Mizumiya Su Laughs: The Last Boss of Love and Applause - The Empire of Approval: Emotions That Can't Be Reduced to Numbers

Minato Studio, deep in the night. The small room enclosed by the soundproof walls of Streaming Booth A held only the faint warmth of the equipment and the presence of a single girl named Mizumiya Su. The monitor's glow cast a pale light over her long, aqua-colored hair, tracing the outline of her twin tails — loosely curled on either side — like light reaching the floor of a deep sea. "Alright everyone, great work today as always! Su will be streaming again next Wednesday at eight p.m., so make absolutely sure you come hang out, okay?" Her voice, even in its final drop before it rode the airwaves through the microphone, was sweet and crystal-clear to the last note. She leaned her small frame — barely five feet tall — slightly forward and waved both hands at the camera lens. The sleeves of her aqua frilled blouse fluttered, brushing the air. The gesture was a flawless form she had repeated hundreds of times. The end-of-stream countdown appeared on screen. Three, two, one. The red light went out. In that instant, every expression vanished from Mizumiya Su's face, as if a mask had been peeled away. No trace of the smile remained. Her clear aquamarine eyes, which had been narrowed into crescent moons just moments ago, opened cold and wide, reflecting her own figure on the monitor. The girl sitting there was not the beloved public relations officer everyone adored. She pulled off her headset and tossed it roughly onto the desk. The dry clatter of plastic echoed through the silent booth. "...Efficiency is good." The murmur wasn't meant for anyone's ears — it was squeezed from deep in her own throat. Somewhere deep inside her body, behind her chest, the organ known as the Approval Organ was slowly warming. The countless comments from viewers. "So cute." "So healing." "You were amazing again today." All of them converted into a single energy within her body, spreading to every corner of her being. The praise of ten thousand people became roughly three thousand kilocalories of heat, filling her up. Mizumiya Su had known this sensation for as long as she could remember. To her, it was as natural as breathing. Without the approval of others, she could not survive. A being that converted love and praise into fuel — an Approval Converter. One of only twelve such unique humans said to exist in this world. But she had never revealed this to anyone. On the surface, she was the PR officer of FLOW GLOW, a new unit under the virtual streaming agency Hololive DEV_IS. A girl who spread charm everywhere, who loved shabu-shabu and cute things above all else, a slightly clumsy kouhai character. That was everything the world knew of Mizumiya Su. Leaving the monitor on, she picked up her smartphone. She unlocked it and traced a familiar motion with her fingertip. What launched was a database she had secretly built — one exclusively for FLOW GLOW members. The Quantification Eye. Her other ability. On the screen, the members' names lined up. Beside each, a percentage displayed — quietly, but unmistakably — their level of trust in her. Hoshikawa Ruri: 89 percent. Yogiri Shion: unmeasurable. The other members: 85 to 92 percent. Every one of them a stable number, sufficient to support her empire. But at the very bottom of the list. Amane Kanae. Only beside that name did red text blink. Unmeasurable. Error. No number displayed. Su bit her lip. A faint imprint of teeth remained on the thin flesh. "...This again." Her voice was lower and drier than even she expected. The Quantification Eye was an ability to instantly perceive others' emotions and trust as numerical values. Who doubted her, who was on the verge of turning away — she could sense it all in advance. It was thanks to this ability that she had built her empire of approval beneath the surface. She appraised members' statements, managed their popularity, controlled information. Everything rested on numbers. And yet. Only Amane Kanae's numbers remained unreadable, no matter how much time passed. At first she thought it was a measurement error. A malfunction of equipment, or a bug in the app. But no matter how many times she tried, the result was the same. Kanae's trust could not be quantified. A trust too pure exceeded the scope of her ability. "...Genuine emotion." Su felt an indescribable discomfort at herself for saying those words. Genuine emotion. Such a thing couldn't possibly exist in this world. There were only numbers and reactions. That was the conclusion she had reached after twenty years of living. And yet, Kanae's existence threatened to shake that conclusion. She laid her smartphone face-down on the desk. The screen's light vanished, and the booth was once again wrapped only in the monitor's faint glow. Deep in her heart, an old memory surfaced slowly, like a bubble rising from the bottom of water. It was something that had happened at her family home near Yokohama Chinatown. Su, still in elementary school, had come home from school and rushed into the living room without even taking off her backpack. In her hands was a test paper covered in bright red flower circles. She wanted to show her parents the perfect score. She wanted to be praised. "Mom! I got a hundred on my test!" Her voice was buoyant with expectation. But her mother was in the kitchen preparing dinner and didn't even turn around. "Oh, that's nice. I'm busy right now, so later, okay?" Later. The word pierced young Su's chest. Next, she headed to her father's study. She held out the test paper the same way to her father's back as he pored over work documents. "Dad, look! A hundred!" Her father barely glanced up from his papers before returning his gaze. "Oh, impressive. But I'm working now. Later, alright?" Later. That word never came. Su lay face-down on her bed in her room and cried with her voice suppressed. The test paper was crumpled into a ball in her hands. What she had wanted was a single word — "amazing." Just that one word. Why was it so impossibly far away? The desire for approval. She had learned that phrase much later. When she understood what this hunger swirling inside her was, she realized something else at the same time. In this world, unconditional love did not exist. There were only conditional reactions. Only numbers and reactions. So she changed herself. She decided to perform a character designed to be loved. A perfect kouhai character that everyone would like. That performance eventually became everything she was. "...I've had enough." Su exhaled softly, as if surfacing from the bottom of her recollections. The clock on the monitor read past one in the morning. She stood and killed the booth's lights. In the darkness, the teardrop-shaped earring behind her left ear caught a faint glimmer of light. She left Minato Studio and walked alone through the late-night streets of Minato Ward. The wind slipping between the buildings carried the lukewarm humidity of late summer. An ambulance siren wailed in the distance. The city slept quietly, as if it had entirely forgotten the clamor of the day. Su's apartment was a single room in an old, weathered building about twenty minutes from the studio by train. The rent was eighty thousand yen a month. Considering the scale of her empire, it was a surprisingly modest dwelling. When she entered, the first thing that hit her nose was the smell of shabu-shabu. Having gathered around the pot so many times, the scent had seeped into the carpet, into the curtains. Smelling it brought her a small measure of comfort. The memory of the dinner table she had shared with her family at the Yokohama house. Even if it had been nothing but silence flowing between her busy parents, the steam from the pot had always wrapped around her. One entire wall of the room was lined with five monitors. One of them was connected to an approval energy analysis device she had built herself. It analyzed viewer comments in real time and quantified the quantity and quality of approval energy. She tossed off her coat and sat before that monitor. She booted up the device. On screen, the total approval energy gained from today's stream appeared. The number slightly exceeded her expectations. "...Not bad." She murmured quietly. That was when it happened. A small notification popped up in the corner of the monitor. The sender was unknown. It was an encrypted communication. Su furrowed her brow. The number of people who knew her communication address was limited. Among them, only one organization came to mind as capable of something like this. Zero Orbit. An anonymous surveillance organization operating in the shadows of the approval economy. They monitored the unauthorized use of approval energy by streamers and carried out purification when necessary. They were the existence she was most wary of. With trembling fingers, she opened the message. "Notice of new monitor dispatch. Target: Mizumiya Su. Duration: undetermined." A sterile string of characters. "...That organization again." Su's voice carried a quiet anger. She had known of Zero Orbit's existence for a long time. They did not tolerate the unauthorized use of approval conversion abilities. They viewed beings like Su as dangerous. The Approval Economy Surveillance Act. An unofficial set of rules operated by Zero Orbit. It prohibited the unauthorized use of approval conversion abilities, the theft of approval energy, and the intentional manipulation of Discord Noise. Violators were subjected to memory alteration known as purification. Su had woven through the gray zones of that law to build her empire. But perhaps they had finally caught wind of her movements. She sat motionless before the monitor for a long time. Eventually, she opened another window. Akari Archive. A virtual space where data on virtual streamers accumulated. The collective name for the massive server clusters storing all of Hololive DEV_IS's streaming data, comment logs, and superchat histories. Su illegally accessed Layer 3, the restricted area. Deeper still than the domain Zero Orbit monitored. She was saving a single text file in a hidden area only she knew of. The file name: "Draft of True Intentions." She began typing. The monitor's light illuminated her expressionless face. "Hoshikawa Ruri: Numbers stable. Trust at 89% is favorable. Sufficient qualities as a leader. However, suspicion toward me is slightly increasing. Requires observation." "Yogiri Shion: Unmeasurable. Not a threat. However, I occasionally sense a gaze that seems to probe me. Connection to Zero Orbit unknown." Cold characters lined up on the screen one after another. She appraised her members and managed their numbers. That was how she ran her empire. And then, the final line. Her fingers stopped for a moment. "Amane Kanae — why can't I read this number?" She wrote that single sentence in red. "Should this girl be processed, or let go?" The sound of keys clacking cut through the late-night silence. Su, irritated by a fluctuation of emotion she couldn't explain even to herself, encrypted the data and saved it. "...How stupid." She muttered to no one. That night, Su sat alone around a shabu-shabu pot. Pork, cabbage, tofu, enoki mushrooms taken from the refrigerator. She boiled water in a small earthenware pot meant for one. Steam rose, moistening the air in the room. Wordlessly, she picked up meat with her chopsticks and dipped it into the hot water. The meat changed color. She dipped it in ponzu and brought it to her mouth. Delicious. But she had no one to share that deliciousness with. Beyond the steam of the pot, she pictured the comments that had flowed during today's stream. "Su-chan, you're cute again today!" "I want to hear more about shabu-shabu!" "I love Su-chan's smile!" All of them had become her energy. But that was all they were. "...There's no such thing as genuine love in this world." She set down her chopsticks and murmured quietly. "There are only numbers

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Episode 1

Name: Mizumiya Su Laughs: The Last Boss of Love and Applause
Author: Novelia

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