Fear Not (3)
The compressed file finished transferring. As she downloaded it back onto her PC, Ninomae Hitomi worried at her lip.
She swallowed without thinking. The gulp echoed inside her skull, and she flicked her eyes to the chat window. The mic didn't catch that... right?
Judging by the reactions, the sound had fortunately not gone through.
Of course, that didn't mean the chat wasn't in an uproar. The mere fact that a VTuber had downloaded a yuri erotic manga starring herself was more than enough for the viewers to tear into.
"I-I didn't download it, okay?!"
"What. Wait. I was being as quiet as I could, and you still heard it...?!"
"?! Maya-senpai?!"
Mary Tepes was weak to mind games. As if to verify that fact all over again, she fell for it at once and let out a shriek. Maya, however, fled the call far faster than Mary could get a word of scolding out.
"Th-that was a joke. What I said just now was only a joke. You servants know that, right?"
"Ugh......"
She even tried brazenly demanding they pretend not to have noticed, and of course it didn't take in the slightest. Why would Senpai hand something like this over in public and leave me looking like this? Even as she grumbled, Ninomae went ahead and unzipped the file, moving it into her collection folder.
The moment she turned her eyes back to the chat, she found a remark she was none too glad to see, and flinched for the briefest instant.
It was a mention of the photo she had taken with Han Seoyeon the day before. Seoyeon had sucked at the nape of her neck until a flushed red mark rose on the skin, and of all things, that had ended up in the picture. It wasn't a deep mark of the sort people usually called a hickey—just a faint trace that had vanished in less than an hour.
The problem, if there was one, was what came the next morning. Ninomae woke, realized, and in a preemptive panic deleted the photo. Had she simply left it up, as her manager had advised—though of course she only read that advice after the deed was done—it would have been enough. All she had to do was leave it sitting there as if she hadn't noticed, and if a moment ever came when she couldn't avoid explaining, only then act as though she had just caught on and brush it off as a bug bite.
But by rushing to delete it, Ninomae had instead made plain that she had something to feel guilty about. From her ego-searching—checking the internet for mentions of herself—talk related to it seemed to be trickling out little by little. She had never expected someone to bring it up mid-broadcast, with no context at all...
No. That was nothing but an excuse. Honestly, she had let her guard down.
The internet was crawling with people who had no sense of tact and yet clung with obsessive force. An ordinary person might be forgiven, but for a broadcaster, failing to prepare could fairly be called negligence. At least, unlike dealing with such people in real life, she had the small mercy of being able to ignore them. All she had to do was pretend she hadn't seen the chat and carry the stream on.
"......"
Well. That, too, depended on the situation.
In truth, it wasn't rare. Trolls who took being ignored as a personal insult, and repeated the same line like a fit until you finally looked their way, turned up often enough on internet broadcasts. Naturally, that viewer was hauled off by the chat mods monitoring the stream. Spam was more than sufficient grounds for a ban.
The trouble was that once things reached this point, plenty of viewers would already have seen what was written, and it became difficult for Mary to claim she "hadn't seen it." How on earth was she supposed to respond... That worry lasted only the briefest moment, because a call ringtone came through at once.
"Wah?! Serena-chan, you're way too loud...!"
The witch, Serena Razania, had crashed in, shredding the speakers and a few viewers' eardrums along the way. What remarkably convenient timing, Ninomae thought. Of all moments to call—and then to flip the mood in an instant.
It had to have been deliberate. Chiyo was a fellow second-generation talent, with the same debut window, but she had streaming experience of her own even before Anathema, and her judgment in moments like this was quick. There were logs of other first-generation senpai attempting calls at nearly the same instant, and seeing that made the guess all but certain.
"Anyway... thank you for the congratulations."
Hearing Mary's words, Serena answered with a light drawl trailing off the ends of her sentences. Where Maya's manner was warm and languid, Serena's carried a hint of nasality and a bewitching air. Her voice and way of speaking were like that to begin with, but as Gen 2's designated sex-appeal member, she put that voice on deliberately as well.
She gave a soft chuckle as she said it. At those words, Mary's expression brightened even further. An avatar could only do so much with its face, and yet the sparkle of anticipation in her eyes came through all the same.
"What on earth is it? It's not going to be something like 'the present is me, so do whatever you want,' right? In that case, hmm......"
"......"
"...Serena-chan?"
A silence had fallen, sudden and unnatural. Sensing something wrong in it, Mary called her name under her breath.
"Don't tell me she actually... Aah?! She hung up?! Wait, are you kiddin—"
"...Blowing a hundred thousand yen on a Super Chat just to say something that tanks your credibility is, in its own way, impressive."
Mary said it, and still couldn't help a short laugh. She probably hadn't truly come up with just settle it in cash on the spot; the timing was far too quick for Serena to have topped up her balance just then. It was also hard to believe the money had been charged in advance—at least as far as Mary knew, Serena wasn't the sort of viewer who threw Super Chats often. Which meant the little performance just now had, in all likelihood, been mostly acting. Staged.
Then, as if deciding this was the moment, Mary offered her thanks for the high-value birthday Super Chats bursting out one after another. She had thought the sums dizzying enough to make her head spin were finished once the opening Super Chat rush died down, but that had apparently been a misjudgment. Most likely these were fans who had joined partway through and were simply waiting for the right opening.
Mary looked as though she was trying, in her own way, to hold on to her composure, but she couldn't quite hide the way her pupils trembled at the parade of zeroes lined up against that red background. Perhaps the viewers found the reaction entertaining. The Super Chat baptism, which had been cooling, caught fire all over again.
Of course, Han Seoyeon was not the type to let a moment like this slip past. Even amid the flood of chat racing by, Mary picked out that nickname, and her gaze went ice-cold.
"Sis-ter-san! I told you to at least save the money you spend on Super Chats!"
"What kind of nonsense is this person spouting?! Keep that up and you really will get scolded!"
"I don't want to hear any buts! ...Haa. Anyway, I'll see you after the stream."
Mary let out a long sigh, then cleared the air. For the moment, she meant to fold this topic away and steer back to the stream.
"Anyway, thank you, all of you, for the congratulations. Not only the fellow VTubers who've called, or mean to... the servants right here. And the servants who, for one reason or another, can't watch the stream just now."
Having somehow settled the uproar on a warm note, Mary stole a glance at the voice-chat program—the one that wasn't showing on the broadcast screen. A message saying they were about to call had only just come through. It wasn't long before a familiar melody rang out, as if putting that declaration into action.
"Another one's here. So this time... Ah! Hello!"
The stream went on for quite a long while after that.