Chapter 232 — To Call Is to Name (3)
What had just unfolded before their eyes was simple enough. The maid who had been standing demurely behind Hyakurenno Yuri strode around the desk with her head high and sat down in the interviewee's chair.
…Making sense of it was the part that wasn't simple.
They knew perfectly well she wasn't the sort to pull a mean-spirited prank, and still the résumé was checked again, just in case. Momomomo Chisa. She could have rinsed her eyes and looked a second time; the name would not have changed.
"Uh… so then, Miss Momomomo?"
"Yes."
Seoyeon had called her without thinking, and what came back was a bright, clear-eyed look and a crisp reply that bore not the slightest resemblance to the usual plastered drunk. A moment later Seoyeon caught on to something else, and her eyes went wide.
"…You haven't been drinking, have you?"
The smell of alcohol was, for the maid known as Momomomo Chisa, as natural as her own scent. She was the sort of person who could turn up a blood-alcohol reading that had climbed clean past the decimal and into whole numbers, and still make you wonder whether it might actually be true before you ever thought to blame the machine. That was Chisa. And yet now there was no trace of it. If even Han Seoyeon's nose couldn't catch the scent at this distance, then the molecules simply were not there.
"Yes. I considered this an important audition, so of course."
Thud—something struck the desk and went rolling. A pen was turning across the surface: the fountain pen Hyakurenno Yuri had been holding to take her interview notes.
"Chisa is… abstaining…?"
"…This is hardly abstinence. She is simply refraining for today, is she not?"
"For Chisa, that much is a vow of sobriety on the order of resolving to save the nation…!"
"So this is the sort of person you keep as a bodyguard, Yuri…?"
Professor Senjoji, the only judge not truly acquainted with Chisa's infamous reputation, tilted her head. A moment later she decided that, well, such people existed, and let it pass.
"Setting that aside—judging from your reaction, this doesn't seem to have been discussed with Miss Yuri either. Will that be all right?"
"That is… well, if this is what Chisa wants, I don't intend to stop her……. But Chisa. Your contract isn't only with me, is it?"
There would certainly have been a contract with the Hyakurenno Group itself. However much Yuri was the practical owner, and however much the agreement with her took priority, this was not a matter her consent alone could settle.
"Ah. I asked the family head's permission beforehand. I told him I could not possibly stand to watch that damned Fuu get hired and strut about, and he granted it quite cheerfully."
"Faaather……"
Yuri pressed a hand to her brow. It wasn't that she doubted Chisa's word. The gap from her usual self was throwing her off something fierce, but Chisa was not someone who would lie in a situation like this—and her own father was entirely capable of behaving this way.
"Remember this, Yuri. If something gets under your skin, you charge it. That's the correct thing to do."
"Father…?"
"Of course, charging in blind isn't always the answer. The world is full of problems that won't be solved that way. But if it looks like charging will solve the thing, then putting up with it would just be stupid, wouldn't it?"
"Father?!"
…He had left her those words in the immediate aftermath of a hostile takeover of the largest pharmaceutical company in East Asia. Even setting that occasion aside, the family head went about with similar sayings forever in his mouth, so there would have been nothing strange in his telling Chisa much the same. March in with her chin up and announce that Fuu was pissing her off, so please let her sit the interview too, and he would have roared with laughter and waved her through—
"…Wait. What did you just say? 'That damned Fuu'? You mean the Ryuumai Fuu I know?!"
"Unless she is a different person who happens to share the name, yes. The very one you know, miss."
The instant that landed, Yuri began riffling through the résumés. When her hands stopped a moment later, an identification photo of a woman in an eyepatch lay on the desk atop its application.
"…I'm really starting to think something may have latched onto the grounds of this building."
Han Seoyeon murmured it, having stolen a glance from the side.
Ryuumai Fuu. Retired vice-captain of the Triage Team. And before that, an onmyoji who, together with Chisa, had been counted among the geniuses meant to lead the next generation of Japan's Onmyoryo. Not, at the very least, a name one expected to find on a VTuber audition résumé.
"President, you seemed to have already gone over the applicants. You knew about this as well, I take it."
"Of course."
"You look remarkably untroubled, for all that……"
"I'm merely pleased that our Anathema appears to command so varied an audience, from every walk of life."
"……"
As expected. This man's values are not of this world. Seoyeon reconfirmed something she had felt for some time. All that talk of how one simply had to endure pressure of this caliber as a baseline—of course it came from a man who possessed this kind of nerve himself. Drop him as he was into the Apostles' council from the other day and he would keep a perfectly firm grip on his sanity. He was that sort of freak.
"Well, I mean… even when I came in, he had this look in his eyes like he'd fail me on the spot if he genuinely didn't care for me……"
Yuri seemed to feel the same; she dug her fingertips into her temples. Viewed a certain way, he could be called an ideal interviewer. He paid not the slightest mind to an applicant's background and considered only whether they met his own standard.
"Haaah. Anyway, I understand."
A sigh-laced lament slipped out of Yuri, no doubt to clear the air and come back to the point.
"But there will be absolutely no leniency just because we're acquaintances. If anything, I'll be looking harder. You keep that in mind, Chisa."
"Of course I know. I've watched from your side every day."
"The rest of you don't need to look kindly on her just because she's my maid, either. Even without my saying so, I don't believe any of you would judge unfairly."
Slowly, her expression changed. She wiped the bewilderment from her face, and the light in her eyes became a manager's. Next to her father, or her two older brothers, she still fell far short—and yet she was someone who had been educated to suit the Hyakurenno name since she was small.
"I say, Gyokichi. To my eye, this young lady is far more the president than you are."
"Is that so? I happened to be thinking the same. What a curious coincidence."
…Well. The atmosphere she had finally taken hold of was promptly demolished by the childhood-friend duo chattering at her side.
A short while after interviewee number one—a veritable storm—had taken her leave.
"What does everyone think?"
It was Yuri who asked first. She didn't say what had been good, or what hadn't. Worried she might have looked on a longtime employee with unconscious favor, she wanted to hear the others before she spoke. That wasn't the only reason, of course. She also meant to take the measure of the president, who held the final say.
"Well… she's perfectly fine, isn't she? In an ordinary way."
President Gyokichi answered, scratching the tip of his nose a couple of times with those long, spindly fingers.
"I'd thought so even back when she was drunk. The voice is the sort that would land well with a general audience. There's a gap between drunk and sober, but… her rapport is decent, and she's well-spoken. With a background like hers, there's no need to worry about stamina or health, either."
He went on assessing Momomomo Chisa, folding his fingers down one by one.
"Her existing friendships with the current VTubers are another plus. She already has the character of the 'maid' who turned up so often on Miss Yuri's streams. We could keep the baseline a touch prim, then have her show her true colors once she's drinking and let the maid come through, or…… If I had to name a drawback, it would only be that she can't very well be drunk around the clock."
He tacked that on at the end.
"But she came to the interview this sober, and if we needed her to abstain during a broadcast, that seems entirely possible. Hmm. What do you think, Miss Shion?"
"Wasn't I brought in to handle the visuals, to begin with? I shouldn't think this is the sort of place for me to be offering opinions……"
"No. If intimidation were the only aim, I alone would be quite sufficient."
"That… is difficult to deny."
"Haha, isn't it? I brought you, Miss Shion, because I wanted the eye of an ordinary viewer. An opinion short on expertise is fine. If anything, that's preferable."
At that, Han Seoyeon sank briefly into thought, and then she spoke.
"I think she's someone who would suit whoever you paired her with. She'd be good at needling a Shuten-type, and on the other hand, a combination with someone who runs wild right alongside her sounds like it would be fun. And when the premise is that she's in her right mind, couldn't she take the opposite role and serve as the brakes?"
Whoever she was matched with, the stream would be entertaining. That was Han Seoyeon's conclusion.
"I see. I feel much the same. In a team, it's not a bad position to have one of. And what do you think, Chihaya?"
"Me, is it? You can hardly be asking how she strikes me as a broadcaster."
Senjoji Chihaya was present as the adviser charged with authenticating the anomalous lore. Gyokichi's question would be about that, of course.
"To begin with, I was rather taken with what she herself requested. It was plain she had looked into the matter properly and thought it through."
"Mm. Whichever way you turn it, that's a professor's eye."
"And what would you have me do about being a professor? Endure it, Gyokichi."
What Chihaya meant was the field at the very bottom of the résumé—its formal title was the audition application, though that hardly changed anything.
If you were accepted into the third generation, what sort of RP character would you like to receive?
Seeing Seoyeon look at it, Yuri added that the same question had been on the second-generation audition as well.
"Behemoth. A rather interesting answer, wouldn't you say?"
Professor Senjoji chuckled under her breath and murmured it.
"The speculation that the third generation's concept is Hebrew mythology has spread rather widely online, I'll grant. Even so, answering with Behemoth was quite intriguing."
Asked why Behemoth of all things, Chisa had replied that she herself was the physically gifted type, and that in Satanic tradition the beast was regarded as the guardian of the wine cellar.
"Behemoth itself would hardly be a rare choice. But to tie those traits to herself and explain them so coherently—admirable, wouldn't you say?"
"…It really is entirely a professor's point of view."
"As I said a moment ago, this is my nature; what can be done? Ah—and that she did not clumsily trot out Wrath of the Seven Deadly Sins, or some such, I personally rate rather highly."
"Well, setting the lore aside, I agree with that much as president."
They had no intention of recruiting as many as seven third-generation talents, not even so. And if they parceled the Seven Deadly Sins out across several generations, remarks of the wouldn't this one fit that slot better? variety would be unavoidable.
"Besides, Behemoth is easy to pair."
A duo of Behemoth and Leviathan came readily to mind, and it was an easy relationship to make convincing. If they wanted a trio, they could add Ziz—a little more obscure, but it would do.
"…You're all speaking so highly of her. Chisa would be delighted to hear it."
Yuri had said she wouldn't cut any slack on account of knowing her, and yet she looked quietly pleased by the other judges' praise.
"Well, I'll admit I was thrown… but if it's Miss Momomomo, I'd call her an excellent prospect."
"Quite. Her identity will come out quickly because of her connection to Miss Yuri, and in that case, her looks being as fine as they are will count as a positive."
The mood among them was decidedly good—no doubt because the very first interviewee had already produced a satisfying result. Short of a stampede of geniuses with impossible talent pouring in after this, her acceptance could be treated as all but settled. The atmosphere sat at that level.
"Yes. Shall we call the next interviewee, then? I'd feel bad keeping them waiting too long while we talk among ourselves."
With that, Nakabashi Gyokichi worked his phone and sent a message to the staffer holding the audition participants outside. It wasn't long before the door opened, and a woman with a bright, confident expression walked into the room. A stride at once light and brimming with assurance drew every judge's eye. Still smiling, she came up before the chair and, before sitting, bent deeply at the waist toward the panel. It felt a little excessive, but the swaying blonde hair and Western features swept even that unfavorable impression away.
"Hello-yo! Contestant number two, come from France! Osean Lee, nice to mee—"
And as she lifted her head, her eyes met Han Seoyeon's, who was staring straight at her.
"Erk."
The bright, pure, clear-eyed young lady of Western Europe she had been performing—that expression rotted straight through in an instant.