Shatter That Vessel (1)
VTubers under the same agency were bound, sooner or later, to fall into one sort of relationship or another, and those ties had a way of being played up on stream, the better to catch a viewer's interest. Nor was the habit limited to members of the same generation. Seniors and juniors were hardly exempt.
Komori Sae of Anathema's second generation and Tachibana Rin of the first were a fine example. The two of them were, to put it plainly, rivals — and bitter ones at that.
Sae's concept was a cocky little brat: a demon summoned into the modern age. Rin was a haughty serpent god, a little clumsy with human feeling, only lately freed from a long seal and busy drinking in the culture of the twenty-first century. Both of them, in character, defaulted to looking down on everyone else, so a collision between them was more or less inevitable.
Their feud — a broadcast concept through and through, of course — had long since been packaged as content, and whenever the audience was in danger of forgetting it, back it came under titles like Duel Collab and the War of Gods and Demons. The battlefield chosen for this particular showdown was Mouse Hell in the Bucket, a set built around a gauntlet of minigames. The game was widely agreed to be at its best with a full lobby of four. One-on-one was possible, but most people found it a little thin, and so the match was settled as a two-versus-two, each side bringing a single backup.
“……which is how you ended up in this party-game collab, Ninomae-san.”
“Yes! That's exactly it!”
At Han Seoyeon's words, Ninomae nodded hard — and then, just as quickly, broke into a sheepish little laugh. However the collab had come about, she was the one imposing on Han Seoyeon now.
A few hours earlier, Ninomae's computer had died. It went dark with a grotesque noise and never came back on. The assignment trapped on the hard drive before she could even send it to her professor was trouble enough, but the greater trouble was the stream waiting only a few hours out. Had it been a solo broadcast, she could have explained herself in a tweet, apologized, and taken the night off. Pulling this on the day of a collab was a nuisance of an entirely different order. They would have to scrape up a replacement on no notice, and if that failed, throw some other plan together in a hurry — or, at the worst, the stream itself might fall through.
“If it really comes to that, would you like to use my PC?”
“Uh…… sorry?”
Han Seoyeon had made the offer right around the moment Ninomae was about to message the rest of the collab and explain herself. It wasn't a bad suggestion, once she thought it through. Mary, joining the War of Gods and Demons as backup, and the one other reinforcement were strictly support this time, and they had already agreed not to turn their own streams on. She didn't need her usual broadcast-grade rig. So long as voice chat and the game could run at once without brutal lag, the specs would do. An offer like that, from someone who lived nearby, was no different from a lifeline dropped out of the sky at the exact moment she needed one.
“Um…… you're really sure this is okay?”
On the bus toward Han Seoyeon's house, Ninomae asked it carefully. There could hardly have been a proposal that fit the situation better, and yet what she had felt then was less joy than sheer fluster. Even now, the unease hadn't really faded.
“Well, why wouldn't it be?”
“But this is my first time at your house, Shion-san.”
She didn't mean she was nervous simply because it was new.
The two of them had been seeing each other for over a year, and despite living relatively close, neither had ever visited the other's home — not until Ninomae's double life as a VTuber was found out. Each had something to hide from the other, so they had tacitly refrained from digging into one another's ground. Deliberately avoiding any errand that might lead to the other's door had been part of that same understanding. What Ninomae was really asking, then, was this: Seoyeon's secret was still unrevealed, and was she truly all right letting her into the house?
“It's fine. I'll have the place cleaned.”
Han Seoyeon's answer was perfectly calm, as if it weren't something she absolutely had to keep buried.
“To begin with, what I've been hiding all this time isn't actually much of anything.”
“Huh? What is it?”
“You won't believe me, but the truth is, I'm a holy knight. I cut down evil in the dark.”
“Heh. Already gunning for a third-gen spot? Too bad, though — Yuri-san already claimed that RP.”
Ninomae let out a short laugh at the joke. Even through the receiver, she could hear Seoyeon's playful one in answer.
“Ah, I'm almost there. I'll hang up.”
“Shall I come out to meet you?”
“Nah, I know the way. You just rest.”
Ninomae checked the scenery sliding past and pressed the stop bell. When the bus soon pulled over, she stepped off with a confident stride.
“Mmm…….”
She followed the address Seoyeon had given her. The neighborhood was faintly familiar; she had walked Seoyeon home once before, the day Seoyeon met with her manager.
……Not on Yuri-san's level, maybe, but Shion-san's pretty well-off too, isn't she?
She stopped in front of the building and lifted her head. Outskirts or not, this was still Tokyo. A two-story house this large — well past merely respectable — was not the sort of place a mere university student ought to own.
“Shion-san, I'm here!”
She pressed the doorbell and called out.
“Ah, come in, Ninomae-san.”
A moment later the door opened, and a woman of unsettling appearance revealed herself. It was a sight that belonged in a thriller, and yet the face Ninomae turned toward her was brilliantly bright.
“Ahem. Pardon the intrusion—”
Smiling, Ninomae slipped off her shoes in the entryway, her eyes already darting about to take the interior in. Han Seoyeon's residence, seen for the first time. Curiosity glittered as her gaze roamed every corner.
“……Y-you're quite frugal, aren't you.”
“You can go ahead and call it barren. I don't mind.”
Soon enough, though, bewilderment crept into her eyes. What occupied the spacious living room was a television, a sofa, and a small table set between them. That was all. Leave aside the question of a PC, and it was nearly identical to Ninomae's own living room — which, considering the difference in size between the two, was precisely the part that made no sense. Matching her in the scale and number of furnishings should have been absurd.
“Filling leftover space with furniture I don't need has never been to my taste.”
At Ninomae's dumbfounded look, Seoyeon shrugged.
“I'll admit I can't really picture you throwing money around for no reason, Shion-san……. If anything, the surprise is that you were living in a house this big,” Ninomae added.
“The truth is, I didn't buy it intending to live here.”
“Then what? A real estate investment?”
“Something like that. Leaving it empty felt like a waste, so I ended up living here after all.”
Ninomae's head tipped to one side.
“Do you invest a lot, usually?”
So that was why she had money? This, too, was hard to picture — Han Seoyeon, multiplying her fortune on property deals.
“Not really. An acquaintance kept pecking at me: if I was going to let the money rot, I might as well invest it. And at the time, beyond the bare minimum to keep myself fed and housed, I wasn't spending on anything.”
“Anyway,” said Han Seoyeon, and turned the subject.
“The computer room is on the second floor.”
“You keep a whole room just for the computer?”
“I could hardly watch Mary's streams from the bedroom. So I set aside a room for it.”
“…….”
Ninomae's gaze on Seoyeon wavered — the look of someone who couldn't tell joke from sincerity.
It was a joke, of course.
About thirty percent of it.
“Whoa…….”
In the room at the end of Seoyeon's lead, Ninomae let slip a note of wonder. A desk and a computer sat against one wall. A few pieces of Mary merch, and the decorating was done.
How can one person be this consistent?
At this point, the fact that there were two monitors was the genuinely surprising part.
“You can use this. If we were sending out a stream as well, perhaps not, but for the game alone it ought to run just fine.”
Whether or not she caught Ninomae's mood, Han Seoyeon said it as she switched the tower on. Ninomae watched the computer boot, then changed her expression and sat down in the chair. The air about her was the serious one she wore as the broadcaster Mary Tepes.
“Specs, let's see…… huh? This feels like it's performing better than what's listed.”
Parts worn down by long use falling short of their rated specs was common enough. The reverse was honestly rare.
“Ah, well…… an acquaintance who knows computers helped me optimize it.”
“Is that so?”
Something about the answer struck her as odd, but Ninomae decided it was nothing and let it go.
It's because I rubbed it down with holy oil and consecrated it.
Han Seoyeon, for her part, swallowed the words. A computer buffed and overclocked by a blessing — say that out loud, and no one was going to believe it.
……Bring this down on a spirit, and it would probably land.
“……Press the ready button and behave. Damn brat.”
“Heeh? Sae-chan didn't not press the button — she just pressed it twice, okay? Ahaha, Grandma's eyes really have gone all cloudy, huh.”
“Be grateful you were summoned into the modern age. Were it not for this country's laws, I would have eaten you alive.”
“Whaaat? A third-rate reptile running her mouth isn't scary at all, you knooow?”
“Dragged in as backup for these bitches, and what a pain it is, nya. Mary-chan.”
“Ahahaha…….”