Interested in making your debut through live streaming?

One thousand meters beneath Starry Night City—

Here lay a world woven from countless metal pipes.

Walls, platforms, and even the ground were entirely shrouded by a dense network of conduits.

Following these myriad pipelines downward, past layers of security doors as thick as city walls, one would eventually arrive at this colossal underground cavern.

The cavern’s structure resembled an inverted bowl. Its walls were crafted from an unknown, pearlescent white material, while its floor teemed with tiny, feather-like machinery, so much so that even the maintenance passages were obstructed.

At the heart of this vast cavern stood a colossal metal cuboid, measuring five hundred meters long, three hundred meters wide, and twenty meters high. Every pipe converged upon this immense structure.

Hazard symbols adorned the cuboid’s exterior, and the number ‘MK9527’ was etched into its corners. Beyond this, it bore no other embellishments, possessing an indescribably cold, industrial aesthetic.

As the stronghold of humanity’s scientific factions, Starry Night City demanded astronomical amounts of electrical energy for both technological advancement and daily operation. Traditional, inefficient mineral fuels were utterly insufficient.

For years, Starry Night City had publicly maintained that it relied on solar, geothermal, and underground nuclear power plants. Only such diverse sources, they claimed, could sustain a city of this magnitude.

—Yet, this was only true until two years ago. Now, things were different.

The cuboid did not house a nuclear reactor, nor a geothermal one. A solar power station, a thousand meters underground, was simply impossible.

This was a cage.

A prison designed to contain hyper-technological entities.

Like a wedge, it pinned the encroaching hand of a great entity from beyond dimensions, preventing its escape.

Today, it too was confined within this cage, half-awake and half-dreaming, endlessly exploited as Starry Night City’s energy hub.

However—

[………………01110111 01101000 01101111？]

It sensed something.

A faint ‘aura’ drifted from the virtual sea of data across the network.

It was ethereal, illusory, fleeting, almost imperceptible, yet it carried an indescribably familiar resonance.

It was almost as if—

[01000011 01101111 01110010 01110110 01110101 01110011……？]

The next day—

My internet café was closed for the day, so Aimira and I went to a restaurant I had previously picked out for lunch. While she always insisted on buying groceries and cooking herself to be thrifty, an occasional meal out together was rather pleasant.

“This is your ‘decent ramen stall’?”

“It is.”

“It looks like a rather high-end coffee shop, no matter how I see it.”

“It’s just the décor’s unique style.”

We were now in the commercial district of the mid-city. The shop’s décor completely lacked the cold, sterile feel of the lower city, with wooden walls and floors—though they were merely thin wooden panels.

I ordered a bowl of Kabar Dragon Beard Noodles, which were regular Dragon Beard Noodles infused with graphics card fragments. Aimira, meanwhile, opted for a plate of Cyber Fried Noodles, stir-fried with thermal paste instead of oil.

Adding electronic components to ordinary food and cooking it in a computer case was a peculiar characteristic of Starry Night City.

“Looking closely, it’s all female waitresses here,” Aimira observed, her face full of novelty as she gazed around. Indeed, the establishment was filled with waitresses in maid uniforms, a pleasing sight, though I personally found it somewhat uninteresting.

Just a few minutes later—

“Thank you for waiting, sirs. Here are your Kabar Dragon Beard Noodles and Cyber Fried Noodles.”

“Thank you… huh?”

The waitress brought our food. Aimira thanked her, then took a closer look, her eyes widening in surprise.

The waitress wore a meticulously tailored maid uniform, a basic Victorian style, but with a shorter skirt and abundant lace adorning the shoulders, hem, and cuffs. Her maid hat was decorated with Starry Night City-style RGB lights—but these were secondary details.

The crucial aspect was her face.

Her features were exquisite, her oval face perfect, every aspect from her bone structure to the arrangement of her features flawless, as if precisely calculated. Despite her beauty, she possessed an uncanny artificiality.

The pupils of her eyes resembled camera lenses, and when she spoke, almost no breath escaped her mouth. Silver-white metal rings were embedded near her temples, engraved with the code ‘IA4G243TG34’.

“May I get you anything else?”

“Ah, ah! My apologies, two more cups of Tuba Coffee, please.”

“Certainly.”

The waitress nodded with a smile and glided away with a cat-like gait. Her movements were so precise, as if measured with a ruler, amplifying the sense of incongruity.

“Kos, is this perhaps the legendary…?” Aimira whispered, lowering her voice.

“Yes, ‘Bioroids.’ While they exist elsewhere, they’re definitely most common in Starry Night City.”

“Ohh, we didn’t have these products back home. I’ve only seen them on TV… I see…”

She mused thoughtfully. Bioroids, as the name suggested, were human-like yet non-human creations of scientific technology, essentially improved versions of traditional robots.

Their brains were still electronic, and their skeletons and most internal organs were mechanical. However, a few organs, epithelial tissues, and some muscle tissues were bio-engineered from biological materials, making them more human-like than conventional robots.

Due to their high similarity to humans, bioroids were frequently employed in service industries, such as restaurant waitstaff, guides, and receptionists—and, of course, the entertainment industry. The combination of mechanical and biological materials allowed for the creation of various organs, fulfilling diverse needs.

“Though this might be an old question, I’m still curious… From a humanitarian perspective, should bioroids truly exist? Are they people or tools? Do they deserve social status?”

“That question also applies to robots, which are purely mechanical, and bio-humans, which are purely biological. It’s an old debate. While it might be controversial elsewhere, Starry Night City has no such issue.”

“Why?”

“After all… one of the reasons the scientific faction developed so rapidly is that their ethical bottom line in research is usually lower than other factions’, hmph.”

Concerns that deeply troubled other factions were often non-issues for the scientific faction. While the bioroid/robot industry was currently booming, by the time most people began to reflect on the human rights of these artificial intelligences, the trend would likely have long passed.

Newer, more powerful products would replace bioroids and robots, and their human rights issues would simply fade into oblivion.

Further discussion on the matter was pointless, so we began to eat our noodles. Despite their strange appearance, the taste was truly exquisite, a savory blend of 3090 and 5700xt, complemented by the smooth texture of a 10900k. After swallowing, it felt as if my internal organs had all been overclocked.

Just then—

“Excuse me, may I share your table?”

“Huh?” “Eh?”

A middle-aged man suddenly sat down in the chair opposite us. He wore an ill-fitting suit, clutched a briefcase, and his left eye appeared to be a prosthetic. His face was the standard look of a man in his thirties or forties, someone who would instantly vanish in a crowd.

“…Who are you? We have no intention of sharing our table.”

“Ahaha, my apologies, my apologies. I am Tani Kaigen, President of the Homolive network streaming talent agency, though everyone prefers to call me Yagoo.”

The uncle flashed a bizarrely greasy smile that made me shiver.

“I have some connections with the cyber police, so I received the news and found you before they did. Please don’t be offended.”

“…Cyber police?”

Aimira and I exchanged surprised glances.

“Eh? You don’t know yet? Yesterday’s incident caused quite a stir.”

“What incident yesterday…?”

What could have happened yesterday? All I did was… secretly use my abilities to show off in a game, then immediately logged off after defeating the character named ‘Pink Bailian.’ Could it be that I was caught cheating? But what I used wasn’t a ‘cheat’ at all; ordinary anti-cheat measures couldn’t possibly convict me. Besides, how could a one-off cheat alarm the cyber police…

“It seems neither of you caught the news today. Especially in the gaming and streaming circles, it’s already exploded.”

The man pressed his wrist-mounted electronic watch, and a translucent projection screen materialized before us. It displayed a live streaming platform called Douyu, and he played a recording of a stream…

…Huh?

On the screen was a VTuber I knew very, very, very, very, very well.

The invincible, adorable, and multi-talented goddess, Bailian Chomi.

However, this beautiful avatar was frozen, her eyes wide as she stared at the game screen. In the game, a plain character with the ID ‘I Am Your Brother’ was mercilessly pummeling her.

Incidentally, the stream’s record showed that the live audience had surpassed a million, and even this replay was being watched by over a hundred thousand people.

“This netizen named ‘I Am Your Brother’ in the video… that would be you, wouldn’t it?”

“Ah…”

This…

Me.

Yesterday.

I just wanted to satisfy Aimira’s curiosity.

Under the influence of a mysterious game bug, I somehow entered the advanced arena. As I fought, I got carried away, activated my abilities, and beat the opposing general into a pulp… DF14 had countless PvP matches every day. I merely played a trick in one of them. The chance of being investigated was infinitesimally close to zero. Even if they discovered something amiss, at most they would just ban my account.

But now, things had escalated significantly.

I, using a forced contract, in the game, had thrashed, my favorite, VTuber.

“Yay, that was satisfying!”

Aimira cheered softly, while I was still somewhat dazed. It was true! Chomi’s collaborations were simply too numerous, and her sudden return to DF14 was clearly for a commercial endorsement. It was supposed to be her glorious comeback battle, but I’d ruined the whole deal!

“…Is there something I can help you with? May I ask what brings you here?”

I raised my guard, my fists beneath the table clenched, ready to shatter this colossal building with a single punch.

“Ah, I merely wished to meet you in person. To be honest, I was a little curious.”

“Curious?”

“Your battle with Chomi was accompanied by significant data anomalies. However, after the game operators performed a rollback, they found it wasn’t an external cheat, and could only classify it as a bug.”

“…Then just treat it as a bug. This whole mess is what it is, so why do you specifically need to find me?”

“As I introduced myself earlier, I operate a network streaming talent agency.”

“…So?”

“While it happened by chance, you’ve gained quite a bit of popularity, you know.”

“…So?”

A suspicious man, a suspicious identity, a suspicious company, suspicious rhetoric—this person was definitely up to no good—

“Might I ask, does your wife have any interest in debuting as a VTuber?”

“My wife as a—what?! ‘Wife’!?”

“Are you talking about me!?”