Chapter 5

The Moving Princess

I downloaded the new model file as soon as I paid for it, and the package arrived right after lunch the day after I ordered it.

Considering the enormous sum(?) I had invested in it, it felt a little underwhelming, but hey, it was better than nothing.

“Miss, would you like me to open it for you?”

“No! I’ll open it myself!”

I brushed off Ms. Sejin’s offer and rushed back to my room carrying the package on trembling legs. No, I rolled back in. My legs got tangled halfway there...

“F-Finally.”

My hands trembled as I opened the box.

To think a single package could make me this excited. But I could not help it.

Now this noble body would finally become a moving VTuber. My days of being a preserved specimen that only blinked ended today.

Do you know the princess who became a specimen?

“I don’t care, asshole. I’m feeling absolutely High right now! WRYYYY!”

But—

“...How was I supposed to do this again? Ah, here. Heave-ho.”

Surprisingly, installing the webcam itself did not take long.

There was only one cable, and the plug was a typical USB shape, so finding where to connect it was not difficult. Even I could manage that much.

The problem came afterward.

Apparently, I had to load the newly purchased model file into the program.

But it would not go in easily.

“...Why won’t it open?”

When I dragged and dropped the file, it would load for a moment and crash. If I dragged it in again, it crashed again.

And when I finally thought I had gotten it open, nothing appeared on-screen.

“Ugh. Where did my princess go?”

Even digging through the settings only greeted me with walls of incomprehensible English.

Pressing this changed that, pressing that made something completely unrelated pop out.

For someone like me who hated machines, this was practically torture.

I could handle Excel reasonably well in my previous life, but nobody ever taught me shit like this.

“Aaaaagh! I don’t understand!”

Knock knock knock.

“Miss, are you having trouble with something? Would you like me to help?”

“Aaaagh, no!”

That was close. If Ms. Sejin came in here now, it would be a catastrophe.

In my previous life, I would have just called the IT team and had them fix it, but if I called the IT team now, everything I was doing would be exposed.

I had to somehow manage this on my own...

“Oh. Did it work?”

After searching the internet and figuring things out bit by bit, I somehow managed to get it more or less working.

“Ugh... I’ve already been doing this for two hours.”

Still, it works now, so Success! All’s well that ends well—.

“Hmm... what position would be best?”

Where to place the webcam was another problem.

I roughly set it on the desk and sat down to test it, but the camera framed my face starting from under my chin. The angle was awful.

“...This won’t do.”

I tried putting it on top of the monitor, but it kept slipping and falling.

In the end, I stacked up several thick books I never read to make a stand and precariously balanced it on top.

But at first, the balance was off, so the slightest touch sent everything crashing down.

Only after knocking it over about three times did I finally get it settled.

“Pant... pant...”

I was already exhausted just from this, and the real work had not even begun.

“Ughhh. When am I ever going to finish setting all this up?”

The program VTubers use to control their models.

“Still, it’s free. How conscientious of them for once.”

If this had cost money too, I would have cried.

Just thinking about begging Ms. Sejin to lend me her card again was horrifying.

But you get what you pay for. And they say if you love free stuff too much, you will go bald.

I only found out after installing it, but there was a huge watermark stamped in the corner of the screen.

Apparently, I had to pay money to remove it.

“...You money-crazed bourgeois bastards! You’re going to kill all the commoners!”

So it claimed to be free, but in the end, it was designed to squeeze money out of you.

They really were right when they said nothing in this world is free.

Well, what could I do? I had no choice but to use the free version.

Besides, I am a girl now. Even if I carry the genes for male-pattern baldness, they will not activate.

“Hahahaha. Hit me with a million baldness attacks. I am invincible!”

All right, now the real thing begins.

If I turn on the webcam and enable the feature called tracking—

The model is supposed to move according to my face.

With my heart pounding, I turned on the camera.

“Ooh, ooooooh!...Huh?”

The model did move like the instructions said, but something was strange.

I stayed perfectly still, yet the princess’s head bobbed on its own.

When I turned my head to the right, the princess jerked hers to the left.

Even worse, only the whites of her eyes were showing.

“Aaaagh!”

The elegant vampire beauty Lilith had rolled her eyes back until only the whites showed—

She now looked like she needed an exorcism immediately.

“This isn’t right. This isn’t right at all.”

Then there was the lip-sync problem.

Even when I closed my mouth, the princess kept opening and closing hers.

And when I talked, she clamped her mouth shut.

We were completely out of sync.

“No, why the hell is it doing thiiis?!”

I spent an entire hour wrestling with the computer like that.

Unplugging and reconnecting the webcam, closing and reopening the program.

I dug through every setting I could find.

But the more I messed with it, the worse it got.

At one point, I must have touched something wrong, because the princess stretched vertically into a long, thin shape.

“Eek. It’s Slender Man.”

Another time, her head spun around in a full circle.

“Aaaaagh! What is this, The Exorcist?!”

No matter what I tried, the princess kept having seizures.

By this point, I actually missed the still image that only blinked.

At least back then, she still looked human.

Then, by chance, I found a button tucked away in the corner of the settings window.

“Calibrate? Let’s see... Ooooooh!”

The effect was immediate.

When I nodded, the princess nodded too, and when I smiled, the corners of her mouth rose as well.

Of course, it was not perfect.

Sometimes only one eye closed, and if I moved too dramatically, her face followed a beat late.

But still, this was something.

The princess who had been preserved like a specimen had finally begun to breathe.

“I should’ve pressed this button from the start.”

Why the hell did these bastards shove such an important button into some barely visible corner? Good grief. Bureaucratic nonsense without a thought for the customer... no, deskbound businessman bastards!

“Yaaawn... I’m sleepy.”

I had struggled so much that I was completely exhausted, so I lay down on the bed and went to sleep.

—

Thanks to Ms. Sejin waking me at just the right time, I enjoyed dinner and returned to my room.

“Kahaha. Five minutes until the stream begins. Bring forth the wine and women—! The hour of heroes and champions... no, blood and vampires has come—!”

Click.

-She’s here

-The princess is here

-Huh, wait

-The model is different?

-It looks kind of nicer

-Don’t tell me?

“Ahem. My subjects. Today, this princess has prepared something special.”

As I pompously nodded my head, the princess on-screen nodded along with me.

-She moved

-SHE MOVED!!!

-Holy shit, she’s moving

-The princess is moving T_T

-That scared the hell out of me, seriously

“Hahaha. You ignorant subjects. It is nothing special, yet you are astonished by something as trivial as this?”

-She just nodded, damn

-Revolutionary technology

-Our princess finally became human

-She evolved after a month of streaming

-But honestly, the quality still isn’t great lol

-Yeah, looks like a cheap model lol

-Still, going from zero to one is infinite growth lol

All I had done was nod once, yet everyone reacted like primitive people witnessing a spaceship launch.

Well, after staring at a still image for an entire month, I suppose seeing it move would have that effect.

The explosive reaction did make me feel pretty good.

Maybe even a little smug.

“Behold. Only at this level may one truly be called a vampire princess.”

-She nodded again, damn

-I got chills

-Why is this so moving when it’s nothing special

“Huh?”

But then.

The princess suddenly stopped moving.

“Huh? Why have you stopped moving again?”

No matter how much I nodded, the princess did not budge.

She had been following me perfectly just moments ago.

-Huh, why’d she stop

-The princess became a still image again

-Doesn’t she need to go in for repairs?

“W-Wait. Just wait a moment.”

Cold sweat broke out.

I had not touched any settings, so why did it suddenly stop working?

As I frantically moved the mouse around, I suddenly realized.

I had just turned off the room light with the remote. Normally, I switched it off before streaming so Ms. Sejin would not notice, but today I had started a little earlier than usual.

And once the light was off, the camera could no longer detect my face.

So it did not recognize me well in the dark. Pretty pathetic for cutting-edge technology.

“...What kind of nonsense is this now.”

I hurriedly turned the light back on, and the princess came back to life. Surely this would not get me caught.

-Oh, she’s alive again

-I thought she actually died just now

-A vampire that dies when the lights go out lol

-Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

“I-Insolent! This princess was merely immersed in meditation for a moment!”

-Meditation lol

-You were frozen with your eyes unfocused

-If that counts as meditation, I meditate at work every day

“Hmph. As ignorant as ever. I suppose this princess has no choice but to understand. How could inferior creatures such as you possibly comprehend the lofty world of this noble princess?”

My first stream with Lilith Version 2.0 was incredibly fun.

The problem was that I got too excited.

Now that the model moved, I kept wanting to make bigger gestures.

I raised my hands high and whipped my head from side to side.

Watching the princess move along with me was so fascinating that I got carried away without realizing it.

And then.

“Look at this. This princess shall dance— ngh!”

The moment I swung my arm wide, a sharp pain shot through me and a moan escaped before I could stop it.

-Huh???

-Here we go again

-There’s that sound

“N-No. That just now was— nghhh!”

I tried to adjust my posture and did it again.

Muscle pain knows no mercy..

And the bigger problem was.

Thanks to this damned tracking technology, every time I grimaced, the princess on-screen made the same pained expression.

Now the moans came with facial expressions too.

-The princess is hurting too lol

-Look at her face, her face

-The synchronization is insane

-Is this technological progress

“Do not laugh, you fools! This is the result of grueling training— Ahaagh!”

-There’s the training again

-What training lol

-Clip-worthy

-Today’s stream is hilarious

So I kept talking, getting teased, getting annoyed, and moaning again.

Whenever the princess malfunctioned for no reason, the viewers burst into laughter while I desperately struggled to preserve my dignity.

Everything was a complete mess.

But strangely enough, it was so much fun that I completely lost track of time.

Three hours passed like thirty minutes.

It was the exact same amount of time, yet it felt so different.

“Yaaawn...”

If I had my way, I would have continued forever, but after all the effort I had spent setting up the webcam and model earlier, I did not have enough stamina left for a late-night session today.

“...This body is weary today, so I shall retire to my coffin early. My subjects, you too may rest.”

Before ending the stream, I checked the corner of the screen one last time.

“Ooh.”

The viewer count had risen again. Just ten days ago, I had thirty viewers, and now I already had three hundred.

“That’s a tenfold increase?”

In stock terms, that is 1000%. An absurd rate of return. If only the starting capital had been a little larger—.

Anyway, at this rate, I would surpass 1,000 in no time.

Even I thought this growth rate was ridiculous.

I shut down the computer in a good mood.

For the first time in a long while, a very long while.

I felt like I could sleep soundly.

— — —

The next morning.

As always, I finished my workout and staggered toward the dining room.

The dining room in our house is needlessly extravagant.

Even though I eat alone, there is a huge table meant for ten people, and the walls are covered in paintings I never even look at.

Is this what rich people waste their money on? Ah! My late parents decorated it this way. I just insulted my own family.

“Yawn... what’s today’s breakfast menu?”

Muttering a famous line from the wildly popular cooking survival show, I stepped into the dining room—

And froze on the spot.

“Uh... uh...”

Neatly arranged on the dining table were bags of snacks.

The treasures I had carefully hidden beneath my bed.

I had definitely hidden them where nobody would know, so why were they sitting out there in plain sight?

“Miss.”

At that moment, a chilling voice came from behind me. Every cell in my body was warning me that I would die if I turned around—!

Step.

Step.

“Did your workout go well?”