“If we do well today, we’ll hit the jackpot…?”
I tilted my head, unable to understand what the boss meant by that.
“What jackpot?”
“Ah, I mean. Since even you prepared so hard, I feel like we’ll really hit it big.”
I nodded, relieved.
I had been worried that if I stuck out like a black hole among the 1st gen members who were good at acting, the game would become too easy, but seeing our boss acknowledge it meant that wasn’t the case.
Anyway, it means my practice passes, right?
It was my first time using my voice on broadcast, so I’d really prepared hard.
My mood lifted, and I couldn’t stop the corners of my mouth from twitching up.
“Hehe. Since I have to play a game with the boss, I’ll work hard.”
* * *
She had brushed it off vaguely, not wanting to make a fuss, but—
truthfully, Cheon Dohee had frozen, properly shocked after seeing Jia’s voice impression.
“She unexpectedly had talent….”
What kind of person had she been?
Before Cheon Dohee hired her, she had been someone who scraped by on part-time jobs to make ends meet, spending her time acting like a malicious troll while watching Vtuber streams.
But when Dohee made her a manager under the guise of punishing her, she unexpectedly did her job well.
When she brought her into the company, Jia saw everything she was asked to do through to the end.
In other words, she wasn’t the type to actively seek out work on her own, but if she was told to do something, she did it incredibly well.
She was truly the type to shine when she had a good superior.
So after much deliberation, Cheon Dohee entrusted her with the most difficult job in the company.
Can you do this too?
And Jia had solved even that with ease.
You could tell how hard she worked at her assigned duties just by seeing how the current 1st gen members treated her as an indispensable presence.
But that effort was, at best, within ordinary bounds.
In other words, Dohee had believed she wouldn’t be able to conquer even the areas where people thought you couldn’t succeed without “talent.”
Broadcasting, entertainment, singing, and voice impressions, for example.
So while having dinner together, Dohee asked Jia directly.
“Jia. Have you done voice impressions before?”
“No. This is my first time.”
“Your first time?”
“Yes. If you hadn’t told me to participate in the content, I wouldn’t have prepared at all.”
Her first time.
It was a voice impression in a realm that required the ability to observe people in detail, analyze them, and express them identically, plus the natural talent to show it all off without a moment’s hesitation.
She had perfectly imitated the unique accent and pronunciation of a gyopo, and even the parts where Rain actually freaked out, so aside from innate tonal differences, it was closer to a perfect replica than a mere imitation.
‘Voice impressions like this can’t be done with effort alone.’
Jia had revealed the talent she’d been hiding all this time, exactly as it was.
She simply hadn’t done it because nobody had told her to.
She was someone who could do it if she tried.
In a way, she was a hidden genius.
“Did you prepare a song too?”
“Since it’s Rain, I did prepare a rap. But I’m hoping the viewers won’t ask for it.”
“You prepared that?”
“I had to, right? When you told me to prepare for the content, you said to prepare because the person who came to guess might ask for a song.”
“Ah, right. Yeah.”
Just then, the tendon they ordered arrived, and Jia immediately put shrimp tempura and vegetable tempura half-and-half on top of the fluffy rice and stuffed her mouth full.
Her mouth opened as wide as before, but perhaps because her jaw itself was small, it took quite a while to chew.
While she herself found it uncomfortable because it took so long to chew, to the person sitting across from her, it couldn’t have been any cuter.
Dohee watched her eat so hard with that tiny mouth and tried imagining Jia singing.
‘…Come to think of it, I have absolutely no data on that.’
Dohee knew that her vocalization was clean.
Because Jia deliberately slurred her words to fix the habit of speaking sharply as she became socialized, few people had noticed it.
When she spoke in a comfortable state, she was just cute.
Since it wasn’t a forced sound, it was comfortable to listen to, and her endurance was good too.
How should I put it. A cuteness with clear highs and lows that you never get tired of?
But during company dinners, even when they went to karaoke, Jia never once grabbed the mic and only busied herself with the tambourine, as if she had no interest.
The fact that such a girl had practiced singing, and even prepared a rap, made Dohee curious and eager to hear it.
“Want me to check if the song is okay?”
“No.”
“Why.”
“It’s embarrassing to sing in front of the boss. Practicing alone is enough.”
“Today’s content has an expected audience of ten thousand, though?”
“That’s fine because you can’t feel their gazes anyway?”
“Or, you do that because the boss told you to?”
“Hey, if I’d told you to sing a song at the company dinner, would you have done it?”
“Yes.”
“…Why?”
“Because you told me to.”
She really is a character you can’t hate.
That was why Dohee had dinner with her every day.
Because she was worried that the already skin-and-bones girl might suddenly collapse from malnutrition.
But by this point, Dohee had something she was curious about.
Where exactly was the limit of this mad devotion?
“At this rate, you’d become a Vtuber if I told you to.”
At those words, Jia paused.
Her lower jaw, which had been working hard, completely stopped.
Soon she roughly swallowed the food she had been chewing and muttered.
“I’d do it if you told me to. But given the boss’s personality, you’d never say something like that.”
“…So you’d do it anyway, huh?”
“What.”
“You screened the 1st gen members extremely strictly and cut them. It doesn’t make sense to pick a Vtuber to be the face of the company carelessly.”
“…That’s true.”
“And as the boss said, an unprepared Vtuber shouldn’t debut.”
“Me? When did I say that?”
“When interviewing the 1st gen members, you shouted it so loudly that the interviewee who’d been drinking the day before could hear.”
“Ah. Right. Hmm… yeah, you’re right.”
Vtuber is a job where even if you pay to hire them, they easily quit due to mental issues.
If your own will is weak, it’s hard to overcome all the unfounded criticism and slander that comes during broadcasts and last long in the industry.
As Jia said, even if she forced herself to do it because the boss told her to, the chances were high that she’d quickly tire and drop out.
‘If she finishes the content well, I should make sure she gets a bonus.’
Since she’d clearly refused, Dohee shouldn’t bother a girl who already had a clear job to do.
Unless people started an online protest shouting “Free Ma Jia” just because she’d shown her face once.
* * *
And so, at 8 PM.
— Open the dooooooor
— Rain noona, I’m so dry I’m about to crack
— *slurp slurp slurp slurp slurp slurp slurp slurp slurp slurp*
The appearance of 1st gen member Aoyagi Rain, whom a whopping five thousand people had been waiting for since before the broadcast, signaled the start.
[Oh hell yeah! Can you hear me!]
— Raaaaain
— I thought I was gonna die of thirst ㅠㅠㅠ
— I can hear you
— Hell yeah~
— Re-ha~
— What, noona’s voice sounds weird
[Ah, ah, the Today actors, uh, use voice changers, right? So I did a little, uh, staging too. Got it? Puddles?]
— Staged, my ass
— No wonder I thought I heard a robotic voice haha
— Look at that sophisticated word choice
[Anyway, Today’s content is what! Find— find— find— Rain——!]
— The boss has lost it
— First Vtuber in history to rain down pizza by the truckload ddd
— Oh please, I told you there’s no pizza up my sleeves haha
As could be seen from the chat reactions, the viewers actually expected Rain’s wallet to take a hit.
Because Rain’s way of speaking was so unique, the community consensus was that if people kept talking to her, they’d eventually slip up.
So if I wanted this to be even more entertaining, I had to put in the effort.
“Hoo…. Haaa…..”
In a single-person broadcast room attached to the company’s motion studio, I took deep breaths to suppress my nerves.
It’s not that standing in front of people makes me nervous; I was anxious because I couldn’t stand the thought of not carrying out the boss’s orders properly.
She believed in me and entrusted me with such an important task.
Failure? Impossible.
Today I’m going to show everything I prepared.
I finished meditating and focused on Rain’s lines.
Soon it would be the actors’ turn to appear.
[— so, I’ll gift a pitza to whoever guesses right! Okay, everyone gets it now? No idiots? Then shall we call the actors? Today, me, B-Rain, C-Rain, and D-Rain who will imitate A-Rain. Let’s go!]
At Rain’s signal, I pulled her Live2D, which had been hidden at the bottom of the screen, all the way up.
— Wow, look at it filling the whole screen
— Crazy, four cutting boards ddd
[Four cutting boards, what kind of dog-bird. You banned. Puddles! I’m B cup. How many times do I have to say it?]
— Deonggeong
— Four cutting boards and four knives too, so fast~
— W… wow, honestly, I think even B-cups are cutting boards…
In the meantime, I checked if Rain’s character on the screen moved properly.
It felt a bit amazing that Rain moved as I moved.
How should I put it, should I say my troll instincts were awakening?
If I said something funny now, could I slander Rain?
‘…I need to hold back.’
If Rain’s peers did it, it would be content, but since I was an employee, people might take it seriously.
It might seem somewhat unfair, but that was the weight the management team carried.
If you’re a shadow following the stars, you must never overtake the star.
While I fought my inner mischief like that, my turn soon arrived.
[Now. D-Rain, shall we introduce yourself?]
What I’d shown the boss earlier was “how Rain talks when gaming.”
I’d practiced the lines Rain said when starting a broadcast separately.
Powerfully. As if scratching my throat slightly—I’d learned it from Neotube, so it might not be accurate—a feeling of clearing a path refreshingly all the way to my lungs and outside my body!
“Oh, hell, yeah. Puddles! Drop the Rain from the sky. Today too, I’ve come to soak the dry land refreeeshingly!”
But practice was practice.
Once it was the real deal, it wasn’t so easy anymore.
Just seeing how sweaty my palms were after the voice impression showed that.
This was why I couldn’t help but respect our talents.
How they pulled off such embarrassing lines every day without a care.
Being a Vtuber was really not easy.
‘…But why was it so quiet?’
The real Rain, who’d been giggling uncontrollably while holding back laughter during B-Rain and C-Rain’s introductions, was for some reason completely silent.
Even the chat window, which had been too busy laughing along, saying they could see right through the fakes, was now completely:
— ?
— ???
— ??
— ?
— What the
— ??
— ? Huh?
— Wasn’t A the real Rain?
— Puddles, I’m scared
— Suddenly throwing a real punch out of nowhere
— D really sounds like a cutting board though
— Ah, are you doing two roles by yourself?
— What’s with the difficulty level haha
— Chest… ddd
— No but C was clearly a comedy act until now hahaha