I Shall Not Drink Again (4)
"...Do I really come off as someone that unhinged about games?"
The first half of the broadcast had somehow stumbled to its end, and they were in the brief lull before the second. Fitting motion trackers to herself for the half that would use 3D models, Ninomae muttered it under her breath.
"You're still on that?"
Charlotte — Tsunashi Tenka — had caught it from beside her and broke into a laugh, the kind you give someone who simply cannot be talked down.
The moment a game Ninomae loved had come up, Serena and Sae — Chiyo and Marin — had recoiled in horror and tried to stop her, and it seemed she had been carrying that ever since. She didn't resent them for it, of course. She knew perfectly well that the exaggerated reactions had been for the sake of the stream, and that her own show of sulking had belonged to the same bit. What she was actually turning over was only herself. Was she really so far gone that she made a natural target for a joke like that — did she truly look like a fanatic?
"It's fine. If it's you, Ninomae-chan, it just comes off cute."
"Auu."
Tenka huffed a laugh and stroked her head. Ninomae looked up at her with a small complaint in her eyes, and did not remove the hand.
"Talking hard about the thing you love. I think that's good. Isn't it cool, being able to get passionate about something?"
"How do I put this. You're saying something that goes straight to an otaku's heart, Miss Tsunashi."
"Yeah? I don't really get what you mean."
"I mean it in the ordinary sense — that you're being very kind. People like us can stay wary of someone who praises us, and look at them with a clear eye. But someone who praises the thing we love, and likes it along with us? That sort, we don't even think to doubt."
She had heard that more than a few broadcasters leaned into an otaku image well past the real thing, for exactly this reason.
"Hmm. That so...? Then maybe I should try that game you were talking about."
"R-really?"
"Yeah. I was looking for something worth playing anyway, and if what you just said is right, then you'll be happy if I start it. Won't you?"
"Of course!"
Ninomae nodded so hard it was almost violent, huffing excited little breaths through her nose, and the whole picture was so much like a small animal set in front of food that Tenka broke into giggles. Seeing her like this, it did occur to Tenka that this was probably why other people called her a gremlin and worse — but she was at least kind enough not to say that to the girl's face. Instead she watched, fond, as Ninomae took the phone from her before she quite noticed and set about installing the app.
"Real-life Charmea... I can't, I can't..."
"...What are you doing over there, Miss Shion?"
"Ah. Miss Yuri."
There was one other person gazing on that scene with a deeply satisfied smile. From a little way off, where she had been spectating the two of them, Hyakurenno Yuri regarded Han Seoyeon as if the entire display were a lost cause.
"My Charmea intake has felt somewhat insufficient lately. I am replenishing it."
"Are you aware that looking at you does considerable damage to the image of an Apostle?"
"I would consider that quite ordinary, among Apostles..."
"This is... ordinary?"
Yuri turned it over. Was this merely a failure of self-awareness — or were the Apostles, every last one of them, such eccentrics that a person like this truly counted as normal? Apostle Thomas, whom she had briefly crossed paths with once before, had at least been a mild middle-aged man.
"It is not as if VTuber viewers are especially rare. Even limiting myself to those I know, there is one Apostle whose oshi is Sae, and one who is an active VTuber outright. By simple arithmetic, a quarter. Exclude the two honorary seats, and it comes to thirty-three percent."
"Would you mind not shattering my image of the Apostles quite so thoroughly...?"
No — before that, what even was a VTuber? Was that an industry the Apostles took such an interest in? Yuri pressed a hand to her brow as if the room had begun to spin.
"Isn't it generally the case that even those who properly understand the concept of a VTuber are an extreme minority?"
"But if we extend the range that far, I would have to add at least two more."
"...Nnnngh."
Han Seoyeon was recalling something she had heard a while ago. Her master and her godfather had both mentioned that, since the matter involved her, they had looked up videos of the Anathema Production members. Not that they had been converted into regulars — but if one counted anyone who had watched a broadcast even once, nearly half the Apostles were included.
"...Let us leave this topic."
In the end Yuri had no choice but to make that decision, if only to protect her own sanity. Even from the vantage of the Hyakurenno, these were beings for whom the word giant was not inadequate, and the thought of several of them taking an interest in her company was enough to make her dizzy. More than that — if one were speaking of that Han Seoyeon Margarita's godfather...
"Miss Tsunashi, the install's finished. The reroll guide is right here..."
"Rerolling. Do I actually have to?"
"It's to cut down on what you'll spend later!"
While all of that had been going on, Ninomae returned the phone, its game freshly installed, to Tenka's hand. She did not forget the advice a newbie truly needed.
"You're only saying that because you aren't used to the nasty side of collector gachas yet, Miss Tsunashi. Take off however you feel like it, and don't come crying to me later when you've slammed into the ceiling over and over and regretted everything."
"Isn't the saying usually 'beat the ground and regret it'?"
"Ah... so we're starting from there. All right, so the ceiling is—"
Ninomae pressed on with the explanation, aimed at the sight of Tenka's tilting head.
"I mean, dumping all that information on a newbie at once is kinda counterproductive, isn't it? And if you make somebody who doesn't know gacha start out by rerolling, they might fall out of love with it before they even begin."
"But you really will regret it later."
And then Yuri, who had been watching from the side, cut in as well.
"There's no need to be so afraid of meeting the ceiling in a gacha, is there? Think about it the other way around, and the heart gets ever so much lighter."
"The other way around?"
"A character you would normally have to purchase at the list price of forty thousand yen... and instead, at a certain probability, you can obtain them at a steep discount..."
"That is a line of thought available only because it's you, Miss Yuri?!"
Ninomae shrieked at a statement she could never have imagined. Heiress of the Hyakurenno or not, to think this was the mind with which she pulled on a gacha. Ninomae had assumed, at the very most, something on the order of an Indian rain dance always succeeds — and yet.
"Gacha games are even deeper than I thought..."
"No, no, Miss Yuri is the strange one! You must not copy her! You will go bankrupt!"
"I'm joking. Thanks for worrying."
Ninomae looked genuinely aghast, and at the sight of it Tenka let out a small laugh. The face itself was already something considerable; set it with a bright, clean smile and a word of thanks, and the result was a picture all on its own. Halfway through that thought, Ninomae stole a glance toward Seoyeon.
She was wearing precisely the expression of someone with nowhere to put herself before such holiness — the face of a woman inwardly crying, Char-chan is smiling at Shutan... Ninomae breathed out a sigh. Honestly, would it have killed her to step outside expectations, just a little?
Does Miss Shion not get jealous?
The thought arrived all at once, and Ninomae murmured it inwardly.
If she and Han Seoyeon had been caught in the opposite situation, Ninomae had no confidence she could have kept her composure. Her lips would have jutted out in a pout from sheer jealousy; of that she was certain. And yet Seoyeon only looked satisfied. Was the feeling she held something other than what Ninomae held for her? For no reason she could name, a dull ache went through her chest.
That Han Seoyeon felt desire for her was a plain fact. Affection, too — that much was certainly there. But that did not mean it could be called love, not the romantic kind. If she held even a little of that heart, wouldn't it have been all right to show even a little displeasure?
That was what made Ninomae anxious. That Seoyeon might not regard her as a romantic prospect in the slightest. That contrary to the hope she had been quietly nursing, there might in truth not even be a possibility.
"Hmm."
...And that expression was under the eyes of Hyakurenno Yuri.
A little while later, she quietly took out her phone and sent a message to her attendant.
Before long it was nearly time for the second half to begin, and Han Seoyeon, still an outsider here, left the studio again.
"Sishter-chaaaaaaan!"
She already had Anathema's official channel up on her phone, and from beside her came a voice thick with the smell of alcohol. She turned her head and found a woman in a maid uniform approaching, the same as always. Momomomo Chisa. Yuri's attendant, and her bodyguard.
"Welcome back."
What differed from the usual was that the very woman who ought to have been playing bodyguard had left her young lady briefly in Seoyeon's care and stepped away. It would have been reasonable to find that strange, but Han Seoyeon did not ask. Seeing as much, Chisa tipped a bottle of whiskey straight to her mouth and grinned.
"All wrapped up thanks to youuu~ hic. Who'da thought some paparazzi'd be dumb enough to tail milady. Thanks for the heads-uuup."
The reason Seoyeon had felt no need to question Chisa's absence was simple. She was the one who had sent her elsewhere in the first place. Her nose had caught the scent of a suspicious figure circling the company, and Chisa had gone out to intercept.
"A paparazzo?"
"Yep! Just some moron sniffing around for a scoop."
She had worried, for a moment, that it might be something to do with an anomaly. By Chisa's account, it had only been an ordinary paparazzo.
"Seriously, unless it's somebody who knows absolutely nothin', nobody's crazy enough to poke Anathema, riiight?"
"...Well. That much is true."
The relevant names alone ran to Apostles and Professor Senjoji, and the roster itself was a gathering of every kind of anomaly. Anyone with ordinary judgment would never lay a hand on it. Only residents of the surface world who truly knew nothing occasionally stuck their heads in — and even then, the weight of the Hyakurenno name made most reporters watch themselves. She had sent Chisa just in case, given the recent incident in which the Church's radical faction had run wild... The worry, it seemed, had been excessive. Well, Communio Sanctorum was active besides. Reassured on that point, Han Seoyeon let out a breath.
"Anyway, though, Sishter likes Vampire-chan, doooesn't she?"
"Hrk—?!"
And immediately her breath snagged on itself, inhale tangled with exhale. She stilled, with holy power, the diaphragm that had begun to hiccup from sheer surprise, and turned a shaking stare on Chisa.
"W-w-what are you saying all of a sudden?"
"Whaaat, but it's true, isn't iiit? Anyone can see you've got feelings. Why on earth aren't you two dating?"
It wasn't as if there were no chance — wouldn't it be quicker to confess and find out? At those words, Han Seoyeon looked away.
"...Yes. It is true that I have feelings for her. But I don't know Miss Ninomae's heart."
"Isn't it faster to confess and see if she says yes or nooo? Scared what you have now'll break if you dooo?"
"It isn't that I have no such fear. But if it is Miss Ninomae, then even if she did not love me, she would surely accept me for my sake. I don't want a sacrifice of that kind."
"Sooo that's hooow it iiiis—"
An explanation she had given more than a few times, to others who had harbored the same doubt. Hearing it, the maid grinned loosely, slack and pleased.
"But that kinda stuffy thing isn't my styyyle."
"No, even if you say so, Miss Maid..."
"So! I've got a recording riiight here!"
With that she opened the eyes she had been keeping half-shut and drew out the smartphone she had tucked into a pocket. For an instant Han Seoyeon failed to grasp what she meant, and simply stared at the phone, blank.
A voice-recording app. The file's title was identical to the current time — which was to say, a recording of the conversation from a moment ago. Then, under Chisa's touch, the screen changed. What was probably the most famous messaging app in Japan. Its window shone up from the display.
"I don't have Vampire-chan's contact, but if I send it to milady, she'll pass it alooong!"
"......!"
Han Seoyeon lunged for the phone in open horror.
But the arm was stopped by bamboo that had grown, between one instant and the next, out of the wall. Stalks beyond counting shot sideways and wove themselves into a barrier, cutting the two of them apart, and through a narrow gap in it Momomomo Chisa's eyes glinted. Not a trace of drunkenness left in them — a perfectly clear gaze, looking through the gap at Han Seoyeon, grinning.
"I may be retired, but I'm just tryin' to give a little push to a junior who's still workin' sooo hard for the sake of order. No need to look so shooocked~"
"The phone. Pass it this way."
"Buuut leaving things all bottled up like this isn't my taste. Even if I'm fond of how it is, I get the feeling milady wouldn't be toooo pleased, you know?"
"Give it here."
The young lady's request had been a little different from this — but since she was already here, she might as well satisfy her own curiosity too. Chisa was smiling when she said it, and then she dropped, hurriedly, nearly throwing herself flat.
A gunshot smothered by a suppressor cracked through the corridor.
"If you'd hand it over. The phone."
"Seriously? Is this really something to go this far over...?"
The muzzle was trained on her, breathing a thin thread of smoke. Brought to this, even Chisa had no choice but to let her expression harden.
...Huh. Did I just step on an enormous landmine?