Chapter 15: A Bombshell Nobody Saw Coming — The Spinster's Comeback

[Immediately after Round One]

I muted the mic and sat in front of the screen with my head in my hands.

I lost.

Seira's pressure-then-kindness switch. That kind of stagecraft really is beyond an amateur like me.

"Sis!"

Yui called out to me, worried.

"That advice just now, you weren't losing at all."

"I don't need the comfort. She won, that's how it came out..."

My voice sank.

"It isn't comfort. I was watching coolly, as your producer."

"That was a form of mind control, I'm pretty sure. The kind of move exploitative companies pull all the time."

"But it only works from the second slot, and it's a finisher you get to use once."

"Next round you're going second, Sis. So round two is a win. Guaranteed."

Yui's read brought my head up.

"Even so... I don't have a weapon like Seira's."

"You do!"

Yui said it with force.

"What? You've got some secret plan?"

A light of hope came into my eyes.

"Nope!"

Yui said it completely breezily.

"Hey! Don't build me up just to drop me! I'm desperate over here!"

"Your life itself is the weapon, Sis, and it's a hilarious one!"

"Huh? Is that an insult?"

"No! Think about it. You went live by accident on your sister's avatar, roasted everyone, blew up, became a star overnight..."

"And now you've picked a fight with the number one VTuber in Japan, trained like your life depended on it, and you're out there fighting in front of hundreds of thousands of people."

"Is there anyone else this interesting?"

"Interesting... huh."

"Why do you think the pigs love you?"

"Because you roast them? Wrong. They're in love with the Misaki Tanaka underneath!"

"Yui..."

"You're not the Captain, Sis."

"You don't fight with calculation or technique. You fight as the person YUICA is!"

"After that it's just the guts to face them stripped bare."

Yui's words made my chest a little lighter.

Right. No point overthinking it.

I just have to fight like myself.

[Round Two, start]

"Moving on to Round Two. Going first: Seira Hououin."

The host kept things moving.

Host:

"Will she work the crowd with some technique again this time?"

Hikaru Amachi:

"Going first, she can't see what her opponent will do, so the switch-up she used before is off the table. And it would lose its punch the second time anyway."

"What strategy has the Captain built? That's worth watching."

—Seira was thinking.

Good. I took the first round, barely. From here it isn't about technique.

I hit her with the bare me. Anything less and I don't beat YUICA outright.

It might cause trouble for the company and the other members.

But today, I want to collide with YUICA with nothing on.

—And a new caller appeared on the screen.

"Hello. I'll stay anonymous, if that's all right."

Voice only. A woman's calm voice came through.

"I'm a thirty-five-year-old single woman. I'm bad with people, and... I haven't so much as dated anyone in over ten years."

"My confidence keeps draining away, and I hate how small I've gotten about it—thinking that at my age it's all downhill from here. How do I take that first step?"

It was heavier than I'd expected.

The hall, a carnival a second ago, went abruptly quiet.

"That trouble of yours. Allow Seira Hououin to answer it."

Seira, the Captain, stepped forward.

"Let me say this first..."

Seira's face was more serious than usual.

"My canon states that I am eternally nineteen. Which makes me uneasy about whether I can answer you at all..."

The hall buzzed.

Naturally. The Captain, of all people, showing a rare flash of weakness.

"—is what I would say, if I were sticking to canon."

"My real age is..."

"Thirty-one."

The chat went into uproar. I was startled too.

She's throwing away her canon at this point, just to face this woman honestly?

"Which is exactly why I understand how you feel. Truly."

There was a gentleness in Seira's voice I had never heard before.

"The anxiety a woman in her thirties feels about love. The impatience. That feeling that sits right next to giving up. I have been through all of it."

"Captain..."

The caller's voice was shaking.

"But hear me. Thirty-five is not too late. Not in the slightest."

"There are plenty of people around me having wonderful romances in their thirties."

The Captain kept the advice careful, meeting the caller at her own eye level.

"You've gained years, and with them you understand yourself, and your eye for other people has sharpened."

"You can build something deeper than the love of your younger days."

"Yes..."

"The trick to taking that step is to stop demanding perfection of yourself."

"Don't be greedy. Start as friends. Start by treasuring your connections with people."

Seira's answer was sincere advice with the stagecraft stripped out of it.

"Thank you... that really reached me."

The caller was moved.

The chat was showering Seira with praise too.

"Seira Hououin. Of course."

I couldn't help being impressed. A completely different approach from Round One.

And going first, she'd deliberately laid it right on top of the one thing I do best.

"That's... not what I expected," Yui murmured.

"Instead of piling pressure on someone who's already down, this time she came in beside her, as somebody who understands."

"She just stole Sis's whole thing. The standing-beside-people angle."

"To win from the second slot now, you'd have to blow way past anything anyone's imagining... she's a schemer, all right."

"And now, YUICA♡'s answer, please."

My turn had come.

Fighting this straight and winning is going to be hard.

How am I supposed to top a perfect answer like that...

Oh god. What do I do.

The pressure had me shaking again.

"U-um..."

My voice trembled.

"Being thirty-five and scared of love... I understand that feeling."

The pigs were worried too.

"But, um... age doesn't really matter, or..."

Nothing but platitudes coming out. After what Seira just did, every word sounds paper-thin.

And anyway, in my entire life I have never had a real relationship.

I'm a loser with no business advising anybody about anything.

Why are you asking me that... I don't know.

This is brutal. This hurts.

I want out.

"There are plenty of men in the world, so..."

No good. This is Round One all over again.

And then, out of nowhere, Yui's words came back.

"After that it's just the guts to face them stripped bare."

She's right. The answer I'm giving, anyone could give.

Yeah.

I just have to do this like me.

Sorry, pigs.

I might be about to break the fantasy you have of me.

But I don't want to lose like this.

I am done having regrets!

"Listen. I'm—"

"a thirty-six-year-old spinster too."

"So... I know exactly how much it hurts."

I just said it, plainly. The stream went dead silent.

"What? What—you're thirty-six?"

Seira's voice shook with shock.

Older than her, of all things. Her read had been badly, badly wrong.

The shock ran through the chat too.

I stopped caring. Fine. Let's go all the way naked.

"That's right! Thirty-six, never had a boyfriend, not once in my life, single as they come!"

"So I understand how you feel. It hurts how well I understand. You look in the mirror every morning and think 'maybe it's already too late,' don't you?"

"Yes... yes, exactly!"

Strength came back into the caller's voice.

"But it isn't too late. It never is. I'm this age and my life only just got fun."

A conviction I'd never had before was filling my voice.

"The truth is I'm a gloomy shut-in, I'm bad with people, and I spent my whole life thinking I was a loser."

"Figured I'd just keep getting older and die alone with nobody around."

"Yes... I know that feeling."

"But it's different now."

"I took one step out, as a VTuber.

"Everything ahead of me was pitch dark, but I worked up the nerve and walked, and...

"now here I am, standing somewhere like this."

"...Weren't you scared?"

"Of course I was scared at first. But now I can't wait to stream every single day."

"I don't have a boyfriend, but spending my time with a bunch of slightly broken pigs isn't so bad either."

The pigs were losing their minds for some reason.

I didn't even compliment them. Yeah, these guys have a screw loose.

"There's no such thing as too late in a life. Already thirty-five? No. Only thirty-five!"

I spoke to the caller, pulling the words up from the bottom of me.

"That's wonderful... Big Sis!"

"If a gloomy thirty-six-year-old spinster like me could change this much, you can turn into something even better!"

"Yes! ...Yes... uuuh..."

I could tell the caller was crying.

"Thank you so much... I'm honestly so moved."

"If you're scared, follow my footprints. There's a road there, at the very least."

"Yes! I'll walk it... with you!"

"Um, can I... become a pig too?"

"Sorry? Huh? ...Of course you can!"

"Senior pigs, everyone—is somebody like me okay?"

The caller's voice, straight from the heart, rang out through the stream.

And then, cheeky as ever, the pigs answered with pride.

"That's right. Every one of my pigs is an equal little loooser.

I'll dote on you all as much as you like."

The pigs flooded the screen in raw excitement.

Even if I'd never claimed an age, though. Getting lorded over by a bottom-of-the-barrel woman like me.

Some of them had to be disappointed.

I asked, timidly.

"Say what you like, you lot really want a young girl, don't you..."

"Finding out you've been getting stepped on by a failure like me. Be honest, you're disappointed, right?"

The reaction was so far from what I expected that I nearly cried.

"...Thanks. God, you lot really are disgusting."

Once the pigs' cheering settled a little, the host spoke up.

"That was... nothing like the development we were expecting."

"No, it wasn't," Hikaru Amachi said with a deep nod.

"A complete turn from the 'emotional control through technique' the Captain showed in Round One. In Round Two she led with plain, sincere humanity."

"Revealing that she's thirty-one included—so she changed her strategy completely?"

"More that she threw strategy away and came to fight bare-knuckle. But YUICA♡ revealing thirty-six was the showstopper. It overturned the shock of the first answer from the ground up."

"A bare-knuckle brawl, exactly. A magnificent fight."

The host turned back to the camera.

"And now, the ruling for Round Two..."

The result was coming. It was coming.

I could feel the audience holding its breath.

"Weighing the caller's satisfaction, the viewers' response, and Amachi's opinion all together..."

"YUICA♡ takes it!"

The Captain, meanwhile, was stunned blank.

"Thirty-six... to think she was older than me..."

"The schemer drowned in her own scheme."

Yui muttered it, too quietly for the mic.

For the first time, a crack showed in the Captain's unshakeable face.

With the cheering still going, the host raised his voice.

"Well! That puts us at one apiece!"

Watching the frenzy, Hikaru Amachi gave a slightly wry smile.

"Honestly, the thing that surprised me most is that YUICA♡ and I would have been classmates."

The host reacted with surprise.

"Is that... meant as disappointment?"

"Not at all. I'm more interested than ever. I'd like to know more about her."

There was a real warmth in Hikaru Amachi's voice.

"Thirty-six years of setbacks and loneliness, and she came through them to stand here. As someone from the same generation, I find that genuinely encouraging."

"I see..."

"'Follow my footprints.' The weight behind those words was enormous. Because she walked that road herself, and here she is."

The host spoke, a little worked up.

"Even so, for the caller to declare on the spot that she's joining the pigs..."

"This has gone past life advice," Hikaru Amachi continued, impressed.

"It feels like watching the moment a life changes."

The host moved on.

"The tie will be settled in the final round: the talk appeal battle."

Seira lifted her head and looked at me.

"Landmine Princess... no. ...Seeenpaaai♡ Time to settle this!"

I raised my head too and faced her.

"Guess that age advantage of yours is gone, kiddo."

Seira grinned at that.

"Ha! This is fun. You really are the best."

"That's my line, Number One in Japan."

"Number one, huh. Heh. I'm starting not to care about that at all."

"This last round. I'm going to enjoy it for real."

"Likewise. I won't be holding back."

The showdown had gone to a final round.

(To be continued)

Next time: "The Final Battle at Last! Which Way Will It Fall?!"

------- Afterword -------

Thank you for reading this far.

Next time is the final round.

YUICA, or Seira.

Which one are you all rooting for?

I suspect a fair few of you are pulling for the rival, Seira, over the heroine.

I was always that type myself.

Incidentally, Hikaru Amachi, the YouTuber doing the commentary,

is a cameo from my main work, Oracle Dungeon.

Did anyone notice?

Please keep enjoying the story from here!