Opening Act Three (4)
Like most of the pretty-girl collector games on the market, Barbara Knight fell well short of anything a person could honestly call a god-tier game.
And yet its players kept their grip on it for the same reason players keep their grip on any other game of the kind: there was simply no substitute.
"…No, even granting that, this game takes it way too far."
That was Ninomae's verdict. Hearing it, Han Seoyeon thought back over the official broadcast that had only just ended.
Asked what they considered the game's single greatest strength, every guest had offered nearly the same answer. There was simply nothing that could replace it.
"A fleet of arsenal ships crewed by Nord Vikings, sailing south — anybody with a working scrap of common sense in their head would never put that in a game."
"I suppose Marx has shown up in a game before, maybe… but as far as I know, this is the only one that turns him into a woman and sends him out strapped with two enormous, plump revolutionary pouches."
Only then did Han Seoyeon begin to understand the internet's verdict. No wonder that, whenever she looked in on the communities, they called the developers crazy hipster bastards whether the post in question was praise or abuse.
"I'd forgotten……. These people are the lunatics who, on an event rerun, gave players going through it a second time an entirely different story."
"So there was precedent."
"But even so, there was no predicting this……."
Changing the story for an event rerun, at the very least, only meant treating it as one more event and working the writers a little harder. Shoving an entirely different story at people simply because they were on a different server was another matter.
What, in the first place, was the greatest reason mobile games expanded overseas? Because a game already finished could be made to turn a profit on the smallest possible investment — a few light touches, and nothing more. Spend only a little beyond the cost of making one game, and you could hope for the revenue of two. Assuming, of course, that the thing actually managed to find its footing…….
And the category of "already finished," naturally, included the scenario as well. Events? Adjust the currency handed out as rewards, translate the script, and ship it. Wasn't that all there was to it?
"Then why on earth did they do it this way?"
The more she heard, the farther Han Seoyeon's head tilted. Turn it over as she might, no reason worth the trouble would come to her.
"Because they thought it'd be more fun! These weirdo developers have nothing but thoughts like that in their heads……!"
Future sight for the operations still to come? A translated early read of story the Korean server had already put out?
"They definitely did it because they decided, 'That wouldn't be very fun.'"
"For us, fun always comes before profit." Ninomae recalled a developer interview she had seen in the past.
At the time, some had cheered that attitude, and others had written it off as lip service meant to reel in naive players. The company, however, proved not long after the game launched that it had been their true feeling, without a single lie in it. …The only catch was that the "fun" in question had been their own, and not the players'.
"At least one thing came clear from this. From here on, future sight for the Japanese server isn't worth scrap paper."
"Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?"
"There are two sides to it. If you know the future, you spend according to a plan, so short-term revenue has no choice but to fall. Though it seems that very notion of being 'rational' sometimes gets a wallet open from someone who otherwise never would have opened it……."
In any case, whether future sight existed or not made a difference too large to gather into any single phrase. And there was, apparently, a lunatic who had thrown it away for nothing but fun.
"They've genuinely lost it. Lost it, I mean it. Going to the trouble of essentially making two games, only to kick the ground out from under their own feet."
"……For all that you've been saying so for a while now, Ninomae, your expression looks remarkably bright."
"But a game I love just turned into two games."
The reason Ninomae looked strangely delighted in spite of all this was simple enough to explain — whoa, the story had doubled!
"Even so, there's no denying the developers have lost their minds…"
"—Yes, hello. Foremost among those who have lost their minds."
"Hyaaak?!"
At the woman who had suddenly sprung up beside them, Ninomae startled so hard she leapt clear off the ground.
It was a developer who had come from across the sea to film the official broadcast. Han Seoyeon recalled that she had introduced herself as both director and programmer.
"……."
And she carefully shifted her position.
The beaming smile suggested no particular intent to do harm, but if one listened only to Ninomae's account, the developers of this game were madness itself. There was no telling what the woman might do, and so Seoyeon naturally took up a place at Ninomae's back, where she could answer whatever came.
"Ah, n-no. I mean, what I said just now wasn't meant as an insult…"
"It's all right. I hear it on the internet all the time."
Seoyeon had hidden her presence to some degree, and perhaps because of that the woman never even noticed her moving around behind them. She simply went on with Ninomae.
"We're lunatics who push straight through with whatever we feel like doing. I also know that most of our players trust us precisely because of that."
"Th-that is true, but still."
They were absolutely not a company that would fleece its players. Ninomae held that much faith in them, too. …If they were going to hit you, they would request a duel first, one hundred percent of the time, and come at you from the front.
"Anyway, I've let this go too long, but thank you for coming today as a guest."
"Not at all. If anything, I'm the one who's grateful. The guides and all the rest — I only did those to suit my own feelings, and yet you invited me all the way to a place like this……."
"We called you because you're someone who pours this much of your own time and money into the game out of personal feeling. It means it's something you do because you truly love it."
Even so, the conversation between the two of them went on more warmly than expected. Seoyeon had worried some truly out-of-nowhere remark might come flying, but off-camera the woman was a more ordinary person than she had thought.
"Ah, and choosing this particular guest was partly my own selfishness. The truth is, I'm a fan of Mary."
"Huh? Really?"
"Honestly, I wouldn't go so far as to say she's my favorite VTuber… but it's true that I like her a great deal."
With that, the developer rummaged through the handbag she was carrying.
What came out were nine illustration cards. Every one of them had Mary drawn on it, and every one of them was official merchandise from Anathema Production.
"I brought them on purpose, since a chance like this came up. Would it be all right to ask for your signature?"
"Of course! The honor's mine, really. …Oh, but they're three of each."
"One set I took in place of a coworker who couldn't make it, and another is meant as a gift."
"A gift?"
"I'm going to brag my head off to a friend whose oshi is Mary, and then, while I'm lording it over her, tell her I actually got one more and hand it over."
She said it with a wicked little grin. Ninomae must have pictured the scene, because a small chuckle escaped her.
"So, the name…"
"Please write my real name. Yu Hyena. Oh, and my coworker is……."
Ninomae put a cute little signature on all nine cards — they had even brought the pen — and handed them back to their owner.
"Here you are."
"Thank you. I'll keep them as heirlooms."
"You really don't have to go that far……"
Even as she said it, Mary looked pleased. Naturally, there are not many people who can feel bad with a fan who likes them standing right in front of them.
"…And I'm even happier that it's you, Yu, and not someone else."
"Hm? In what sense?"
"I started falling into VTubers after I got to know my first-generation seniors, of course… but they weren't actually the first VTuber I ever watched."
At those words, Han Seoyeon recalled something Ninomae had told her before.
Come to think of it, the first VTuber Ninomae had ever encountered had belonged to some game company — a VTuber begun, more or less, for the sake of promotion. The reception hadn't been particularly kind, she had said… but Ninomae herself seemed to have found her fairly entertaining.
Judging by the look of surely not that crossed her face, Yu Hyena had caught on to what Ninomae meant to say.
"If you trace it back, I became a VTuber thanks to Lily. Ah — you are Lily herself, aren't you? I recognized the voice, though I suppose I could always be wrong."
"Yes. That's true, but… it was something the higher-ups half forced through, and personally it's close to dark history……. …Wow. This is a really complicated feeling."
Work at a company she had come to for bad reasons, with a bad reception on top of it. If that turned out to be what had started a VTuber she loved on the path to streaming, her feelings were bound to tangle in every direction.
Should she be glad of it? Or should she grieve, because a dark history she had forgotten would now never be forgotten in someone else's memory?
In the end, the conclusion she reached was flight. As if taking those feelings out on the moment itself, Yu Hyena put her scheme into action at once.
A shutter clicked, and — perhaps imagining how that friend of hers would react — she began, smirking, to type something into her phone. A boast, in all likelihood, salted with mockery.
"Hm?"
—And at that moment, Han Seoyeon's phone buzzed.
She had set it to silent, worried it might interrupt Ninomae and Yuri's broadcast partway through. She drew it from her pocket on reflex, the sort of motion that has become a habit of modern people.
It was a chat from Pasta, the voice-chat application.
"Huh?"
The sound escaped her entirely on its own — truly, against her will. It was the natural, and exceedingly rare, bodily reaction of someone faced with a thing she had never once anticipated.
Her pupils trembled. Slowly, her gaze moved.
The woman was still standing there, smirking down at her own smartphone.
No. Even so, something like that couldn't……. For an instant her mind was swallowed in chaos.
No — and yet, looking back, there was no contradiction in it. Korean. A programmer. It did not differ from the handful of facts she had already known. The voice… it did seem similar, now that she considered it.
And there had been something odd besides. Once, in answer to something Han Seoyeon had said, hadn't the other woman replied to the effect that if Seoyeon was Sister, then she herself was a pretty-girl VTuber?
……What if that hadn't been a lie?
"……."
Han Seoyeon's eyes swam in every direction. Her heart went on denying it. Her head had already accepted the situation.
Quietly, she raised her phone and took a picture. The shutter made no sound. She confirmed that the back of Yu Hyena's head sat unblurred inside the frame… and sent the image at once.
A moment later, the body of the woman in front of her flinched.
Creak. Creeeak. Her neck turned the way a machine does when it has rusted thick and seized stiff.
Their eyes met.
The eyes meeting hers trembled, fine and fast. In all likelihood she was passing, exactly as it was, through the chain of thought Seoyeon had just finished.
"Uh. Fuck?"
"Now, now. Swearing at someone the moment you meet them? How vulgar. I had you pegged from the moment I saw that nickname of yours."
"No, the nicknames are six of one— no, forget that, no, hey, what……."
As was only natural, she broke down almost at once. She hadn't even been in service very long.
"More to the point, isn't there something you ought to say first?"
"Oh, right. SisMary's gachikoi, yeah?"
"How is that the first thing out of your mouth after we meet. You absolute maniac."
Of course, the two of them were not the only ones thrown. Ninomae, who had been watching, had no choice but to go round-eyed herself.
Two people who looked as though they shared no point of contact whatsoever — she could hardly believe they knew each other.
"Or rather… you seem quite close."
Ninomae could manage Korean to some degree, and of course she could follow their conversation as well. Part of the difference was simply that the language itself was another one, and yet Han Seoyeon's manner of speaking still wasn't her usual. Ninomae smiled, as if glad to be shown a new side of her.
"How on earth do the two of you know each other?"
"Ah. We simply happened to meet on the internet, perfectly ordinary. We are certainly not especially close."
"But you're talking so freely."
"Well, she is hardly a person toward whom one owes courtesy."
Han Seoyeon said this, and shot a sidelong look at Yu Hyena.
"Are you aware? That director, putting on a genteel little fan act in front of you, Ninomae, is in fact a vulgar creature who, whenever she gets a spare moment, sends Mary's lewd art over chat and tells me to look at it."
"W-wait. If you say that in front of the person herself… damn it. That's how you want to play it? Want me to blow the lid off how you prattle every single time, saved under the name 'How could anyone commit an act this obscene, I cannot condone this'?"
"…Slander. Yes. You haven't any evidence, now have you."
"M-Mary's lewd art, you say……."
"No. It truly is slander. If it comes to that, I can even show you my PC."
Ninomae's cheeks colored, just a little. But the flat certainty in Han Seoyeon's voice soon made her reconsider.
Right. Thinking about it, of course that was so. This was Han Seoyeon speaking — not some other person. If she could not trust her, whom in all the world could she trust? And there she stood, confident enough to offer to crack her own computer open and show it.
…The truth was that there had already been any number of chances to look through Han Seoyeon's PC, which was why. Not so much as a single illustration of Mary had been anywhere on it.
"……Uh, one moment."
But in that instant, a single doubt flickered across Ninomae's mind.
"This really did just occur to me, but… Shion."
"Uh— what is it?"
"Now that I think about it, something's strange… how can there not be a single illustration of Mary on the PC of someone as passionate as you, Shion? Wholesome ones included."
"……."
Ninomae's eyes did not miss the way Han Seoyeon's expression locked stiff.
"Or rather, if it were you, Shion, you'd say we have to build an ark, and you'd keep Mary's fanworks stored separately in case something happened to the computer… which means the indecent pictures would be over there, too, of course……."
"I— I swear to heaven, I have not done anything like hiding a hard drive."
"Then perhaps the SSD? Would you be able to swear to heaven about that one as well?"
"…I-I do not think it is good to misuse the Lord our God in that fashion."
"Shion?"
"……I'm sorry. The truth is, I had a great many of them stored."
In the end, Han Seoyeon had no choice but to admit defeat.
"I won't tell you to delete them."
At that confession, Ninomae let out a long, deep sigh. But a moment later she smiled, small, and leaned her face in beside Han Seoyeon's ear.
"Instead, one of these days we'll hold a viewing together, all right?"
"Urk… mercy, at least on that……."
"…Hehe. I'll think about it. I'll think about it."
Ninomae, whispering so, looked unexpectedly bright. She seemed thoroughly satisfied.
How could she help being glad, realizing that Han Seoyeon — who had held Mary sacred — did, in fact, harbor at least a little of that kind of feeling for her?
Huh. So it really was gachikoi. Nice. Tonight's a SisMary doujinshi.
It was a meeting that left everyone happy, except for Han Seoyeon.