Miss Witch, even if we're poor, we can't sell ourselves!

In an unassuming apartment building in the eastern part of Bella Vita, the dawn light at five in the morning was still a thin, dark blue, like ink that had been accidentally spilled into a glass of milk and hadn't been stirred yet.

The streets were so quiet that you could hear the distant clanging of the tram tracks on the night line, gliding past an intersection and disappearing into the gaps between the buildings.

Rika Asaba has woken up.

She had no classes at university yesterday afternoon, so she slept from noon until evening, and then drifted in and out of sleep until dawn, completely huddled in her blankets like a koala that had experienced both hibernation and estivation.

Now her biological clock has completely given up on distinguishing between day and night. Anyway, the class schedule of Tsukimori University has always been just a reference for her. Her talent [Causality] allows her to deduce the remaining 70% of the test points from the 30% of the content she casually listens to in class. She can get into the top three in the grade in three days of cramming for the final exam.

But he just couldn't surpass that young lady named Reminal; he was always just one or two points behind, like a piece of chewing gum stuck to the sole of his shoe that he couldn't shake off.

Thinking about this made her feel uneasy.

But now is not the time to think about Reminal.

She rolled over, reached under her pillow for her phone, unlocked the screen, and opened MikuFans.

The movements are fluid and natural, entirely due to muscle memory.

She first habitually clicked into her following list and found the pinned account, 【弥夜】.

The profile picture is grayed out, and the bio reads "[Live streaming paused, return date undetermined]". The last time the stream started was three days ago.

The comment section is overgrown with weeds. The latest comments are all about when the streamer will come back, saying they can't sleep without hearing her voice, and wondering if she's really being kept by a sugar daddy.

Rika Asaba sighed, hovered her finger over the screen for a moment, and then logged out.

The thought of this made her furious. How dare Reminal like the same V as her!

She was actually a little embarrassed to admit that she liked Miya.

There are quite a few virtual YouTubers who debut as male Vtubers, and there are tons of witches at Tsukimori University who are into male Vtubers, so there's nothing shameful about it.

But Rika Asaba's reasons for pursuing Miya are different from everyone else's.

She knew that Miya was a girl.

However, she didn't tell anyone about this, nor was there any need to.

Her talent, [Cause and Effect], doesn't need to be activated actively; it's like a pair of glasses that's always on her nose.

What others saw was a handsome silver-haired boy saying "Welcome to the live stream" in a deep, gentle voice, but what she saw was his habit of slightly raising the pitch at the end of his voice, the occasional upward syllable when he forgot to lower his voice, and the unintentional "I really like it" that came out when talking about cute things.

All the causes, when put together, point to a definite effect.

The person sitting behind the screen was a girl about the same age as me.

This contrast is her weakness, but also her secret joy.

A girl was livestreaming while pretending to be a boy. Her voice was fake, and her appearance was drawn, but the way she spoke and the frequency of her breathing when she laughed couldn't lie.

This incident gave her a subtle sense of superiority and closeness every time she opened Xiaomiye's live stream, as if—

Others: Wow, this male V is so handsome!

Me: Sigh, didn't anyone realize that there's a girl under this person's skin?

It's just... (laughs while covering face.jpg)

Unfortunately, Xiao Mi Ye hasn't updated for several days.

Rika Asaba put her phone down, then picked it up again, and aimlessly scrolled down the MikuFans homepage.

The recommendation algorithm showed her a bunch of virtual streamers, probably because she only watches this category recently.

There are 3D motion capture videos, singing videos, and late-night talk shows; each cover is more exquisite than the last, and each title is more enticing than the last.

She randomly clicked into a live stream, intending to just play it as background noise while she brushed her teeth.

Then her fingers stopped.

The chibi-style maid on the screen is drawing with her head down. Her short, light golden hair is fluffy and soft, tied with a bow neatly, and there are two faint blushes on her cheeks.

She recognized the suit; it was the number one trending topic on MikuFans last night—the Nightingale's Nest maid who licked the ears of prosecutor Mebius.

The suit looks almost exactly like the real person. Someone online has already put a screenshot of her screen recording from last night next to the suit and made a comparison picture. The similarity is over 95%.

Rika Asaba also saw that trending topic last night, but she wasn't very interested in real-world dramas, so she just glanced at it and scrolled past it.

However, she stopped now because of what was on the canvas.

Between the library bookshelves, the pink-haired young lady rested one hand on a bookshelf while pinching the black-haired prosecutor's chin with the other.

The prosecutor's back was pressed against the spine of the book, and a button on his collar was undone by his fingertips.

The composition and emotional tension of the entire painting are so precise that it would make college students majoring in related fields want to tear up their graduation projects and redraw them.

Rika Asaba stared at the painting for several seconds, then made an expression that was very different from her usual aloof persona.

"……puff."

She buried her face in the pillow, her shoulders began to tremble, and the white hairs that stick up on her head twitched along with them.

Reminal, the top student in her grade, the rich girl who always outranked her by one or two points, was drawn into a doujinshi, and in a rather erotic way.

She also recognized the black-haired woman next to her: Mebius, one of the youngest prosecutors in the Witch Association, who was said to have graduated from Tsukimori University and was known for her cold, aloof, and unsmiling demeanor.

She is now depicted being pinned against the wall by Reminal in the middle of a bookshelf, with one button undone at her collar and her eyes reddening.

After laughing, Asaba Rika turned over, held her phone up to her face again, wiped away the tears of laughter from the corners of her eyes, and then began to think seriously.

To be honest, she didn't have a good first impression of this streamer.

It's all about riding the wave of popularity from Nightingale's Nest's Little Maid, and it's also about piggybacking on Reminal and Mebius's popularity. The hype in the entire live stream is so high it's almost overflowing.

What she hates most are those streamers who have no real skills and only chase after trending topics to gain popularity. There was one in her following list who was unfollowed on the spot because she touched on a controversial topic about her favorite game.

But she didn't leave the live stream because the drawing in that sketchbook was just too good.

Reminal's arrogance and Mebius's asceticism—this streamer captured the full tension between the two characters with just a single sketch.

This person's writing features characters with distinct personalities.

Based on this alone, Rika Asaba decided to stay a little longer.

She leaned against the headboard, hugging her knees, watching the anchor draw the storyboard frame by frame, stroke by stroke.

The chat was buzzing with discussion about whether the streamer was actually the Nightingale's Nest Maid herself, but the streamer just smiled and remained silent, neither confirming nor denying it.

Rika Asaba narrowed her eyes. Her intuition, a gift from her talent, told her that it was indeed her, but she was too lazy to type and participate in the discussion.

Her attention was entirely focused on the canvas.

In the scene, Reminal's fingers are approaching the second button on Mebius's collar, and the two are getting closer and closer, their noses almost touching.

The chat was going crazy, but the streamer was still slowly and methodically drawing lines, as if he were completing a great work of art.

This focused attitude actually made Asaba Rika like her more.

While this person may be trying to ride the wave of popularity, they genuinely put effort into their artwork and didn't just throw together something to grab attention.

Then the streamer drew that distance.

Their lips were separated by only a thin layer of air. Reminal's index finger gently hooked Möbius's chin and lifted it up, casting a small shadow under Möbius's eyelashes.

The tension in the entire scene reached its peak, but the anchor stopped writing.

"Hmm... I need to think about this some more; it's a bit difficult to gauge the appropriate level of intimacy..."

The chibi-style maid on the screen tilted her head.

The comments section instantly split into two camps.

The radicals suggested that since the streamer had already gone all out, she might as well draw a kissing scene, while the conservatives thought the radicals were too conservative and that she should just start doing it.

The two sides were arguing fiercely, while Rika Asaba sat cross-legged in bed, the light from her phone screen reflecting in her deep purple eyes like two eerie flames.

She looked at the two people on the screen, who were hovering at a distance that seemed neither too close nor too distant, and at the barrage of comments saying that the streamer had chickened out. The corners of her mouth slowly turned up, revealing two shallow dimples and a small tiger tooth.

Then she extended her index finger, tapped the screen a few times, opened the gift menu, selected paid comments, entered 500 Loren, typed a message, and sent it.

[I'm so sleepy: Host, I want to see them both love each other.]