plunging off a sheer cliff. My identity as Snow had been exposed? And to Yu-na, the only person I even talked to at school…? Of course it would be bad no matter who found out, but this was on another level. She was my angel, after all!
I had no clue how she’d learned about Snow. From every angle, Yu-na looked like an ordinary girl with zero interest in that world. She was definitely going to see me differently now. So I decided to deny everything as hard as I could.
“Ah, no?”
“Really?”
“I-I mean, what even is that? Snow? You must be mixing me up with someone else. I have no idea what you’re talking about… and it’s really awkward to suddenly hear something like this…”
“Hmm…”
She didn’t seem completely certain; it looked more like a suspicion. If I insisted I wasn’t Snow, she’d have no way to prove it. Besides, I had solid grounds for pushing back so firmly. The version of me at school was completely different from the VTuber Snow in many ways. During streams I deliberately raised the pitch of my voice, and my personality and speech patterns were nothing like the ones I used here. Though I couldn’t do anything about my natural tone.
There were plenty of voices in the world that sounded similar. I will never admit it. Ryu Seolhwa and Snow are two different people! I don’t know the first thing about VTubers!
But my answer must not have satisfied her. Yu-na pressed a finger to her lips in thought, then stepped closer and whispered right next to my ear. It was an adorable voice, yet the content was utterly shocking.
“Don’t worry, Seolhwa. I already know everything. You’re streaming as a VTuber with Se-rin at Unimori, right?”
“Hic…!”
She knew every last detail… And she even knew that Se-rin was a VTuber?! I stared at her in utter panic. She opened her mouth with a slightly mischievous expression.
“Sorry for startling you. The truth is…”
“Hey, wait up! Let’s go together!”
Just as Yu-na was about to say something important, a loud shout suddenly rang out from not too far away. We were in a secluded spot between the school building and a high wall. It was probably just students heading home. Yu-na’s eyes widened at the sudden noise. She glanced around, then gave me a cute smile.
“Want to go somewhere quieter? This doesn’t seem like a good place to talk about this stuff.”
“Y-yeah…”
I had no right to refuse. If anything, it was the opposite. If the conversation ended here, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I needed to know exactly how much she had figured out. Ugh, my parents were probably waiting. I pulled out my smartphone and texted my mom.
The atmosphere Mom was imagining was probably completely different… After sending the message, I looked at Yu-na walking ahead. Her back looked somehow different from the girl I knew. She was supposed to be the only angel I could rely on at school, yet right now she felt more like an adorable little devil.
Trailing after Yu-na like a lost puppy, I eventually found myself standing in front of a building once we’d left school grounds.
“This is…”
“You haven’t eaten lunch, right? Let’s talk while we eat.”
Surprisingly, the place she’d brought me to was a shabby-looking snack shop. It didn’t seem very popular; the interior was nearly empty. I’d imagined a quiet room café when she said she wanted somewhere private. I never expected a place like this. But as I followed Yu-na inside, I understood why she’d chosen it.
Of course… It’s an old building, so there’s a hidden space in the back that’s hard to see from outside.
They’d squeezed a table into the deepest, dimmest corner of the narrow shop. It was so well concealed that you wouldn’t even notice it was there. This was the perfect spot for a sensitive conversation.
“I’m a regular here—I’m close with the owner. When I want to be alone, I often come here. It’s hard to see this table from outside, and the sound doesn’t carry well either.”
“Huh… I see.”
“What do you want to eat? I dragged you here, so today’s on me.”
Right now I was in no position to argue. I accepted Yu-na’s kindness. We ordered two servings of tteokbokki, some fried items, and fish cake. Since there were no other customers, the food came out almost instantly. It was the sticky, old-school style of tteokbokki, not the modern kind. The flavor was so good I immediately understood why she was a regular.
“Shall we get to the real talk now? Ah, where were we again?”
“…You said you know that Se-rin and I are VTubers at Unimori.”
“Oh, right. That’s where I left off…”
Yu-na seemed to finally recall the earlier conversation. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and asked me,
“Seolhwa. Why do you think I know all this?”
“I-I have no idea.”
“Buuu… Really? You still don’t get it? Even after I went this far?”
She puffed out her cheeks in a pout. She looked genuinely hurt that I hadn’t figured it out. But since I truly had no clue, I had no answer. In the end she must have decided I’d never get it on my own. With a sigh, she cleared her throat.
Then came a shock like a hammer to the back of my head.
“Hello! I’m Shura, the Oni of Unimori’s third-generation Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. Nice to meet you!”
“Huh? Whaaaaat?!”
“…Do you understand now, Miss Snow?”
Yu-na beamed at me as if to say, Figured it out yet? The gentle, considerate aura she usually had was gone. It was the grin of a mischievous little devil. My brain was malfunctioning from the sheer impossibility of it all. I barely managed to squeeze out a voice.
“Voice impression…?”
“No way! This is the real Shura, one hundred percent authentic! Hmm, maybe this will convince you?”
“This is… your channel? It’s real…”
She held out her smartphone for me to see. There was Shura’s VTuber channel on the screen. The crucial detail was the prominent upload button. That was the most definitive proof possible that Yu-na really was Shura. So Shura had been Yu-na all along? I was so stunned I could only open and close my mouth wordlessly.
I did think the voices were similar…
Come to think of it, I had never actually met Shura in real life. When all the third-generation members first gathered, she was the only one missing. And even when I visited the agency, our paths had never crossed. Still! I’d been a trainee for a whole year. How had I not noticed? It didn’t make sense!
At this point I was half-convinced the whole thing was some cruel prank and that I was being tricked.
“S-since when…?”
“Ahaha, what kind of question is that? I’ve been Shura from the very beginning.”
“That’s not what I mean…! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?! Why keep it a secret?!”
Yu-na had apparently already known I was Snow, yet I’d been the only one left in the dark. It felt strangely unfair. But she shook her head as if that wasn’t the case.
“Because I only found out recently too. I wasn’t sure until I asked…”
“Recently?”
“Um… Probably when I ran into Se-rin on the street last time?”
Yu-na calmly explained how she had learned my identity. It turned out she had already known Se-rin was a colleague at the same agency. They had bumped into each other at the office before and both been shocked. Then she saw Se-rin clinging to me at school, and the way I panicked and spoke when she hugged me felt oddly familiar.
No wonder Se-rin had acted a little strange that day. So that was why…
“Of course, there are plenty of people with similar voices in the world, so I wasn’t completely sure until just now. But the moment I asked, your panicked reaction was pure Snow.”
“What do you mean my panicked reaction is pure Snow…”
I mean, of course I panicked. I thought my life was over. Sigh. Maybe I needed to practice so I wouldn’t freak out like that next time.
Still, thank goodness. My school self and my VTuber self are so different. I was worried she might tease me now that she knew… but of course Yu-na would never do that!
The way I acted as Snow was much closer to my real personality. If she had thought I was just putting on an act at school, it would have hurt. Knowing that wasn’t the case was a relief. I pressed a hand to my pounding heart to calm it down.
Wait. If I think about it that way, Shura’s personality is also a bit different from Yu-na’s…
What kind of person was Shura again? Basically cautious and timid about everything. After debut she couldn’t even ask me to collab directly and had to ask Airi to pass the message. She gave off the vibe of someone you kind of wanted to tease. Her speech and aura were quite mature, though, so among the third gen she ended up in the position of being bullied.
And Yu-na? She was an angel whose mere presence healed your heart. Kind to everyone, always speaking first, pure as if she knew nothing dirty, and a universally acknowledged soft, lovely girl with a warm smile.
The reason I hadn’t connected Shura’s voice to Yu-na was because the personality gap was so huge. They really felt like different people. Wait a second… that would mean…
“Yu-na. By any chance…”
“Hm? What’s wrong?”
“Are you also acting like a different person at school, just like me?”
“Ugh…”
The smile on Yu-na’s face froze solid. It was the reaction of someone whose sore spot had been stabbed perfectly. But she must not have wanted to admit it. She answered in an obviously guilty tone.
“A-acting? I-I don’t know what you mean…”
“No, no matter how I think about it, that thirty-two-line thank-you message you sent after our last collab stream can’t possibly be an act…”
“Uwaaaah! D-don’t bring that up! I’m already regretting going that overboard!”
Wait… seriously? The entire image she showed at school was an act? That incredible social-butterfly energy that rivaled even Se-rin’s?! I covered my mouth in shock. Yu-na clutched her head and groaned. It must have been too much to bear, because she flopped onto the table and whined.
“Ugh… For some reason kids have been relying on me since middle school. I had no choice but to act like a mature adult! Before I knew it, that became my fixed image… If I stopped now, everyone would be disappointed…”
“Huh… I see…”
I could roughly understand the feeling. I’d been popular in elementary school too. When people praise you like that, it gets hard to act spoiled like a child. You feel like you have to behave more grown-up. But she must have misinterpreted my sympathetic nod.
Yu-na suddenly lifted her head and shouted in frustration.
“W-well you’re the same, Seolhwa! You act all cool and uninterested in everything, but the truth is you’re a fragile mess who crumbles the moment someone pokes you!”
“I-I wasn’t acting cool or anything…”
“I saw your collab with Se-rin too! Why were you letting her lick your arm?! Pervert!”
“P-pervert…! That was unavoidable, okay?! And could you please not say that stuff right to my face?!”
My face burned at Yu-na’s words. Why did she have to bring up exactly that? It had been about a week, so I’d mostly calmed down, but hearing it from someone who knew the real me was incredibly embarrassing.
In the end, both of us had struck each other’s sore spots and bickered for a long time. After a year of trainee life and a month and a half since debut, we had plenty of accumulated stories. There was no shortage of material to embarrass each other with.
When the pointless argument finally started to wind down, Yu-na relaxed her shoulders and suddenly burst out laughing.
“Hehe… This is fun. It’s my first time talking about VTuber stuff face-to-face like this.”
“R-really?”
“Yeah! If I’d known, I wish I’d found out you were Snow sooner. Still, I’m glad we got to talk today. Ehehe, we would’ve run into each other at the agency eventually anyway.”
I actually agreed with her quite a bit. I never talked to Se-rin at school, so it felt like I was finally sharing my secret with a friend. The fact that my only friend at school was also a VTuber colleague felt like an unbelievable stroke of luck. I was secretly happy about it.
We kept talking, opening up about our real feelings. By the time the tteokbokki we’d ordered was almost gone, Yu-na suddenly spoke with a deeply troubled expression.
“Um, Seolhwa. Did the boss ask you about your direction too? What are you planning to do with your streams from now on?”
“Hmm… I still don’t really know.”
“Ugh, right? Airi and Karen seem to have already found their paths, and even Priya… I’m still lost too…”
It was true that both me and Shura felt like we had vague broadcasting directions. Airi had settled into talk-focused content, Karen was leaning into her map-obsessed personality, and Priya was doing difficult games alongside singing. I was just awkwardly chasing trends, and Yu-na was doing standard singing streams. Compared to the other third-gen members, our individuality was definitely weak.
She must have brought it up for a reason. Lifting a piece of fish cake from the tteokbokki with her chopsticks, she continued.
“Hey, listen.”
“What?”
“Well… After that stream you did with Se-rin, your follower count exploded, right?”
“That stream…”
Ah, the real-life collab stream. Just remembering it made my face heat up. I squeezed my eyes shut. The memory of what happened in the soundproof booth flashed through my mind. Could she please stop bringing that up already?!
I kept my mouth clamped shut and let out a low groan. Yu-na touched her neck nervously and spoke carefully.
“So, um…”
“Yeah?”
“Could you… maybe do some Yuri Business with me too?”
Me and Yu-na doing Yuri Business? The suggestion was so shocking it left me speechless.