White, Green, Blue (2)
"By the way, Ninomae-chan. So you and Sister really did end up together~"
"Ugh, are we still on that?"
The VTubers' waiting room. Sakuragi Oka had murmured it in the middle of watching Charlotte—Tsunashi Tenka—up on the stage.
"But it's something worth congratulating you for."
"Even so, it's embarrassing. It only came out because I slipped. I never actually meant to tell anyone..."
Ninomae answered with a faint flush on her cheeks. Ever since the call with Seoyeon a little while ago, the members had been hounding her over it without pause, and the broadcast starting had done nothing to stop them.
Well, of course. Hear that a fellow streamer had news in her love life, and how could anyone fail to be interested? Had the situation been reversed, Ninomae would have been just the same. Still, being the one on the receiving end was embarrassing all the same. At least everyone was cheering her on, so it didn't feel bad.
"Honestly, you're too cruel, Hitomi-chan. You stir up a maiden's heart like that, and then you throw me away to go date someone else. Boo-hoo."
"I didn't throw you away—I never even had you!"
Senjoji Chiyo, who had been listening in from the side, put on an extravagant show of weeping. The idea that Ninomae had abandoned her for Han Seoyeon was nonsense, of course. There was no reason to be reacting this way now of all times. After Ninomae had come to recognize her feelings for Han Seoyeon, the very first person she had opened that heart to, seeking advice, had been Chiyo herself.
"...Mm."
Well. Think on it a little more deeply, and Ninomae was not entirely without a prick of guilt. If someone pressed her on whether she hadn't kept up all sorts of casual touching afterward, enough to set a heart racing, she would have had nothing to say for herself. She was the one who had said it right to Chiyo's face—that if Chiyo was going to turn her eyes toward Han Seoyeon and become a rival, she might as well fall for Ninomae instead.
"Can't be helped. I'll just have to go looking for my next love!"
Of course, none of that meant she had genuinely fallen in love with Ninomae. Chiyo dropped the exaggerated act at once, her expression snapping back as she smiled with triumphant satisfaction.
"Your next love, huuuh. Then maybe I should put my name in~"
"H-huh?! Oka-senpai?"
Oka, seated beside them, spread both arms and offered it with a loose, dopey grin. Chiyo's face, by contrast, stiffened just a little.
It wasn't that she felt any aversion to a colossal woman standing more than six foot seven. Of course it wasn't.
Chiyo-san is the type who confesses like mad the moment she locks eyes with a beautiful woman, and yet the instant the other person is the one to approach, she puts the distance back...
It seldom showed in her usual manner, but what lay underneath was a considerable depth of self-loathing. She fired off confessions so cheaply only because she assumed that no ordinary person would ever accept one from her in the first place. The moment someone else made a romantic approach, her guard shot straight up. Or, to put it more precisely, was it less wariness of the other person than a fear of the very notion that someone like her might end up bound to anyone at all? So Ninomae thought, tilting her head.
All the while, Charlotte's solo was already past the halfway mark. It was about time they started moving as well. Ninomae rose carefully from her seat and made for the stage, and two of the waiting staff came over to give her equipment one last check.
In the meantime she glanced at the monitor—the final picture being sent out to the broadcast. A werewolf strode across a dazzling stage, and in the moment the camera closed briefly on her face, she, Charlotte, flicked a wink.
A wink, yes, but one that leaned harder into cool than cute. Well, Charlotte's fandom would rather have it that way. In truth, face tracking was a little unreliable under the present broadcast setup, so the model's expression had merely changed along a program entered in advance. Even so, since Tenka had winked at the very same moment knowing full well it wouldn't register, they hadn't truly deceived anyone, had they? Ninomae decided that was rationalization enough and let the matter rest.
Confirming that one of the staff had signaled her with a wave, she stepped up onto the stage. Her model had not been brought up yet, so the feed still showed Charlotte alone.
The stage was built with a second platform raised near the center, and Charlotte was singing from the top of it. This was the highlight, the final stretch—a song that favored the singing itself over choreography—and even now she stood motionless with the microphone in hand, driving a high note upward. When Ninomae came to stand quietly beside her, Tenka rolled only her eyes in her direction, careful that the motion capture would not pick up the movement.
In the next instant the accompaniment cut dead in the same breath as Charlotte's voice. Amid the silence and the lingering echo, that body drew a deep breath, seemed to pitch forward—and then she hurled the microphone skyward and dropped toward the lower tier of the stage.
But before she could strike the floor, Charlotte's model burst apart in every direction and became a swarm of pitch-black bats. The squeaking creatures wheeled and gathered once more upon the upper platform, and from the place where they massed together, a platinum-blonde woman appeared. Head bowed, she extended only her right arm and snatched the microphone still spinning through the air. An electric guitar cut in. A moment later Mary snapped her head up, and her red eyes flashed open.
A grin. The corners of her mouth lifted, light and easy, as her gaze swept across the audience below the stage.
"Nice work. Ninomae-chan, Akane-chan."
When their turn ended and they came back wiping the sweat from their brows with their sleeves, Tenka, who had held the stage just before them, raised a hand in welcome. A moment later she passed a chilled bottle of water each to Ninomae and Akaba Akane.
"Nice work, nothing. There's still a long way to go."
Akane took hers, gulped the water down in rough swallows, and said as much. As a reply to nice work, the tone came off a little blunt, but there was no real malice in it. Even Ninomae could tell that much, so Tenka, who had been with her since they were children, went without saying. She only smiled.
"And if anyone worked hard, it wasn't me. It was this one. Two songs in a row."
"Yeah. I already said it once, but you worked hard too, Ninomae-chan."
"Ah. Thank you."
True to her word, Akane added it at once and tapped Ninomae's shoulder with the back of her hand. Just as she had said, Mary's set had been built as two songs back to back. The second, at least, had been a duet with Akane, so the burden had been lighter.
"So when are you two up next?"
"Me, after three more songs. Two in a row, a duet with Serena."
"Mary is... um, probably six songs from now, not counting Tsubasa-san's set that's on right now. A trio with Sae-san and Rin-senpai. Then I sit one out, and it's a solo again."
"I felt it on our turn, too. The boss really does love a mess."
Hearing both answers, Akane sighed.
"In and out, in and out. It's a complete circus."
"Still, isn't it easier than performing straight through? We get breaks like this."
"For us, sure."
"The staff must be terribly busy because of it, though."
Ninomae glanced toward the staff and murmured it. Every time the performers changed, models had to be brought up and taken down again—and on top of that, all manner of special effects, thanks to the boss's pet theory that a virtual concert ought to do what only the virtual could.
"The money... must have been enormous, right?"
"Well, obviously."
They hadn't even sold tickets. According to the boss, rather than turning a profit, the strategy was to swell the live viewer count and bait people in with a why are so many people watching this?
"Drop it. With a boss as sharp as ours, worrying yourself sick won't cost you a thing."
"Mmm, that is true, but..."
"You think she booked that collab of yours tomorrow—calling it a post-show chat—for nothing? Factor in the Super Chats that'll come flooding in, and she must have decided it'll be more than enough."
With that, Akane dropped into a chair. Ninomae followed, sat down beside her, and reached into the bag of snacks that had been left there.
"Huh? Wait a second. Ninomae-chan."
"Yes?"
"No—your eyes..."
They had been chatting idly when Tenka's eyes went suddenly round, as if she had noticed something. Ninomae tilted her head, and Tenka pointed at the corner of her eye, then realized that would explain nothing and pulled out her phone. What she opened was the camera app. The front camera, at that, in selfie mode. A mirror, in short.
Reflected in that screen, Ninomae looked at her own face—no, at her eyes, just as Tenka had indicated.
They were red. Her irises had been flooded with crimson light. Not the uncanny blood-red one usually saw in albinos, but a glittering red that called a ruby to mind.
"Ah..."
Ninomae puzzled over it for a moment, then understood the cause.
"Right now it feels as though a part of me is lightly settled upon Shion-san. I think that's probably why..."
She had thought the scent seemed strangely familiar, and when she followed the memory back, it was the smell that hung in her own home. Some portion of Han Seoyeon's sense of smell must have been feeding back to her.
"Divine possession? No—I heard you'd become a god, but this is happening out of nowhere?"
"Mmm, well. It seems that when I hold a live concert, it counts as a kagura—a sacred rite..."
"So you're saying it stays like that at least until the concert's over. If anything, it'll get worse, not better."
Furrowing her brow, Akane added, "And what are you going to do about those eyes?"
"Is eyes changing color all of a sudden all right under the Secrecy Protocol? Akane-chan, do you know?"
"All right? Like hell. That's supernatural enough on its own. ...Six songs from now, you said? Is there a glasses shop around here?"
With that, Akane got to her feet. She looked ready to go and get colored contacts by whatever means necessary, this very moment. For most things they could simply ask the staff, but this touched the Secrecy Protocol, and it was hard to leave a matter like that carelessly in someone else's hands.
"Ah, you don't have to go buy them yourself."
Even so, Ninomae smiled and shook her head. A moment later she gestured at the empty air, and a bat no bigger than a palm appeared.
"I'll leave it to my familiar."
"...You know, you really are getting strong enough to work the field for real, aren't you?"
"?"
"No... forget it. You're probably just dating your own kind......"