chapter01 · 022-ep22

Episode 22: A New Normal

Ever since the stream where she'd defeated the deep-layer irregularity, life around Karin had grown hectic in all sorts of ways.

The day after the stream had been particularly rough.

"Oh, it's Karin ojou-sama!"

"I thought she was just a weirdo, but she's that amazing!?"

"Can I shake your hand? Uh, gently, please..."

"!? Wh-what's all this, desu no!?"

The moment she arrived at school, a mob of students surrounded her. Girls wanted handshakes and boys wanted autographs; things got so out of hand it looked like classes might start late.

Luckily, she'd planned her autograph before becoming a streamer. With the superhuman speed of an explorer capable of soloing the lower layers, she managed to get through the fan interactions and settle things down quickly. But Karin was drained by a kind of exhaustion she'd never known before. "I-I'm happy, but is THIS what happens when your stream gets popular, desu no!?" She'd lost the energy to stream at all that day.

Fortunately, no one had tried to identify her school and show up there—perhaps they were too afraid of her. If any more people had come, things could have been much worse.

Nor was everyday life the only thing changing.

Offers flooded the social-media account she used for announcements from major clans and streaming agencies across the country. Unable to handle them all, she closed her DMs and pinned a blunt response: 'Following the example of Setsuna-sama, who often acts alone, I have no intention of joining a clan or agency for the time being, desu wa!'

The guards at the dungeon entrance who'd brushed aside her account of beating Kagerou also sent a formal apology through the Explorers' Association. Karin made sure to say on stream, "It doesn't bother me at all, desu wa!" and "If anything, I am grateful you worried enough to call an ambulance, desu no!" She spent days responding to people on all sides.

On top of that, her recent stream had gone from being called legendary online to downright mythical, and its influence was considerable—

"Karin ojou-sama is so cool, right?"

"Right? She's amazing! Her early clips have already hit ten million views!"

"Because hardcore fans like you keep watching them on repeat."

"Ehehe. Man, I don't have anything else I wanna do. Maybe I'll try becoming an explorer. Or at least dress like her—"

"Hehehe..."

One weekday morning, as Karin walked to school, she heard a friendly group of girls in another school's uniforms chatting brightly.

They appeared to be watching one of her videos on their way to school. Hearing her own name, Karin secretly smiled behind them, pleased despite herself.

"Hehe, heh... I learned at school the other day that causing a commotion and bothering everyone is not Elegant, so I shan't shamelessly call out to them myself... But it really does make me happy to hear them talk about me."

Only recently, she'd had zero concurrents, and even the occasional viewer had declared her footage fake. She couldn't help feeling proud now.

But the next moment, that composure crumbled.

"Morning! Whatcha watching?"

A tall girl joined the group up ahead and peered at the video.

"You guys are watching Fist-Fuck Ojou-sama AGAIN? I mean, you got me hooked after recommending her videos too, but..."

"Come on, don't call her that out here... pfft."

"Y-yeah! Karin ojou-sama said that was a misunderstanding!"

Karin went rigid at the words.

(OAAAAAAAAAH! I thought it would blow over after a week, desu noooooooo!)

She screamed internally at the realization that even random passing schoolgirls knew her as Fist-Fuck Ojou-sama.

She hurriedly redid her ojou-sama hairstyle into a ponytail so neither the girls ahead nor anyone else nearby would recognize her as Karin Yamada, then fled.

Getting mobbed in the hallway or entrance would bother everyone, so—whoosh!—she leapt straight up to the third floor.

Still running on the momentum of her escape, Karin cried, "Uwaaaaaah!" as she opened the balcony window and burst into her classroom.

"Oh, Yamada came to school via the balcony again today."

"Never gets old seeing that."

Her classmates spoke without a care while Karin flung herself at her best friend. "Mafuyu!"

"Things were finally calming down on my channel, so I thought it was all right, but a whole week later the meme contamination still won't stop, desu no! The internet is a bad influence! It's the worst, desu no!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. That again."

Mafuyu Sasaki caught the sobbing Karin with practiced ease.

"It's just the price of fame, right? Give up on fighting it."

"Isn't this rather different from the price of fame!?"

As Karin protested Mafuyu's low-energy verdict, other voices chimed in.

"I like it!"

"I think it's great too!"

"I'd even let Karin-chan fist-fuck me!"

"Easy to say when it's not happening to YOU, desu wa!"

And the students weren't the only ones piling on.

"...! Yamada's wearing her hair normally again today...!"

The woman who said this, moved to tears, was their homeroom teacher, who had just entered the classroom.

"Maybe the internet isn't all bad... If this 'Fist Fuck' thing spreads further, could Yamada become even more normal...? Okay, one more retweet."

"Are you really an educator, desu no!?"

Karin's cry rang through the morning classroom as she confiscated the teacher's phone.

Later, during break, Karin was still crying to Mafuyu.

Mafuyu spoke in the same listless tone.

"Okay, I feel bad for you about the way things are going. But it's not like you've caused a scandal, and your subscribers have skyrocketed, right?"

"They have, but still!"

As Mafuyu said, the channel 'Natural-Born Ojou-sama Karin Yamada's Elegant Dungeon Conquest' had amassed a staggering number of subscribers since then.

Around 1.5 million.

As Karin kept diligently streaming, word of the records she'd set, her achievements, and the shocking footage she'd produced on that one dungeon run spread wider and wider. New people never stopped finding her channel.

Many had watched her Elegant dungeon conquest before subscribing this time, which in itself was something to celebrate.

But from the channel settings' analytics—the data showing subscriptions over time and viewer age and gender—and what was happening on social media, it seemed a lot of people were coming because of Fist Fuck too. Just as with Thug Ojou-sama, quite a few subscribers had the wrong impression of Karin (and that was important).

If she wanted to stick to her channel concept of 'Elegant Dungeon Conquest,' gaining subscribers with the wrong expectations could eventually cause the channel to decline. It was troubling. Besides, she simply didn't want the Fist-Fuck Ojou-sama image spreading.

"Well, I guess you just have to keep streaming steadily, or do something that changes people's impression of you. Like how this whole thing pushed the thug image into the background."

"That sounds like washing away blood with blood, desu wa..."

"But you don't really have to do anything different. You're already... a lot. If you just keep streaming like normal, some new weird image'll overwrite this one soon enough."

"You're right..."

Karin nodded faintly at Mafuyu's words.

"As long as I don't make any mistakes and demonstrate my usual Elegance, people's impression will shift in that direction, won't it?"

"Uh... sure, yeah."

"Ooh... I'll do my best with my streams, desu wa..."

And so Karin prepared to stream as soon as school was over.

Not that she was doing it solely to dispel the Fist Fuck image.

"As Mafuyu said, streaming regularly is important for establishing an Elegant impression. Right now I should stream every day I can, gain fans, and keep the momentum from going viral, desu wa."

Honestly, the number of subscribers was growing so fast it was a little frightening... But trends came and went quickly. There was no telling when her popularity might plummet. It was important to gain subscribers while she could and build a base of regular fans.

Mafuyu had also warned her, though: 'Continuing to dive into dungeons in front of an audience this big could tire you out without you realizing it. That's dangerous, and your streams could get repetitive too.'

"Which is why today's stream will be from home, desu wa."

Following her best friend's advice, Karin started streaming from her room.

She had no idea that today's stream would, in a sense, cause an even bigger uproar than her last dungeon conquest.