Zibeon's Donkey (7)
The screen held a single illustration, with the signature of first-generation Kitayama Maya etched small in the lower right corner. An open-air hot spring filled the background, five characters soaking in the water, and a closer look turned up chibi figures as well—one for Sister, one for the maid. The left corner belonged to Komori Sae's chibi, seated on a hospital bed, while first-generation Tachibana Rin's character peeled an apple at her side. It was probably a sketch of something that had happened on stream a few hours earlier. The illustration did not hold the viewers' eyes for long.
The sound of running water poured through the speakers. Hurried, slapping footsteps followed, and then—a splash. Something had gone into the water.
"Con-Sere. I'm reporting live from the scene."
A sloppy impression of a news reporter, the voice dropped to a whisper as if the moment were urgent. It was Serena Razania of the second generation, deep in her ghost roleplay.
"Everyone else? They're rinsing off before they get in the bath. Can't you hear them, all quiet? I hurried and turned the stream on so I could let you viewers hear thiiis."
"Try picturing it while you listen, won't you? The VTubers you love, naked, close enough that this mic is picking them up... gyek."
"What kind of nonsense is that, you punk, nya."
A wet, breathless smack of impact. A short yelp. Then the heavy plunge of a body into water.
It had been a towel. Soaked through, the thing had considerable weight all on its own, and taking it full in the face sent Serena toppling backward.
"Pwaaah...! Cough, cough..."
Only after flailing a few times did she break the surface again, coughing and spitting water. Sulfur ran wild in her mouth.
"Haa. I really do worry this one's gonna get hauled off for sexual harassment one of these days, nya... Anyway, nyahallo. Yugure Tama, Anathema first generation, nya."
Tama stepped into the bath right after her. She tested the temperature with her toes first, then lowered herself in one unhurried foot at a time.
"Hold on. That towel Tama-senpai had draped over her bare skin until a moment ago is basically no different from underwear, isn't it?"
"...Just do whatever you want, nya."
"Serena-chan. You said you'd go ahead and start the stream, so why are you burying your face in a towel? Some new kind of beauty treatment?"
"Surely nothing more than some trifling perversion has occurred to her."
Tenka—Charlotte—in a faint voice, and Tsubasa, who had struck rather cleanly to the heart of it, cut in one after the other.
"But Tsubasa-chan, you're the type who looks slim once the clothes are on. Your body's surprisingly solid."
"But of course. Looking after one's health is an important refinement. And if we are speaking of being in fine shape, Miss Charlotte is hardly one to take lightly."
Neither as a holy knight, her character concept, nor as the daughter of a great house, her real self, was there any chance she would neglect her body. She was probably under professional care besides.
"Well, if I had to say what's incredible once the clothes come off, it isn't anywhere else, it's the chest—"
"Zip it a little, nya."
"But Senpai said to do whatever I want..."
"I never gave you permission to sexually harass other people, nya."
If the nerve to sexually harass that Hyakurenno young lady without a flicker of hesitation counted as a talent, then it was a talent. Tama sighed.
"Anyway, as a devotee of washboard abs, I am so happy I could diiie!"
"We can address the manner of speech in due course... It is true, though, that the people who came on this trip are in relatively fine shape."
Even Tama, already in the bath ahead of the others, exercised to a fair degree in ordinary life. To say nothing of Sister—a Holy Knight by profession—or the maid, a bodyguard by profession.
"Mary-chan's the same. The rest of her is on the slim side, just hidden behind those terrifying breasts... wait. Am I the only soft, plump one here?"
"Call that fat, and I suspect stones would come flying in off the street."
The one who cut in, as if to sever the self-deprecating bit Serena had been winding up, was Sister. A towel wrapped around her, she was walking over with Mary at her side.
"Oh? Mary-chan."
"Wh-why do you ask, Serena-chan?"
"The towels they had out here were pretty big, right?"
"Th... they were."
"But if one of them can't even make it once around your body, then your bust size must be—"
Splash. Tama caught the back of Serena's head and shoved her under.
"Pfwah?! Cough..."
"Uu..."
"You've got a baby squirrel who doesn't know what to do with herself right in front of you. No thoughts at all, nya?"
"That sinful figure against that innocent face is seriously so ho— glub!"
"Have a little more of what this health spring can do, nya."
Bubbles rose and popped across the patch of water where Serena had vanished.
"Ahaha... Don't bully her too much, Tama-chan."
"Pwaaah! I knew it was you, Shar-chan. You came to save me! The bonds of the second generation were real after all!"
Let someone take her side for even a moment, and Serena immediately tucked herself away behind Charlotte.
"Oh, wait a moment. My maid isn't here yet?"
"Fell asleep somewhere on the way, maybe?"
"...I cannot deny the possibility. I shall go and fetch her."
And so, as if the two of them were changing shifts, Tsubasa left the bath.
"...So you really can float around in a bath, nya."
"I-it's embarrassing, so please don't stare too much."
Right after that, someone with the smallest figure in the party caught a stray round, and her voice went strangely, unaccountably bleak.
"Eek?! Wh-what a vulgar—! No, I mean, at least use some word other than maternal!"
"Tenderness, maybe?"
"I am an evil villain, Shar-chan?!"
"You servants over there with the question marks! I've remembered your nicknames, you know?! Just you wait, on my stream later!"
With the memory Mary was publicly known for, she could certainly have memorized them. Not a single viewer was worried about that.
"You say all that, and yet you've never actually taken revenge, have you, Shuttang."
"Nnnngh...!"
And this was the woman holding forth as the Queen of Evil. Sister—Seoyeon—smiled a thin, bitter smile.
"Eheheh... everybody's so faaast."
"You're the one who's late, you drunk."
It was around then that Tsubasa returned, towing one plastered drunk—no, one plastered creature. A wooden tray came with them, set with a ceramic bottle and cups.
"Drinking... in the bath. Is that all right...?"
Mary's voice was plainly worried. No one else said it aloud, but the rest were surely thinking much the same.
"It's fine. We booked the whole place."
"No, I meant in the health sense."
She was fairly sure she had heard that drinking in the bath was quietly dangerous.
"Worrying about that one and alcohol is a waste. You could inject it straight into her veins and she'd still walk around perfectly intact."
"Mmmmm..."
Was it really all right? Then again, the woman herself was saying so. Considerable conflict showed through on Mary's face.
Watching her, Charlotte suddenly burst out laughing. A pity, and nothing more, that she could not show the viewers this face—there was no avatar up to carry it.
"Breezy and niiice, sky wide opeeen, the moon's so preeetty, and my body's all tooasty waaarm, ehe, s'gooood—"
"...There's no moon today, nya."
"Huh. Then what's thaaat? The thing next to the pink elephant."
"No, seriously, is this person actually okay, nya?!"
No matter how one looked at it, these were hallucinations brought on by too much alcohol. Amairo Tsubasa only sighed, as if a maid like this were nothing new to her.
"Well. Should it come to that, I will heal her, so do not trouble yourselves overmuch."
"...Aren't you really a bit too all-purpose?"
"You think the world's number-one religion got that way for nothing?"
Sister murmured it at a volume the broadcast would not catch.
Mary—Ninomae—wore a vacant look for a little while, but she accepted it soon enough. Last time, she'd heard the woman even cast buffs on computers and ran them that way. Something like this, she would handle without any trouble.
The whisper had not, however, reached the others, who were a little farther off. Curious, Charlotte parted the water and came over in long strides.
"What are the two of you talking about, faces all stuck together, having so much fun?"
"U-wait, you're too close, Shar-chan..."
"Ah. Sorry."
Close enough that skin might have brushed skin. Only after the remark did Charlotte seem to notice, and she laughed, a little awkward.
Mary turned her face slightly the other way, slipping clear of the one that had drawn so near.
"SharMary, teehee..."
"...What are you doing, Miss Sister?"
Her eyes met Han Seoyeon's—hands folded neatly, watching her all the while.
"An acquaintance of mine always insists that LupuMori, Charlotte × Komori Sae, is the greatest of all. But the truth, as ever, is bound to win out in the end."
"Ah... right. This is just how she is...!"
Mary, letting yet another lament escape her today. Someone that wonderful the rest of the time—why did she only get like this when it was about Shuttang!
It was, by and large, a sound argument. Sister thought it over for a moment, then nodded, conceding that it was certainly true.
"To learn I was an acquaintance of Shuttang's—I am proud to call it the third greatest fortune of my life."
For a person living the so-called V-life, how extraordinary a thing it was, being invited along on a trip like this.
"Strictly speaking, we were the ones who got invited. It started when Tsubasa-chan squeezed herself into Mary-chan and Sister's trip, and—"
"Setting that aside, if this is third, then what are the first and the second?"
Charlotte added it with a smile. Tsubasa, dismissing that much as settled, pressed her to answer the question that actually interested her.
"Meeting the Lord, of course. That one sits just narrowly ahead of meeting Shuttang, so it takes second."
"No, if the margin is that narrow, that's a problem, isn't it?!"
Mary shot back, appalled. Was that really something a person of religion ought to say?
"No. It isn't that I treat the Lord lightly. It means Shuttang is precious to me to that degree."
"It has to be overwhelming, doesn't it?! From the standpoint of faith!"
"It is quite all right. The Lord is merciful, and He does not grow jealous over a thing like this."
"Eeeh..."
"I am honored."
"What?!"
"Shuttang. They did say they would not be hearing objections."
"Whaaat?!"
Leaving Mary, who very much looked to have a great deal to say, Tama opened her mouth.
"So, what in the world is the greatest fortune, nya?"
"Ah... that would be difficult to say on stream."
Sister seemed about to hem and haw, and then she swallowed the rest.
"Is it something personal, nya?"
"Well. Personal, if one were to call it that."
Sister nodded, and after that Tama didn't press.
Her real name was a personal matter too, after all. One could hardly say Shuttang's real name on stream.
Thinking so, Han Seoyeon looked at Ninomae Hitomi, who had her head tilted in a question.