I Shall Not Drink of It Again (2)
Unholy Party
The broadcast opened on five seats arranged like a pulpit. The middle one jutted forward, though, so the whole thing also called to mind a judge's bench—or a winners' podium.
In that raised center seat sat the holy knight Amairo Tsubasa, and her clear voice welcomed the viewers with blessing and greeting alike.
"I am Amairo Tsubasa, Trainee Knight of the second generation, and I will be hosting this first-anniversary special."
Four monsters and one cleric. In a group special like this, the hosting fell to her as a matter of course—and, truth be told, her personality was well suited to it. Or perhaps it was precisely because of that personality that the company had parked her in the role to begin with.
"Thanks to the love and support of our viewers, we of Anapro's second generation—the subjects of special observation under the Blasphemy Project—have each reached the first anniversary of our debuts. The Blasphemy Project, launched to help certain monsters adapt to society—"
"Hey, enough of that! Drop it, sis."
Someone cut in before she could finish. The little devil, Komori Sae.
"We don't need the long version. Everybody already said the important stuff on their own streams, right?"
Sae snatched the script clean out of Tsubasa's hands and ripped it to shreds.
"Staff! Big sisters, big brothers—just keep it rolling!"
She hustled the crew along. Tsubasa watched her for a moment, then let out a small sigh.
"Well... you aren't wrong. Shall we do it that way?"
Skip the preamble and move straight on. Tsubasa shrugged as if she'd lost, but in truth even this much was scripted—agreed upon in advance, if one wanted to put it that way.
From a certain angle it was the sort of thing one could fairly call rude, but the chat didn't seem to mind. Everyone knew the two of them got along, and this was simply how Sae's character worked. More than that, they all knew that if you left Tsubasa alone she really was capable of delivering a school principal's morning homily straight through to the end of the stream. Quite a few comments, in fact, praised Sae for shutting her down.
And so, while Tsubasa sat there tasting the karma of her everyday life, four more avatars appeared on the broadcast and filled the remaining seats.
"Bonsoir—."
"Konmea!"
As the rest of the second-gen introduced themselves one after another, Tsubasa picked the thread back up.
"Today's broadcast is brought to you by these five—the entire second generation. Part One is a talk show, and Part Two will be a team game in a party-recreation format."
"So Part One is Live2D, and Part Two is 3D models."
"And the first segment of Part One is this."
She gave the signal, and enormous letters rose across the screen.
"Unholy...? Is that all right? The title alone doesn't bode well."
"Hmm. The second-gen debut project was called Unholy, so I figure they just took it from that."
"R-right? The questions themselves aren't actually unholy or anything, are they?"
Mary pressed a hand to her chest in relief, and Tsubasa nodded along as she elaborated.
"We gathered, through social media, the questions you viewers wanted to ask the second generation. We draw one from the box, each of us writes an answer on a panel, and we reveal them all at once. Anything too sensitive was removed by the staff beforehand, so please rest easy."
"Hold on, though. Tsubasa-nee. So what about the questions that are 'not too sensitive'?"
"Oh, come on. They wouldn't pull a word game like that. Right, Tsubasa-chan?"
"Haha."
"...Tsubasa-chan?"
"I'll be answering the questions as well, after all. Rest easy, Dame Mary."
"No, what I'm asking is about how intense the questions—"
"Well then! Shall we get started?"
"Tsubasaaaa-chan?!"
"I trust them! I trust, one hundred percent, that weird questions got mixed in!"
"Well, that was a joke."
"A-a joke?"
"The truth is, the staff prepared two boxes."
Tsubasa let out a small giggle and went on.
"One holds ordinary questions, and the other holds ones that are a little risky, or so I was told. The plan, as it was relayed to me, is to draw only the safe ones as a rule, and to pull a sensitive question if the broadcast starts to drag..."
In short, questions of that sort would amount to one or two at most. If things went well, they might even finish without a single one appearing.
"If that's all it is, then I can relax... huh? But if you're going to run it that way, shouldn't you not be telling us?"
Before long, though, Mary had no choice but to tilt her head. Wasn't this an admission that they would pretend the draw was completely random while quietly steering it? And why lay the whole scheme bare? A glance at the monitor carrying the chat showed plenty of viewers just as puzzled.
"More to the point, Tsubasa-chan? Unless my eyes are wrong, there's only one box."
Serena had her doubts as well. They simply pointed in a slightly different direction.
"Oh. You're right."
"Huh?"
"Are they going to bring the other one out and swap them when we need it?"
Only then did the rest seem to notice, and every avatar's gaze converged in the same direction.
"But that wouldn't be any fun, so I mixed them all together ahead of time."
"What."
"No no no no, what are you doing?!"
"But I did say it was a joke, just a moment ago."
"That's what you meant?! You were announcing that you lied?!"
"Peace."
"This is not a peace-sign moment!"
"Still, the fact that they left this in my hands means the staff wanted something like this too, don't you think?"
"There is no way that's true..."
Mary howled, aghast.
"Well, if you think of it as them filtering out only the questions that crossed the line, and bringing the rest in without ever sorting them, isn't that fine?"
"Oh, Char-chan, are you a genius?"
The others, by contrast, took it fairly calmly. One person was making such a racket that the rest had grown composed in self-defense.
"Well then, shall we start by drawing a question?"
"Ugh... if you've already mixed them, there's nothing we can do..."
In the end Mary had no choice but to give in and move on. Anxious or not, she could hardly halt the broadcast on her own whim.
Tsubasa rummaged through the box, drew out a slip of paper folded twice, and opened it.
"'I'm curious about the second-gen members' fetishes,' it says."
"Aaaah! I knew it, a weird question right from the start!"
"Oh? Shootan. What were you thinking? It might only mean fetishism in the commodity-worship sense, and yet that's where your mind went first... How lewd."
"Aaah— Mary-nee, honestly. Such a pervert. Kehe."
"Anyone would read it that way in this situation! Stop ganging up on me like I'm the strange one!"
"Eh, ehh... I'm the weird one? Eh?"
"Ahaha, everyone, don't tease her too hard. Mary-chan's having a difficult time."
"So you are teasing me..."
"But Shootan reacting all cute and clumsy every single time isn't a bad thing, is it?"
Serena said it with a bewitching smile. Mary shot her a sharp glare, but Serena only shrugged, as if even that much were a reward.
It was the sort of back-and-forth the two of them had traded plenty of times before... and yet this time it was a little different. Mary lifted her chin and snorted. Even that came off as cute rather than ill-mannered.
"Hmph. Serena-chan's a clumsy innocent too, for all that."
"Whatever could you mean, Mary-chan? As if."
Mary shot a glance at the chat, stuck her lip out, and struck the desk with a bang—or rather, something closer to a bonk.
"Viewers! Don't be fooled! This witch does nothing but sex jokes on a normal day, and on stream it's sexual harassment every single time, but in reality she's a glass cannon who crumbles the second anyone makes a move, and her heart is a pure maiden through and thro— mmph!"
"U-ufufu. Whatever could you suddenly be saying, Shootan? Hm?"
"Mmph! Mmph!"
"Now, now. Let's calm down. Making too much of a scene on stream is a problem, isn't it?"
Whether what Mary had said was true, no one knew. The other members had hardly ever seen Serena like that, so it was probably something known only between the two of them. The truth, therefore, was unverified. If one insisted on being precise, the rational move would be to consider who bore the burden of proof... but the viewers could not have cared less. For them it was only a question of which reading was more fun.
A VTuber who usually fired off sex jokes at the level of a horny middle-aged man, showing an unexpected side? True or not, one thing was certain: there was now something to chew on and tear apart. And the viewers were not the only ones who noticed.
"Heeh, Serena-nee. Don't tell me you always act like you've got tons of experience, when you're actually completely pure?"
"Th-th-there's no way! Pipsqueak, be quiet!"
"Nee, you'd better be honest. The mesugaki inside me is trying to wake up."
"What is that supposed to be?!"
"Dame Serena. Please understand that accepting one's lack of experience is nothing to be ashamed of. Forcing a denial—wouldn't that be the truly shameful thing?"
"I said knock off this forced pile-on!"
Under the second-gen's successive assault, Serena flailed both hands.
"Mmm... but it's exactly what Serena-chan was doing to Mary-chan a moment ago, so call it karma?"
"Even Charlotte?!"
Enemies on every side, truly. Which made sense. Serena, whose usual concept was sexual-harassment demon, generally held the upper hand when she bantered with the others. This was a rare chance to tease someone like that. Charlotte, who would normally have been the one telling everyone to stop, had even tossed in a remark of her own—which said everything.
"Eek?! Wait, Shootan just licked my ha—!"
The finishing stroke belonged to Mary, whose mouth had been covered the entire time. At the wet touch against her palm, Serena screamed before she could stop herself. Needless to say, that unexpectedly frail little shriek had the viewers sinking their teeth into their prey all over again.
"Heh heh."
The vampire who had engineered the whole situation merely laughed, triumphant.
"That aside, shouldn't we actually get around to the first question soon? Let's each give a little ground, provisionally agree that Dame Serena is an inexperienced klutz, and move on."
"Yes, Tsubasa-chan has spoken rightly."
"That wasn't a compromise in the slightest, was it...?"
"Serena-nee doesn't even know? 'We don't negotiate with terrorists.' Think of it as punishment for all the usual sexual harassment!"
"If we're talking indecent remarks, Sae-chan is hardly one to—"
"Huuuh? Sae's still little, so she doesn't reeeally get that stuff."
"Girls. You do all realize this is the first question of the first segment, right...?"
Charlotte pressed a hand to her forehead.
"The person who yells 'cut it out' matters far more than I thought..."
It was the moment—for the girls and the viewers alike—when it became plain that if even Mary, who ordinarily served as the brakes, drew her blade and threw herself into the brawl, there would truly be no one left to stop it.