[Stream] Working & Chatting

Even after Kazami-san left, Reine’s attentive care—which had shocked Mom and Kazami-san and shown them what a true maid was like—continued to surprise Mom again and again, while the sheer thoroughness with which she was perfectly looked after even left her bewildered.

Mom had also been exhausted from her long location shoot, so by evening she ate a light snack in place of dinner and promptly fell asleep.

Which meant I had nothing to do.

Hmm, I’d been planning to work on Reine’s model, but that project was comfortably ahead of schedule right now, so there was no need to rush.

So even though I hadn’t originally planned to stream today, I decided on the spur of the moment to do a work stream while making Reine’s model.

“I am the one and only Queen of the Demon Realm, Demon Lord Verchera Merisis. Though this is an impromptu stream, you have done well to gather, my subjects.”

“Indeed. Today I shall chat while working on Reine’s model. Naturally, I cannot show you this part of the process yet. So from your perspective, this will essentially be a chatting stream. I intend to pick questions from the comments and answer them as I go.”

“Would I even stream in the first place if it were something that required me to work in complete silence?”

If the process itself was entertaining to watch, maybe people would tune in, but if you asked whether that sort of thing was really suited to streaming, then yeah, probably not.

Now, as for why I’d decided to stream this time even though I wasn’t doing anything like drawing directly on-screen, I’d actually caught wind that a certain number of people had gone out of their way to complain to Gem Pro about me participating in the 『OFA VtuberCUP』 as part of the Gem Pro team.

I was going to team up with Effie, Rio, and Suu for the upcoming 『OFA VtuberCUP』, but despite having an unusually large subscriber count for an independent Vtuber, I still had relatively few streams and videos under my belt. Apparently, Gem Pro had been receiving weird complaints—or accusations, really—along the lines of, “Don’t put an unmotivated Vtuber in the tournament.”

Effie was the one who chose me, and Gem Pro had approved it.

So realistically speaking, there was absolutely no need for me to accommodate those complaints in any way.

Still, they weren’t exactly pleasant to hear.

“Today I am creating the individual model parts. Naturally, I cannot show you this area until Reine’s actual unveiling. If you are ever to see it, that will be after everything is finished.”

“Fundamentally, I doubt Reine would ever stream without me present, so the odds of her independently streaming are rather slim.”

“When I am not streaming, Reine is tending to me. Unless I am at school or out on personal business, she is constantly hard at work fulfilling her duties as a maid.”

Admittedly, if someone lived like that in modern Japan, it probably would raise all sorts of problems.

But still…

If I told Reine something like, “You’re forbidden from working outside your official hours,” she might start thinking I no longer needed her, which could cause problems of its own…

Yeah, best not to touch that subject.

“Have I not told you that Reine serves as both my maid and personal attendant? Though admittedly, since coming to this world, I have not exactly been burdened with anything that could be called official duties. In terms you people would understand, I suppose she would be something like a live-in housekeeper?”

“…Effie. Had you stated the exact number of years, I would have hammered a lesson in internet literacy into your skull.”

“…Effie, why are you here when your own stream begins in a few dozen minutes…?”

“Do not attempt a fake first-time-viewer act when you have commented here several times before. I recognize your name.”

“…Indeed. There really are cases where people mistakenly believe I am actually a Gem Pro Vtuber.”

Apparently, lately there really were people who genuinely seemed to think I belonged to Gem Pro.

Setting Yuzu-neesan aside, a lot of people had come over from Effie, Rio, or Suu’s audiences, after all.

But I’d never intended to join an agency in the first place, Gem Pro or otherwise.

“…It appears Rio and Suu are here as well… How did things even come to this…?”

According to Yuzu-neesan, Gem Pro’s policy was to actively interact and collaborate with me in order to emphasize how close we were, and they’d suggested doing not only off-stream practice together but also practice streams and collaborations in other games… but did they really need to go out of their way to politely show up in my streams too?

I mean, couldn’t they at least use alternate accounts…?

“Indeed. Reine’s expressions do not change much to begin with, so she requires considerably fewer parts. Thus, there is no need to draw a vast number of variants… However, I still wish to ensure that I can express subtle differences. Since there are fewer ‘obvious variations,’ I intend to compensate by adjusting more delicate changes.”

“I would hardly call it an idea. In the Vtuber industry, having a range of expressions generally makes things easier to understand. A neutral face, an angry face, a crying face, a shocked face—by changing parts to portray joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure, one makes the character seem more human, or rather, more expressive. However, in the case of a character whose expressions change very little, those variations become difficult to use. Broadly speaking, expressions may be categorized as joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure, but even within ‘joy’ alone, there is a gentle smile, an exasperated wry smile, and countless other variations, is there not? Therefore, in Reine’s case, rather than dividing the variations according to the broad categories of joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure, one might say I am dividing them into variations within the category of ‘expressionless.’”

“I have looked upon Reine’s face for several centuries. I do not find it particularly difficult.”

Well, it wasn’t lore so much as the truth.

But from a human perspective, I supposed it wouldn’t feel realistic, so they could think of it as lore if they wanted.

Also, Effie, could you please stop play-fighting with viewers in the comments section of someone else’s stream?