Work Text:
“Good morning from the dead of night, Mayonaka Punch. It’s me, Masakichi.”
I’m exhausted . After the midnight vampire tag stream, not to mention everything leading up to it, I more or less crashed in my bedroom and slept for five hours. When I woke up, Chirper (or whatever it’s called now) was already spreading rumors and theories about what was going on, including several out-of-context clips. If I don’t want to drag Mayonaka Punch down with me, I’ll have to address the elephants in the room.
But start small.
“I’d like to address some concerns and questions our fans have raised since last night’s livestream. The vod is linked in the description if you haven’t seen it, but you’ve probably seen bits and pieces.
“First off: I’m not jumping onto MayoPan for clout, as some have claimed. I’ve been working with them behind the scenes since they were the Chuchu Girls. I’ll let Live tell the whole story if she wants, but the short version is that we met and decided to make NewTube videos together, and then she recruited some of her friends.”
That’s the easy part. Now for a delicate bit.
“I had initially planned to stay behind the camera, filming the others and editing videos and so forth. But after some…discussions with Live, we decided I should sometimes appear in videos. I’m not going to take over the channel, any more than Tokage or Yuki did when they joined. It’s going to be the same MayoPan, just with one more member.”
Okay.
“Onto some more specific claims I’ve seen floating around social media. I’ve seen some people claiming that I offered Live sexual favors in exchange for working with me on Mayonaka Punch, and that I said as much on stream. Those clips are taken out of context. What I meant was…”
My plan was simple. Start recording, start talking, start lying. I’d have to lie like crazy, to avoid revealing that vampires exist. But the lies aren’t coming.
Let’s try something easier, to warm up.
“Onto some more specific claims I’ve seen floating around social media. Some people claim that I must believe in vampires, since I took the stream seriously enough to fall for Live’s prank. This is ridiculous. The vampire thing was a gimmick Live threw in so that I wouldn’t realize the stream was a setup for pranking me. Ordinary tag would make for a boring stream, so I’d know something was up.”
Never mind the part where I jumped off a roof and Live caught me. People are going to ask about that eventually. Ugh.
“I saw a few chirps claiming that Ichiko used real blood bags to fake her injury. No, obviously not, that’s a prop full of fake blood. We all know how scarce blood bank blood is.”
All lies; we hadn’t realized how little donor blood was floating around until reading those chirps. I haven’t decided whether to bring this up to the others. It’s not like I had a safer alternative to suggest. Even if Live was fine sharing me, I don’t think I could feed six hungry vampires on my own.
“Other people thought Ichiko was actually injured, probably because they closed the stream before the prank reveal. She’s fine, though I didn’t know that at the time.”
I’m on a roll.
“The usual suspects posted some out-of-context clips to make it sound like I offered Live sexual favors in exchange for working with me on Mayonaka Punch. What I actually offered was…”
Fuck. My momentum crashed into that wall, that impossible obstacle, the question with no answers that weren’t dangerously honest or obviously absurd.
I switched off the camera and looked up one of the clips passing around Chirper.
“Live! You’re watching this stream, aren’t you?! I showed my face! I didn’t run away this time! Did you forget our deal?! You promised me, didn’t you?! To make a meal of me once we hit a million subs! So hurry up and show yourself already! ”
‘To make a meal of me’. A few interpretations of those five little, stupid words were floating around the internet. A surprising number of people thought Live convinced me that she was a vampire, tricking me into thinking Live could drink blood and that the Vampire Tag was real Vampire Tag. That was technically true, but not something I could safely admit to.
The other guesses were more sexual in nature. There were a surprising number of sex acts with food-related names, and someone had imagined Live doing each and every one of them to me in exchange for NewTube subscribers. Confirming any of these rumors or implying that they were true wouldn’t get me vampire-murdered, but “admitting” that I convinced Live to work with me by promising sexual favors would wreck my reputation worse than punching Ichiko on stream.
How else could someone interpret that stupid sentence I stupidly said? Browsing Chirper and comments on the Vampire Tag vlog and every other fan space I know of, the only things I found were a hundred people repeating the same basic ideas, a dozen people telling me personally that vampires don’t exist, and multiple people who drew what they imagined “making a meal of me” might look like. Which should be gross, but it’s…distracting. I need to focus.
Maybe I could find some way to confirm the vampire thing without attracting Mother’s wrath? Have Fu and Ichiko tell everyone that I believe vampires exist and…what, that Live played into my delusion? There’s no way to spin that without making Live look like a colossal bitch. Unless we convinced everyone that Live also thinks she’s a vampire?
No. Too convoluted. Too many layers of lies. Could we convince everyone that Live was an ordinary human who thinks she’s a vampire? Could we strike a balance where Live lies convincingly enough to convince everyone that we’re not lying to cover something up, but not so convincingly that Mother thinks we’ve revealed the existence of vampires? More likely, we’d piss Mother off and people would think we’re lying.
I groan in frustration.
Could we pretend the whole Vampire Tag stream was one big, scripted event? No. Well, maybe if I hadn’t punched Live. But I did, and she kinda deserved it, but it would be hard to pretend that was something we’d scripted. Not unless I wanted to say I was playing up my violent outbursts as, like, a character gimmick or something, and that sounds both stupid and exhausting.
Stupid, useless ideas that can’t solve a stupid, pointless problem. Something dumb I said because I thought Live was gone and Mayopan was over. An idiot shooting herself in the foot. Again.
Maybe I should pretend I misspoke, that I promised Live something else? That I promised she could…have a meal with me or something? Sure, that only sounds a little like “make a meal of me,” and it sounds like a really weak promise for a million subscribers. It sounds like the obvious lie that it is. But…no, it’s just terrible. Stupid. Worthless.
I grab something from my desk and throw it at the wall. My mouse? Fuck, I need that. I jump over to grab it from behind the bed, then back to the desk to make sure it works…yeah. Thank god I didn’t buy the cheap garbage.
I stare at Chirper again. I’d searched for any chirps containing both “Mayonaka Punch” and “meal,” which brought up more speculation and accusations and alleged jokes than one NewTuber could read. Also a few people watching our videos while eating rice. Nothing new. Nothing useful. One more uncomfortably sexy drawing of me and Live.
I turn off the monitor, put away the camera, and start pacing. Dammit, dammit, dammit. It’s all delusions or dubious deceptions or…dirty deeds. The plausible lies are bad enough that I consider telling such an obvious whopper that everyone knows I’m hiding something but no one can guess what. Everyone would individually assume the worst, but nobody would agree on what “the worst” is, which might be better than everyone “knowing” one moderately bad thing.
Well, significantly bad. I punch the wall in frustration. Every option sucks. I just barely started showing up on-camera and I fucked it up already. Sure, I only said that shit because Live was pulling a prank on me, but it was my fault. In what universe would shouting about how I promised to let Live eat me not cause problems?
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I punch the wall again. Stupidly. What is that gonna accomplish? Bruise my knuckles, maybe crack the drywall? Is that supposed to make me feel better? Dumbass.
Someone knocks on the door. I open it, and see Live in her pajamas.
I blink. “You’re awake?”
“You’ve been kinda noisy.” Live yawns.
“Oh, sorry.”
“Something wrong?”
After a moment, I decide to tell her. “Just trying to figure out how to respond to some…criticism I’ve seen.”
“Already?” Live yawns again. “It’s been, like, four hours since the stream, hasn’t it?”
“Closer to six. And the point of live streams is that people can react to them live , while things are happening. Or a few hours later, if they want. Whenever they wake up.”
Live hums. “Okay. What’s the criticism?”
“There’s a bunch of little stuff. People thinking Ichiko actually got hurt, or questioning why I joined Mayonaka Punch all of a sudden.” Probably not a good time to mention the blood bag thing. “And one big thing. People are making all sorts of wild guesses about what I meant when I said I’d let you make a meal of me.”
“Oh? What kind of guesses?”
“Let me show you.” I turn the monitor back on, remembering a fraction of a second too late why I’d turned it off in the first place. That uncomfortably—that uncomfortable drawing. I scroll away from it quickly, though judging by Live’s confused grunt, not quickly enough.
“There are two kinds of rumors floating around about why I’d promise to let you ‘make a meal of me’,” I said. “There are some people who think you tricked me into thinking you’re a real vampire or something, and they’re mad at you for lying. And there are a bunch of others who think I, um, seduced you into working with me. And they’re mad at me for doing that.”
Live hummed. “Sounds like a problem. I think Shirayuki had some thoughts about how to handle it. So did Tokage, but—”
“But they’re both asleep,” I finished.
“I guess? I was gonna say that Tokage’s idea sounded dumb.”
“I can’t wait for them to wake up,” I snarled. “The longer we let this fester, the worse it gets! I need to do something! ”
Live frowns. “Is it worse than that time you punched Otomi?”
I groan. “Which one?”
“The second? Either?”
“Well…no.”
“You didn’t do a video for that,” Live says, “and it stopped getting worse after a while, right? Even after weeks and weeks?”
“…I guess?”
“So letting this sit for a day or two can’t be that bad.”
“You—” She has a point. But it still feels wrong. “Argh!”
Live pushes me at my bed, hard enough that I trip backwards onto it. “Get some rest. We’ll talk about it in the evening.”
“But—”
Live yawns, crosses her arms. “You’re probably as tired as me, whether you admit it or not. Besides, six heads are better than one.”
I sit up. “I have to—”
“No.” Live shakes her head. “We have to. Its our problem, not your problem. And we can work on it once everyone’s all rested. Okay?” She grabs my mouse off the desk. “No work until then.”
I stare at the mouse in Live’s hand as she leaves my room. I still need it. I need it to fix my stupid mistakes.
But…maybe not yet. Maybe not alone.