Entering the Door (3)
In the VTuber industry, the person inside is a curiously delicate subject.
What people variously call the red pill, real life, or a past life differs from one person to the next. Stream through an avatar and you tend to get called a VTuber, and so the varieties can't help but multiply.
There are those who never reveal the person inside at all. Those who show as little as their hands, and those who show everything but the face. Those who keep their identity hidden on principle while carrying on some entirely separate career. Celebrities with no intention of hiding, who insist only as a matter of lore that they are, in any case, not that person. There are even broadcasters who have already shown their faces and simply borrow an avatar as another piece of content.
Even so, unless someone already famous as an entertainer or a broadcaster debuts as a VTuber on the strength of that fame, the usual practice is to conceal one's personal information, face included. Plenty of people who stream with their faces bare still try to give away as little else as they can. That is simply common sense.
Privacy wasn't the only reason. There was also the risk that showing a VTuber's body, and especially the face, might break the illusion. Unless the avatar had been built around some peculiar concept, outshining the character was difficult. You needed a face that had torn its way out of a manga just to break even, and fall even a little short of that and you were already in the red. Even genuine beauty could disappoint people on a whim, if the impression failed to match what they had imagined.
Short of a beauty that overwhelmed the avatar itself, it was an act with no return and nothing but risk. And even then, opinions would come creeping up that one ought to forget the avatar and just turn the camera on, which was a problem of its own. For all those reasons, the great majority of VTubers went on streaming with the person inside kept hidden. Corporate talents especially. Dodging needless risk was the obvious choice for a company.
That did not mean their red pills stayed buried. The world is thick with internet wraiths who piece a real identity together from the smallest scraps—Bill Gateses of free time, every one of them. If a VTuber had ever done any separate work before or after debut, those whose identities had yet to be found out were probably the minority.
Unless someone was openly hunting sensitive information, a home address and the like, even a company at one's back made it hard to answer. The moment you responded to any particular claim, you had all but proved it true.
Every VTuber at Anathema Production already had a photograph somewhere on the internet. Mary Tepes and Yugure Tama, being closest to ordinary people, had barely been dug up at all—and yet the former was a known name in the hidden world for being an acquaintance of Han Seoyeon, while the latter had her face made public when she was photographed alongside the rest of her debut class, whose identities were already known.
Tachibana Rin and Komori Sae, who had worked in the entertainment industry outright—real names Guroyuki Sui and Bansei Marin—went without saying. They weren't straining to hide it themselves. It simply never came up in chat, and among the people watching, those who knew who they were surely outnumbered those who didn't.
"No, but... is this really the right thing to do?"
Even so, this was not an idea a person in their right mind could have, was it? Hitomi stared at President Gyokichi with a vacant, spiritless look.
A VTuber appearing on television? There was precedent. It was entirely possible. Guroyuki and Bansei appearing on a real-world broadcast? They were retired from the industry now, but Anapro permitted side work so long as it didn't interfere with their Etube activities. Treat it as a brief return, and a television appearance was possible.
Doing both at once, though, was plainly not sound judgment. It wasn't as if they could summon a second self the way Hitomi could. How were the real person and the VTuber supposed to be on the air at the same time? The program named in the proposal was, as she recalled, a talk show that seated a studio audience, which meant filming the real appearance and the virtual avatar separately and editing them together was impossible too. And using a double felt, in its own way, like deceiving people. That was how it struck her.
"Ah, you needn't worry about that part."
Gyokichi heard her out, then answered with a thin smile.
"There's... some way, then?"
"When one of them is on, the other will simply be offstage."
"......?"
Ninomae Hitomi blinked. She looked as though she doubted her own ears.
"Um, that is... I think I must have misunderstood..."
"Have you? The truth is, I happened to watch a Korean Etube video and took my inspiration from it. ...Ah. This one."
The phone he held out was playing a single clip: a rapper in a pink hood being interviewed on some Etube channel.
"From what I understand, there is practically no one who doesn't know who this person is. That's the only reason the bit works."
"Yes. Exactly."
Needless to say, the explanation did nothing to restore Hitomi's expression.
"President?! I'm truly sorry to say it, but have you actually decided to go shouting all over town about who those two are on the inside?!"
At this rate it was a plan that stopped just short of announcing, outright, that the two were the same person. As Hitomi—no, as the VTuber Mary Tepes—she could only be appalled. It couldn't really be that; there had to be some other reason. But the trouble this would drag in after it...
"Ah. It seems I've given you the wrong impression. That is, in fact, the goal."
"...Nyeh?"
"The purpose is to connect how they look in reality with how they look in the virtual."
Hitomi's face went rigid. It was the look of a mind that simply could not keep up.
"Th-that's—wait, what?"
Why? What could it possibly mean? Her pupils darted from side to side.
Watching her, Gyokichi went on with a crooked grin—or rather, with his maw splitting wide open to either side.
"You know the purpose for which Anathema Production was founded, don't you, Miss Ninomae?"
"Ah... yes. In outline."
Natsugahara Hina and Guroyuki Sui, forced by the matter of the uncanny to fold their dreams in the entertainment world. Helping those two stand once more before a great many people. That was how this company had begun.
"Even so, it isn't complete yet. Anapro has settled in quite solidly, and Tachibana Rin's channel is sailing along well enough... but that feels like Tachibana Rin, rather than the second act of Guroyuki Sui."
Someone like her would surely be content with where she stood now. But it was not the same as the future she had lost. It could not be made the same to begin with. And so, at the very least, he wanted to arrange the semblance of it. Nakabashi Gyokichi added as much, his smile baleful.
"She goes back to the station she left as if fleeing, and she declares it. That Guroyuki Sui, who fell once back then, has returned like this. That she has succeeded this blatantly, for everyone to see, in the Etube industry."
Of course she would not truly cry it out in so many words. There might even be people who said an actress turned VTuber had come down in the world. All the same, it would be a satisfaction for Guroyuki Sui herself. Bansei Marin's case would not be so very different.
"So, to put it nicely, they are going to set down, however late, the ending they never got to finish, because of an accident that was no fault of theirs. So the two of them can settle their hearts for certain."
So that the women who had, against their will, been kept from working in entertainment could put their feelings in order and bring the matter to a close.
"Connecting reality and the virtual this openly will be the last time. Mind you, if they themselves wish to return to the industry, I have no thought of stopping them. Anapro doesn't forbid side work."
Nor, of course, would the real and the virtual be treated as the same thing even then. So Gyokichi added.
"...So you had thought it through."
She had half wondered whether some strange whim had taken him, that he would so brazenly prepare a project hinting at the red pill. The irony was that, heard in full, it was a reason she found impossible not to accept.
"If it were up to me, I would have had Miss Natsugahara with us this time as well."
"That senior is... well, she's probably still having a very hard time of it..."
Natsugahara Hina had lived with a severe fear of other people ever since she was caught up in the Vampire Syndrome incident. Going out as a guest on a talk show where every eye would gather was still beyond her. Even Hitomi, who had met her a fair number of times by now, still could not get her to remove the mask unless she kept a definite distance. Among the first-generation peers who had watched over her for years, it seemed even physical contact was possible, but...
The accident she had been swept into was the very first thing that put the notion of founding a VTuber company into Gyokichi's head, so he might well feel a pang of regret. A chance this good did not come along often.
"Well, it's all right. I believe she'll get back on her feet someday. And I believe this company will still be doing well by then."
"If the company were truly about to die, wouldn't Miss Yuri haul it back to life whether it liked it or not?"
"Haha. That, I can't deny."
At Hitomi's words, Gyokichi broke into laughter.
"At any rate, that's how it stands, so I'll be counting on you for the concert as well, Miss Ninomae. Mary's television broadcast isn't scheduled until after that."
"Yes. I'll do my best."
Right. What did it matter. For now, she only had to give everything she had to what had been set in front of her. Thinking so, Hitomi firmed her resolve all over again.