All of Us Together in One Place (2)

"I-I have to go on after that...? In an atmosphere like this, my opening number has to be a denpa otaku song?!"

"H-hang in there. If I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had my way, I'd take the slot right after the glorious Sarah-chan myself... but then I'd be stuck preparing, and I wouldn't get to see her stage..."

"Waaaaah...!"

Another song had ended, and the stage had settled into a lull, when that wail burst from one corner of the waiting room. Sarah Groothuizen had rehearsed apart from the other VTubers, so no one had known precisely what kind of atmosphere her stage would bring—and since what they had just heard was a new song receiving its first public performance here, there had been even less chance of guessing.

"Ah, Yuu-chan, could you keep it down a little? I just took in Sarah-chan's new song, so I need to sit with the afterglow..."

"That's so mean...!"

Watching that bit of banter, Hitomi let a small laugh slip. At the same time, she was thinking, privately, Thank goodness I'm not the very next one. Honestly, how was anyone meant to beat a VTuber whose voice, whose singing, whose every last movement had been fine-tuned, detail by detail, until she was all but perfect? She was genuinely sorry for whoever was batting next, but even so, Hitomi had no desire to be compared with Sarah.

Perhaps Yuri had taken that into account, at least a little. Third in the order wasn't so vast a difference... and yet, simply not being immediately after did ease the weight, if only slightly...

"...Hweh?"

"Aaaaah?!"

But at the words that followed, Hitomi could only be struck with horror.

"Stop talking me up this instant...!"

"Wow. A musician the Sarah Groothuizen herself respects."

Hitomi's face had gone a little pale, and Kuroyuki set about teasing her with a few dry claps and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a perfectly level voice.

"It's a lie. No, seriously, don't lie. You put on a stage like that and then say something like that—what am I supposed to dooo...!"

Raise expectations this high, and outdoing that performance would be the bare minimum just to break even; one slip, and it was a straight drop into the abyss. She could already picture, all too clearly, what the mood would become the moment the cheers failed to come.

"Still, I don't think she just blurted that out with nothing behind it."

Kuroyuki had turned serious again.

"Just to confirm the one thing—she isn't the sort to pull something like that purely to mess with Ninomae-chan, is she?"

"Mmm... not as far as I know."

"And she isn't someone who wouldn't realize a remark like that inflates expectations for no good reason."

She was a broadcaster drawing crowds on a worldwide scale. Unless she had reached that seat by miraculous luck, there was no chance she didn't know what followed from blindly pumping up expectations, only for the result to come out mediocre.

"The possibility that she likes Ninomae-chan so much she takes her for the god of concerts."

"Even so, I don't think it's to that extent."

If her faith ran so deep that she believed Hitomi would surpass even expectations raised that high, it would be a different conversation... but that couldn't be it. An ordinary viewer who didn't know the details might be one thing, but Sarah, as someone in the same line of work, could not possibly be ignorant of the hardships and the realities behind the curtain. And yet, if her devotion really did run that deep, Hitomi could say without hesitation that it surpassed even Han Seoyeon's.

"Then there's only one conclusion. She has some other card to trust in. Hyakurenno prepared plants in the crowd, and she caught on ahead of time."

"Even so, if it were something like that, I think they would have given me a heads-up..."

"Or plants that sprang up on their own, without Yuri-chan lifting a finger."

"If nobody's planting them, they aren't plants, are they?"

"Who knows."

Having offered that peculiar remark, Kuroyuki only shrugged. With scarcely any change in her expression, it was difficult to tell whether she was joking. Hitomi had watched her long enough to read her face a little... but even powers of observation tempered against Han Seoyeon reached their limit with Kuroyuki. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rough shape of an emotion was as far as she could get. Pinning down exactly what the woman was thinking was beyond her.

"Anyway, hang in there."

"Okaaay..."

Thinking of what lay ahead, Hitomi let out a small sigh.

"That was Bidetin Tira of V-Utaki! Thank you!"

An avatar with long, straight black hair hanging loose bowed deeply toward the front of the stage. A floating hologram, wasn't it? She had heard that on a fixed stage like this, it was a technique one could use with relative ease by setting up panes of glass. Of course, that didn't mean there were no installation costs, or no technical problems... but well, it was Hyakurenno. They would have handled it. Han Seoyeon decided to let it go at that.

Next was Hitomi's stage, wasn't it...

Seoyeon called up the performance order she had looked over before. Among the VTuber stages, she remembered Hitomi as the third. Then she turned her gaze, and even across a little distance, a sight that could not help but stand out came into view.

"The madam's stage is next. Assume your throats will be ruined by the time it's over!"

"After today, scream until you lose your voices! Those necks wouldn't even still be attached if it weren't for Bartholomew!"

It was a two-headed bear in an Anathema Production merch T-shirt, directing a handful of monsters. At the sight, a wry smile rose on Seoyeon's face before she knew it. Every face gathered there remained in her memory. Each of them, in ways great or small, had been helped by Han Seoyeon's work as a holy knight.

Insisting they had to repay her even in a form like this, they had won the ticket war and come all this way to lend their light to Hitomi's stage—to Mary Tepes's stage. Honestly, as Han Seoyeon, she thought there was no need for them to go so far. And yet she also thought that Hitomi would be truly delighted.

Hitomi had experience on a stage, but she had never heard an audience's cheers with her own ears. The heat of a chat window, the gushing, starry-eyed write-ups on the community boards—those she must have seen in abundance... If she received a response this passionate at her very first concert, there was no way she would not be moved.

"Is there a set cheer, Miss Yuri?"

"Ah. Nothing special. When I give the signal, if you could call out Mary's name..."

...Though having two princesses mixed into that cheer squad was, no matter how she looked at it, a little bewildering. One of them had only picked up the nickname because she was the youngest daughter of a major corporation's chairman, but the other was a true heavyweight, with imperial blood actually running in her veins.

"Aaaah! Found you! Lady Behemoth...!"

"Oh? Miss Yelena? What brings you here?"

But the situation Seoyeon had failed to anticipate did not end there. A girl who had pushed through the crowd to the edge of the Mary cheer squad (name provisional) suddenly cried out. Snow-white hair and dark skin. It was Yelena, half-blood of a polar bear spirit.

And the end of that gaze was, of course, Behemoth, just then receiving a light stick from Yuri. Her purpose had been to find the Behemoth who would be here and speak with her.

"What do you mean, what brings me here—that's my line! Why on earth did you come to cheer for creatures like these?!"

Behemoth already carried a faintly foreign air, and in Yelena's case, no one could have mistaken her for Japanese. Raising their voices under those circumstances was bound to draw the eyes around them. If there was a mercy, it was that they were speaking Russian. It did not seem likely that many in the audience could understand it.

"Yelena? What are you doing here?"

No—surprisingly, there was one more. Or perhaps she ought to say one more beast. The two-headed bear leading the group approached them and addressed them in Russian.

"I came on the ticket Uncle sent me."

"No, but for you to come yourself... no. I see. Leave you out of it, and there's no one in that lot who would move on impulse like this."

The bear pressed a hand to his brow. With two heads, he needed both hands.

"I gave you that so you'd sell it and put the money toward the funds... Did your father allow this?"

"If you mean the consent of the rest of the clan, I have it. I, who resemble a human, came as their representative."

"Meaning the consensus of the polar bears living on Russian soil. What am I supposed to do with this..."

The ticket had come into his hands by pure chance. A close aide of the Grand Master had sprung Lucifer in order to buy a ticket, been duly punished, and the ticket had returned to the Freemasons. The Grand Master himself had no interest in this sort of thing, so it had gone round and round until it reached him, and he had sent it on in the hope that it might help a friend in the far north... He had never imagined it would come back around like this. Truly, who could have predicted such a thing?

"Anyway, don't cause trouble for other people. Go home, Yelena."

Honestly, they were a friend's clan, but this time the fault was plainly on their side. Was this not exactly the spectacle of a vegetarian citizens' group that had unilaterally decided some politician was their ally and thrown their support behind him, only to fly into a rage when he enacted a policy helpful to livestock farming and start meddling even in his private life?

"But the Arctic... the number of polar bears...!"

"The gene pool is widening, and the population is growing."

"Pure polar bears are going extinct! You can't let yourself be dazzled by simple statistics!"

"You don't happen to like rolling your pant cuffs up, do you? Black boots and all..."

"......?"

Never mind. The bear let out a deep sigh through both mouths, wondering whether this child had forgotten that even her own mother was not a bear.

"Anyway, don't go causing needless trouble, and hurry up and..."

"I'm all right with it."

He had been about to drag Yelena outside... but the one who stopped him was, unexpectedly, Behemoth herself.

"She went to the trouble of getting a ticket and coming all this way. Wouldn't it be a waste if she couldn't even enjoy the show?"

With that, she lightly stroked Yelena's head.

"Since she's come this far, the least I can do is hear her out."

"Lady Behemoth...!"

"However. That will be after the performance is over."

To a Yelena who looked overcome, Behemoth added that condition.

"And you'll stay quiet, so you don't disturb anyone else. Yes?"

"Yes, ma'am, understood...!"

"And enjoy the stage while you're at it. You've been running around this whole time, so I'm sure you haven't really watched."

"That..."

But she could not give a proper answer. It was a field she had had no interest in to begin with. She had come here for no reason other than that she needed a place where she could meet Behemoth. So she had no choice but to hesitate. She was obviously going to wait around in boredom, wondering when it would end—she could hardly lie about that to her lord.

She had just been about to confess that it would be difficult, when—

"...!"

A great bell-toll came, as though it might carry far into the distance—the sort of bell one would expect to find hanging in a church spire upon visiting some medieval castle, pealing again and again. Right on its heels, red mist began to seep up over the stage, and high above, enormous wings evocative of a demon or a bat appeared without warning.

A beat later, a figure wrapped in a black cloak emerged from the center of those wings. Vast wings spread, the being descended slowly, as if gliding. The languid tolling sounded twelve times, and with the final stroke his shoes touched the stage. The bell-sound spread, leaving its echo behind, and for a moment silence held the place.

Then, all at once, the wings and the cloak burst ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into flame amid a brilliant effect, and the woman hidden within was revealed.

A pure-white costume and cap that called to mind a ceremonial honor guard, or a naval dress uniform. Platinum-blonde hair swept up and tied to one side, unlike the look she usually wore. Wearing a confident smile, the woman slowly surveyed the crowd below the stage with blood-red eyes. Then she opened her mouth, bared her fangs, and called out.

Yelena looked up at that sight with eyes gone a little blank.

Falling into a fandom, after all, was like a traffic accident: it arrived all at once, riding on the back of some truly trivial thing.