Chapter 1 : GIRL

Hirojimi was perplexed as to why the application went through, but he decided to come nevertheless. The building resembled a refurbished house turned into an office space. It had a small, startup company vibe. Hirojimi wasn't picky about the size of the office, as he had applied to numerous startups in the past, only to be ghosted for two months after the interviews.

Upon entering, he noticed that the workers were dressed casually. Some even wore loungewear, which seemed bizarre to him. However, there were a few, including the receptionist, dressed in suits. Hirojimi tilted his head, trying to understand the work culture in this place. Some seemed diligent, while others appeared lazy, glued to their phones while lounging in their cubicles.

"Excuse me, are you Hirojimi?" The receptionist greeted him as he was lost in thought.

"Yes, I am."

"Please come in. Mister David has been waiting for you." The receptionist guided Hirojimi to a room where a well-dressed, handsome man sat with a teenage girl who couldn't have been more than 17 years old.

"Is she his daughter?" Hirojimi wondered silently. Even if she was the CEO's daughter, hiring a teenage girl seemed unusual. Moreover, while her father was dressed in a suit, the girl wore casual clothes. Both of them smiled at Hirojimi as he entered, and a chair was reserved for him in front of the table. He handed them a large brown envelope containing his resume and job application, copied from his previous interviews. Unlike his first and last interviews, this time, he had no hope for this company.

"Greetings, my name is Hirojimi Tanaka."

"Hello, I'm David, the branch director here at Vee Idol branch studio. This is Marienne, an employee of our studio. Are you an expat? Your name seems Japanese," he inquired after hearing Hiro's name. Hirojimi's name was Japanese, but he was born in the USA. The name had simply been given to him by his parents, who had naturalized there. He didn't know a single word of Japanese either.

"No, my parents naturalized here."

"So, you applied here even when you stated in your application form that you could not sing and lacked Japanese. May I ask why that is?" David asked with a smile. Knowing that, Hirojimi wondered why they had even selected him for an interview. With nothing to lose, he answered nonchalantly.

"It was written that it was optional, and while I do not know if my voice was satisfactory, you could judge it yourself. The form asked for my voice sample," Hirojimi sarcastically answered, trying to maintain a polite demeanor. However, to his surprise, the interviewer didn't seem angry and instead smiled, though the girl was frowning.

"I thought you would sound more like a feminine boy from your voice. Is it truly your voice?" the girl spoke. Unlike Hiro, she had a beautiful voice and pretty looks. He would believe it if she were in the idol industry. What a waste that her pretty looks were being underutilized as a virtual idol.

"Yes, it is my voice recorded from my phone."

"I see. Alright, let's put this aside for now," David said, moving Hiro's resume into his drawer, unwilling to read the many exaggerations that had been put into it.

"Do you know what we are working on?"

"Yes, I followed some of your company's profiles on the internet. You are hosting some kind of virtual idol agency, right?"

"Yes. Do you know what a vtuber is?"

"Umm… it's a 3D anime character that can move in real-time," Hiro answered. Being a Summa Cum Laude nerd, he knew almost everything anime-related. However, the vtubers themselves left little impression on him. He only knew about Silly, the cute idiot Vtuber, who was the most popular with twenty thousand subscribers.

"Yes. So, I will jump right into the matter. Will you become a vtuber?" David said.

"Yes," Hiro answered. At this moment, he would just say yes to anything to get a job.

"Good! Well, then. See you on Monday. We will get you through the training," David replied. It was so sudden that Hiro didn't know how to respond.

"Huh? Wait? I got accepted?"

"Yes. Well, that depends on your performance during training. If you feel you don't want to be a vtuber, you can always back out. But if you do, I shall welcome you to our company," he smiled.

Hiro was taken aback as he was guided out of the building. He wondered if all of this was a dream. But when he looked back at the dilapidated building on the outside but neat on the inside, he knew it wasn't a dream. He clenched his fist and yelled.

"Yes!! Finally, my first job!!" His shout drew glances from bystanders. With an embarrassed gesture, he bowed and left the premises. But he couldn't help but skip his steps toward the station with a grin plastered all over his face from top to bottom.

When he got home, his mother annoyingly asked him about the interview during dinner. Hiro reminisced every word David had said to him.

"They told me to come back on Monday for training. That means I am accepted, right?"

"Well, if they said training, that means you got accepted. No employer would bother training others just to reject them," his mother nodded, smiling.

"Okay! Whatever they throw at me, I will crush it!" Hiro said with a smile. His attitude was met with a smile from his mother as if their tense relationship from yesterday was a lie.

Meanwhile, at the VeeIdol Branch Company, David was questioned by Marie. Marie was another Vtuber hired by VeeIdol, not David's daughter, a fact that Hiro would soon find out. Little did he know that David was still a bachelor, even when his office was surrounded by beautiful girls.

"Why did you hire him?" Marie sulked a little.

"Hm? Maybe because he was interesting?"

"What can he even present to the viewers? He said himself he couldn't sing and has no talent."

"Well, you could always teach him, right?"

"Even I was scraping by. My talents are only singing and dancing."

"Well, Vtubers are not well-known on this side of the world. Even in their home country of Japan, they only have several tens of thousand subscribers. So, our recruitment pool is surprisingly small," David said as he reviewed the resumes he had received. Even when he lowered the bar to almost nothing, only 10 job applications reached him. The Vtuber industry was seen as more of a side job, and it was hard to get by in life working in it. It is not unlike the talent agency in Japan, where idols have to perform side jobs like becoming hostesses in restaurants and so on.

"Yeah. Nobody knows us yet," Marie sighed.

"So, let's eliminate these seven who didn't respond to the email or didn't show up. Three came: an ex-idol cum actress, another teenager looking for a side job, and him."

"The teenager..."

"No. We have too many teenagers already," David said. He didn't want his agency to be filled with only underage children. Moreover, they tended to have problems with their work schedule due to their schools, exams, or parents. Complications could also arise if the children did something unimaginably against the law, which fortunately hadn't happened in his office.

"Then the ex-actress..." Marie whispered.

"Tell me, which one is more interesting: a fat male otaku trying to become an anime waifu or an experienced actress playing the role of a female Vtuber?" David whispered. Like a whisper of a devil, Marie gulped. However, despite things getting interesting, she resisted the idea of Hiro becoming a female character. Both of them had heard the sound recording that Hiro had submitted to them before the interview.

Being popular was like winning a ticket lottery. Sometimes it was related to their skills, and other times it was due to pure luck. People in the entertainment industry have tried to research various methods on how to become popular, but they only arrived at a simple answer. Refusing to accept that becoming a popular idol was unrelated to skills and beauty, they referred to it as "hidden talent."

"The star is a hidden talent where an idol can shine." Marie, the beautiful teenager, was aware of this. She had worked for this company for almost a year now. She had accumulated efforts to finally reach three thousand subscribers. Her subscriber count afforded her a sustainable life, though with limited luxuries.

"Do you think he has the star, the talent that every popular idol possesses? I mean, looking at the sound recordings…" Marie looked at him, her expression apprehensive as she breathed in, trying to quell her dissatisfaction.

"Do you believe that people are born with the star?"

"Well, I have seen idols climb through the ranks like it was nothing. What else could we assume? Star is an innate talent."

"I see. We shall see. Whether he fails or succeeds, we shall see. After all…" David said, raising his hand. "We only seek Female Character Waifus! Their 3D form in this world is irrelevant! As long as they have a waifu in their heart, we should welcome them! VeeIdol will exhibit their Waifu soul from their heart. Anime is Justice!"

There was a fine line between genius and insanity. Whether David fell into the former or the latter would be decided later. Marie could only sigh as she continued with the paperwork while glancing at his resume.

"We need to introduce him to the other members…" Her whisper was heard by nobody. She facepalmed with stress as she re-listened to his meowing sound again. "How will we even train him?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-mcvszd0yM