I watched as Melty's limousine pulled up to our house the next day.
"Now, I need you to not embarrass me," I told Shindo.
"Bro, when have I ever embarrassed you?"
"I don't have time to write a whole thesis right now," I told him. "Just act normal."
He gave me a mock military salute. Clearly he didn't understand what 'act normal' entailed.
"Hello!" Melty said, emerging from the car. Trailing behind her was Eclair as usual, though aside from our usual greeting she gave Shindo a glare, and he flinched under her gaze.
"What's with the angry-looking woman?"
"That's Eclair, her bodyguard."
"Bodyguard? Wait, who's your classmate then?"
"That's Melty," I told him, pointing to the violette.
Shindo leaned closer to my ear. "Bro, you're not doing much to help with the lolicon allegations here..."
I elbowed him in the stomach.
"Pardon me, but who is this?" Melty asked.
"This is my younger brother, Shindo," I said.
"Iwatani Shindo at your service, hime-sama," Shindo said.
I glared at him thought Melty just giggled.
"So, where's Filo?" I asked.
"Well, she can't come today," Melty said. "I guess she's busy with shooting for the next season of Magical Girl Kiiori. Also, there's talk of a movie coming soon though and while that's good and all it means she'll have even less time to spend with me..."
"Hmm," I see. "Uh, hey, Eclair, I needed some help with something."
"Mmm? What is it, Naofumi?"
"There were some parts I needed for a school- well, actually college project, but it's a bit hard to get them right now, as you might understand," I told her. I gave her a list of things. "I'll pay you back of course but-"
"No issue, I think I can get these things easy enough," Eclair said. She snapped her fingers and someone handed her a phone, which she spoke into.
Really, the two of us were almost living on two different planes of existence here.
Back in the house, when Melty finally entered our apartment, I had to not only work on my own college project- but Shindo's as well.
I could tell this annoyed Melty, we were a bit behind on the project anyway because of Filo and the time Melty had spent with her, but there was little that I could do to make her feel better.
As a matter of fact, we weren't even done by the time that Melty had to leave, and Shindo and I were working until well into the night after she was gone to get the project somewhat running.
It seemed that we would have a crude model running by the time the project and the exhibition were due, so there was that.
The next day, Raphtalia dropped by.
"Again, Shindo, I need you to stop acting weird," I told him as she knocked on the door.
"You keep saying that but when have I eve-" he began to say before I told him to keep quiet as I opened the door.
"Hello, Mister Naofumi!" Raphtalia said. She noticed Shindo and didn't seem to have much of a response to him.
"Hey Shindo- I wouldn't want any background noise interfering while we're streaming, so could you go ahead and start testing out the experiment outside?" I asked him. "As quietly as possible of course."
"Aww, it sounds like you just want to get rid of me..."
"When you know it why do you resist?"
"Hey!" he said before grumpily walking out.
"Do you and your brother always fight like this?" Raphtalia asked as Shindo slammed the door.
"No, it's just... he was being a bit irresponsible is all," I told her. "Coming here without a plan and dumping things on me- if things were a little less busy I wouldn't be too annoyed but we're dealing with a lot as it is."
"With that said," Raphtalia said, sounding very excited. "Did you see the recent numbers?"
"Huh? No, I was busy with these other things," I told her. "And that stalker... you know what, never mind, it's not important now as it is." I told her.
"Oh, then I think you'll be really surprised at this," she said.
She opened up the main channel page, and I saw that our views had nearly tripled and our subscribers had doubled. 'When did this happen?"
"I think that our little stunt with Filo worked," Raphtalia said. "It might've taken some time, but it did pay off!"
"Right," I said. "Well, I think we're almost done with the singleplayer campaign now, so then we can go back to playing ranked..."
Ranked was where most of the views, and consequently, most of the money was, and I thought that Raphtalia had built herself up enough to go to that place. Not to mention she had grinded to get things that would help her be better than a default player if she went for ranked.
The stream went on without a hitch, though that 'lanserboi' user was back in chat. I only recognized the username because of the large donation he had made last time. He kept asking when we would have Filo on again, and though I tried to ignore him, when he dropped a thousand yen donation and asked the question, we sort of had no choice but to break the news to him.
"Well, that thing was sort of a one-time only event," Raphtalia said, a bit nervously. There was no good answer to this. "While I would love to have Filo back on, the fact is that she has other responsibilities shooting her television series, so she might not be back on for a while. I can't say anything definitively though."
It seemed this 'lanserboi' user tuned out after that, though no one else in chat did so. I guessed that most of the new traffic was of people genuinely finding Raphtalia's stream and sticking with it, which was good. I don't think I could've handled it if the stream was filled with people asking for Filo.
I could perhaps get Filo back on, but that would have diminishing returns now given that Filo didn't do much in the streams. Not to mention I would have to risk incurring the wrath of that cold-hearted lolibaba, which I would rather not do, so I decided to throw that idea into the proverbial trash can for now.
