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When you're an eighteen-year-old university student, living far from home and seeking some escape from your dull everyday life, most people would start searching for a part-time job. That's what Lysithea does, a bright morning of March. She sits at her favorite spot in the school library and searches. It takes all day – and many, many candies crushed under her teeth in frustration – but she ends up finding something. It's suspicious sure, but it's something.
A random sponsored tweet – she wouldn't even look at them normally – advertising auditions for a newly-established “vtuber” agency. After some light Google searches, she ends up with two pieces of knowledge. 1. Vtubers are just streamers but with L2D avatars. And 2. If you hit gold, you can make money. A lot. Enough to send some to her family. So she spends the next weekend preparing a video reel to promote herself and writes the perfect CV. The agency seems legit what's with their two generations – twelve vtubers already – and their CCV and view counts seem good enough to Lysithea.
She doesn't expect much of course, but she sends her application and returns to job hunting. Two months later, she receives an e-mail and that's how she enters the Garreg Mach vtuber agency with the premise of debuting with their third generation – the Golden Deers. Meetings with the managers and the CEO – a pretty young woman named Byleth -- are done over Zoom and Discord.
They reveal to her the model she was assigned. To her surprise, it's pretty accurate to real life – just more anime – and it's pretty fun to move around and change expression with a click. Lysithea has to choose a name for her new identity. She pauses for a moment before she mutters a simple “Cordelia”. In her parents' home country, that's how her surname is pronounced – why did it become Ordelia when her family came here she doesn't know – and she had always liked it. Behind her monitor, Byleth nods and that's how Lysithea von Ordelia becomes Cordelia.
She meets her genmate the week after. The Discord call is silent at first. Then multiple voices talking at once without any discipline, until one of the managers – Seteth – turns their sound off before making them introduce themselves one by one. They all seem to be nice enough, though Lysithea has doubts about the guy they named the leader of their generation. By the sound of his voice, he's not very serious and spends most of the meeting cracking jokes, especially during his presentation. His name – his vtuber one of course – is Claude and he seems like the type of person Lysithea likes to ignore and ridicule in her head.
The Golden Deers' discord server is always bustling with activities and she loathes to admit it but it's pretty relaxing to come home from class, do her homework and then spend time with her genmates. Nothing like listening to Valentine talk about her lavish vacations or Ignatz rave about what kind of cartoon porn he drew for a commission for her to feel like she has friends. And surprisingly, Claude proves himself to be rather competent – calling for meetings, organizing some mock streams for them to get used to it, brainstorming lore – “it's the most important part!” he had said and well, he sounded so convincing that Lysithea accepted to write a detailed background for her anime character.
After a few months of this routine, Byleth had finally given them the okay for their debuts – a week-long event – and the rush had begun. Not for Lysithea though; she had researched everything beforehand, made slides to present her likes – books, cakes - and dislikes – ghosts – and commissioned artists for her stream assets. She has watched debuts from multiple agencies – not content with just her own, she looked overseas for inspiration and heavily drew from retired vtubers like the one from Chalphy Productions. Suffice to say, she's ready with a capital R.
And soon, the debut week arrives. The stress. The “what can I say on Twitter, so people will get what my personality is without it being cringe” dilemma. The “YouTube won't let me stream without buffering” curse. Their gen is hit with all that and more but surprisingly maybe, the debuts go well. Lysithea is pleased with herself and with the reception of the fans – “she's cute and smart” is great but “I want the loli to insult me” may be a tad too much – and she's more than pleasantly surprised with how well their generation is received.
First comes Ignatz, who specializes in art streams. Then, Raphaël whose content is full of Ring Fit Adventures and whose design seems tailored to attract a certain demographic. After that, Marianne who Lysithea doesn't really understand; the horse girl part she gets, but the part where she insists on creating the most chaotic Sims house? Nope. Still trying to find a niche, Lysithea has filled her first week with a mix of strategy games, chatting streams, and one tiny science experiment stream. Valentine had first tried to market herself as a girlfriend experience streamer, but her streams are a mishmash of lewd ASMRs -- she can't go too far the management warned – and handcam streams where she either tries to make the worst food in Fodlan or the best accessories, nowhere in between. And their leader well, he's a whole riot.
Planning streams and building a real PC to replace her old laptop isn’t how Lysithea thought she would spend the evenings of her summer break but doing it while speaking to her genmates is pleasant. It’s the first time she has found a community – she has always been a loner – and they may think of her as just a coworker but she likes it. She settles into a comfortable rhythm of studying, streaming, and chatting with her friends.
* * *
After a month of this life, Lysithea reaches a point where she can finally say she’s happy with herself. She got used to managing OBS, interacting with the chat, planning collabs with the other members – to put it lightly, it is going great. (She won't admit it out loud but she likes going on Twitter and shifting through her art tags to see how people draw her avatar – and it makes her happy to see so many people encouraging her.)
It’s at this moment that Claude asks her to collab with him and of course, she accepts almost immediately. They never had a 1-on-1 collab before but they talk almost every day on Discord and they get along quite well during group collabs so why not? Plus, if they don’t do anything together, rumors may spread there’s dissension inside the group and Lysithea doesn’t want that. But more than that, she often watches his stream, and begrudgingly, she will admit he’s a far better streamer than her so she wants – needs – to grow.
They decide on a simple stream where they play Clubhouse Games on the Switch. As soon as Lysithea leaves the Discord call, she starts practicing. She saw Claude destroy others at that game and she’s not going to be another victim. His L2D model’s smug smile as he beat Valentine at Mancala is burned into her mind – she will not stand for that.
When the day comes, she’s ready. She connects to Discord and enters the chat channel where she waits for Claude and once he’s here, they agree to start the stream. She’s confident in her skills – she won’t lose.
* * *
So, she is losing. 7 to 2 precisely. And she’s not bitter despite what her chat and the SuperChats she’s receiving think. Look, her model is smiling, that sickly sweet anime girl smile which means everything is alright. She doesn’t even look at the Claude L2D on her screen because she knows he’s smiling smugly and she hates it. He’s an awful person. She’s sure that in reality, he isn’t even half as attractive as his model. So fucking annoying.
“Last game! What should we do, Cordelia?”
She grits her teeth but answers in the cutest voice she can: “Let’s play chess!”
She’s good at that – better than Claude probably. As she clicks on the game, a red SuperChat catches her eye. She refrains from clicking her tongue too loudly so her mic doesn't catch it.
“don’t lose again lol… Hey, who do you take me for?! I’ll have you now I’m great at chess!”
She will prove to Claude and her chat they are underestimating her. No need for backseaters here. He is black and she’s white so she makes the first move and instantly, it feels great. And maybe Claude thinks she is serious because his model’s expression changes from the usual carefree one to his serious one. Perfect.
“Cordelia you’re so good! Where did you learn that? Thanks, PegKnight776 for the aka supa. To be honest, I...” she hesitates. She can’t say she learned because she spent hours as a kid playing against the computer because she had no friends. Thankfully, she remembers what her lore is supposed to be. Right, she’s a rich girl. A count’s daughter. “My father taught me. After all, chess is quite a normal game to play in high society.”
The chat fills with comments like “ deep lore ”, and “ are you an ojou-sama irl??? ”... and she smirks. She has heaps of written lore and she only gives them crumbs so seeing them scramble to gather them every time she lets something slip is funny.
“Is that so, Cordelia? Then I guess,” Claude uses his knight to take her rook, “me being better than you is because I’m of higher standing?”
“Don’t make me laugh, Claude,” she takes a pawn. “Results in chess aren’t determined by status but by yourself!”
It’s less of a chess game and more of a shōnen battle on a chessboard, she realizes after a while, with never of them conceding. And just when she thinks she cornered him, she hears him laugh and the chat turns from optimistic “ you got it ”s to “ f ”s. He hasn’t even played yet so why- oh, the lag . Which means people tuning in on both their streams have seen Claude win – and her lose again. Strangely, she’s both irritated and relieved. They both did their best and it wasn’t a unilateral battle – she’s mostly satisfied. A Discord notification pops on her screen: well played and it makes her cheeks redden – thanks the Goddess her model can't reflect that.
After the stream, she is about to leave the call when Claude talks to her:
“Hey, Cordelia, how about an off-collab next time? I don’t know where you live but I think I should be able to swing by for a stream.”
“What, already missing me?”
“Yeah. It was fun playing and chatting with you.” And his voice is so fucking soft.
She’s too shocked to speak at first but she quickly recovered. “I’ll send you a DM. It was fun for me too,” she quickly says before exiting the call.
What the fuck was that . Lysithea hops on Twitter to say good night to her fans and then she throws her phone on her bed. There’s no reason for her heart to beat that fast. He’s just a coworker. To her, he’s just a disembodied voice with a cute anime boy model. And now she’s supposed to meet up with him? Find out his real name and face? Her screams get muffled in her pillow. She’s so busy trying to gather her thoughts, she doesn’t send Claude a DM until twelve hours later.