It's Incest, It's Incest! 【Party Playtime】 #1 Touring the Toy Factory with Lora
The stream title flashed across the screen in bold letters: It's Incest, It's Incest! 【Party Playtime】 #1 Touring the Toy Factory with Lora 【Ayanokouji Sora/EYEAI】.
EYEAI third-generation VTuber Tanabe Ainatsu spoke in a heavily slurred, drunken voice.
“...They’re in the middle of a stream. Show some restraint.”
Rinko answered with a sigh.
Tanabe Ainatsu. She was famous in EYEAI as a legendary drinker. Almost every time she went live, she had a drink in hand. Some viewers wondered if she drank alcohol instead of water. It was clearly an unhealthy habit, yet in the three years she had been a VTuber, Ainatsu had never once taken a break from drinking. In fact, she had caught the eye of a beer company and landed a sponsorship deal. Just as the word “surrender” did not exist in Napoleon’s dictionary, the word “sobriety” most certainly did not exist in Ainatsu’s.
Still, starting a daytime drinking stream on Chuseok felt a bit much.
【Drunk Stream】 It's Chuseok but I have nowhere to go so I guess I'll just drink~~~~ 【Tanabe Ainatsu/EYEAI】
While many EYEAI VTubers had gone home for the holiday, Ainatsu turned on her stream. She was the very model of a professional. There were always viewers who wanted to relax and watch VTuber streams on public holidays, so her broadcast wasn’t without an audience.
...But did it really have to be a daytime drinking stream?
It had been roughly twenty minutes since the thoroughly intoxicated Ainatsu had called Rinko on Discord. Rinko had been half-forcibly keeping the drunk company ever since.
“Besides, isn’t the collab restriction for the new kids still in place?”
“Still, don’t call them...”
Rinko said, growing uneasy. Then Ainatsu replied,
Party Playtime. A horror game about surviving inside an abandoned toy factory. Its unique gimmicks using a rocket hand created a fresh feel, and because the puzzle sections and horror sections were clearly divided, it was recommended for beginners. (With a few exceptions) the pursuing enemies weren’t designed to be particularly terrifying, so accessibility was solid too.
And Sora had cleared Chapter 1 in roughly forty minutes.
“...Chapter 1 is really short.”
Sora sounded dumbfounded.
“It is, isn’t it.”
I nodded.
Chapter 1 was basically a tutorial. The volume was short and the horror segments were kept brief. It was praised for being short but intense, yet once you removed the jump scares it wasn’t that difficult. At the end of the day, it was mostly about memorizing the path.
If it had been Anna, it probably would have taken much longer.
Anna was quite the scaredy-cat, after all. By comparison, Sora wasn’t that easily frightened. She still jumped at the scares, but thanks to the experience she had built up playing Darkness Deception, she adapted quickly.
“It ended too early. Should we keep going straight into Chapter 2?”
Sora glanced at me. Since she was streaming from my house rather than her own, it seemed she wanted to follow my opinion.
Hmm. Chapter 1 alone did feel a little light, so doing something more made sense. Continuing to Chapter 2 as Sora suggested was fine. Pushing all the way to Chapter 3 wouldn’t be bad either. Or we could switch to a different game together.
-Ding-ding-ding.
While I was pondering, a Discord call suddenly rang out.
“Oh? It’s a call from senior Ainatsu?”
Sora turned the monitor toward me.
“It looks like she contacted us while we were streaming.”
A few people in the viewer chat had mentioned that Ainatsu was doing a daytime drinking stream. When I opened the iTube app on my phone, sure enough, she really was broadcasting while drinking in broad daylight.
“What should we do? Pick up?”
“What a foolish question. We cannot possibly ignore our senior’s call, now can we?”
“That’s true.... You actually know how to say normal things sometimes.”
What exactly did she think I was? Anyway, Sora accepted Ainatsu’s call request.
...The smell of alcohol practically wafted through the voice chat.
“Ah, hello, senior Ainatsu.”
“I’m streaming with Lora right now. So your voice is also being heard by the viewers.”
“You were watching us?”
Ainatsu began speaking with an utterly uncooperative tongue.
“......”
Sora glanced my way. Her eyes clearly asked, What do we do about this?
With no other choice, I pulled the microphone closer.
“Hello, senior Ainatsu. I am Oh Lora, who recently joined as part of the sixth generation.”
“It is a tremendous honor to be able to become senior Ainatsu’s mother. In that case, since Ainatsu is now my daughter, I may speak casually, yes?”
“Hmm.”
She was a formidable opponent. Stronger than any adversary I had encountered so far. She truly deserved to be called a senior.
“So, what exactly did you call for?”
“I see. However, if Ainatsu were to enter, would I not become heavily pregnant? We must give birth quickly.”
“But if Ainatsu is not born, we cannot receive the childbirth allowance. That is what true filial piety is, you know.”
While I was conversing with Ainatsu, a new voice cut in.
“Oh my, senior Rinko.”
“Not at all. I am having quite a bit of fun.”
Rinko sounded bewildered.
...She must be saying that out of politeness.
There couldn’t be much difference between a new hire calling her boss “Mom” and this. From Lora and Sora’s perspective, it must have been incredibly awkward. The fact that they still handled it gracefully was impressive.
...Or was it graceful? The talk about being heavily pregnant and childbirth allowances had been rather strong wording. Still, the fact that they didn’t openly say they were uncomfortable in front of their seniors was already admirable.
There had been controversy when she debuted, yet she overcame it all. Her mentality had to be incredibly strong. Unlike me.
Mental fortitude. The very thing Kisaki Rinko lacked seemed to reside within Oh Lora.
“It’s Chuseok. Aren’t you going anywhere?”
I’m sorry for interrupting your stream. Stop dealing with this drunkard and go back to what you were doing. As a senior, that was what she should have said. Yet Rinko unconsciously kept Lora on the line. She wanted to talk a little more. She wanted to check something. She wondered if she could escape her own rut.
“I see. ...The Fantasy League announcement was made recently. Did you see it?”
She couldn’t help but ask.
“What do you think? Are you planning to participate?”
Lora’s voice was perfectly calm. It seemed she had no particular thoughts on the matter. She lacked any burning desire to compete. There was no visible ambition as a VTuber. Perhaps she had been quite successful in real life as well.
Now that I think about it, Rion was the one who brought Lora in.
Lora hadn’t become a VTuber because she wanted to. She had joined the company at Rion’s recommendation. In that case, VTubing might be closer to a hobby for her. Since she approached it with a light heart, she probably had no grand goals she absolutely had to achieve.
“As you probably already know, I participated in the league last year. And I lost horribly to a pro gamer named MadMask.”
Rinko spoke a little haphazardly while trying to figure out what Lora truly desired. Looking at the path Lora had taken so far, the pure joy she took in games, Rinko guessed that defeating someone in a game might be Lora’s true desire.
“MadMask is a Korean pro gamer active in China. There’s a Chinese team called SVG that’s quite strong. MadMask belongs to them.”
“MadMask is especially famous for playing the Trickster class. I could never beat him.”
Last year Rinko had been assigned the role of keeping MadMask in check. The strategy was for Rinko to stall him while the rest of her team defeated the other opponents, but she had failed to fulfill her part. It was a painful memory. Still, when she spoke it out loud in a cheerful voice, it almost felt like a fond recollection.
“If you enter the tournament, you’ll get to fight pro gamers. Are you not interested, Lora?”
Ainatsu spoke in a drawn-out tone.
“...No, that’s not—”
“......”
She either spoke the truth or complete nonsense. Rinko wished she would pick one. Although she had grown slightly irritated after being scolded by a drunk junior who kept calling her own peer “Mom.”
“...Did I come across as a boomer?”
“Then that’s a relief...”
Rinko let out a small sigh, then deliberately changed the subject to Sora. In between, the drunk Ainatsu continued to spout nonsense. After roughly twenty minutes of conversation, she sent Lora and Sora back to their stream.
Ainatsu ended her broadcast as well. A lonely silence settled over the room. Rinko leaned back in her chair.
“I don’t know. ...I should just get overthrown already.”
Wouldn’t that make things a little easier? It wouldn’t be long now. She just had to endure until then.
