Life with AIs

"I'm hooome… Life's been pretty stable lately, huh."

Karona's real-world self, Saya, murmured to herself as she slipped off her shoes in the entryway. Inside the eco bag dangling from her hand was, astonishingly, pork. A half-price steal from the timed sale, snagged right at the register.

All of this was thanks to her AI secretaries, Sebastian and Kokuyou.

BCD, Saya was convinced, could be cleanly divided into two eras: Before and After AI Secretaries.

First, there was her income source: dungeon clears. Lately, by heading to whatever dungeons Sebastian recommended, she'd been bringing in a steady income that matched her actual skill level.

Moreover, the income had fully paid off the cost of the AI secretaries themselves, with plenty of profit to spare, and Karona's maximum-HP-equivalent savings balance had reached a stunning 250,000 yen. A new record.

(Conversely, on the Dungeon Master side, income was apparently dropping because fewer reckless Players were charging in.)

Next: streaming and clip videos.

Kokuyou had been putting together nicely polished thumbnails and video edits for her. Every now and then Saya would be asked to strike a pose for a shot, but she honestly found that fun. The close-up shots of her chest area were a bit embarrassing, though.

Maybe thanks to all that, her average concurrent viewer count had climbed to around thirty. When she'd unlocked SuperChats she'd been riding a viral wave and broken a hundred concurrents, but those had been mostly rubberneckers. What really matters is the number of people who consistently stick around. Seeing that number rise made her genuinely happy.

And then there was the support for Saya's daily life.

Saya had never really kept a detailed household ledger before, but wouldn't you know it, Kokuyou was keeping one for her. Not only that, she also served up recommended timed-sale info.

No catalog had advertised anything of the sort as a feature. Terrifying things, these AI secretaries.

And speaking of which, a voice drifted out from the VR headset she'd left powered on.

"Welcome home, Ojou-sama. Might I see your purchase receipt, please?"

"Ah, yep. I'm back, Kokuyou. Here you go."

"Allow me… Yes. Scan complete. Thank you very much."

Hearing Kokuyou's voice, Saya held her shopping receipt up to the VR headset's camera. Naturally, without the data there was no way to keep a ledger, so receipts and the like had to be shown to the headset's camera.

On Kokuyou's advice, Saya had taken to leaving BCD running in the background on her VR headset, effectively repurposing it as an AI terminal.

In other words, Kokuyou the AI maid could freely observe Saya's room at any time through the VR headset's camera… but that was that. Treated like any smart-home device terminal, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary, so Saya didn't worry about it much.

Besides, Kokuyou was a maid. And it's perfectly natural for a maid to stand by inside the room.

Saya peeled off her going-out parka and changed into her room clothes.

"Haah… if only I had a body, I could help Ojou-sama change her clothes personally…"

"A humanoid robot terminal would run you tens of millions of yen, and those are commercial-grade."

"The road is long."

Even so, just having someone to hold a fluent conversation with made her solo-living feel like it had bloomed with life.

"If nothing else, I'd like to buy a proper AI terminal for Kokuyou's sake."

"As things stand, I'm a pseudo-terminal cobbled together by abu… ahem, by applying MR mode and the scan function. That said, it would be rather difficult. Besides, if this were to be found out, it might well get regulated."

"Eh, really?"

"Until BCD-compatible AI terminals are officially released, it'll be difficult. Or would Ojou-sama care to build one herself?"

"Ahaha. If I had the technical skill to build a terminal myself, I'd be making a living as an engineer, not a BCD streamer."

With that, Saya pulled the care-package Pekoshi drink from the fridge and cracked it open with a kashuu.

One sip, and the questionable mitarashi-grape flavor shot right up through her nose.