I Will Never Drink Again (6)

Pocky. The particulars shift from product to product, but in essence it is a stick biscuit thinly sheathed in chocolate, all but the little stretch left bare to serve as a handle.

Put in terms of the lookalike every Korean knows, it would be Pepero. Strictly speaking, one ought to call the other the original.

In any case, the game built around the thing bore a name of devastating simplicity: the Pocky Game.

You took the stick by both ends in your mouths and nibbled your way toward one another. That was the entire premise. With lips forever at risk of meeting, the heart of it came down to a single question — at what distance do you stop? And unless the match was merely a pretext for a couple who wanted nothing more than a good long mwah-mwah-slurp, the rules fell broadly into two. One was a sort of game of chicken, in which the first to pull back lost. The other was a cooperative contest, racing to see which team could whittle the stick down shorter.

"…Which is, more or less, an explanation of the Pocky Game. So. Which version was it that Lady Serena proposed?"

"I mean, if I'm being exact, my actual goal was the mwah-mwah-slurp I mentioned a second ago… I hadn't really thought about which rules we'd be using……."

"……."

"Ah. Yes. That, then. …Lady Serena may have blurted it out with nothing in her head but ulterior motives, but fortunately the staff had something prepared."

"Urk! There was an awful lot of bone in that…!"

"You brought it on yourself."

Tsubasa took the card passed over from the staff beyond the camera and ran her eyes down it.

"Bite through the stick first, or go ten seconds without moving, and you lose… Well. Reasonable rules, I suppose. Best of three, besides."

"Then one of us — me or Serena-chan — might have to go twice."

"If we close it out in two straight wins, we're fine."

"Easy for you to say……."

"Anyway, Team H, talk it over among yourselves and decide your vanguard."

A short while later, the ones who stepped forward were Serena and Mary.

"Heheh, Syuttang's taking point? Total free win~"

"Hmph! I'll see that you regret those words."

Mary snorted and threw the provocation straight back. Of course, considering how easily Mary embarrassed, a line like that was foreshadowing for the disgrace to come. Strut and then get thoroughly dismantled — that was a fixed sequence, and a very familiar bit of repertoire on Mary's streams.

…Then again, against Serena-san, don't I actually stand a chance?

Only if the one across from her weren't Serena. The thought arrived all at once.

"All right, bite the ends, both of you. Yes, and… ready…"

Tsubasa, still holding the MC's seat even after the teams had split, brought over a single stick and set it between their teeth. Mary regarded, quite meekly, the face of her opponent, the two of them joined by one thin line.

"Heheh… Here I come? I'm really coming?"

The candy in her mouth let the consonants leak, and Serena wore a lewd little smile. A beauty like that, and yet the things she said and did belonged to a vulgar, perverted old man — the gap was considerable. To Mary, who had seen the sight often enough, it stirred no particular sense of wrongness.

"Begin!"

At Tsubasa's signal that same Serena set upon the stick with a rapid crunch-crunch. Little bites, little enough to deserve the word gnaw, and yet very, very fast.

Serena, flaunting the approach. If Mary shrieked and recoiled here, that would be one highlight clip, finished. It was also Mary's character to be treated as the most innocent of the bunch — the one who caught "boss of Gen 2" and "the doormat on the bottom rung" in the very same breath.

"……."

But Mary sank, for a moment, into thought.

It wasn't that she had to clench her teeth and win. As Mary, she would have liked to lead with her pride, but as Ninomae she knew well enough that a stream's entertainment came before victory. What snagged at her, rather, was the matter of how Serena was judged — and beyond Serena, Senjoji Chiyo.

A woman who traded in filthy talk at all hours and tossed confessions off as lightly as anything. And yet Ninomae, over a year in her company, had come to understand that the truth of it sat much closer to a mask. Before she could be avoided and despised by others for loving women, she stepped forward and made a caricature of herself. That was the Senjoji Chiyo Ninomae had watched. The dirty jokes came on the premise that they would be written off as jokes. The playful confessions came on the premise that they would be refused at once. Underneath it all lay the certainty that no one could ever sincerely like a thing like her, and so she volunteered for the role of clown. An unexpectedly tender person.

Mary had been lost in that thought for a moment when—

"Nnh—?!"

Crunch. She bit a great mouthful off the stick, taking nearly half of what remained, and the distance between them halved at a stroke.

At that bold strike Serena's eyes went perfectly round. A flustered sound leaked out past the candy still clenched in her teeth. Mary took it for the reaction of someone meeting a thing entirely outside her expectations. In fact, Serena had never imagined the gap closing this far. She had simply assumed that Mary would retreat on her own before it came to that. That she offered no further response even so was only because surprise had frozen her solid.

"Eek…!"

But when Mary bit away another half and the distance shrank to a quarter of what it had been, Serena had no choice but to do something. Specifically, she lost her nerve and fled. The stick in her mouth snapped clean. Even then she leaned back on instinct, trying to open more space, and sat down hard on her rear with a thud.

"Are you quite all right?"

"Ah, uh. Yeah, I-I'm fine, I'm fine."

Serena answered with her face gone bright red, her eyes dodging away. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Worried for the woman who had fallen, and yet unable to help herself at how cute the reaction was, Mary let a small laugh slip.

Someone this cute, and all she ever gets is "perverted middle-aged guy" and "crude" — that really is too much of a waste.

Genuinely charming, and yet the viewers' judgment gathered on nothing but the provocative character. Ninomae found, all at once, that she didn't much care for it. And so she had acted. Throwing out, in the first half of the stream, the question of whether Serena might unexpectedly be something of a late bloomer — that, too, had been part of the same effort. Anyway, with this, the viewers would surely come to know a little of Serena's charming true self…

"…Huh?"

Did I overdo it…?

Watching the viewers' reactions, Mary simply worked at the candy still left in her mouth. This didn't feel like showing them some new facet. It felt like the existing roleplay had been smashed to pieces……?

A few minutes after Serena Razania's concept — a harassment fiend of a witch, lust-mad enough that her very lore had her die atop a bed — had been revised, in practice, into a virgin ghost whose greatest feat of skinship in all her life was holding another girl's hand.

…No. Truth be told, Senjoji Chiyo was not so catastrophic a late bloomer as all that, whatever else one might say, and even supposing she were, there existed no evidence by which anyone could be certain of it to that degree. Viewers, however, could always be counted on to malign a streamer in whichever direction was funnier, and more extreme.

At any rate — once the chat had been turned fully upside down, and a further stretch of time had passed — the studio.

"…Well. Taking Mademoiselle's lips in a fashion like this would hardly be good manners."

Charlotte Lupus had been locked in a staring match at a distance from which their lips had very little left to travel. She smiled with her eyes, and let the stick go from between her teeth. Someone had been about to have to close that gap, with almost nothing left of the ten-second limit, and Tsubasa — handed the win almost as a concession — breathed out in relief. Even then her face seemed to be burning; she kept fanning it with her hand.

"Boo! Keeping both your chastity and your RP, how cowardly! Charlotte Lupus, awaken!"

"Serena-unnie. Honestly, that was a little pathetic……. Your RP broke in the first place because you're a sloppy ponkotsu, unnie."

"Urk… If you call me sloppy that deadpan it actually wounds me, so put a heart on the end for me, with a mesugaki's love……."

"Sloppy♥"

"Ghhk!"

"…No. What kind of comedy routine is this, the two of you."

Mary cut into the exchange and pressed a hand to her forehead. Setting that aside, she could agree with the point itself — that holding an RP together was a matter of individual skill. Not so much that Serena had come up short, as that the balance of it ran toward Charlotte simply being sharper. Someone pulling back because lip meeting lip was too much to bear was as good as the essence of this game of chicken. Coming up, in that same moment, with a justification fitted to the character — I withdraw, for the sake of a lady's purity — was another matter entirely. As a fellow professional, she could only admire it.

"In any case, that makes it two to nothing. The winners of this match are our team, Wing. We'll be taking that one point, thank you."

"One to nothing, huh… Well, we just have to play well in the next game. Don't get too down. Let's all give it our best, yeah?"

"Then we'll decide the next event right away! Staff, if you'd start the roulette."

At Tsubasa's signal the wheel began to turn once more. Serena's slot had been painted gray, marking her as already out. And the name it pointed to, when at last it stopped, was Amairo Tsubasa.

"……."

"Oh. The game I picked."

"…Next time we have a project like this, couldn't the company just decide the events for us?"

"This one… isn't going to be easy."

"Oh? Is there a problem?"

"It's nothing but problems! What even is this 'acupressure-mat limbo'?!"

"As I'm sure you all know, limbo is a game of flexibility and core strength, in which you bend and pass beneath a bar. Doing that on top of an acupressure mat is all it—"

"I wasn't asking for the definition! We're on the same team, so show a little restraint, you masochist Holy Knight…!"

…To skip the process and begin from the conclusion, it was a total wipeout.

"Oogh, my feet… my soooles……."

"Uweeeegh……."

"Gyaaaaaah!"

Komori Sae lay face-down on the floor, twitching. Mary Tepes was sprawled wide on her back and wailing. Even Charlotte Lupus, the comparatively composed one, had sunk down to rub at the soles of her feet, and Serena Razania had gone so far as to clutch her own and roll across the ground. …Whereupon, having rolled onto the acupressure mat by mistake, Serena screamed all over again.

"Haaaah… Which makes this match ours ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as well. A perfect lead, two to nothing."

"Ah… yes…"

"Lady Mary doesn't look terribly pleased."

The only one still standing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on two legs was Amairo Tsubasa, who had proposed the game and survived it to the end. The only one wearing a vacant, blissful smile was her as well.

"What I understand even less is you being that excited, Tsubasa-chan… Uegh, it's still tingling……."

"Oh, but isn't it wonderful? Your body curling in on itself all on its own, and in the middle of that you just barely surpass your physical limits and break your own record. It's incredibly thrilling, and my heart just pounds……."

"Agh, be quiet, masochist Holy Knight! Nobody needs a commentary on your perverted proclivities!"

"No. I'm not a masochist. I simply enjoy overcoming ascetic trials?"

And what, exactly, is the difference… Mary glared at Tsubasa with eyes full of that grievance, and even while thinking what is that cute ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠little creature, Tsubasa went on with the explanation — or the excuse.

"Did you know? Among people who like dark fantasy, quite a few aren't cheering for the bleakness itself, but for the hymn to humanity that blooms out of it. Of course plenty of them simply like that atmosphere as it is… anyway, that's the sort of thing I mean. What you just said is like blindly calling dark-fantasy fans hipster pessimists, that kind of…"

"This unnie is such a perfectly decent, lovely person. I don't understand why she only gets strange when it's something like this……."

Komori Sae sighed.

It was one of Anapro's greatest mysteries. Outwardly she was the young lady of the Hyakurenno house, and she had made so fine a showing in her interview that she had even secured what amounted to the leader's seat… so why, the moment a stream went live, did she turn into a VTuber who did nothing but whatever she pleased, and sank accordingly into the pettiest little bits?

Save for Tsubasa herself and, stretching the definition generously, the maid Momomomo, it was probably something no one would ever know.

"Anyway, to settle the next event as well, the roulette—"

"Please, can we rest a little first…!"

"Hmm."