Preparing For The Meet-and-Greet

I was still carrying around that vague, unsettled feeling, but by the time first period ended, I had completely forgotten about it… ahem, I had managed to switch gears.

The rest of that day’s classes had been one long battle against sleepiness.

The reason was that Yuzu-neesan had pulled that souvenir-pressure tactic on me yesterday, and I’d ended up with a bit of an upset stomach—or rather, heartburn—during the night, so I hadn’t slept very deeply.

I could have just healed myself with magic right away, but I’d been so sleepy that even moving felt like a chore, and apparently trying to laze around and sleep without using magic had only resulted in shallow sleep.

Incidentally, I did use magic this morning.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

Maybe I should develop a spell that gets rid of drowsiness….

“Rinne, we’re going shopping. Wanna come?”

“Sorry, I’ve got a bunch of things to do today, so I can’t. Invite me again another time, though.”

“Mm, gotcha. Tomo finally decided what she’s making for that(・・), so we figured we’d go shopping.”

“Oh, I see.”

Apparently, Yuika and Tomo had Valentine’s Day preparations to make.

It was February ninth, after all, so there were only five days left.

“Oh, right. What about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

Tomorrow was Saturday, and I didn’t have any plans.

If I had to name something, I’d been thinking it might finally be time to do a drawing-game stream.

But I had my meet-and-greet with Ephir-san and the others today, and we’d already talked about doing at least one collab, so I’d preferably like to keep my schedule open.

“Hmm, is it okay if I message you tonight? I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be free.”

“Ooh, someone’s busy. Sure, sure, that’s fine.”

“Thanks. I’ll message you tonight, then.”

“Gotcha. See ya.”

We exchanged a few brief words, and just as I was about to head home, I felt a sticky, lingering gaze on me.

Tojo, was it?

He had been staring at me in this strangely persistent way, and then his gaze shifted toward Tomo and Yuika, who were standing some distance away from me.

…Hmm. Even so, he didn’t seem like he was going to come over and talk to us.

Ever since that incident with Tomo the other day, he hadn’t approached me either, but that look made it seem like he might be plotting something.

Thinking that maybe I should stay a little more alert just in case, I headed home.

I arrived back from school.

It was already almost four in the afternoon.

Today’s meet-and-greet was scheduled to begin at five, which apparently counted as morning in streamer time—since so many of them had their days and nights reversed—but I still had a little time to spare.

According to Yuzu-neesan, six in the evening was around when streams started getting active.

So ideally, she wanted to spend that time checking other streams, and when you also factored in making sure the streamers were actually awake while choosing a time convenient for me, this apparently worked best.

I’d occasionally heard streamers talk about having their days and nights reversed, but I’d always imagined that meant they went to sleep around sunrise and woke up sometime in the early afternoon.

Apparently some of them really did sleep straight through until evening.

Anyway, I tended to get a little hungry around this time, so for now I prepared one of the matcha cream puffs from the refrigerator and a cup of hot coffee.

Naturally, I added milk and sugar. It wasn’t that I couldn’t drink black coffee, but I basically reserved it for when I was sleepy. It was bitter.

I changed out of my uniform into some casual clothes and booted up my computer.

When I checked 『Connect』, which launched automatically on startup, I found a message from Yuzu-neesan with various notes, like saying it was fine to introduce myself normally during today’s meet-and-greet.

Ahh, right.

It wasn’t like they normally spoke while constantly putting on a character persona.

In my case, you could say both sides of me were genuine, so technically either way would have been fine, but I used my current-world manner of speaking as the baseline because the other one would obviously stand out too much here.

Mmm, this matcha cream puff was good.

Oh, another chat message from Yuzu-neesan.

『Can you send me a message once you’re home from school and settled in? I’ll make a server and have you join it, and there are a few things I want you to do, so I’d like us connected before the scheduled time.』

Oh, right.

Come to think of it, 『Connect』 worked by creating groups—or rather, servers—so that only the members who joined could see and talk in them.

We’d probably be discussing the tournament too, so making a dedicated room definitely made sense.

『I’m home. I’ve already changed and gotten everything ready so I can voice chat, and now I’m at the “matcha cream puff is delicious” stage.』

『Welcome home. Those have a little saltiness to them, don’t they? They’re really good.』

…Saltiness?

I didn’t taste anything like that in this matcha cream puff….

…Ah.

『…Yuzu-neesan, didn’t it only taste like that because you were eating one while you were tearing up? There’s no salty taste at all, you know?』

Come to think of it, Yuzu-neesan had eaten that matcha cream puff right when she was about to enter full-on crying mode.

『…Maybe. Anyway, I’ll call you around half past, so just wait a little.』

『Okaaay.』

Yuzu-neesan was probably remembering it right now and turning bright red.

Incidentally, Mom had apparently liked that picture of Yuzu-neesan tearily munching on a cream puff so much that she favorited it, then split her phone wallpaper between that and a picture of me.

Her wallpapers had always been pictures of me, or pictures of me and Yuzu-neesan, or things along those lines, so I’d figured she’d do something like that.

These days, Yuzu-neesan had this sharp, highly capable career-woman vibe, but apparently when she was younger, she’d been so serious and earnest about everything that whenever people relied on her, she couldn’t bring herself to refuse, would overload herself, and end up teary-eyed. Mom also used to drag her around everywhere until she got teary-eyed, so apparently getting watery eyes had practically been her default state.

Mom said that expression was cute and sometimes made her want to bully Yuzu-neesan a little.

Was Mom an ogre?

So the mother of the former Demon Lord that was me was actually an ogre. Somehow, that almost made too much sense.

Anyway, Mom had gone out of her way to call me yesterday and had told me all that along with her thoughts on the photo.

I wondered how Yuzu-neesan would react if I told her….

But Mom and I had already agreed that we’d reveal it while we were all together after she got back, and I’d enthusiastically gone along with the idea, so I couldn’t say anything yet.

After taking a break for cream-puff-munching time, I sipped my coffee, casually adjusted a few computer settings, and played some recent clipped videos of Ephir-san and the others. Right on schedule, 『Connect』 played its sound effect to notify me of a call from Yuzu-neesan.

…The default ringtone on this app sounded kind of ominous.

“Hellooo.”

《Hello, Rinne. Can you hear me?》

“Yeah, perfectly. Can you hear me too?”

《No problems here. Your microphone settings look good too, and your camera has a perfect view of you.》

“Oh, my camera’s still on. Should I turn it off?”

《Yes. When we’re having internal agency meetings, we sometimes leave cameras on so we can see each other’s faces and check how everyone looks, but you’re technically an outsider, so for the sake of everyone’s privacy, leaving the camera off is fine.》

“Huh, so that’s how it works. Got it.”

If they were handling management too, then yeah, I supposed there were situations where seeing someone’s face mattered.

They could probably tell immediately if someone had just rolled out of bed….

《All right, then. I’ve already made the server, so I’ll send you the invitation first.》

“Mm, got it. Oh, there it is. I just join this, right?”

《Yes. Can you see a room called 『First Meet-and-Greet』 under the VC rooms? Once we hang up, can you enter that one? I’ll send invitations to Effie and the others.》

“Okaaay.”

And just like that, preparations for my meet-and-greet steadily moved forward.