Chapter 6: Intro
The lounge door swung open before the music could restart. A production assistant with a headset and a clipboard gave them a tight smile. “Five minutes to stream setup. Follow me, please.”
The word ‘stream’ landed in Rena’s gut like a lead weight. The practice session evaporated, replaced by the immediate, terrifying future. Mina cheered, Suki calmly collected her lip gloss, and Hikaru gave Rena one last, unreadable look before leading the way out.
They were ushered not to a stage, but into a smaller, soundproofed room that smelled of ozone and new electronics. Four high-end gaming stations glowed under adjustable studio lights, each with a monitor, a sleek microphone, and a camera on a flexible arm. It was a setup that, under any other circumstances, would have made Ren’s fingers itch with anticipation.
Now, it just looked like a tribunal.
A technician hurriedly adjusted a camera to face a plush pink gaming chair. “Rena, you’re on Station Three. You’ll be playing ‘Starfield Siege’ with the others. It’s a cooperative mission. Just be cute, react to the game, follow Hikaru’s lead in the commentary.”
Starfield Siege. Ren knew it. He’d topped the global leaderboards under the tag ‘VoidReaper’. The muscle memory was there—the optimal builds, the spawn timers, the precise flick-shot needed for the final boss. A stupid, traitorous flicker of interest cut through the panic.
He sat. The maid dress poufed awkwardly around him. He pulled the chair in, the stockings whispering against the leather.
“Headsets on, check your mics in thirty!” the assistant called.
Rena fumbled with the headset, his fingers suddenly clumsy. Hikaru, on Station Two to his right, slipped hers on with practiced ease. She leaned into her mic, her voice dropping into that liquid-sweet stage tone. “Testing, one two. Welcome, everyone!” It was a chilling transformation.
Mina was already making kissy faces into her camera, adjusting her twintails. Suki, on Station Four, simply waited, her hands folded in her lap.
A large screen on the wall facing them flickered to life, showing the live stream feed. The viewer count, visible only to them, was already climbing: 10,000… 25,000… 50,000. Comments scrolled in a frenetic river on the side.
[Mina-chaaaaan!]
[Hikaru-sama looks divine today!]
[Who’s the new girl? Station 3??]
[Cute maid! New member?
Rena’s mouth went dry. He could see himself in the feed corner—a pale, wide-eyed girl in a lace-trimmed apron, looking like she was about to be sick.
“We’re live in five, four, three…”
Hikaru shot a glance at him, a sharp, warning glare. Smile.
“…two…”
Ren gripped the mouse. It felt like a lifeline.
“…one. And we’re live!”
“Hello, my cherished starlights!” Hikaru sang, her face illuminating with pure, bubbly joy. “Welcome to our special C4 gaming corner! We have a super special guest with us today! Please welcome our adorable, shy little sister, Rena!”
The camera on Station Three zoomed in. Rena froze. Every instinct screamed to bolt. He saw Yuna hovering just off-camera in the shadows, her arms crossed, one perfectly manicured finger pointing rigidly at her own smile.
He forced his lips upward. It felt like cracking plaster. He gave a small, shaky wave. “H-hello,” he whispered into the mic. His own voice, pitched higher and softened by Yuna’s coaching, sounded alien in his ears.
The comment flood exploded.
[KYAAAA! SHE’S SO TIMID!]
[PROTECT THAT SMILE!]
[Where did they find this angel?
[She looks terrified, poor thing!]
“Don’t be shy, Rena1`” Mina chirped, leaning into her own cam. “We’re all friends here! Today we’re tackling the Nebula Phantom raid on ‘Starfield Siege’! It’s super hard, but we’ll get through it together, right everyone?”
The game loaded. Familiar HUD elements painted the screen. The tension in Rena’s shoulders eased a fraction. This was code. This was language. As the mission started and the others began moving their characters with competent but unremarkable skill, his focus narrowed to the screen.
Hikaru played a healer, keeping clumsy commentary. “Oh no, Mina-chan, look out! Ah, I’ll save you!” Mina, playing a tank, charged ahead with cheerful recklessness. Suki, on sniper duties, was methodical and quiet.
Rena’s character was a damage dealer. For the first few minutes, he held back, mimicking what he thought a novice would do. He missed shots on purpose. He stumbled into easy traps. The comments were full of supportive cooing.
Then Mina’s character over-extended, pulling two elite mobs at once. Hikaru’s heals couldn’t keep up. Suki’s sniper fire was too slow.
“We’re going to wipe!” Mina gasped, her cheerful voice fraying with real stress.
A wipe. On stream. In front of 80,000 people. Ren saw Yuna’s shadow stiffen.
Something in Rena’s brain snapped. The desensitization plan, the role—it evaporated. This was his territory being disrespected.
His posture changed. The shy hunch straightened into a focused, forward lean. The nervous flutter in his hands vanished, replaced by a stable, rhythmic clicking.
“Mina, fall back to the red marker. Now. Hikaru, stop casting the AoE heal, it’s drawing aggro. Single-target on Mina only. Suki, switch to the left mob’s weak point, its knee joint, not the head.”
His voice wasn’t Rena’ shy whisper. It was lower, flatter, a commander’s tone. Efficient. Authoritative. The ‘VoidReaper’ was on the field.
He stopped missing. His character became a blur of motion, weaving through particle effects, his attacks landing in critical chains the game’s mechanics barely allowed. He managed the enemy agro, directed the chaos, and within twenty seconds, the two elite mobs were dissolving into pixels.
Silence filled the stream room, broken only by the game’s victory fanfare.
The comments paused, then erupted anew.
[Did… did Rena just carry that?]
[That voice! So cool!]
[What was that strategy??]
[She’s a god gamer?
Rena blinked. The adrenaline receded. He slowly sat back, the maid apron crinkling. He looked to his right.
Hikaru was staring at him, her doe eyes wide. The innocent, bubbly mask was completely gone. In its place was pure, undiluted shock, and beneath that, a dawning, almost predatory understanding. Her gaze flicked from his hands on the mouse and keyboard—his grip was all wrong for a novice, it was the ingrained, aggressive clutch of a veteran—to his face.
The shy, flustered ‘Rena’ was nowhere to be seen. In that moment, she saw the person underneath: focused, arrogant, in control.
A slow, deliberate smile spread across Hikaru’s lips. It wasn’t her stage smile. It was genuine, intrigued, and deeply, deeply mischievous.
“My,” she said, her sweet stage voice returning, but now laced with a new, knowing edge. She leaned into her mic, her eyes locked on Rena’s paralyzed form. “Rena-chan, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
The break couldn’t come soon enough. The second the stream ended and the “We’ll be right back!” screen flashed, Rena ripped the headset off and stumbled from the chair, his heart hammering against his ribs. He practically fled the streaming room, the crinoline of the skirt scratching at his legs.
He found Yuna by a water cooler in the hall. “I can’t do this,” he gasped, his voice dropping back into its natural, lower register. “You saw that. I blew it. I sounded like… like me. They know. Hikaru knows.”
Yuna took a sip of water, her expression utterly calm. “You saved the stream from a disaster. The comments are loving the ‘shy gamer girl. The contrast is trending.”
“This isn’t a game!” he hissed, stepping closer. “That girl looked at me like… like she’s solving a puzzle.”
“Then let her solve it,” Yuna said, her eyes sharp. “It keeps her interested. It keeps you in the group. Now, get it together. You have a solo introduction segment after the break.”
“No. No way.” The sheer scale of the exposure was crushing him. The thousands of eyes, the expectation, the foreign texture of the clothes on his skin. It was too much. Desperation overrode pride.
In the middle of the fluorescent-lit hallway, he dropped to his knees. The action was so sudden, so fundamentally dramatic and un-Rena-like, that Yuna actually took a step back.
“Yuna, please,” he begged, his hands clasped in front of the frilly apron. “I’m begging you. Call in a bomb threat. Fake a power outage. Say I have a contagious face. Anything. I’ll do your laundry for a year. I’ll never trash-talk your designer shoes again. Just get me out of here.”
He looked up at her, his emerald eyes wide with genuine, undignified terror. A bit of his long, silky hair had slipped from the headpiece.
Yuna looked down at her brother, the most chaotic and beautiful canvas she’d ever worked on, now groveling on linoleum in a maid costume. She didn’t sigh. She didn’t offer a hand. A slow, triumphant smile touched her expertly lined lips.
“You’re doing great,” she said simply. Then she checked her diamond-studded watch. “Break’s over in ninety seconds. Your makeup is smudging. Fix it.”
She turned and walked back towards the control room, her heels clicking a final, merciless rhythm on the floor.
Ren—not Rena—remained on his knees for a five-count of utter defeat. The faint, upbeat music from the lounge seeped into the hallway. The buzz of the lights was deafening. He could hear the faint murmur of the crew, the approaching click of other, lighter footsteps.
He pushed himself up, smoothed down the stupid skirt, and straightened the stupid lace collar. A profound, familiar gamer’s resignation settled over him. The boss fight was unbeatable. The only option was to respawn and walk back into the arena.
He took a breath, forced the ‘Rena’ mask back over his features—the downcast eyes, the slight tremble in the lower lip—and turned just as Mina, Hikaru, and Suki rounded the corner.
“There you are!” Mina said. “We’re up!”
Hikaru walked past him first. As she did, her shoulder lightly brushed his. She didn’t look at him, but her voice, low and just for him, was a whisper of promised chaos.
“Nice plays… VoidReaper.”
Then she was gone, leaving him frozen in the hallway, the alias he used in a thousand midnight gaming sessions hanging in the air between them like a declared war.