I Will Make Your Name Great (6)
Well. That was fair enough. Ninomae read the message Han Seoyeon had sent and let a soft little laugh slip out.
To go back to the day she and Han Seoyeon had gone to the department store: in the end, the two of them decided to buy this enormous bed.
They could get it cheap through a connection of Hyakurenno Yuri's—someone who ranked about as high as the manager of the department store's manager... That, of course, was not the reason. To be honest, Ninomae had meant to refuse. Set against the original price, the discount was practically giving the thing away, and accepting it was a burden on the one receiving it. However vast a fortune Yuri might possess, she had no wish to lean too heavily on another person's kindness.
"Um... Lady Yuri says it's a housewarming gift."
"Is that so? ...Ninomae-san, I think we ought to go with this one."
Han Seoyeon, however, seemed to see the matter a little differently. Having heard the whole story from the clerk, she had turned toward Ninomae and said precisely that.
"But... it's still far too expensive to accept as a housewarming gift, isn't it?"
"This may actually be the better course. We need to exhaust the pretext of a housewarming gift here and now."
Exhausting the pretext of a housewarming gift. It was a turn of phrase with not the slightest apparent connection to housewarmings or to gifts, and yet that preposterous combination had come tumbling straight out of Han Seoyeon's mouth.
"If we refuse this offer now and grant Hyakurenno Yuri-san unlimited license to give housewarming gifts, what do you suppose will happen?"
"Ah."
The moment the rest of it reached her, though, Ninomae was persuaded.
Yuri was not the sort of person who sprayed money around with no sense of its worth. She was, conversely, the sort who never hesitated in the slightest once a thing was something she wanted to do. Hadn't she, not long ago, booked out an entire inn for three nights—one whose rate would have strained an ordinary person for even a single stay—for no better reason than that sharing a room looked like fun?
And knowing Yuri's temperament, a gift for a precious colleague clearly belonged to the category of things that must be done without withholding a fraction. There was no telling exactly what she would do, but the odds of it producing a result that made Ninomae go pale were considerable.
Under the circumstances, exhausting the opportunity really was the right phrase, and the right choice.
The result of that choice was the photo Seoyeon had just sent.
And then Ninomae shifted her gaze to another screen, from her smartphone to the monitor of her PC.
An Etube livestream was playing there. A VTuber broadcast, of course—and one belonging to a senior from the same agency.
Kitayama Maya. A Gen 1 senior, and today was her birthday.
An illustrator by trade, she was on stream in the middle of personally producing the commemorative art for her own birthday celebration.
Holding a totsumachi on one's birthday—a broadcast spent waiting for calls to come in—was something of a tradition at Anathema Production. How one filled the rest of the time, however, was left entirely to the VTuber herself. A drawing stream was Maya's own answer to that question.
On one side of the screen sat a character with pink hair. The face was a gentle one, well matched to an exceedingly mild voice, and the smiling, narrow-eyed model even gave off, at a glance, something like a benevolent maternal warmth that seemed ready to accept anything at all. From the forehead, though, two long horns grew out in parallel. Less the horns of a beast than a form still sheathed in skin, they called any number of oni characters to mind. Considering that her actual roleplay was that of an oni who had survived into the modern day, it was an obvious image.
Ninomae—Mary Tepes—watched the broadcast, taking the measure of the moment to step in.
A totsumachi, waiting without arrangement for calls to arrive from whoever felt like placing them. Ordinarily it was also a stage on which one's everyday conduct and accumulated karma were put on display... but today's birthday stream, though it bore the name of totsumachi, was closer to an event in which everyone took a turn calling in, left a few words of blessing, and went on their way. In short, barring something unusual, full attendance was the default. Skip without a reason, and the whole picture started to look strange.
Maya, Gen 1's designated specialist in dirty jokes, had to be considered at a disadvantage when it came to totsumachi. Gen-mates who dropped in half out of fondness were one thing, but calls from her Gen 2 juniors were rare, with a single exception. Today, however, was different.
"Happy birthday, Maya."
"Well... happy birthday, nya."
The opening, as expected, belonged to her Gen 1 colleagues. Rokumondera Aki and Yugure Tama called in one after the other.
"Happy birthday, Maya-senpai. I'm looking forward to that Tsubasa-chan doujinshi, just so you know."
Next came Serena Razania of Gen 2. As her generation's own dirty-joke specialist, she generally got along well with Maya—and she was, of course, the exception among the Gen 2 talents, the one who appeared often on Maya's streams even on ordinary days. She put on her usual considerable chemistry with Maya, or rather a festival of dangerous remarks testing the very limits of Etube's censorship, and then made her exit.
So the next one would be Rin, the last of the Gen 1 seniors... That was what Mary had been thinking, but time passed and no call came from Tachibana Rin.
"Joyeux anniversaire, Maya-senpai."
The fourth spot went to Charlotte Lupus, the werewolf. She, too, had surely been waiting for Tachibana Rin, but having judged that the other woman would not be coming just yet, she had gone ahead and called first.
Unless Rin was actively hoping to get roasted, there was no chance she would skip the stream entirely. She had most likely claimed the final turn for herself, so she could bring the occasion to a graceful close.
Charlotte departed, and for a while Maya carried the drawing stream on alone. Mary, who had been watching for an opening, grew certain that now was exactly the right moment, and pressed the button to connect the call.
The ringtone peculiar to the Pasta app sounded for a time, and after a little while Maya picked up.
"Hello~"
"Maya-senpai, happy birthday."
"Oh my, Mary-chan? Thank you~"
Mary smiled at Maya, who answered with a bright, easy laugh. Only her voice was going through on this end, of course, so there was no way the smile could be seen.
"What are you drawing right now?"
Maya's hands were on the quick side. Because of that, the birthday illustration she had originally been drawing was already finished in the time it had taken the first four callers to ring in. She was on a new picture now, and it was still at the sketch stage—from the curves of the bodies, one could just barely tell that the subjects were two women, and nothing more.
"Tama-chan and Aki-chan. They were the first ones to come, so I thought I'd draw them a picture."
"Wow. I'm a little jealous of that."
Even now, when she had made something of a name for herself as a VTuber and had no shortage of illustrations drawn of her, every single piece of fanart still felt precious. Gratitude toward her viewers, the satisfaction of what she had achieved as a VTuber... the reasons she was moved were surely a tangle of things, but the greatest of them, in the end, was that she was deeply attached to the character of Mary herself. And when the illustrator was someone as famous as Maya—strictly speaking, as famous as her true self, Sakuragi Oka—feeling a stab of envy was hardly strange.
"Ufufu, is that so? I'm glad. I just happen to have something I drew for you, Mary-chan."
"Huh? Really?"
"Mm. You could call it a present for Mary-chan~"
"Ehehe... I'm the one who's supposed to be giving the birthday present, and instead I've gone and received something precious."
Sorry as she felt, she ought to send something later, once the stream was over. Even as she thought it, there was a curious pleasure coloring Mary's voice.
"If it's a present, I already received one, you know? It's a piece I made from the inspiration you gave me, Mary-chan."
"Because of me?"
"So this is less a present and more of a thank-you, maybe? Anyway, I'll send it right now~ It's a big file, so it'll take a moment."
But that smile soon locked stiff. It was an unease called up by instinct—a bad feeling, in the most literal sense. Even she did not quite know the reason. All at once, she simply felt that something was ominous.
If the file was large, it was probably a comic. A comic in which Mary appeared. For the moment, that was the only information she had. However much Maya loved the erotic, and however famous she was for work of that kind, it was too early to jump to a conclusion on so little. It would be rude to the other woman, if anything.
"Um... when you say that 'inspiration'...?"
And yet there is a saying.
"Mary-chan, I hear you and Sister decided to move in together~?"
What people call a bad feeling is not mere mood. It is the sensation produced when the great store of data accumulated over a life predicts an unhappy future, and offers up its answer.
In that instant, a file was uploaded to the Pasta call. Several pages bundled together—sure enough, just as expected, it seemed to be a comic. A colored cover showed in the preview.
The cover, though. How to put it. Even seen only as a tiny image, it was rather sticky, and rather generously supplied with skin.
A transparent fluid whose viscosity seemed to come through even though it was nothing but a drawing. Drenched in it, a half-bare Mary and Sister tumbled together across a bed.
"——!!!"
A brief silence. Then Mary let out a howl that never managed to become words, and hung up. From Maya's stream, still running, her voice came drifting out.
"Oh my... was that too intense for you, Mary-chan?"
"You want me to show it? Nope~ It's R-18, so Etube would be all, 'Hey, you!' The price? I'm not selling it~ It's a not-for-sale piece, just for Mary-chan."
Mary closed the browser window where the stream played on as well, and covered her burning face with her hands.
What on earth is this person sending me?!
So she grumbled, and moved at last to shut down the voice-chat program... only to stop, partway through the motion.
"......"
A sidelong glance.
......But what is it actually about, though.
Curiosity. It is said to be the emotion that has killed more human beings than any other.
Put another way, however, it is an emotion capable of outstripping even the survival instinct that forms the foundation of living things.
"S-since she went to the trouble of drawing it, deleting it without even looking would be rude, wouldn't it...?"
There was no one else there. Who was she making excuses to, going so far as to say them out loud?
Just a rough skim. Yes. Only that much!
She herself, at least, appeared to have been thoroughly convinced. Mary swallowed for no particular reason, and clicked the file whose transfer had finished.
And then—.
"W-wah... this is..."
"Nnh, it really is that sort of thing... It wasn't only the cover."
"Th-this is far too indecent, no matter how you look at it... isn't it?"
"Aah, she did say it wasn't for sale, so there isn't even any need to mosaic it... gulp."
"Th-the drawing is good, though. As expected."
"......"
"No—what am I even thinking... You can't, Ninomae Hitomi!"
"......"
"..."
"...J-just a little, then?"
"Yes. Right. Just a peek is fine. Surely."
"......"
"......Hn."