Runa Shinomiya Won't Yield: The Final Boss's Conviction - Night of Optimization: The Final Boss's First Move

It was past eleven at night when Shinomiya Runa sat alone before her computer in the soundproofed streaming room of her home. All the lights in the room were off; the only illumination came from the twelve monitors lining one wall and the small ambient lamp on her desk. That orange glow faintly lit her purple hair. 　Runa was small. One hundred forty-seven centimeters tall. She wore an oversized purple hoodie, her legs curled up on the chair inside black leggings. Her back, rounded like a cat's, would look far younger than her age from behind. Her bangs were cut in a blunt fringe, just barely brushing her yellow eyes. 　Those eyes now stared fixedly at a single point on the screen. 　A new email had arrived. The sender: Victoria Production Operations Headquarters. Subject: "Notice Regarding the buisupo! All-Member Social Event." 　Runa moved the mouse and opened the email. The text was exactly what she'd expected. An event to deepen bonds among members. We hope this will be an opportunity to strengthen everyone's ties. Venue: Verde Hall in Odaiba. The timetable is as follows. 　She opened the attachment and displayed the venue map and participant list. All twenty-eight names were lined up. Runa scrolled slowly from top to bottom, then back up again. 　(...Something's off.) 　The waiting room layout on the venue map differed subtly from past events. Waiting Room A's position was adjacent to the temporary booth for operations staff. The timetable also had a lunch break fifteen minutes shorter than other events. And the participant list wasn't in the usual gojuon order—it was grouped by debut period, with gojuon ordering only within each group. 　Each discrepancy was the kind only someone paying attention would notice. 　Runa's lips twisted, just slightly. The left corner of her mouth rose a fraction faster than the right. 　"...So Operations intends to use this to sort us." 　Her voice was not the soft, healing tone she used on stream—it was lower, drier. 　Runa climbed down from her chair and turned on the wall of monitors one by one. The dark room filled with pale blue light. On the screens, her self-built member psychology database booted up. Displayed were streaming archive analyses of all twenty-eight members, emotional trend graphs from their social media posts, conversation logs with collab partners, and psychological weaknesses organized chronologically. 　Runa returned to the main monitor and placed her fingers on the keyboard. 　(I know.) 　She began to scroll. 　Records of reprimands from Tamura Mitsuko. "You've gotten better at smiling, haven't you." That time, Runa had been praised for her on-stream smile. But what those words really meant was: your smile is manufactured. Mitsuko had noticed. That Runa's smile was calculated. 　Next, a facial capture of Tachibana Hinano right after her victory. December 2022, the finals of the first Apex Legends Cup. Hinano had clutched the championship trophy, her face a mess of tears, laughing. A defenseless, pure, and above all powerful smile. Runa had replayed that image over and over. 　And then, a memo from the winter night in their second year of middle school, with Kurumi Noa. 　Runa's finger stopped on that data. 　"Noa said she wanted to stay by my side. The silence that followed lasted thirty-seven seconds." 　Just that single record. But to Runa, it was the heaviest line in the entire database. She traced the characters gently with her fingertip. The monitor surface fogged slightly from the warmth of her finger. 　(That silence was everything I am.) 　Runa closed her eyes. Winter of her second year of middle school, the way home with their bicycles side by side. She had confessed her true self to Noa. That she observed others, collected data, predicted how they would move. 　Noa had cried. And still, she said she wanted to stay by Runa's side. 　But the silence that followed destroyed everything. 　Thirty-seven seconds. If not for that silence, maybe she could still have been an ordinary girl. Runa had thought so countless times. And each time, she felt something inside her freeze, cold and hard. 　(Noa doesn't understand anything.) 　Runa opened her eyes. Her yellow irises reflected the monitor's light. 　She worked the keyboard and opened another window. Apex Legends' training mode launched. Runa placed her right hand on the mouse. On the back of that hand remained faint taping marks from tendonitis caused by long hours of streaming equipment use. 　On screen, enemy targets appeared one after another. 　Runa fired. 　Headshot. Next target. Headshot. The next one too. Headshot. Her movements were without waste, precise as a machine. Dynamic vision that read movements 0.3 seconds ahead. Mental control that erased emotion to take aim. She called this ability Aim of Silence. 　Inside her small one-hundred-forty-seven-centimeter frame dwelled an FPS demon. 　But she would never show it on stream. Every time she streamed, Runa soothed her viewers with a soft, healing voice. The quietest girl in buisupo!. Shinomiya Runa. That was her mask. 　Runa closed training mode and switched the screen to an image of her own avatar. A white-and-purple gothic dress with a small bat hairpin. Large yellow eyes. Purple hair with soft inward-curling ends. 　"This is my mask." 　Gazing at her avatar, she remembered something from two years ago. 　The first Apex Legends Cup. The finals. Her opponent was Tachibana Hinano. 　Runa could have won. No—she should have won. Her aim surpassed Hinano's. But during the match, she realized something. Hinano believed that winning this tournament was the only way to prove her own worth. She was cornered. Runa noticed. 　And so she deliberately missed her shots. 　After the match, Hinano laughed through her tears. The moment Runa saw that smile, she felt something deep in her chest grow faintly warm. 　But that warmth did not last long. 　After the match, one of the operations staff approached Runa. 　"You lost because you were kind, didn't you. You're a girl who can't win." 　Those words pierced Runa's heart. 　Kindness. 　(Those words decided everything about me.) 　Lost because of kindness. A girl who can't win. In other words, kindness was weakness. As long as she held onto kindness, she would keep losing. That day, Runa chose the strength to destroy. 　She abandoned kindness and decided to believe only in efficiency. 　Runa placed her fingers on the keyboard and took a deep breath. 　(Now, I begin my plan.) 　She started entering the activation key for Project Endgame—the unauthorized access route she had planted in the operations server. Only the sound of keys clacking echoed through the quiet room. 　This system had the function of analyzing members' trust relationships through data and identifying the most fragile connection points. Runa had spent over half a year building it. She wrote code late at night between streams, running test after test. 　(I will remake buisupo! into the strongest community in the truest sense.) 　In her mind were Victoria's implicit evaluation system—the Competition Protocol. A system that quantified stream counts, superchat amounts, and tournament results, quietly fading out lower-ranked members. Runa loathed that system more than anything. 　But precisely because she loathed it, she understood it. 　(Operations only sees numbers. So I will control the numbers.) 　She entered the final key. 　She pressed Enter. 　The screen shifted. A trust-relationship graph of all twenty-eight buisupo! members emerged. Names connected to names by countless lines, and the color of each line represented the strength of the relationship. Blue lines were strong trust. Yellow lines were ordinary. And red lines were the most fragile connection points. 　Runa stared at the screen. 　A red line was blinking. 　(Here.) 　Runa checked which two people that red line connected. 　(...As I thought, this is the most fragile.) 　Gazing at those names, she smiled quietly. 　"Weak bonds, false friendships, members who never grow." 　Runa leaned her weight against the backrest and looked up at the ceiling. 　"Destroy them all, leave only efficiency. That is the shape of the truly strongest community." 　Her plan was perfect. The data was in place. The system was running. All that remained was execution. 　But somewhere in her heart, there was a small catch. 　Kurumi Noa. 　Runa remembered that winter night in their second year of middle school. That thirty-seven-second silence. 　(Noa doesn't understand anything.) 　Runa thought it again, as if convincing herself. 　(Noa is only pretending to understand me. In truth, she's afraid of me. That silence is the proof.) 　She closed her eyes. 　(But what if Noa truly did understand me?) 　The thought crossed her mind. 　Runa shook her head. 　(...No. Noa doesn't understand anything.) 　As if to shake the thought away, she placed her hands on the keyboard once more. 　(I will proceed with my plan. That's all.) 　Runa clicked the red connection point on the trust graph. 　Detailed analysis results appeared on screen. The relationship between those two was dissected in minute detail from past streaming archives, social media exchanges, and conversations during collab streams. 　Reading through the data, Runa laughed quietly. 　"This is the most efficient way, after all." 　Her yellow eyes reflected only the light of the monitors. 　Inside the room, only the hum of the computer's fans and the clatter of keys echoed. 　To the outside world, surely everyone thought of Runa as a quiet girl. The little vampire of buisupo! who spread smiles on stream and soothed viewers with her healing voice. 　But the one in this room was not that girl. 　The one here was Shinomiya Runa as the final boss—dominating the data of twenty-eight members, analyzing their trust relationships, and sniping the most fragile points. 　Runa gazed once more at her avatar on the monitor. 　(I will now destroy everything.) 　Her fingers gripped the mouse. 　(And then I will rebuild everything. Into my ideal form.) 　With quiet but certain resolve, Runa began making her next move. 　The night was still long. 　Her lonely battle had now begun. 　The monitor's light cast a pale blue glow over Runa's purple hair. Her yellow eyes stared steadily at the trust graph on screen. In those eyes there was no hesitation, no wavering. 　Only efficiency. 　"...Let's begin." 　Runa's voice was quietly absorbed into the soundproofed room.

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Episode 1

Name: Runa Shinomiya Won't Yield: The Final Boss's Conviction
Author: Novelia

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