Dangling from the line

From the moment I woke up, I dreaded going to school that day. I hated the place at the best of times, but the few moments of reprieve I had there came from Pep, Sai and the club, and considering the fallout of the events of the day before… well, that was hardly likely to be any less stressful.

Lunch with Sai would likely pass in silence, as was common for she and I, but it was Pep with whom I was expecting to have an awkward atmosphere. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other since my outburst, and I had no idea how she was gonna act around me when we inevitably saw each other in class.

In fact, after the stream ended the day before, the entire club just remained in silence, until the bell rang and we filtered out of the room one-by-one, not speaking a word to each other. The atmosphere had been suffocatingly heavy, and I was severely concerned that it would be more of the same once I arrived at school.

Though, my anxieties over arriving at school certainly did not mean I appreciated the interloper that showed up before I even got there.

“Bitchqueen?”

“Yo.”

Stood with one foot against the wall in a hoodie that was almost definitely against school dress code was Ran, greeting me far too casually for someone who was clearly waiting to ambush me for some reason.

“The hell are you doing here? I know for a fact this isn’t your way to school.”

“Saw the stream. Needed to talk to you. Walk with me.”

I got the feeling that it was much more so a demand than a request, but even though I didn’t feel I owed her a moment of my time I figured I could at least hear her out. So, to my surprise and chagrin, the rest of my walk to school that day was accompanied by an unwelcome guest.

“So…” I started, as she and I walked alongside each other, “you watched that absolute catastrophe of a stream?”

“Course I did. You know how excited Pep was for it? Practically nagged me to watch along.”

“Yeah… shoulda figured as much…” I groaned, realising how much attention was likely to be on myself. Considering Pep had asked Yaki to watch, the odds were that the only friends she had that weren’t watching were the two of us who were actually there. With how fast stuff spreads in the internet age, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that half the school knew before the sun went down.

“That whole thing was… alright, let’s not sugar coat it, it was a fuckin’ disaster. I didn’t expect it to just go off without a hitch, but I never would have expected it to get that bad,” said Ran.

“Yeah… sorry about that…”

“What? The hell are you apologising for?”

“Hmm? Aren’t you here to grill me over the way the stream ended?”

“Are you an idiot? I was gonna swallow my pride and thank you for sticking up for Pep. Why the hell would I grill you over that?”

I tilted my head in surprise and mild confusion. I had fully expected Ran to be pissed off that I practically hijacked the end of the stream for my outburst, especially considering some of the shit I said. I figured she was gonna rant at me about how I was ruining Pep’s social image and that being associated with me was a detriment to her. A thanks from Ran was a guess I never would have made in a million years.

“So you’re not pissed off that I ended the stream so poorly that Pep can probably never return to streaming?”

“Are you kidding? If I was there the shit I would have said would have gotten the stream banned before I even had a chance to end it. Keep Pep away from streaming? Sounds like a win to me, considering the way those assholes in chat were treating her.” Ran practically spat as she talked, nothing but contempt and loathing in her voice.

“Well we’re in agreement there,” I sighed, “I had a feeling things were gonna go poorly from the start, but considering just how badly it went I wish I had actually tried to talk her out of it. If this is the kick she needs to never try this shite again, I guess that serves as a silver lining.”

“Doubt she’s got much of a choice at this point. She tries streaming again, the internet’s gonna eat her alive. And she’s smart enough to know that.” She sighed, seemingly conflicted over the situation. I couldn’t say I felt too different. Pep being forced out of doing something she seemed so excited for was hardly a kind ending for her, but I also felt like it would save her substantial pain down the line. A nasty means to a good end, so to speak.

“By the way,” I started, “you mentioned the way her chat were treating her. What were they saying?”

“Hmm? Oh, guess you wouldn’t know since you were actually there rather than watching.” Ran’s face twitched as she recalled the day prior. “It was like watching a bunch of jackals testing the waters with their prey. Most of the messages were innocuous, but you could tell some of them were picking at her for insecurities. Every time she seemed to react to something, no matter how small the reaction, they’d zero in on that point. Ruthless bastards.”

“What sort of stuff? Pep’s generally not all that insecure of a person when it comes to appearance and stuff, how were they getting under her skin so easily?”

“At first it was stuff like ‘we came for them, not you,’ as if she was an unwelcome presence in her own damn stream. I could see her faltering a bit whenever she looked at chat at first, but she seemed kinda prepared for those messages. Guessing she probably expected them. It wasn’t until that one dono in the middle of the stream that they really started to get at her.”

“Dono? Which dono?”

“The one about you and the silver girl being a couple or whatever.”

I felt a pit in my stomach, though I couldn’t say it was entirely unexpected. Even without her breakdown at the end of the stream, I already knew Pep had certain insecurities about me and Sai. Hell, considering my conversation with Sai a couple days before, I couldn’t even say her concerns were entirely unfounded. So a message directly asking if Sai and I were dating was bound to strike a critical point for her.

“I’m guessing chat latched onto that one pretty hard?” I asked.

“You should have seen it. Hundreds of messages spamming “S heart K” and calling you two idiots “power couple” and all this other shite. Worst part was, it was clear they didn’t actually give a damn about the stupid shipping shit, not that it would have made it better. They just saw it made Pep uncomfortable and used it to bully her. Feckin’ hivemind.”

“Should have known. Bastards.”

Trust the internet to find one insecurity and attack it like the weak spot in a boss battle. If there’s one thing humanity was good, it was ruthless efficiency in mob cruelty. Get a group of people together, give them a mask and point them in the direction of one person, they’ll torch the poor bastard alive for their own amusement. Social media was truly just the final evolution of the angry mob: a group of people using those around them to cloak themselves in anonymity and divvy up the responsibility for their actions, purely as an excuse to indulge themselves in their most sociopathic and socially unacceptable behaviours without consequence. Now, with all the comfort of hiding behind a screen like a damned coward.

“Unfortunately, there’s probably nothing we can do to help Pep save face anymore,” said Ran, surprisingly analytically for someone usually so driven by emotion. “That much is a lost cause. This’ll probably be a stain she can’t wash out. But there is something that can be helped.”

“Hmm? Whaddyou mean?”

“This godforsaken love triangle you three are stuck in.”

I stopped on the spot, and Ran stepped out in front of me. The look on her face was stern, but not aggressive. As if she wanted to scold me, but out of concern, not hatred.

“It’s… not that simple…” I muttered, not having any better answer for myself.

“I know it’s not. What, you think I of all people don’t know how much it sucks trying to figure out your own feelings, especially when you know someone’s inevitably gonna get hurt? When I realised I was falling for Pep, that shit sucked. Especially since I already knew how attached she was to you. And hell, I’m still stuck on that particular line. So believe me when I say, I know how you’re feeling right now. And I know how Pep’s feeling. And that’s exactly why I’m telling you that this facade of a balance you three have has to end sooner or later. It’s not fair on her, and it’s honestly not fair on yourself either.”

I initially responded with still silence. Primarily because, as much as I hated to admit it, I knew she was correct. My indecisiveness was hurting Pep, myself, and even Sai. I used Pep’s own words as an excuse, insisting that this was the way she wanted things to go, but I knew deep down that it was wrong. And worse, I knew exactly why Ran was bringing this up now. It was that same indecisiveness, that cowardice in not giving Pep a straight answer, that caused the very insecurities that those bastards had attacked yesterday. In other words, whether directly or indirectly, this whole situation was my fault.

“So… what? What do I even do? Half-heartedly accept her confession? Shoot her down then live to regret it? I just… have no idea where to go from here.”

“And you gotta figure that out on your own. All I’m telling you is that you gotta do it soon,” said Ran, still sternly, but with a surprising amount of sympathy in her voice. “I don’t know whether it’s Pep or the silver girl that you want, and honestly I don’t think you know either yet, but if you keep giving yourself an out instead of actually getting your own feelings in line, you’re gonna keep hurting her, and I can’t accept that. At the moment, you’ve got her dangling from the line. Either reel her in or cut her free, I don’t mind which, but don’t just keep her dangling like this. It’ll just make it hurt all the more when you do make your decision.”

I had little to say in response. I couldn’t disagree with a word she said. My own hesitation, my inability to confront my own feelings, was now openly hurting the people I loved. In trying to avoid upsetting the balance, I had let that balance shift into something unhealthy for all three of us. And I think deep down I already knew that. I was just too scared to confront it.

“I really have been a spineless son of a bitch, haven’t I?” I sighed.

“You won’t find me disagreeing,” replied Ran, “but you also won’t find me pretending to be any better. You’re in a rough spot. I doubt I’d handle it any better. Just… do me a solid, yeah?”

“Hmm? And what’s that?”

“If you shoot her down… try to let her down easy, yeah?” she said, her voice tinged with sadness.

“I’ll… cross that bridge when I get to it…” I replied, knowing full well that the bridge was already fast approaching on the horizon.