354: The Unrotten and Unseen (4)

"……."

"……."

A delicate silence held, and through the call, beyond it, a man's voice came.

By the time fires had begun to catch all over the internet, the next thing Ninomae Hitomi and Han Seoyeon did was, of course, contact operations. A report had to go up the chain before anyone could settle a course of action — or settle on having none.

If a firestorm ever looked likely, don't try to handle it alone. Talk to the company first. That had been one of the pieces of advice Hitomi had heard since she was preparing to debut. The report that went to their manager first climbed almost at once to President Gyokichi, perhaps because the incident was a kind without precedent inside the company.

"I'm sorry. At an hour like this……."

Listening to the voice on the other end, Han Seoyeon apologized. It was already evening, well past ordinary working hours. Their VTubers all streamed on different schedules, so some of the staff stayed late, and some all but lived with day and night reversed — but Gyokichi was not among them. In short, he might already have gone home, only to be called back because something had blown up.

He gave a small laugh, though, and added that.

Objectively it wasn't that large a problem, so they ought to just spend it as viral buzz. Gyokichi himself had said so. Even then, he clearly hadn't been able to switch his concern off entirely. Then again, had he been that irresponsible, he would never have earned, among so many people at the company, the judgment of being someone worth respecting however they might grumble about him otherwise.

"S-so… what are we supposed to do, I……?"

Hitomi murmured it, careful. She hadn't imagined, even remotely, that it would spread like this, and her composure looked just slightly unsteady.

He seemed to sink into thought for a moment. Then he spoke.

"……What?"

The answer came out so cleanly, as if it were nothing at all, and Hitomi's eyes went round.

"No — is that really something you can just decide that easily…?"

As a stream runs long, and the character on it begins to mix, little by little, with the real person underneath, the concept is bound to shift. Even aside from that, a stream's direction often swings toward whatever looks likely to land better, according to the numbers. …Not that any of that was a good reason to suddenly declare oneself a married woman on a VTuber broadcast.

In reality, two memories had already been wiped from the brains of all humankind. Gyokichi had no way of knowing that, which was why he put it so.

"No. Even granting all of that, a VTuber has to approach anything romantic with care, and there's the chemistry with the other members — the teetee, and all the rest…"

Of course, even hearing him out, Hitomi had no choice but to be uneasy. Anathema Production was a company that spoke of yuri fanservice and the like on official occasions, so a major backlash was unlikely. But this would also put no small change to the image of Mary Tepes that viewers had pictured until now. No — before anyone else's verdict, Hitomi herself was afraid of that great upheaval. She had been doing well all this time. She could only hesitate before setting a foot into unknown ground.

Because he knew that, Nakabashi Gyokichi opened his mouth again.

As the head of a company spoken of under the name of the corporate faction, looking after the people who belonged to it was his duty as well. That duty covered, of course, not only the material and the technical, but care of the mind. In that respect the human being called Gyokichi — and to say it once more, he is a pureblood human — was rather talented. He was confident in his grasp of how to lead a person's thoughts the way he wanted them to go.

"……Huh?"

And immediately afterward there came a sound as if something had snapped. Nothing had actually broken. But as Hitomi felt it, a clean tok sounded inside her head. Silence drifted past again, briefly. Then Hitomi smiled, bright and easy.

"I'm turning the stream on now, so please wait just a moment."

"Yes. I'll hold her."

"Nnngh…! Let go, Shion! I'm turning the stream on this second and showing the viewers our newlywed life!"

"Do calm down, first."

"I! Am completely normal right now! My head is perfectly, totally sound!"

The leading question, however, seemed to have landed a little too well, and Hitomi began to rampage. It likely wasn't that one line alone getting under her skin. It was closer to the stress she had stacked up — shaking over what on earth she was supposed to say on stream — detonating all at once with this as the spark.

In the end, Hitomi only settled after Seoyeon ended the call, gathered her up, and threw her onto the bed.

…Or, in place of "settled," one sometimes uses the word "blacked out."