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Games really are a joyful culture. There were the games I played as a kid out in front of the corner stationery shop, the games I carried through arcades and PC bangs, and the games I kept playing through sleepless nights long after I was grown. Somewhere along the way, they had carved a deep mark across the whole of my life.

Which is why I try not to discriminate when it comes to games. Just because I play Legend of League and someone else is on Storm of Spacetime, I don't look down on them, and I don't sneer about why they'd waste their time on trash like that. Whatever game a person plays, that's their freedom, isn't it? In that spirit, I meant to sink all the way into whatever title came my way and run the kind of stream a sponsor would watch with complete satisfaction.

"But this is a little... this is not okay!"

Viewers who had come in off the stream title were already laughing, already having a wonderful time.

Adopting a daughter. Right—a game thick with raising-sim elements. Hadn't everyone tried one at least once as a kid? The legendary masterpiece Princess Maker. This was that sort of game. Except she was human... and also not.

Early this year it had been a once-in-a-generation mega-hit in Japan, and two weeks ago it had landed at home: the so-called Horse Girls raising game. Around March a domestic publisher had signed the publishing deal, and that alone had been news. That publisher was the same company I'd signed a one-off sponsored-stream contract with.

Before going live I'd studied up on the game. You have to, if you're going to give viewers the basics and the quirks, and run the kind of ad stream that leaves a sponsor glowing. But this one was hard on me. Honestly, not a little hard. A lot hard.

"I didn't have time, so I only got through episode three of season one."

"I'll get started. Mods, if anyone spoils the game or disrupts chat, timeout or ban them as you see fit."

I'm a streamer. The start of it had been an accident, but that isn't true anymore. A great many viewers had gathered to watch me, and I wanted to give them a good time. I didn't want them walking away feeling they'd wasted it. So no matter how hard this otaku game curled my toes, I was going to give it everything I had.

"All right—here we go!"

The game booted, and bright, buoyant music spilled out. The setting was a stadium carpeted in green turf, and a crowd of girls was running flat out. And yet... and yet... pointed ears stood up from their heads, and below the waist, tails.

The girls' fight for position was every bit as fierce as the argument in chat. Then the screen cut without warning. A huge concert stage rose, and the same girls who had been racing a moment ago were on it, singing and dancing.

"Oh, I think I can explain that part. In the game it's called Winning Live—the first-, second-, and third-place finishers headline a performance. Real horse racing has something similar. The winning horse does a ceremony after the race called a winning run, and they say the game adapted that."

"Sorry, but I'm a mega-normie. Please stop herding me over there."

"Ah..."

Is this what they mean by a dilemma with no good way out? In the end, I chose money over conscience.

"Then I'll actually start the game."

I finished the latest patch and went straight in. The opening backdrop was Tracen Academy, the training institute built to raise the greatest horse girl of all. You become a trainer, raise the horse girl you choose, enter her in races, and aim, at the end, to win the URA Finals. Each turn you can train, go out, rest, and so on, and the six support cards you set before a run open up all kinds of growth paths and raising events.

An awkward thing to answer. But I'm a professional. Time to have some professional pride. I clenched my teeth and muttered it small.

"In real-world terms, it's like br... breeding, the way you improve a bloodline into something better. In the game, you inherit another horse's superior factors."

I ignored the irritating little villains and moved to the shop to pull support cards. From what I'd read ahead of time, they were providing a ticket that lets you pick a three-star racehorse of your choice. That was why spending your starter currency on support-card gacha was the law of the land. I'd also confirmed, beyond any doubt, that you need two support cards treated as tier one before you can take off—the point where the game actually begins. Not that any of it matters much to the whales.

"Since support cards are so important, I'll pull those first."

My account already held plenty of currency the company had loaded in. In cash, it was nearly four hundred dollars' worth of spending. Add what you get just for starting, and my heart felt nicely fortified.

"I think I saw that Neighbor Noona got that nickname because of the outfit. But Super Creek..."

I didn't know the character, so I searched her. A character image with a truly impressive chest appeared on the screen.

"..."

I ignored the viewers and kept searching until I turned up a Horse Girls support-card tier list.

"Hmm. Neighbor Noona, Super Creek, and Kitasan Black are in a league of their own. After that, maybe Tokai Teio and Vodka."

"All right, I'll pull. Apparently when a card of the highest grade, SSR, shows up, there's a rainbow effect."

Jewels are the currency you spend to pull in Horse Girls. Each pull costs 1,500 jewels, and I had about 44,000, enough for twenty-nine tries.

"Hoo—here goes!"

I confirmed that one SR was guaranteed, and pressed the button. The screen changed. A plain desk. A stack of books sat neatly arranged in the upper right, and in the center lay a large black volume that anyone could tell was the heart of the thing. Ten bookmarks jutted from the top of that book—the predicted grades of the support cards, shown in advance. Nine white, one gold. White was R, the lowest grade. Gold was SR, the middle. The highest grade, SSR, was rainbow, and in the current spread you could scrub your eyes raw and never find one.

"They say the grade can change partway through. Nobody relax. Stay with me."

I turned the pages of the cards stamped R, one at a time.

"Even at R, the illustrations are lovely. The characters are cute, and the outfits and backgrounds are seriously high quality."

"Okay. This is the moment I check my first SR. Let's look."

The gold bookmark sat in the fourth slot. But the instant I tried to go from the third page to the fourth, the page stopped dead. The view zoomed in on the bookmark, and the glittering gold flared through a lavish effect and shone rainbow.

"Huh? Uh—uhh?"

Whatever the viewers were howling, the page that had turned rainbow blazed in splendor and soon showed what it really was.

The viewers jeered, baring their teeth in the rage of relative deprivation. Watching that wildfire of reactions, I thought it over.

Is this what they call bait?

This... might be more fun than I'd thought.