[Stream] A Minor Controversy — Behind The Scenes

My niece, Rinne-chan—the daughter of my older sister—felt more like a much younger sister to me than a niece, and she was an extraordinarily talented girl.

When she started learning piano as a child, she mastered difficult classical pieces at astonishing speed, and when she drew, rather than cute illustrations, she produced incredibly high-level landscapes and similar works. She was so gifted that I could sincerely call her a bundle of talent.

However, her appearance was extraordinarily beautiful and marked by unusually striking colors.

A foreign girl with refined features could possess a kind of fairy-like, almost inhuman beauty, but in Japan, foreign children were still relatively uncommon, so they inevitably attracted attention.

She had grown frightened of other people’s stares, and apparently some thoughtless little brat… or rather, some boy, had once hurt her by calling her beautiful silver hair “old-lady white hair.” She had even come home once after smearing her lovely hair completely black with the ink from her calligraphy set.

It was hardly surprising that Rinne-chan had become introverted.

For better or worse, Japan had a tendency to reject anything perceived as “different,” with a deeply ingrained insular mentality.

For Rinne-chan, this country must have been an exceptionally difficult place to live.

Sending her abroad to study had been one option if we wanted her talents to flourish.

But naturally, we couldn’t simply throw her into a foreign country by herself, and my sister, Rinne-chan’s mother, couldn’t easily move overseas because of work, so that idea eventually faded away.

Well, as a result, she remained in Japan and, partly because of my suggestion, became a “Vtuber” instead…

《Hah! Talent, you say? Do not disguise your own immaturity—your inability to maintain passion until your heart breaks and you throw everything away—by calling it a matter of talent. Only those who have spent their time and passion to the absolute limit may speak of talent, fool. Do not casually invoke talent unless you have pursued something to its furthest reaches, struck a wall, and still continued struggling against it.》

—That girl changes way too much when she streams!

Perhaps because she’d revealed that she was a high-school girl, her excessively provocative remarks had angered viewers who thought, What could some little girl possibly know? and the comments had begun turning hostile.

But when she saw that reaction, she sneered.

Even though it was merely the smile of an illustrated model, the atmosphere she gave off made it unmistakably clear that it was a sneer.

《Kuhah! How utterly… amusing. You mean to tell Us that because We are young, We know nothing, and that reality is not so kind? Kukukuku. No matter the age or world, those most accustomed to giving up are always the quickest to pretend they have achieved enlightenment. Will you then insist that makes you wise? That you simply know your place? Kuhaha, ridiculous. Those who cannot even take pride in themselves and merely yelp from the sidelines are called losers.》

—That’s way too far, Rinne-chaaaaaan…!

I instinctively clutched my head.

“Ahahahaha! Ver-chan, Your Majesty, is incredible! There’s no way a streamer signed to an agency could say something that aggressive so openly!”

A woman sat beside me.

She was so famous now that it wouldn’t have been an exaggeration to say virtually anyone familiar with Vtubers knew her, and she was also the very person who had latched onto Rinne-chan’s debut stream.

Ruru, the person behind Ephir Lunette, the elf-themed first-generation Gem Pro talent, laughed gleefully beside me and slapped her knee while I held my head in my hands.

Using her natural instincts, she had figured out the connection between me and Rinne-chan—in other words, Verchera Merisis, the newcomer who had caught her interest—and had come to watch the stream together with me.

“Of course they couldn’t… More importantly… ah, just look at the comments now…”

“Well, obviously. But you know, what she’s saying is incredibly sound. It’s direct—too direct—and it easily gouges into people’s hearts. For anyone who has something this applies to, those words must hurt terribly.”

“…Yeah. Exactly. This is the sort of thing she can only say because she’s independent and still a newcomer.”

“No. That’s not it.”

“Huh?”

“Even an independent newcomer normally couldn’t say this. Those words are viciously sharp. A newcomer today couldn’t say something like that unless they were deliberately trying to stir up controversy as a joke. But if you actually said it, there’d be a real chance of getting burned so badly that it wouldn’t stay a joke anymore. If this girl is saying all of this sincerely, not for shock value, and even if she gets flamed she still doesn’t disappear, then maybe…—”

Ruru trailed off.

But somehow, I understood what words were supposed to come next.

“—Then this girl might be the ‘real thing’ you’ve been searching for. Is that what you mean?”

Apparently she hadn’t expected me to finish the sentence, because Ruru widened her eyes for a moment before breaking into a grin.

“Yeah. Exactly. Even newcomers in the Vtuber industry have gradually started playing it safe in order to become popular and make money. She might be the ‘real thing’ who can shatter this era and make even people like us feel threatened.”

I understood what she meant.

The current form of the streaming industry could, in a sense, be said to have begun with the decline of television.

Viewers grew tired of similar programs being produced over and over, and the era shifted away from merely consuming content handed to them toward one where people chose for themselves, enjoyed it, and actively participated.

Unlike television, where only a limited number of people could work within limited environments, internet content overflowed with freedom, stimulation, and novelty, as streamers created things television would never air. It was content people could choose, watching whatever they wanted whenever they wanted.

Naturally, young people drifted away from boring television and moved toward content that felt closer, freer, and more entertaining.

But the streaming industry gradually began heading in strange directions as well, with nuisance streamers who caused trouble for others, expose channels that revealed people’s secrets, and all sorts of increasingly shameless content. Little by little, its popularity had also begun to show signs of decline.

Then Vtubers appeared, presenting themselves almost like living anime characters and simply streaming their everyday activities or showing viewers how much fun they were having.

That kind of content gradually became beloved, and its popularity began spreading slowly but steadily.

Gem Pro—and Ruru, the first-generation Gem Pro talent sitting beside me—had raced through that dawn era as pioneers, and partly because of that, our agency had secured a position that could be called the largest in the industry.

But at the same time, the Vtuber industry had now become a chaotic mixture of every conceivable kind of talent.

The Vtuber world had already passed through what could be called its pioneering era, and agencies with all sorts of different policies were now appearing.

Lewd humor, expose content—the movements within the industry were gradually becoming just as chaotic as the broader streaming world.

Meanwhile, most new independent talents were entering the scene in almost identical ways.

Everyone feared controversy and tended to avoid making strong statements, leaving them lacking in originality and making it extremely difficult for them to gain popularity.

Nowadays, if someone wanted to survive as a Vtuber, the standard answer was increasingly to join a powerful agency and ride the popularity of the group—what people called supporting the whole agency—letting established seniors pull newcomers upward with them.

That was why Ruru had been searching for a “real thing” capable of breaking through all of that.

Someone who could blow a new wind through Gem Pro itself, which had already become too safe, with even its stream content and character personalities gradually settling into templates.

And solely to find someone genuine enough to shake the stagnating Vtuber industry apart, Ruru constantly appeared in debut streams, scouting for promising newcomers.

Now she was staring at Rinne-chan’s stream as though evaluating her.

I wondered whether Ruru realized it.

The smile she wore right now was terribly predatory.

While I was thinking that, Rinne-chan spoke through the stream.

《Kukuku. If Our words merely anger you, and all you can do is spew irritating complaints, then We have no interest in you. As We said during Our debut, begone.》

—At that moment, disappointment colored Ruru’s expression.

She must have thought Rinne-chan had gone too far.

But Rinne-chan connected her words and continued weaving them together.

《But if Our words made you think, “Damn it,” if they made you feel frustrated—why do you not realize that this is proof that what once burned as passion within you, all the feelings you poured into it, are still smoldering there? Why can you not understand that the very thing you covered up and tried to forget still remains within you strongly enough that mere words from Us could reignite it?》

Somehow, she looked terribly lonely.

She was haughty, insolent, and spoke with absolute confidence, yet somehow she looked as though she were grieving something, as though she felt lonely, and I simply listened to her words—to that appeal.

—Perhaps that was what people called being drawn in, being captivated.

The instant my attention became completely absorbed in her, she declared:

《Those who hear Our words, grit their teeth in frustration, and possess enough spirit to wish to prove Us wrong—those are the ones We look forward to. Take that passion of yours, that smoldering thing you have allowed to rot inside you, and set your heart ablaze so that it may finally be sublimated. Cast aside your worthless pride. Even if you must crawl through the mud, if you possess the spirit to astonish Us, then show it to Us. Show Us that this is your radiance. Whenever you are ready. We shall wait as long as necessary for the brilliance you have to show.》

That was the moment.

Once again, her words sent a shudder through my body as though something had stroked the inside of me, and Ruru shivered as well.

《Kukukuku…! We are the Demon Lord, Verchera Merisis, the one and only Demon Lord who rules the Demon Realm! Make the skills you have polished, the techniques you have honed, reach Us! Set your hearts ablaze! Kindle your passion! We shall not permit Our subjects to live their lives merely smoldering away! Deliver your radiance unto Us!》

—The impact was overwhelming.

A heat welled up inside me strong enough to beat something sleeping within me awake and set it ablaze in a raging inferno.

Surely I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

The comment section roared like a battlefield, messages pouring past like a torrent, as though everyone had suddenly been granted freedom after years of suppression.

When I glanced beside me, Ruru’s eyes were wide open and her body was trembling as she stared fixedly at the screen, muttering almost deliriously.

“Ha… haha… the ‘real thing’…? No, that’s… beyond that…! This girl is… practically a dangerous drug…! Demon Lord Verchera Merisis… Ah, she really is a Demon Lord, isn’t she…!”

—She really is a Demon Lord.

Ruru’s words seemed to perfectly express the essence of Rinne-chan that I myself had been unable to put into words, and I instinctively wrapped my arms around my own body.

She had created the setting of being a Demon Lord and built the model herself.

A model that should have been completely unsuited to her.

And yet, what had happened when the lid was finally lifted?

She calmly spun her words exactly like a sovereign, and made people’s hearts tremble.

She was precisely the ideal image of a “ruler,” and the way she teased and awakened the suppressed cries buried within people’s hearts made her unmistakably a “Demon Lord.”

—Had that girl understood her own true nature, her own talent…?

“…Hey, Manager-chan. I want to collaborate with this girl.”

—Honestly.

You’d been showing that look less and less often lately, and now you were wearing it again, making even me tremble like this.

There was no way I could say no to that request.