Destroy This Temple (2)

What set the streams of Rokumondera Aki, of Anathema Production's first generation, apart from all the rest was their sheer, overwhelming length. Aside from the hours she slept, and the work she could not yet show her viewers—meetings with the agency, preparing a new song, and the like—she gave very nearly every remaining minute to the broadcast. The only other exception worth naming was when some fellow VTuber was running a special project, and she raided her audience over to them.

Management had, of course, taken her to task for it at the start. There was no shortage of advice, but the heart of every lecture came down to the same thing: let a stream run too long, and the viewers can't keep up. Go live for hours a day—ten and more—and the live audience falls away as a matter of course, while anyone hoping to watch the VOD on the channel won't even dare to press play.

On top of that, Etube does not archive a stream once it passes twelve hours, so the whole arrangement becomes a nuisance in every other respect as well.

"Then would it be all right if I streamed three times a day, four hours each?"

"Uh... wait. What?"

Morning, noon, and evening—if she went live three times, each with different content, surely there wouldn't be much of a problem. The brilliant, revolutionary solution Aki offered on the matter—or, to borrow the verdict of the head manager in charge of the first generation, the "absolute lunatic" solution—was exactly that.

"Barring special cases, two hours to a little past three. No more than that."

Such was the compromise they finally settled on. It still meant she meant to stream every single day, six hours at the shortest and ten at the longest, which was anything but ordinary... Even so, once she herself insisted she was fine, there was no restricting the broadcasts any further than that.

They did make her break the streams up to a degree, so viewers wouldn't burn out and drift off—though each individual block, granted, wasn't all that different in length from an ordinary VTuber's broadcast—and each divided stream was set to run its own game or its own project. That way, even a viewer who sat through only a single session didn't have to worry about something like the story of a long game getting cut in half.

Mid-negotiation, her own proposal had been, "What if I did eight streams a day, but kept each one to an hour and a half or two?" From the staff's point of view, holding the line here counted as a hell of a save.

It was only possible in the first place because part of her body had mutated into something no different from a vampire's, so that being in poor condition was a concept that simply ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠did not apply to her—and because hers was a body that did not even need to sleep. And with that particular phobia of other people, the number of times she stepped outside the house could be counted on one hand, which meant she had to spend the full twenty-four hours indoors, with not an hour spared for sleep.

The trouble was that Rokumondera Aki—which is to say, Natsugahara Hina—was not especially fond of life indoors.

More precisely, she liked talking to people, and being in their company. Set beside the fact of her phobia, it was an irony if ever there was one. It was possible only because Hina's case was not the fear of conversation and attention that those words usually call to mind, but a fear whose real symptoms were of meeting face-to-face and of being touched.

In short, so long as a phone line lay between them, she could hold a conversation without much difficulty—not that the aversion disappeared entirely—and since her debut, with a fair amount of effort, she had improved to the point of managing video calls even with people she wasn't used to.

At any rate, to circle back to the point and offer nothing but the conclusion: quite apart from her fear of human beings, Natsugahara Hina was a woman with a genuinely extroverted streak, and for someone like that, being shut up alone in a house was a considerable ordeal. Streaming was what stood in for that hunger. She had always liked meeting people more than she liked moving her body, and so a substitute of this kind was, at least, possible.

It was for that very reason, conversely, that management had put a cap on her hours—to keep her from clinging to the broadcast and to nothing else.

"Still an hour..."

Lying on the bed with her phone in hand, Hina checked the time and murmured it in a voice gone faintly bleak. Her evening stream, which started at eight and ended a little past ten, was still a bit over an hour off.

In The Little Prince, to be tamed is no different from growing hungry at three because the meal comes at four. If her memory held, she thought, then she had been tamed by the stream. Ordinarily it was the viewers who screamed "Open the door!" and waited on a broadcast; on this side, the broadcaster was the one knocking, and knocking hard. The viewers themselves, long since adapted to a stream that began at the same hour every day, showed almost none of that impatience in return.

"Huh?"

She had been waiting on nothing but the start time, longing for it with her whole chest, when a call came in out of nowhere. Akaba Akane's name was lit on the screen. It was someone who almost never called first unless something particular was going on, and so the first thing Hina felt was simple puzzlement.

Even so, if they were calling, there had to be a reason. Thinking as much, she picked up.

"Hello? Akaba-san?"

"Ah, yes~ Well, of course I am!"

"Y-yes?"

At the words that followed, Hina's eyes went perfectly round.

"Ah, w-wait a second... I have to get ready, quickly..."

With that she scrambled, flustered, out into the living room and toward the display case standing in one corner. Dozens of masks sat inside the big glass cabinet. She had started wearing them to begin with as a shield for her mind, but somewhere along the way she had picked up the hobby of collecting masks with character, and the case was the fruit of it.

Had the visitor been Akane alone, it would have been all right. Someone else tagging along was a different story. She took down a clown mask grinning with every tooth on display, then went to the closet and pulled out gloves and a hoodie to hide her skin.

"Oh, and come to think of it, about when do you think you'll get here?"

"The window? Yes, all right."

Only after she had made certain she was covered completely, from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, did Hina open the window. She almost never opened it, bent as she was on shutting the outside air out, and the frame was terribly stiff.

"It's open. So—when did you say you were coming?"

"Three minutes? That's fast."

"...Ah?"

Three minutes. They really left that call late. She was still thinking it when the next number landed, and Hina's face locked stiff. There was no world in which this meant they would arrive in six minutes, as if someone were chanting the times tables—three twos are six—so it could only mean they weren't counting in minutes at all.

"Kyaaaaaaah?!"

WHOOOOM—!

And in that very instant, something came tearing in through the open window. It was moving so fast that it kicked a whistling wind through the whole of the room.

It was a broom. An old one, of the sort you'd expect to find at any shrine or temple. You would not, however, expect to see two women riding the thing and flying in on it, no matter which shrine you visited.

The broom carrying Akaba Akane and Han Seoyeon stopped dead in a single instant, so abruptly that the speed of a moment before made it nearly impossible to picture.

"It's been a while, Natsugahara Hina-san."

"Natsugahara. You holding up?"

"Uh... ah... hueh...?"

At the collab airborne drop of a shrine maiden and an Apostle, Natsugahara Hina's mind simply checked out.

"Ah, um... that is... so, what brings you here...?"

The voice was small to begin with, shrinking in on itself, and trembling on top of that, so making out the words was no easy thing. Akane, though, was already used to dealing with her, and it wasn't as if Seoyeon were a stranger to people quaking in fear in front of her—once or twice would hardly cover it—so it wasn't much of a problem.

"There's something I'd like to ask you, Natsugahara-san."

"Oh, i-is that so. But, um, if it was just that... then..."

"A phone call would have been quite enough. That is what you mean."

"Ah, y-yes. That's right. But why did you come all the way— no, I'm not, not complaining. I really, just wondered..."

They could hardly be unaware that she couldn't even speak properly when she met someone in the flesh, so why go to the trouble of coming here to talk? That was what Hina couldn't make sense of. Seoyeon, who had paused a moment over the question, presently opened her mouth again.

"This, I decided, was something I would have to ask in person."

"Wh-what is it? What in the world..."

"Placeholder. The group you used to perform with, Natsugahara-san."

"...Ah?"

A dry, brittle gasp broke from Hina's mouth.

"Would you be able to tell me about Rena? Masuzawa Reina-san, who was your colleague."

A name she had believed she would never hear again. A subject the people around her had gone out of their ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠way to avoid came out of that mouth. What rose up in the same instant was the face of a precious colleague—the tallest of the members, and the one who had taken the role of the group's eldest sister. It couldn't be said the members had never once hurt one another, but they had, on the whole, been a warm and easy group, and she was the older sister the rest of them, Hina included, had leaned on most. Quietly introverted by nature, she had secretly felt the weight of performing, and still she had always tried to stay strong for the younger girls. A leader to be proud of.

And...

The one who, on a certain day, turned without warning—who tore the entrails out of another member, Yuta, and flung them wide; who beat Hina, then ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠performing under the stage name ReM, until her ribs were smashed to splinters; and who, struck back by that same Yuta, still walking around perfectly intact despite having spilled her own guts, had her head ripped from her neck.

"Urgh..."

The memory comes back to life. That hideous waiting room, the other members turning in a single breath to kill one another, blood and scraps of flesh scattered across the floor. Terror surges in, and her breath catches hard. It had been the same back then.

But who was it that had their hands around her throat? That part alone is hazy. All that remains in her mind is the thrashing, caught between fear and the will to live. It felt as if something, somewhere along her airway, were clamped viciously shut.

I have to break through whatever's blocking it and drag the thing out. With nothing but that thought filling her head, Hina clawed at her own throat on instinct, raking it hard. Skin that had flushed red beneath her nails tore away in moments, and blood welled through. And that smarting, searing pain called up a strange rapture.

I'm not a vampire like that. I'm not a zombie, either. At the pain that proved she was alive, Natsugahara Hina grinned.

She was someone who had picked up the habit of hurting herself after the incident. Her fellow VTubers hadn't much liked it, and so lately, through grueling effort, she had gotten a great deal better... Only to be ruled by the impulse all over again. She felt a sting of self-loathing at the fact, and still her hand did not stop. It could not.

"Natsugahara."

More precisely, she could not stop it herself.

Akane snatched her wrist. She closed her hand with real force, tight enough that it throbbed. Hina lifted her head, and her eyes met the eyes fixed on her. Her lips trembled, and she stammered.

"Ah, I-I'm sorry. Th-that was awful to look at, wasn't it. I'm sorry, I'm sorr—ngh?!"

Before the words could finish, Akane pulled her in hard and held her. Then, saying nothing at all, she only patted Hina's back with the flat of her hand, and stroked it down.

A faint heartbeat reached her. Natsugahara Hina's own had already all but ceased to beat, so it could only have been the throb of Akane's heart, carried across. But the brain has always been a bit of a fool, and without asking anyone it decides the thing must be hers.

The heart beat, calmly.

"...I-I'm calm now. So please, let go."

How long had they stayed like that? Hina murmured it, barely above a whisper.

"Your shrine maiden robes will get dirty..."

"It's fine. I'll wash them."

"I-I'm not okayyy..."

From the voice alone, it wasn't hard to picture the face crying behind that clown mask. And judging by the reaction, the claim that she wasn't okay did not seem to be a lie. At this rate, just when she had finally been settled, she was liable to drown in guilt, and so only then did Akane let her go.

"Oh... So Tamama-mama really is the canonical interpretation, then."

"If you're going to talk bullshit, just go home."

"No. Thanks to you, this has been a great help. ...Natsugahara-san, would it be all right if I went on with my questions?"

"Yeees... I think I'm a little all right now..."

At Seoyeon's words, Hina gave a small nod.

"So, Rena-nee—"

Natsugahara Hina slowly began.