The Twist
A hidden-camera bit where you stop a passerby, hold out cash they can see and a mystery box whose contents they cannot, and force them to choose.
Unlike the vicious prank videos that startle people and leave them with trauma, this kind of good-natured hidden camera—fun for both the victim and the viewer—had flipped the entire prank market on its head overnight.
Willingly paying the visible cash to open a mystery box whose contents you could not know: that was the gamble. And the reactions when the gamble paid off delivered pure dopamine to the audience, as if they themselves had just hit the jackpot.
Of course, as time passed the format had been corrupted by people who simply wanted to become the star of a hidden-camera video, and lately the trend had largely faded…
In any case, every one of these formats—whether vicious pranks or hidden cameras that celebrated human kindness—had not yet been popular when Astria was still human.
That was why the shock she felt, after the agent beside her briefly explained it all, was on the level of heaven and earth being remade.
They get popular by giving things to people?
When she listened more carefully, she learned that the greatest MeTuber of the present age simply threw around tens of millions of dollars every single video. He was famous for fixing people’s eyesight and covering their hospital bills, gifting houses to the homeless, or traveling all the way to the African continent to dig wells.
“Uh, big sis?”
This was it. The thought flashed through her mind. She had wanted to improve public perception of As, but honestly she had been at a complete loss as to how.
For the moment they had established official diplomatic relations, so even if she did nothing the U.S. government and the Ronald administration would spread a positive image of As on their own. But how long could she trust that? The other party was a democratic government.
A world where today’s ally became tomorrow’s enemy. A country where President Ronald’s campaign promises and achievements could melt away like snow under the next president. In such circumstances, forever relying on the other side’s recognition was pure folly.
“Big sis…?”
“……Ah, my apologies. You asked me to choose one of the two?”
“Yes! Between a hundred dollars and a mystery box whose contents I don’t know—”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot choose that.”
“Huh? What do you mean—”
Looking at the man tilting his head in incomprehension, Astria offered a wry, apologetic smile.
Content like a mystery box whose exterior revealed nothing simply did not work on someone like Astria. And for good reason.
“A pure-gold bar of 37.5 grams. At current market rates, roughly five thousand dollars.”
“Wh-what—?”
“My apologies. But I can see it, you see.”
As if a scrap of paper made to block human sight could ever block a dragon’s eyes. Right now Astria’s vision was filled with things invisible to humans, things invisible even to living creatures, things that never appeared on the surface of the world.
Discerning what was inside a cardboard box was trivial. In other words, regrettably, surprises and gambles of that sort were impossible for her.
“Ah, ahaha—! I see! Viewers, did you catch that? It seems the people of As possess X-ray vision or something!”
Watching the man smile awkwardly at the camera and try to wrap up the video,
Astria said,
“It seems I’ve ruined your video, so by way of apology.”
She held out both hands exactly as he had, presenting two choices. One of them was—
“Choose. A ten-kilogram gold bar,”
—a gold bar that had appeared from nowhere in an instant—
“or a Mystery Orb.”
A round sphere swirling with unidentified energy.
Michael was a MeTuber with five million subscribers.
It sounded like a lot, but it wasn’t necessarily. In this country people with ten million subscribers were a dime a dozen.
The explosive growth in subscribers had stalled, and his view counts were pathetic relative to his subscriber count, so Michael had been racking his brains over what new video idea to pursue.
That was around the time he heard the news that someone who appeared to be a being from As had shown up in the area. A woman with horns on her head was appearing near Niagara Falls, not far from the park where the giant bird had nested.
This is it.
Quite some time had passed since the existence of As had been made public, yet outside of public-broadcast news they had never appeared in any media. Personal streams were out of the question.
In that situation, if he could just capture a being from As on his camera? If he could somehow get them to appear and upload it? Every person on the planet interested in the beings of As would flood his channel.
Thinking that, Michael immediately put the idea into action and spent days waiting in vain for a being from As to appear.
Meeting Astria was the fruit of that long wait.
“Ah, Miss Astria? This is a little…”
“Hmm? Ah, worry not. This side is a worthless lump of gold I just created, and the mystery side is nothing dangerous that could harm anyone—”
“……You just created it? Miss Astria. C-can you make gold?”
“Of course. I heard even Earthlings can manage that much?”
“N-no—”
Hearing the woman who seemed to be a bodyguard panic like that, Michael realized this was not a setup the two of them had cooked up. At least one of them clearly knew nothing about the situation.
Then was that gold bar real? Michael started running the numbers in his head. He had only finished compulsory education and had long since given up on proper studying, but he had a comparable object right in his hand, so the calculation was not hard.
What I’ve got is 37.5 g, so roughly triple that is 100 g. 10 kg is 10,000 g, so a hundred times that. Three hundred times five thousand dollars is…
At least 1.5 million dollars. An amount even a five-million-subscriber MeTuber like Michael had never earned—and might never earn in his entire life if luck was against him.
He swallowed hard at the sum, yet his eyes rolled toward the object beside it. Literally an unidentified object.
No matter how he looked at it, it did not seem worth abandoning 1.5 million dollars for.
Even so.
Ah, screw it!
“Th-the Mystery Orb!”
He threw the gamble.
Astria looked at Michael and curled the corner of her mouth into a grin.
“Here.”
She simply shot the energy sphere in her hand straight at him. The moment it touched his body it was sucked inside as if absorbed.
In the next instant, Michael instinctively understood what he could now do.
He carefully raised a finger. The energy swirling inside his body rushed to his fingertip.
A moment later—
“O-ohh—?!”
A beam shot from Michael’s fingertip. The beam from his finger struck Astria square in the chest and was absorbed; seeing that, the bodyguard jolted and drew her pistol.
“Hands up! Move and I shoot!”
“Wh-what—?!”
“You crazy bastard. What the hell did you just—”
“It’s fine. Don’t scold him too harshly.”
Stopping the bodyguard who was about to arrest the frantically raised-handed Michael, Astria explained what she had given him.
“That just now was the power of the Mystery Orb.”
“……Did you do something, Miss Astria?”
“Indeed. This man can now fire a beam from his hand. Well? Are you not delighted?”
“Huh? W-well, if you put it that way I guess I am, but…”
“Mm. I thought as much.”
It was a beam, yes, but it could not kill a person. Its power was closer to a one-dollar laser pointer sold on the market. Even if it hit the eyes it would only dazzle them for a moment.
In short, it was a special ability that would not help much in life and could not exert any great influence.
Watching Michael start to look a little disappointed, Astria poured oil on the fire.
“With a little effort you might even be able to fire it like an energy wave. Is that not every man’s dream? Riding a mecha dinosaur or shooting energy waves from your hands.”
“Ah, well, that used to be true, but…”
“Firing the beam consumes calories, so if you starve too long it might stop working. It would help with weight loss, though—”
Various explanations followed after that, but Michael scratched his cheek and said to Astria,
“……Could I maybe take the gold bar even now?”
“As if that would be allowed.”
“Yeah, figured…”
For something obtained by abandoning 1.5 million dollars, the ability was far too pathetic. Michael deeply regretted his choice.
Of course,
a few days later, after seeing the reaction to the uploaded video, he completely reversed that opinion.