Not as If Without Direction (2)
"Konmea! Anathema Production, second generation— the True Ancestor Queen who will one day rule this world. Mary... Tepes!"
She drew her fist up to her face and then flung the arm wide in a single motion, crying out the opening line, and the avatar on the screen opened its arms in time with her. Platinum-blonde hair swayed and settled back into place, and while it did, Mary Tepes watched the chat racing by.
The chat was running hotter than usual. She had put out a notice for today's stream ahead of time, and these would be the viewers who had seen it and gathered. Mary traded a little idle small talk with them, then cleared her throat as if to turn the air of the room over. What she was about to say was also the precise reason so many more people than usual had come to watch.
"Right. Today, just as announced, it's an Antonio Kart stream! A four-person collab, and drinking is allowed!"
A popular game, a collaboration, and alcohol. Any one of the three was enough to draw more viewers than usual, and this broadcast had all of them at once. It was the sort of combination that could not fail even if you held a rite and prayed for it to.
"The avatars... ah, here they are. Ahem. Then, may I ask you to introduce yourselves?"
"Konmaya~ Kitayama Maya, Anathema first generation~"
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amairo Tsubasa, Anathema second generation."
Mary brought the other VTubers' avatars up in a corner of the broadcast, seated beside her own. One of them was unusual. It was not a fixed image at all, but moved in real time, just as Mary's did. Sending live movement out over a broadcast had a way of killing the connection, so unless the collab was happening offline it was a method people rarely used— which was as good as saying that this one was in the same room as Mary.
"Hinata Shion, of Anathema Production."
A silver-haired woman, with a pink highlight set deep in each pupil and ball joints, like a doll's, fitted at the elbows. Few failed to recognize the character as belonging to the person Mary lived with. Even someone who could not tell by the model alone would, in most cases, know the moment they heard the voice.
They refrained as far as they could from mentioning the cohabitation on stream, but they did in fact live together, and a regular of Mary's broadcasts would have found it difficult not to know. All the more so lately, since Han Seoyeon— Hinata Shion— had obtained a model of her own and had begun, now and then, to appear on official streams.
Welcomes of several kinds rose in the chat at her entrance. Shion answered a few of them with a faint smile. Most of what passed for a reply was only someone saying hello, and so she only said hello back.
"Yes, so today's stream is a four-person collab, like this... Does Shion-chan count as one of the collab lineup?"
"I... couldn't say?"
Mary had been about to carry the stream onward when a sense of something off caught at her, and she asked. Shion, for her part, could not answer at once either.
"I am staff, for one. One does not ordinarily say one is collaborating simply because a staff member appears in the broadcast plan, does one...?"
"Even when you're playing games with the other VTubers for the entire stream? And taking the exact same penalties?"
"Er......"
Strictly speaking, Shion had no channel of her own, so a "collab stream" did not, as a thing, exist. And yet calling this a three-person collab felt just as ill-fitting.
"...Let's just move on."
"Yes. Let us."
In the end the two of them agreed to set the matter aside. It was, unmistakably, a problem that would never be solved.
"Anyway... to come back to it, today's plan, just as Lady Mary said a moment ago, is an Antonio Kart match stream with drinking for a penalty."
While they were about it, the blonde Trainee Knight, Amairo Tsubasa, took the hosting over. Officially the leader of the second generation, she was someone who ran the show often enough as it was.
"Lady Mary passed some very fine liquor around the company this time. So the idea of doing a stream like this came up."
Even so, Mary had taken the opening because she was both the one who had proposed the event and the one supplying the drink. She was the lead of the thing, in other words, and Tsubasa had only stepped in so the talk would not wander off sideways before it had properly begun.
"I mean it. This is genuinely expensive. I've only drunk it a handful of times myself."
"For our part, it was a gift from a friend of Shion-chan's father. There was more than one person could finish, so all we did was share it."
"What kind of liquor, you ask? Champagne— no. Strictly speaking, sparkling wine. According to Shion-chan, most of what we call champagne is simply sparkling wine."
The bottle was entangled with the hidden world, so however they spoke of it, they could not go so far as to name its true source. Mary gave only the general kind and let it pass. Among the viewers who knew Tsubasa's red pill, a few seemed to have caught that a remark like that could never have come from nothing more than champagne. Fortunately, no one was inclined to press the point.
"Shutang~ how are we doing the ruuules?"
"We rank everyone, and the bottom two each drink a glass. The AI players' places don't count."
"So half of us eat a penalty every single round──."
The question came in a drawling voice from the pink-haired oni. Kitayama Maya. She had not asked because she truly failed to understand; she was only making an opening so Mary could explain it to the viewers.
"However, I am given to understand that everyone here holds their liquor rather well. Sparkling wine on its own will not suffice."
Shion, seated directly beside Mary, cut in and carried the explanation on.
Most sparkling wine sits a little above ten percent. Ordinary wine, without the carbonation, or sake, usually lands around fifteen, so the sparkling kind counts as mild— truly, only a step above beer. Honestly speaking, for most of the people gathered today, it was no different from a soft drink.
Hitomi the vampire, and Maya the oni— Sakuragi Oka— were monsters outright. Tsubasa, Hyakurenno Yuri, had been raised from childhood on every sort of elixir, and could hardly be regarded as possessing an ordinary human body. And as for Han Seoyeon, forget the liquor: so long as a poison was only mildly potent, that body of hers would drink it down and feel nothing.
"Accordingly, what we will use for the penalty is a cocktail mixed with vodka. I have already sent the recipe along to the others."
"What?! Wait a moment?! This is the first I'm hearing of that...!"
"Well, that would be because I never told you. I can prepare Shutang's share myself, so there was no need to have mentioned it."
Mary's eyes flew wide in horror, but Shion answered as if it were nothing at all.
"What on earth are you doing?!"
"Nothing. I simply wanted to see a drunk Shutang on stream."
"This person really is the worst viewer alive...!"
A moment later came the sound of glass bottles being set on the desk, one after another. She had most likely brought out the vodka she had kept hidden and put it up there.
"Honestly, everyone here needs at least this much before they will get drunk. It cannot be helped, can it?"
"So Mary-chan really didn't know~?"
Mary had assumed it would be obvious that the whole group had been booked precisely because they could hold their drink. Maya put the question to her anyway, beaming.
"No, I thought the operations side had just picked only people like that, so an accident wouldn't happen......"
So although it was a stream whose penalty was drinking, she had expected nothing more than the energy rising a little. She had never imagined being blindsided like this.
"I was told by the president that they deliberately chose a combination in which a doctor stop— no, a manager stop— would be possible."
Shion added that. Which was to say: if any one of them grew drunk enough that the broadcast looked ready to suffer for it, someone would be waiting nearby who could cut the stream at once.
"That means we're running this until one of us dies, doesn't it...?"
Mary muttered it, incredulous, having read the intention underneath. A company that called itself management, and rather than holding anyone back, they arranged a drinking-game deathmatch. Worse, Seoyeon, who was meant to be the manager stop on this side, was joining the drinking game herself— though Mary could not imagine, even slightly, Han Seoyeon ever getting drunk past the point of judgment.
"Speaking of which, who's on brake duty for the other two?"
"My little sister's watching from the bed right next to me~"
"Well... my maid is on standby, for now. Whether she can be trusted is another question......"
One of those brakes, she couldn't help feeling, was already rather worn down. She made an effort to let it pass, telling herself it would be fine.
Something about that pairing must have called itself to mind, for Hitomi sent the message from her phone at once. It was the method the two of them had settled on for trading remarks that would be awkward if they came out on the broadcast. The wording talked around the point, but Han Seoyeon read the intent, and her reply came straight back.
Sakuragi Honoka, the younger sister of Sakuragi Oka. Momomomo Chisa, the maid of Amairo Tsubasa. Both of them were already set to debut as the third generation. If this was the president's intention, then the aim was to have them appear a few times before that debut, so that later the viewers could more easily pin down the person behind the avatar.
For a VTuber agency to go out of its way to invite red-pill speculation was, by any ordinary reckoning, madness. But once one considered the ties those two carried, the situation sat a little differently. A new generation was debuting, and one of them was the actual younger sister of a first-generation senior, while the other was a second-generation senior's maid in real life. Even Hitomi, who had no particular head for the business, could understand the urge to let a few scraps of real life slip on purpose and turn them into a topic.
"Well, fine. In the end I just have to not lose, don't I? Allow me to make you regret ever challenging this True Ancestor Queen!"
Mary gathered herself and said it, looking thoroughly triumphant. It was a very Mary thing to do, and she had, in her own way, practiced the game with real diligence. None of the others seemed to play racing games with any frequency, and she did not feel she was about to lose. She grinned and launched the game.
"Hnyaaaaaah?!"