16 - Three's A Club (2)

Just as Alex has his manuscript, Valerie also has something of her own, from the real world.

A sketchbook, which she pulls out from somewhere behind her.

"Containing everything I ever drew," she says, proudly. "Almost thirty years of drawings, dating back from kindergarten!"

I eye the book suspiciously. "That seems a little thin to contain thirty years' worth of work."

She fans through the pages. "Oh, it's a magical book. Some Point Parallax type shit, I guess. I mean—I worked mostly digitally, with a tablet, and all of those drawings are in here, too, so …"

I take the book from her, and start looking through it. "Huh. These are all … cute girls."

"You sound surprised," she says.

"I mean—with how you look, I just assumed you like … I dunno … skinny dudes with K-Pop boy band haircuts kissing or something."

"Well," says Valerie, somewhat annoyed, "maybe you should re-examine your preconceived notions. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I can't appreciate the supple, soft curves of the female form, and their delicate feminine grace, and—…"

"Okay, but—"

"... their soft hair that smells like strawberry even without shampoo, their precious smiles and button noses …"

"Alright, we get the picture—"

"... not to mention the optimal ratio of subcutaneous fat distributed all across their body …"

"Alright, we're getting weird now."

"... the way their dresses billow as they spin, and …"

"Valerie, please."

Anyway, she goes on like this for a while longer—in the meantime, Alex and I browse through her artbook.

"Hey," Alex says, "I've seen some of these before! Wait, wait … Valerie, were you—… Were you VeeVeeNeko!? I think I followed you on * (formerly *******)!"

("What the fuck did you even use * for?" I ask, side-eyeing Alex. "You didn't have friends."

Alex shrugs. "Following R18 art. What else?")

"Yeah!" says Valerie. "That was me."

"You had like a trillion followers! You even drew for gacha games professionally!"

"Among other things," she smirks.

I stroke my chin. 'VeeVeeNeko' … Unlike Alex, I never followed artists on * (formerly *******) … So then, why does that handle sound so familiar?

And then it hits me.

"Oh!" I say, snapping my fingers. "I think I popped into one of your streams once!"

Alex side-eyes Valerie. "… You streamed?"

"Got a problem with that?" challenges Valerie.

"Who would want to watch someone like you? Your viewers could probably smell you through their screens."

"(Some people are actually into that.) But no, I had a VT*ber model, dumbass. Drawn and rigged by yours truly, of course. You're looking at the flesh pilot behind Himawari Viola, or Himacchi, as my loyal Sunflower Seeds call me."

Now Alex side-eyes me, with a grimace. "… So you fell into the rabbit hole, huh, Odd-kun … I just lost a bunch of respect for you … Kimoi … Kimo-sugiru …"

Defensively, I say, "What do you want from me!? We were all locked inside at that time … What else was I gonna do … (And don't try to flex your basic-bitch N99-level nihongo on me …)"

Presently Valerie also side-eyes me. (A lotta side-eying going on in general in the club room today.) "Wait, VeeVeeNeko and Himacchi are unrelated accounts, Odd-kun." She squints. "How'd you know we're the same person?"

"I, er, uh …"

She gets up in my face, leaning in close, her halitosis threatening to melt my eyebrows off. "Hmm? You wouldn't happen to browse certain … anonymous image boards, would you?"

I shift nervously. "N-no way. I—I must've gotten recommended forbidden knowledge on the Yo*T*be front page, like everyone else," I lie.

Then Valerie backs off, with a smile. "Just kidding. What do I care? I'm dead, anyway." She shrugs. "Well, I guess I'll forgive you"—then she winks at me, which causes this morning's breakfast to rise back up in my throat a little—"if you join my Sunflower Seeds and call me your oshi." Then she sticks out her tongue and does a sideways V sign, which makes Alex swallow all the hemlock we have in our club room. (I don't even know why that's there. He dies.)

Anyway, I immediately pounce on the opportunity to offer another one of my trademark hot takes.

"Oshi!?" I yell, outraged. (Valerie jumps back, startled.) "Ahh, I can't stand this modern watering-down of this once-sacred term! Everybody just tosses around the term casually, to the point where it's lost all meaning! Oh, yeah, what's that? You've got ten oshi-marks? Wow, and you popped into someone's debut just today and you've already got a new oshi? One more oshi to add to your growing oshi collection? Homie, please! You're just a filthy daredemo! … A-and then they started using kami-oshi to mean what would've been your oshi just a few years ago! But now even kami-oshi is being watered down! Soon you're gonna have dweebs with ten kami-oshis and fifty oshi marks! This is madness! Creative entropy in action again! Right, Alex?"

But Alex is looking the other way completely, pretending he doesn't know me. Actually, he's currently in the middle of filling out a club transfer form. (Somewhere, I hear Jessica's voice reminding us that there are no clubs in Point Parallax …) He tells me detachedly, one foot out the door, "Please don't defile my pristine theory with your weird parasocialism shit. (… I don't think I wanna be in this club anymore.)"

But that only triggers another hot take from me.

"Parasocialism is the wrong word! That just sounds like some kind of socio-economic offshoot movement! I'm so tired of hearing parasocialism everywhere I go, when people want to dunk on lonely disaffected males! If you're gonna do that, at least do it right. The correct form is parasocial-ity. Parasociality, please."

Valerie is showing similar signs of revulsion as Alex now. "… Odd-kun, do you just have an unnecessary opinion about literally everything?"

I slam my fists on the table, "You're damn right I do!," cutting my hands open on the shattered fragments of the tea-cups.

"… You're not one of those creeps that goes ballistic when the streamer announces they have a husband, are you?"

I recoil, genuinely hurt by the accusation. "No! What!? No, absolutely not! Hey, what kind of freak do you think I am? I'm shocked that you would even think that!"

"Okay, good."

"(Well, I mean, I do downvote, unsubscribe, and charge back every Argentinian aka-supa I ever made.)"

"What was that?"

"N-Nothing."

Alex, who has checked out of the conversation completely, and is now playing retro games, tilts his head back and says, "… Didn't this whole thing start because you"—referring to Valerie—"said you made a whole bunch of money from iskeai? … What was that all about? Was that just an end-of-chapter fake-out hook or what?"

(Me, muttering: "Yeah, now you know how that feels …")