Surprise Worship

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Viewer count: 50.

Pretty high for a stream that had just started.

Of course, every single one of them was fake.

Every TV in the training center had been tuned to this broadcast, so it was only natural.

Still, if even one real person is watching…

Someone always follows the first one in. Making something out of nothing is harder than turning one into ten. That was the difference seed money made. Might as well put the Yuseong Group’s second daughter’s power to use somehow, right?

“We’ll start with the debut track.”

I started the audio. The accompaniment for Nature’s debut song, Nature, began to play softly through the practice room.

When I open my eyes in the morning, I think of you.

Good entry.

First was Yeonhwa. A quiet, gentle opening.

Looking at her rough exterior, you’d expect her to be into heavy metal or at least rock, but she claimed she had no real preferences. Said she’d spent so much time in dungeons she was basically a musical blank slate. Still, it fit her surprisingly well.

When I look out the window, I think of you.

Nice catch.

Next was Harin. That distinctive, lively voice of hers.

Even if she herself was on the verge of keeling over at any moment, a Thunder Spirit Contractor of her caliber was allowed a little pretense. It made her a terrible Spirit Contractor, but social skills ran inversely to Spirit Contractor talent.

By that metric, just how much of a social disaster was I?

While I was spacing out for a second—

And just like that, another day drifts by…

Sujin’s the same as ever.

Sujin’s voice came through the speakers. But on stage?

“…………”

Learning lip-sync this early? What are you trying to pull?

I put a little force into my gaze. She flinched hard and hurriedly opened her mouth to sing.

“I thiiink—hic!”

“…………”

“……Ugh…!”

“『Seiren』.”

I smiled brightly and cut the audio.

Yeah. I understood. So I’d forgive her.

“What kind of girl is this?”

But would this friend of mine be as forgiving?

“Kyaaaaaah?!! I’m sorry! I was wrong! I’ll do it properly! Ah—kyaaah?! There’s a Tamagotchi in my pocket!”

“You’re practicing for the stage and you’ve got a Tamagotchi…”

Where do I even start?

Still, her talent as a Spirit Contractor was easily the highest among the three. And ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠what did that mean? As I’d said before—Spirit Contractor talent was inversely proportional to social skills.

In other words, she lived entirely according to her own whims.

Splash-splash-splash-splash!

“Kyauuuuk?! Da-Dasu! Dasuuuu!!”

In a panic, Sujin called her spirit. But Sujin, it seemed her lessons still hadn’t stuck.

“Dasu?!”

Sujin was getting steadily soaked, yet Samdasu refused to move. The reason was simple.

“Dasu!!”

Would a private dare raise their head in front of a sergeant? Maybe if they were in different units, but same unit? Everything that needed saying had already been said. If lives were on the line it might be different, but this was just discipline. Samdasu had no reason to step in first.

And what did that mean?

“Sujin?”

“…Can’t we call it a draw?”

“Mm. No.”

A draw?

“You lose.”

“──Kyaaaaaaaaah!!!”

Splash-splash-splash-splash!

Water drenched Sujin’s entire body. In an instant she was soaked through. Unable to withstand the pressure, she toppled backward with a thud.

“I-Instructor!”

“Hm? What’s up?”

Ayeong urgently called out to me.

“Um… Twitch is sending a warning message…”

“A warning?”

“They’re saying broadcasting explicit scenes is a problem…”

“Where the hell is there an explicit sce—… okay, there is one.”

“Hoeh… hueh?”

Sujin, dazed and waterlogged.

I’d seen it enough times that it barely registered, but ordinary people?

Probably…

Since this was a practice room, Sujin was wearing a thin cotton T-shirt. Not just any cotton T-shirt—an oversized one, specifically because of her chest. The fabric clinging to her and revealing everything underneath was one problem. The black bra and the cleavage peeking above it was another. On top of that, when she fell backward, her soft, damp navel and the outline of her tight dolphin shorts came into view.

And most of all, the water droplets trailing down between her thighs. We had a name for this sort of thing.

“A living, breathing porn?”

“Instructor. Everyone’s saying ‘fr lol’!”

The important part was that we couldn’t continue like this.

Next time, should I call Ran instead of Seiren?

Wind left cuts, and Hecate was a bit much to pull out here. Circling back, the solution was electric shock instead of waterboarding—since the latter was “too explicit.” The problem was that the electric version would probably get us banned too, but I’d worry about that when the time came.

“『Shinpung』, and Yeonhwa.”

“Huh? Why’re you calling me?”

“Light a flame for me.”

“???”

She looked puzzled but obediently summoned a flame through her spirit. I turned to Shinpung, who was perched on my shoulder pecking energetically at my hair.

“Can you dry her clothes with the heat?”

“…Alright.”

I’d been hanging out with Seiren and Ran so much lately that I’d forgotten.

“Kamikaze.”

I raised one hand toward Sujin and called out.

“Cloak yourself in the heat of crimson flame and unleash your power!”

“Wha—?!”

Whooooosh!

The flame in Yeonhwa’s hand roared higher. Her face showed clear panic at the sudden surge in output—until she realized it was my doing and quietly handed over control.

Heat problem solved. Part of me wanted to leave her in the cold wind, but idols were still idols.

“Stay still.”

Whoooooosh—

Dry, heat-laden wind wrapped around Sujin’s entire body.

“Hueeeeeeh…”

Her clothes fluttered. Just enough not to fully expose anything. I carefully limited the output to above the navel, drying her clothes and hair completely.

“Instructor! We got another warning!”

“Maybe we should stream the next one on Paprika…”

We’d only just started. What now?

In the end we took three warnings in a row and got hit with a one-day suspension. But seeing the viewer count climb to a thousand on the very first stream made me appreciate just how formidable Sujin’s chest really was…

Twitch. And YouTube.

A few videos had started gaining attention lately.

One of them was this.

The content itself was nothing special.

Newly debuted idols practicing on stage. Then one screw-loose idol lip-synced straight through, so the instructor punished her…

Apparently the stream got suspended right after.

After a day of rest, the stream went back up the next day.

Reason: same explicitness as before.

Apparently making cat-like mewling sounds under a “uterus-pounding” touch got flagged as female corruption moans.

The reupload supposedly went up on Nature’s official YouTube account or something.

After three days off the air, Nature finally returned.

Getting banned this many times meant something was seriously wrong. The man called Instructor begged and pleaded until the practice stage finally came to its first proper end.

And then—

Banned again.

Reason: explicitness controversy.

“…Wow.”

What was there even to say at this point?

“How did all three of them get hit with explicitness controversies…”

“Hyewon, look at this. They’re calling them living, breathing porn idols.”

The comments were each more legendary than the last.

Before, watching them used to give me a headache. Now it barely registered.

“Real deal, huh.”

Bone-deep authentic.

Still, the other two had their own distinct characters, so the public had clearly locked them in as well. Stage performances were still getting interrupted, but awareness itself had risen quite a bit.

“Even so, getting banned this hard means…”

“…How far is that bastard planning to interfere?”

Hyewon dropped the polite language and just swore outright.

“Well, they’ll probably handle themselves somehow.”

“…That’s true.”

I looked down at my phone.

“Hyewon. You were right.”

“No. It’s all thanks to you, Oppa.”

“No. I was the one who brought up solo streams, but—”

There was a saying: if you want to hide a tree, hide it in a forest.

“You’re the one who brought up VTubers.”

Even the mighty Yuseong Group had never dreamed anyone would stream while hiding behind a 2D illustration.