Come Into My House and Play (3)
In a game made for men, feminism is the reverse scale. The one place you do not touch.
A game is, of course, a product for which substitutes are hard to come by. Controversy or no, there is no shortage of users who stay on anyway, choking the bitterness down like mustard eaten through tears.
Even so, people do leave. Those who remain spend less. And, most fatal of all, once a stigma is burned in, the inflow of new users collapses.
Female players certainly exist, and so do female employees, the lead producer among them. Even so, Barbara Knight is a game for men, without a shred of room for excuse. Every collectible character is a woman. There is sex appeal to spare, and fanservice scenes besides, and the whole of it is crammed with giant machines and every other ingredient of what people like to call a man's romance.
"I'm actually going to lose my mind..."
A sharp-featured woman clutched her head. The heat had climbed so high that her skull seemed to be throbbing.
"Don't you remember what Director Yu quotes every single time? Huh? Convictions are bullshit."
There is a famous line about personal conviction. A conviction, it goes, is like a penis. There is nothing wrong with having one, and nothing wrong with taking pride in it. But you do not take it out and wave it in front of other people.
"And yet, fuck, they took it out and waved it? On Twitter, just so everybody could have a look? It would've been a problem even before they got hired, and they kept shitting all over the internet after they joined, too?!"
She — Song Su-ah — glared at the figure in front of her. A woman with her head bowed, wearing the expression of someone who had bitten into shit.
There was, at a glance, no hint of remorse. She was probably just sitting there thinking how goddamn awful this situation was, and that fact scraped Song Su-ah's insides all the worse.
Her head understood, of course. People like this cannot be reasoned with. Spell it out for them as logically and point by point as you like, and they will still believe only that they are right, and that they are the ones being treated unfairly. Understanding that, however, was a separate matter from the rage boiling all the way to the crown of her head.
She had stepped in herself, wary that a male employee making the point would turn the whole thing into some story about men this and men that. Honestly, though, she was beginning to regret even that.
"Let's see. What was it you said? Sexual commodification, your faith in humanity, something or other..."
"That wasn't even about this company in the first place..."
"And where do you get off talking back to every word?! If you were drawing a paycheck here and had actually been taking shots at us, workplace violence or not, I would've slapped you across the face!"
As if to give the fury a body, she kicked a nearby desk with a bang.
"If sexual commodification pisses you off that fucking much, then why'd you join a company that turns historical figures into women's bodies and jiggles their tits around? Huh? Go on, say it!"
"Ms. Song. Your voice is so loud it's carrying all the way outside."
"...Ah. Director Yu. You're here."
She had been shouting with the veins standing out on her neck, and at the voice behind her she turned. Forcing the anger down, she looked at Director Yu Hyena, who had called her name.
"...Hold on. Who are the four in hanbok behind you?"
"Ah, well..."
The question followed as a matter of course. She had been called back to the company in a hurry to put out a controversy, only for Yu to return out of nowhere dragging four women no one had ever seen.
"They're VTubers I personally like, and since I was coming anyway I thought I might as well show them around the—"
"You fucking bastard!!!"
"...Guhk?!"
A flying kick took Yu Hyena full in the gut. Heels and all, the jump was perfect, and so was the kick.
She had already been filled to the brim with rage, and then someone it was permissible to beat had gone and driven the last nail in. An inevitable end, if ever there was one.
"Are you in your right mind?! I explained the situation! And you bring outsiders in? Have you lost it?"
"Kugh... cough... auuugh..."
Looking down at the producer rolling on the floor with both hands clamped over her stomach, Song Su-ah spat out her resentment. To drag outsiders into the company in a situation like this, just because she happened to be a fan — there was no way not to doubt the woman's sanity.
"S-see? We really shouldn't have come, should we?!"
Hitomi, having just watched the violence unfold as smoothly as running water, could hardly have reacted any other way. The flutter of visiting the studio behind her favorite game had long since melted away like snow.
"W-wait a moment. Su-ah."
"What? As you can see, I'm in a pretty shitty mood, so if it's nonsense, keep it to yourself."
"That person back there... isn't that Guroyuki Sui?"
"Guroyuki Sui?"
At a name that sounded as if she had heard it somewhere, Song Su-ah narrowed her eyes.
Daughter of a famous film director, and a former child actress herself. An accident, however, had made it impossible for her to go on acting, and she had since crossed over into VTubing. And the company she belonged to was called...
"Anathema Production?"
"Ah, yes. That's right. I'm Ninomae... no. Mary Tepes, of Anathema Production."
"...Hup!"
In the next instant, Song Su-ah's face — packed until then with nothing but irritation — flooded with shock. And before long a bright, beaming smile was pasted over the top of it.
"Ah— ah! Gall— no, Ms. Mary! Ah, I'm so sorry. For showing you a sight you shouldn't have had to see..."
"No. If anything, we're the ones in the wrong for dropping in out of nowhere..."
"Aaaaah! Not at all! I was only, just, thinking it would've been nice if Director Yu had told us ahead of time that you were coming! Ah, then over here we have..."
"Yes. Sister, Tachibana Rin, and the one in the role of Komori Sae..."
Even as she said it, Song Su-ah shoved the still-sprawled Yu Hyena with her foot and hid her behind a desk. The motion had all the dignity of someone who has only just spotted an important object and is hastily tucking it out of sight before the girl she is seeing, come to visit the house, can notice.
"Hey. Did you see that face change just now?"
"The attitude flip was fucking insane. How much of a fangirl do you have to be for that to happen?"
"Obviously. She's the one who supposedly got into scenario writing off the Gallery Master's smut."
"We can hear every word of that back there!"
After barking at the employees murmuring behind her, she cleared her throat again and again and turned her eyes back to Mary.
"Wh-what a lively company. Ahaha..."
"......"
The fact that Mary spoke Korean was, of course, something you knew, I knew, and everyone knew. Song Su-ah herself had been talking with her in Korean only a moment ago. She would certainly have heard that muttering and understood it. A cold sweat ran down the nape of Song Su-ah's neck.
"That aside, so you're one of the servants..."
"Ah, well, yes. That's right..."
"Last time, Director Yu Hyena said there was someone at the company who wanted one, and took an extra autograph with her."
"Yes. I, um, even had it laminated and hung it in a frame..."
At the sight of the very woman who had started the violence moments before, now turned into a docile lamb, an awkward air settled over everyone.
"Ah, but there's a bit of an internal matter with the company right now. If you could wait just a moment..."
But that was that, and this was this. Deciding that public and private had to be kept apart, Song Su-ah composed her face again and spoke. However she looked at it, this was not something to be carelessly shown to outsiders, and since she could hardly turn guests away at the door either, she meant to take the employee who had caused the trouble and step out for a while.
"...?"
The woman who until a moment ago had merely been dodging her eyes while cursing a blue streak with them was kneeling on the office floor.
"I'm sorry. I was wrong. I just wanted attention on the internet...!"
"No, what are you, seriously. You had that attitude right up until a second ago, so why all of a sudden...?"
"I was foolish. Yes. I'll reflect on it. I'll delete all my posts, too. Should I write an apology? I'll accept being asked to resign."
"What are you even trying to pull, out of nowhere...?"
For Song Su-ah, it was a phenomenon she simply could not comprehend. What in the world had happened.
But the woman on her knees was desperate.
I'm dead I'm dead I'm dead I'm dead I'm dead.
An expression halfway to panic. The reason was simple.
An A-an Apostle is an acquaintance of Mary's?!
She was someone who knew the hidden world. Someone who knew that Apostle Bartholomew existed.
For one thing, she had never watched a stream of Mary's. She did not even have much interest in the game her own company made; she drew pictures and collected her pay, and that was the whole of it. Even so, thanks to the talk that drifted around the office, she had picked up a certain store of knowledge. That this was a streamer devoted enough to the game to be treated as the Gallery Master on the male-dominated boards; that she was the favorite of both Yu Hyena and Song Su-ah; and even that she had a roommate called Sister.
And she had only just learned that the roommate was an Apostle.
The favorite game of a person an Apostle held dear. She was, in effect, a human being who had committed sabotage against it. The moment she grasped that, and Han Seoyeon stared straight at her with a faintly furrowed brow, her body moved first.
This was no longer a question of whether a belief was right or wrong. It was already closer to a question of survival. Having displeased an Apostle was reason enough to be erased from the world without a trace.
Even among those who had set their jaws and taken up the independence struggle, more than a few broke before torture and signed a written recantation. If the brave were capable of that, then an ordinary person of the present day, unused to violence — some feminist whose values had never even been built on firm theory or justice — had no chance of standing against the greatest violence of the modern age.
This was the result.
"...So the optimal method of correcting the rudeness of modern people is the revival of primal violence, after all?"
"No — what is this kid suddenly saying?!"
For those who knew the circumstances, a bitter smile came of its own accord. Well. It was a situation that deserved one.
The Anathema people had seen Seoyeon relatively often, or else they were residents of the surface world, or had only just stepped into the hidden world and did not know an Apostle's reputation, and so it did not feel especially real to them. Put bluntly, the human being called Han Seoyeon was, however generously one looked at her, a walking tank with a license to kill.
"What? No, seriously, what?"
"Why did that person suddenly get like that?"
"Right? She took one look at the Gallery Master's face and just went like that."
"As expected of Lady Mary. Absolutely insane. Reforming people with a look alone?"
"No, even so, I don't think that's the rea—"
"Hey! You think the Goddess of Gacha looks like a dick to you?!"
"E-excuse me? Everyone? Why is my name suddenly coming out of over there..."
"Mary! Mary!"
"Everyone?!"
And so went the reaction of the surface-world staff, who had failed to follow any of that backstory.
In truth, most of them guessed there had to be some other reason they did not understand. It was simply more fun to insist that the moment the Gallery Master's gaze so much as brushed a sinner, repentance followed. Mary's own reaction had been a treat, too.
"Lady Mary looked at me! She's going to guarantee me five stars on this pickup!"
"The Gallery Master's gacha method doesn't work on anything but Barbara, does it?"
"I don't know! Just shout the Gallery Master's name!"
"Gallery Master! Gallery Master! Gallery Master!"
"Hwaaaaaah?!"
"Shootang is the best!"
"And why is Shion joining in over there, too?!"
Like boss, like staff. The old maxim that like keeps to like — Hitomi found herself turning it over once again, after a long while.