Immortal, Invisible (7)
Mary sat posed in a set dressed as the bridal waiting room before the wedding. The situation being what it was, the viewers had no shortage of questions, and the moment she announced a Q&A, they came pouring in without end.
"When did we start dating, you ask? It was the day of the second generation's first-anniversary group stream, so... it's been about three months."
"How I came to like her... honestly, I don't really know. At some point I just found myself liking her so much I couldn't bear it, and only afterward did I realize what that feeling actually was..."
"The bedroom? Ah, yes. We've been sharing one for quite a while now."
"A l-love hotel...? Auuu... that was, only the one time, but... Aah! What are you making me say?!"
"Well, you see. The other day she pulled me into her arms, whispered that she loved me right by my ear, and stroked my hair... ehehe."
And the longer the answers went on, the more openly the affection of Ninomae Hitomi—the woman inside Mary Tepes—spilled out with nothing held back. It had reached the point where one could even sense a motive: she meant to seize this chance and brag about her lover—no, her wife—to her heart's content.
Mary, sincerely and brightly delighted, beaming from ear to ear, passed a warm gladness into the hearts of many fans. Other opinions did exist, but they were swiftly buried and swept away beneath chat crying things like "so sweet" and "Shutang is adorable."
…Only, that current lasted for the first ten minutes or so, and no longer.
"The thing is? We're both women, so we couldn't actually file it, but we even filled out a marriage registration and put it in a frame..."
"So then, Shion—"
"And last time, what she said was—"
"Wow. Do you know what Shion actually said in that situation?"
Viewers were beginning to drop, one by one, beneath a PDA assault of lethal sweetness. Mary was pouring out a fatal dose of affection, to a degree that made it genuinely incomprehensible how she had managed to hide any of it until now.
And indeed, looking back, it had been leaking out the whole time. That was why a half-joking theory had made the rounds through the communities—they were already living together, so weren't they actually dating behind the scenes? Hardly anyone could have sincerely believed it was true, and yet...
In any case, the end result was that Mary had, by and large, succeeded in steering public opinion exactly that way.
…The truly ironic part was that, astonishingly, none of this had been intentional.
"Ahem... it's about that time. Shall we move along, then?"
She said it after checking a message alert that had appeared somewhere off the broadcast frame. She had originally been told to move on to the next segment once the Q&A felt like enough—but she had grown so exhilarated bragging about her spouse that operations, judging she would never stop if left as she was, had stepped in to rein her in. Seeing that, Mary belatedly recovered her senses and smiled a wry smile. A solo stream might have been one thing, but she had guests today. She could not very well keep them waiting.
A moment later the screen switched again, back to the wedding hall they had shown at the very start. What differed this time was that a character now occupied a small platform in one corner—not a still picture, but a VTuber model moving with convincing life. It was Mary's peer from her generation, the witch Serena Razania.
"Hey, viewers~ I'm Serena Razania of the second generation, and I'll be MCing today's wedding."
The wedding broadcast had already strayed a considerable distance from common sense, and hauling in a fellow VTuber to serve as its so-called MC only made the whole affair more absurd.
"Oh. For the record, I hosted the actual wedding too, you know."
That, of course, was the remark that truly left the viewers dumbfounded.
A master detective who pierced straight through to the truth in an instant was among them, but the comment was buried in chat racing upward too fast to read, and it vanished without catching a single eye. The broadcast's firepower was that fierce. Part of it was the existing Anathema viewers, half out of their minds and chattering at a fever pitch, but the viewer count made one thing plain: there was an influx from outside.
Whether deliberate promotion had gone out across the internet on the president's orders, or whether word of the affair had simply happened to reach people's ears, was still unknown. Either way, anyone who heard that a VTuber had come back a married woman behind her viewers' backs and was now mounting a frontal assault in the form of a wedding stream would have found it hard to resist. Even Mary herself would have clicked in at least once, just to see.
"Anyway, before we begin the ceremony proper, allow me to introduce the person who will serve as officiant. This is someone invited from outside Anathema Production."
The real bomb, of course, was still waiting.
"Our officiant, Miss Sarah Groothuizen."
"Hello, Anathema viewers~"
To say nothing of any comparison with Mary Tepes or Serena Razania as individuals, this was the appearance of a colossus who could reduce even a company on the scale of Anathema Production to mere small fry.
Sarah Groothuizen. She had been booked under the president's directive to keep driving the pace so relentlessly that objections to the marriage would never have room to arise in the first place.
"Unworthy as I am, I'll be in your care for today."
The green-haired character stationed at the lectern smiled softly and offered her greeting.
"Anyway... the wedding of the two brides will begin shortly, so we ask our honored guests to please take the seats provided. We would be grateful if you set your phones to vibrate or silent."
Serena did not so much as pause to let the viewers stand still and properly take in what was happening. She simply pressed the proceedings onward.
"Our thanks to the guests who, amid schedules busy with public and private affairs, have come to bless this sacred wedding. And since this is virtual anyway, we will skip the cumbersome formalities and proceed directly to the bride's entrance."
"Then, the entrance of the bride. ...Saying it like that is going to get confusing. Let's just have both of them come in at once."
"Hello! Only five minutes later, my servants! Mary Tepes has arrived!"
Mary's model, visible only from the upper body, seemed to reappear in the corner—and then that mouse-piloted torso went hop, hop, hop, and came to stand before the officiant. The Wedding March was flowing out as BGM, but the staging was so cheap, and Mary's own mood so light, that it was impossible to feel this was a solemn rite. Had they done it in the company studio in 3D models, proper formality would have been possible... but the problem was that Han Seoyeon had no personal model of her own. They had no choice but to proceed on 2D models alone, and once that was the case, the result was bound to look flimsy no matter what they tried. Forcing a sentimental production onto a situation like that would have been pointless, and so the conclusion had been reached: go humorous, and commit fully to a B-grade sensibility.
In the same fashion, Han Seoyeon's model—Hinata Shion—appeared next and was placed in the spot beside Mary. She did not have a wardrobe of models to choose from, so she was simply in her everyday clothes.
"We will likewise skip the mutual bow and the rest of those procedures. It's virtual, so they wouldn't come off properly anyway. We'll move straight to the officiant receiving your precious marriage vows."
"Haha... Japan seems to be a culture that values practicality even more than I thought."
She had been given a warning in advance, and still Sarah said it with a wry smile at the MC's outrage(?) of simply cutting away every procedure in sight. Other Japanese viewers would have been indignant enough to leap out of their seats at that assessment, but there was nothing much they could do about it.
"Well then, I shall first ask the bride. ...Er, one moment. Now that I think about it, phrasing it only that way won't distinguish them. Bride Mary Tepes?"
"Yes."
"Bride Mary Tepes—from this moment, as you take another bride to be your spouse, until death does part you... in joy and in sorrow, in wealth and in poverty, in sickness and in health... do you swear to love and care for your spouse without wavering, and to live together as a married couple?"
"Yes. I swear."
"Good. Then, continuing—Hinata Shion. Bride Hinata Shion, from this moment as you take Bride Mary Tepes to be your spouse—"
Sarah had not been watching the chat of Mary's stream in the first place. She simply advanced the order of service, drew the oath of the marriage vows from both of them, and smiled a small, bright smile.
The marriage vows, and the pronouncement of union. It was fair to call it the greatest event of any wedding, and so every variety of superchat inundated the chat before and after—words blessing the two of them; people who fired off a superchat simply because the situation was funny; people who honestly still had no idea what was happening and were just throwing money; even superchats written by the swarm of outside viewers who had poured in for the express purpose of stirring chaos.
Whether one called it a clamor or a farce... the mere presence of remarks like "so when is Sarah-chan getting married" made it unmistakably a free-for-all. That confusion carried on right up to the moment the officiant's address came to an end.
"Thank you for a fine address. We invited you as a guest, and I don't think it would be mannerly to leave you sitting in silence, so from here on Miss Sarah will be co-hosting with me."
"Ah, would that be all right?"
"It's a stream, after all."
"Then, with thanks... I'm Sarah Groothuizen, and I'll be providing commentary for the wedding broadcast from here."
"Allow me to greet you once more. I'm Serena Razania, your caster. I'm in your care, Miss Sarah. ...Oh, Mary-chan. Could you move Miss Sarah's avatar over beside me?"
"Ah, yes. Got it. Just a moment..."
While the viewers burst out laughing or stared in sheer disbelief at the chaos, some ceremony that was, at best, a lookalike of a wedding carried on.
"Then the next item will be a congratulatory song."
"Might I ask who prepared the song, Miss Serena?"
"According to what I was told by operations, no one prepared one."
"...I beg your pardon?"
And at the turn that followed, even Sarah showed a reaction that looked faintly flustered. There was, of course, no law saying a wedding had to have a congratulatory song. But to announce that the next item was a song and then admit nothing had been prepared was another matter entirely. If it wasn't ready, they could simply have skipped it with the same boldness as before and moved on.
"For the record, even Mary-chan herself was not told about the congratulatory song. Which is to say, this very moment is its first reveal."
"Uh... Serena-chan is right, at least. They said who it was would be a secret... so what is actually going to happen?"
"Then, starting now! We commence the Impromptu Guerrilla Congratulatory Song Event!"
"...Ehhhhh?! Wait a second?!"
"Hello, everyone! Apprentice Holy Knight Amairo Tsubasa will now sing Metallica's Don't Tread on Me—!"
"No, wait. Who sings heavy metal at a wedding?!"
"I do! Here we go!"
The festival of chaos had only just begun.