What We Have Seen and Heard (3)
"Bansei-chan, look this way."
"Hm? Why all of a sudden… mmph?!"
"You've got to keep your sugar up while we do this."
"Haah. And who, exactly, shoves a chocolate bar into someone's mouth like a brute……."
"It's yuri……."
"This is Anathema…?"
"Here. A towel."
"Ah. Thank you, Akaba-san."
"Yuri even off-stream, huh…"
"So they are……."
"Yuri-chan, just a moment."
"Yes? What is it?"
"The marker on your back looks a little loose. …Ah, yes. There we go."
"That's yuri, isn't it…?"
"That's yuri…"
"You—you goddamn drunk…!"
"Whaaat? You hit me? Yer gonna hit me? Young miss steps out for a minute and now ya wanna really go for it, izzat iiiit?"
"Fine. I'll fold your spine the wrong way around!"
"This leg's sooo nice I wanna wear two of 'em~ got iiiit!"
"Yuri?"
"Yuri!"
"No—no matter how you look at it, this is definitely not yuri, okayyy?!"
Momomomo Chisa and Ryuumai Fuu had already seized the gap left by Yuri's absence and started sparring in a corner of the studio. Watching the VTubers from other companies watch them, Hitomi cried out in horror.
"It's hopeless… every last one of them has yuri lenses locked on tight……."
In a single instant, Anathema Production's reputation—even with the broadcast off—had become that of a faction of true believers conducting method-acted yuri business(?). Hitomi had no choice but to be appalled. This concert was, if nothing else, Anathema's first official activity beyond its own walls, and they were getting saddled with an image this bizarre right from the start.
"It can't be helped. How one person looks upon another is the one thing a third party cannot decide."
"No. This is entirely your fault."
They were in the middle of that exchange when a curt voice cut in from behind. Hitomi turned her head and met the eyes of Akaba Akane, arms folded.
"You were smacking lips right in front of everyone, and now you're talking like you've been wronged."
"Ugh… that's……."
Hitomi had nothing to say to that. It wasn't as if she failed to understand that the cause of the situation lay with the two of them. The sparks had simply leapt not only onto themselves but onto everyone else, and in her fluster she had blurted out whatever came to mind.
"…I'm sorry. This is because of me."
She was, however, too decent a person to keep dodging responsibility. Hitomi bowed her head to Akane and offered the words with care.
"Sorry for what."
Akane didn't so much as snort at the attitude. She only answered.
"I said what you did was the cause. I never said it was a wrong."
"What? No. That it's my responsibility is clearly the right—"
"So stop talking nonsense. Anathema is the sort of company where our president will say, right out in the open, that she's gunning for yuri business. Not that she's ever actually handed down a directive telling us to act like couples, mind you."
So saying, Akane tapped her own ear with a fingertip.
"Let the rumor go around that you were cuddling in private. Let the rumor go around that you were biting and sucking and raising absolute hell. If it's good for us, it's good for us. It isn't bad."
Consider the mainstream audience for female VTubers, and for Anathema Production beyond that. Tell them those girls were glued to each other even off-stream, and they would, without question, whoop in delight. To borrow the phrase Akane had tacked on, they would love it to death.
"Unicorns… no. Aside from a vanishing handful of genuine gachikoi unicorns, everyone would be glad of it."
The so-called unicorns: viewers who cared a great deal about a streamer's virginity. In the worst cases they threw fits over nothing more than their favorite exchanging words with a man, and yet, surprisingly, a great many of them hardly minded if she got involved with a woman. All the more so when the other party was a fellow streamer, and a colleague from the same company at that.
They were bundled into the single category of unicorn only because the output came out looking the same. In the end, each of them moved by a different motive. Some sincerely hoped she would never grow deeply close to anyone but themselves. Some recoiled at involvement with a man, yet felt curiously little resistance so long as it was between women. Some held the garden of yuri sacred and stood guard against so-called male intrusion, and some could not acknowledge any pairing but the one they themselves shipped. There were even unicorns who welcomed yuri with no particular thought at all, nothing brighter than a whoa, two virgins!
And if the one testifying to such off-stream teetee wasn't even a company colleague but a VTuber from another agency, the credibility would only climb. Told in their own mouths, the same anecdote could quietly draw the opinion that they were lying in order to milk viewers with a taste for yuri.
"…Even so, hold back on anything past a kiss in front of other people. You're not going to announce the marriage on stream, are you."
"That's… yes. That's true……."
She had said only a moment ago that yuri between colleagues was, unicorns aside, generally well liked and therefore good news. Let it go too far, though, and it bred problems of its own. This was the same reason Anathema rode a yuri line without ever openly pushing a couple concept: do that, and there was a fairly high chance the pairing would lock in place.
They had gone to the trouble of building relationships through a generation system—this one a senior, that one a peer—only for every last scrap of chemistry to evaporate except the romance with a single person. And did even that one remaining pairing thrive? It did not. It grew so unstable that the moment a schedule kept them from collaborating, rumors of a falling-out sprang up at once. If they meant only to strike and withdraw in the short term, perhaps. From any long view, it could be called nothing but a blunder.
"Of course, the two of you hardly need to worry about the falling-out side of things……."
If their relationship were made public, they lived together as it was, and whenever anyone was in danger of forgetting they would crash a stream to be shamelessly lovey-dovey. That particular problem would not exist.
"But other pairings getting walled off is territory you need to think about in earnest."
Han Seoyeon, for her part, could hardly even be called a VTuber. It wasn't high-risk, low-return. It was closer to high-risk, no-return. From the company's seat, it was a risk they had no wish to shoulder. However bold President Gyokichi might be—reckless, past the point of bold—the balance of risk and return still had to come out even.
Unless they intended to do the same for every colleague and string pairings out in every direction at once, excessive displays of affection were, as a rule, better kept in check. Hitomi knew this perfectly well, and so she nodded and accepted the words.
"If you've understood, that's enough. Just be careful about that part. Once there's an outside witness, it stops being territory we can control."
Akane added that much. In the end, the easier of the two was not controlling the witnesses, but never being witnessed at all. Any one of the VTubers here could, without a scrap of malice, let something slip. The chance of it was more than real.
"Oh, and one more thing."
Akane had been ready to leave the talk there, but a moment later she cocked an eyebrow and went on.
"Yes? What is it?"
"The idiot behind you who looks like she's thinking something strange. Give her a slap."
"…Do you mean me?"
Han Seoyeon opened her eyes a fraction wider, puzzled, and pointed at herself. She clearly had not expected the shot to swing back around to her.
"Strange thoughts? I am being treated unfairly."
"If it's so unfair, then say it."
"The only thought I had was that, should Hitomi do something with our fellow VTubers, then even doing it on stream would fall within what is permitted…"
"What are you doing. Slap her. Right now."
"Ahaha……."
What on earth was she saying, with a single-hearted new bride standing right in front of her? Akane's gaze came at Han Seoyeon cold as frost. The person actually concerned, Hitomi, only laughed it off, awkward and sheepish.
"It's just that Shion truly seems to have no concept of jealousy at all."
The affection aimed at Hitomi ran heavy, and yet, set beside it, she had shown possessiveness or jealousy an oddly small number of times—almost none. Past a certain point one might even have tried a jealousy gambit on purpose, but she gave off such an air of detachment that the thought had never occurred.
"Though if you look at how she is in bed, she certainly seems to have a desire to dominate. A desire to conquer……."
"No, I don't want to know that far…!"
Akane cut the story off in a flinch of horror. Only natural. Who in the world would want the details of a coworker's nights?
Now that I think about it, I feel like there might be about two…….
At any rate, the point was that a normal person would of course feel that way, and Akane was a woman who prided herself on possessing a normal set of values. If they were close, and the talk surfaced only as a quiet aside, she might have let it pass. It was absolutely not a subject to raise where other people's eyes were on them.
Dominate, and conquer. Just what did she turn into once night fell, to drag out words like those… no. What was she thinking. Akane gave her head a hard shake and flung the strange thoughts off.
"Pile Driverrrrr!"
"Ghk?! Y-you lunatic, I asked nicely—let go?!"
"You tell me to let go an' you think I'm gonna—urk?!"
"I clearly told you to let go while I was still using my words!"
She snapped her gaze around, saw the brawl unfolding at the end of it, and quietly shut her mouth.
…A little late to be noticing, but thinking about it now, this really doesn't seem like the moment to be taking Ninomae to task.