That Which Shall Not Be Moved (2)

Ninomae Hitomi was a relatively modest woman, and a cautious one besides.

Would it really be all right for me to go in here...? Really?

That thought, though, had nothing to do with her temperament. It was simply the ordinary, commonsensical reaction anyone would have had.

This is a house? Not a national park or something?

The grounds of the Hyakurenno estate stretched so far that, with only a little exaggeration, the far end of the perimeter wall was nowhere in sight. Standing before them, that was exactly what ran through Ninomae's mind.

Through Han Seoyeon and the web of connections that came with her, she had thought herself reasonably accustomed to the hidden world by now. The assessment probably wasn't entirely wrong. But what she faced this time was no monster crouched in the underside of things. It was a monster that sat out in the open, on the surface. Calling them sovereigns of the world would still have been stretching the truth, and yet the Hyakurenno Group occupied, without the slightest strain, a seat a vassal ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠king or a duke might have filled.

She saw Yuri often enough that she forgot, most days. Even so, there were moments like this when the weight of that status came back to her all at once. Whether ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she was being struck anew by the reality of Yuri's house, or fretting over whether she was truly permitted to step inside, the decision was not hers to make. The car carrying her glided serenely through the main gate, as if her wishes were of no concern to it whatsoever.

"Welcome, Miss Ninomae."

"Ah—hello, Miss Yuri."

There were jokes online that you needed a car just to cross the courtyard. Past that courtyard they drew up before a magnificent building, and Yuri was already waiting outside. She studied Ninomae's face, then tilted her head.

"Is something worrying you?"

"Well... seeing the building in person like this, it suddenly feels a little overwhelming..."

"Hmm. And here I invited you to the annex specifically so it wouldn't be too much."

"Most houses don't even have a separate annex, you know?"

At that, Yuri wound a lock of hair around her finger.

"Everyone says something along those lines. Everyone except Miss Tsunashi."

"Miss Tsunashi is... well. She's Miss Tsunashi."

She hadn't seen Tsunashi Tenka's reaction with her own eyes, but somehow she could picture it perfectly. Everyone else, she suspected, had reacted more or less the way she had. They had all accepted the invitation of their own free will, and even so, a mansion like this was enough to take the wind out of you when it was standing right in front of your face.

"I thought everyone had already adjusted to my family. Apparently that was a miscalculation."

Ninomae didn't answer. She only offered an awkward smile, worried, on top of everything else, that Yuri might take it as an attempt to keep her distance and end up hurt.

"In that case, there's nothing for it but to break you in with even more overwhelming luxury and display...!"

"That would backfire, so please don't?!"

She had worried for about five seconds. At what followed, Ninomae flailed both hands in alarm. Those eyes had been completely serious. Of that, she was certain.

Before long, under Yuri's guidance, they arrived at the room.

Can you even call this a room? It's practically the size of a high school classroom...

Taking in the interior, Ninomae could only stare, struck dumb. It wasn't merely the space. The appointments were remarkably thorough: futons enough for five, an enormous television with a game console set beside it, a bookshelf claiming an entire wall, and, tucked in the corner, a great glass-fronted display refrigerator.

"Um... Miss Yuri? Do you happen to use this room for leisure in the ordinary course of things, or...?"

"Hm? No? It used to be an empty room with nothing in it but odds and ends."

"......"

In other words, they had dressed an entire room for today alone. Ninomae swallowed. She knew it had been prepared out of kindness. Even so.

The young lady of Hyakurenno's friendship is heavy in a completely different way from Miss Shion's, isn't it...?

The thought struck her hard enough that she nearly went down where she stood.

Her thoughts slipped back to a conversation with the president, not so long ago.

"...The response is surprisingly decent."

"Decent?"

At the words she had let slip without thinking, Chiyo—Serena—beside her smiled and answered.

"Honestly, once you strip off the packaging, I thought a stream that's nothing but long would pick up plenty of bad reviews."

"Shu-tan."

Using that name was the bare minimum of a safety ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠measure. The conversation had never been meant for the broadcast in the first place, but the microphone was not so very far away, and a little caution could do no harm.

"Viewers are the sort of people who get happy the moment a VTuber keeps talking and the stream runs long."

"...Right. I forgot."

What came back to her was a stream Tsubasa had done some time before. Eight straight hours in a building-survival game, doing nothing but flatten terrain—and the viewers, in a magnificent act of reframing, had cheered it not as an eight-hour demolition broadcast but as an eight-hour radio show, feat. white noise. Ninomae still could not forget the sight of them. She had been at this for over a year now, and the world of streaming remained a thicket of things she did not understand. She smiled, wry.

"If you're really that worried, want me to go lend a hand?"

Serena pointed toward Tenka, who was running the stream from one side of the room. Ninomae nodded, and Serena went straight to her and threw both arms around her.

"Charlotte-chan, what are you talking about?"

"Hm? Oh, Serena-chan. Nothing much. Just chatting with the viewers."

Tenka—Charlotte—jerked her chin at the monitor. The stream was cycling a slideshow of first-anniversary tribute art from several illustrators, and off to one side the chat raced past, bright and lively.

"Huh. What. How'd you know?"

"Perhaps because my love for Charlotte-chan came through so clearly?"

"Ah... yeah. Sure. Maybe."

"Spring something like that on a person and of course they don't know how to react, you witch."

Mary sighed and slipped in between them. She answered the fresh flood of greeting chats, then turned the conversation.

"Ah, that picture just now was Maya-sen— no. That was Miss Sakuragi Oka's art, wasn't it?"

"Uh, yeah, probably? The style felt pretty similar... Is there a way to go back to a picture that's already gone by? I want to check again."

"I don't think you can, not in the middle of a slideshow. We'll just have to wait for it to come back around."

There was a slip of the tongue in the middle of it, but Maya had been feeding the viewers the red pill outright from the very beginning, and so it never blew up into a real problem.

"Ahem. Setting that aside—since this is a follow-up stream, isn't there anything you'd like to say about yesterday's performance?"

A mistake was still a mistake, and Mary changed the subject in a hurry.

"Oh, that scene where you switched with Char-chan?"

"That one, right? We had a mat down underneath, and I've got my breakfalls drilled in well enough that it was actually an extremely safe bit of staging. Switching with Mary-chan right on the beat like that—pretty cool, wasn't it?"

The moment the story came up, the chat swung entirely in that direction. Of course the viewers wanted the behind-the-scenes. And from their side, there was a whole pile of things they had been wanting to let out.

"VTubers who've learned how to fall properly aren't that common, are they? Mmm. Well. Maybe not."

"Charlotte-chan says she studied martial arts in France, too. A martial-artist VTuber is genuinely rare, you know?"

"It's nothing that grand. Just basic self-defense."

She denied it like that, and explaining it that way to the viewers was the proper thing to do. Ninomae, however, knew a certain amount of the truth. The household that had hosted Tenka's homestay in her student days, she had heard, belonged outright to a martial line of the hidden world. In short, whatever she claimed, what she had actually brought home was very likely the genuine article. It was not something to disclose on a public broadcast, and so Mary kept her mouth shut.

"Huh?"

She had been ready to let the subject pass when she noticed something, and tilted her head.

"Isn't this Char-chan's phone? The president's calling."

Tenka's phone was buzzing. On the screen was President Nakabashi's name.

"Oh. You're right. What's going on?"

Charlotte answered with curiosity and unease in equal measure. For the president—who would be monitoring the stream—to call out of nowhere in the middle of a broadcast, it could hardly be nothing. Just in case, she stepped a little away from the microphone before she picked up.

"...Huh. It hung up right away."

The puzzlement only deepened. While she was still wondering what on earth was happening, the phone vibrated again—not a continuous buzz this time, only a short one. Not a call. A message. And a message with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a photo attached. Had the call been nothing more than a ping, meant to make her see this at once?

"This is..."

"What's wrong?"

"No—the president says to show this on stream?"

"Show what? ...Hn. Hmm."

"Sending something like this out of absolutely nowhere—D-chan is seriously mean."

"Everyone, hang on just a second. I'll send it to the PC first... onto the stream... ah, there. I'll show you right now."

The image on the broadcast changed. They had already been cycling through picture after picture in the slideshow, but those were anniversary pieces, and every one of them had shared a thoroughly bright palette. This was different. The 3D image, realistic enough to suggest a photograph, was quite dark. Part of that was the inorganic atmosphere. Most of it was simply that the background was night.

A ruin of a structure, lit by nothing but moonlight—and even that was largely swallowed by shadow. Half collapsed, choked with sand, the place called to mind an ancient site. And in one corner of it, a woman. Her hair, lost in the dark, looked white, or perhaps silver, and she sat slumped on the ground with her back to a wall. Eyes closed, limbs gone slack, she resembled a corpse, or a doll with its strings cut.

But what seized the eye more than any of that was the large lettering anchored along the bottom of the image.

"Oh. Chat's really on fire."

"Well, of course it would be..."

Mary pressed a hand to her forehead.

"Information even we didn't have just got dropped in front of everyone out of nowhere, after all...?"

"Our president really is pretty high-handed, every single time. I'll give him that."

"It's D-chan, so I accept it!"

"Eh... well, that's the situation, everyone. We'd love your support. I imagine the details will come in an official announcement later, so please wait just a little. When, you ask? Judging by how they usually operate, I expect it'll be up on the company's official Twitter not long after the stream ends..."

Anathema Production generally preferred to row while the tide was in, and Mary was certain something would appear as quickly as it could without stealing the broadcast's spotlight.

"Still, they could at least warn us about this sort of thing ahead of time...!"

She let out a sigh, and lamented exactly that.