Digital Silence

God, I wanted to get topped so bad.

That was my primary thought as Fuuji sat on top of me, taking a break from beating my face in to admire the damage he’d already caused. I pressed my legs together. In my delirum I briefly flashed back to elementary school. How are you feeling today? You can look at the feelings chart!

I imagined raising my hand. I’m feeling anger, despair, fear, embarrassment, and incredible horniness, sensei!

Really, the emotional education I’d got in those classes should’ve covered situations like this.

Fuuji raised his fist again. I kicked him hard in the stomach. Right, Ryoya’s stronger than me— That hit was hard, I’d put all my scrawny Matsuda-Rin might into it, and it sent Fuuji reeling, then back over me, coughing bile; he choked and said “Huh! That’s more like it! I was feeling bad beating a helpless guy up, at this point!”

“Oh, I’m still helpless!” I said quickly.

He tried to hit me again. I kicked him again, hard on purpose this time, and wrested my arms out from under him; rolling in the motion, until I was on top of him. His hair was scattered in his eyes and he struggled for air, my knee now on his ribcage.

I wasn’t skinny little Matsuda Rin anymore! Ryoya had a six-pack, I’d seen it in his CGs! And I would use that for my revenge on all the bullies of my life! Even if they were sexy bullies!

I slapped him hard across the face, like Kanai had done to me, and then punched him over and over. His nose dripped blood; mine too, and my knuckles were bloody.

“Ghh—”

“Just leave me alone already,” I said, grabbing his collar, staring at his beautiful face underneath me now, “What’s your problem!”

“Bitch,” Fuuji said, and spit in my face. “You don’t even know how good you have it.”

“I don’t—” Fuck! I’d been miserable for years!

I scrubbed his spit off with my hand and he used that moment to get on top of me again, grabbing my hair and sending my head hard into the thinly carpeted cement of the pool room’s floor. I bit my lip, swallowed blood—my vision flecked with gray.

“Fuuji! Stop fighting!” someone called.

I hit him with a right hook and got him off me for a second. Kazuhiro was standing in the doorway.

“Please, I promised Yuu.”

Fuuji stumbled up.

“Wow, you look like a wreck…” Kazuhiro trailed off. “Miyazato.” His voice was cold as ice. “I’m here to ask you something.”

“Sure,” I said, wiping blood off my face. “Shoot.”

“Don’t fight us again.”

“…Why?” I asked, tense. They were the kind of guys who’d throw down at a moment’s notice. If I wasn’t allowed to fight them, it’d make every time they started it a big ordeal. You promised, Miyazato, asshole! I imagined that yell. Well, you were going to kill me! I’d reply. That doesn’t matter!

“I promised Yuu. Told her I’d ask. If you say yes, she’ll be way happier. Fuuji too. Basically, have a truce when she’s around”

“Now wait a minute,” Fuuji said. “I like that girl, but I barely know her. Look at what happened!” He gestured to his face. “I’m not gonna leave Miyazato alone after shit like this! I feel like my ribs are broken!”

“You started it!” I countered. I was stronger now, not the kid who’d been bullied before. I wanted to assert myself, fucking kill him—no! Not murder, that was too much, but at least get back at him for randomly picking a fight like that.

“You wanna go, then?”

Sure! Yeah! I did!

…I promised Yuu.

Fuck. Damn it all.

“…No. It’s…Yuu’s special. I’m not going to go against what she wants.”

Kazuhiro smiled; Fuuji glared. “I don’t get it.”

“You wouldn’t,” I said. A sixth grade classmate had said that back when I asked him why he wanted a girlfriend. I tried to put the same level of disdain in my words. Predictably, he puffed up, annoyed—

and hit me across the face.

“Hey!” Kazuhiro said. “Senpai!”

I clenched my fists, my nails pressing white crescents into my palms. Don’t hit him back. Don’t hit him back…

In that moment, I really felt like I was losing something. Impotent, that hot blood crusting brown on my face, I walked past the two of them, head down, and left.

➽──────❥ ❀⊱༺♡༻⊰❀ ➽──────❥

White Day, 2024. I browsed through the shelves of the convenience store shops, loaded with white-chocolate candy in anticipation of the holiday. Four girls had given me courtesy chocolates last month. I planned to buy a bag of wrapped-up little chocolates like they had, give out four as return gifts, then eat the rest and pretend they were from one of my 2D boyfriends.

Next to me, staring in contemplation at the candy, was a man a few years older than me. He had a sharp, chiseled nose and wore a soft-fabric bomber jacket that framed his face. Long black hair curled down his neck and around his ears. Since he was looking away, I let my gaze linger on him…he was really hot. I suddenly wished I’d kept the courtesy chocolates; to give them all to him in a big handful and plead “Go out with me!”

He glanced in my direction and caught me staring. His brow furrowed; his nose wrinkled. Disgust, only charitably interpretable as confusion.

He scrubbed that expression off his face pretty quick, but went down the aisle and switched rows. Ugh. I felt like there was slime dripping down my face. I wiped it on my sleeve and tried to focus on the chocolate.

Almost a year later, or six years before, depending on how you figured it, the feeling of slime hadn’t left. It’s all in your head, I told myself. That was scanty comfort. Sitting alone in Ryoya’s room, I pressed a finger under my eye. I’d been used to black eyes in middle school. I’d pasted up most of the cuts, I thought…trailing my finger down a little bit, it rode up over the bruise Kanai had left. I wanted to see him again. Why was that? He didn’t have any good qualities.

After the ups and downs of yesterday, I’d gone home and taken a five-pm nap that’d ended up taking me through the whole night. I’d managed to avoid Ryoya’s parents for breakfast and now it was around noon again. I didn’t want to go out again. Maybe I’d just become a hermit.

“Status window.”

Love Points: 2

Drama Points: 2

Misfortune Points: 4

Money: 8080 yen

Mission: Gain the heroine’s affections. Failure or stalling will be punished.

Becoming a hermit wasn’t an option. “Why?” I grabbed at the corner of the screen, blurring the holographic display. “I don’t get it.”

I closed the window and stood up, going to the bookshelf and rifling through the sketchbooks. I pulled out one that, upon looking through it, seemed to be from when Ryoya was a kid. The drawings were messy, uneven, and mimicked real life in the wrong ways, with tiny eyes set too high in faces and mouths like long sausages of clay.

Playboy characters were often either very sweet or very interesting as kids, or both. Some games showed flirty elementary-schoolers, but most assumed romantic interest of that sort wouldn’t’ve bloomed yet. The characters at a younger age, then, showed more of the subtle aspects of their personality, how they ended up as the adults they were going to be.

I’d been a lot less closed off as a kid. I’d never really felt like I could talk to my parents, which was why bullying was so rough on me later…but I told my sister and my friends everything. I didn’t really have friends, now. In my past life, that was. Ryoya had friends.

I hadn’t done anything cool like art at that age, and now I didn’t have the skills.

I flipped to a blank page in that old sketchbook and set the canvas of Ame from Ryoya’s closet up on his desk where I could see it easily. I pushed my chair back and started sketching it, trying to copy all the lines.

Despite my best efforts, it didn’t seem to turn out, and I wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong. The lips were especially tricky; I erased and redrew them until the paper was smudged gray and I had to flip to another page, but seeing my drawing next to all of his old janky ones helped me keep at it. He’d started here, too.

I wondered if anyone was going to expect me to draw, or if I’d be made to draw to prove I was him—people were already suspicious, though I was sure if I explained the situation they’d just think I was crazy. If so, this was worth the time—though his interest in art didn’t come up much in the story (unlike Tana’s; Shobu Tana was the artistic genius of Delinquent Love!). You learned about it about five chapters into his route, rather than it being an introductory character trait. I’d be better off practicing how to act like a player, which I’d been crap at.

“Hey girl,” I said to the mirror, then had to turn away in embarrassment. If anything, it was easier to do it with someone else then alone in my room.

My room?

I contemplated the permanency of my existence here. I didn’t know how I’d be getting back; did I even want to get back? I didn’t like my life…yeah, I’d have to get back. I needed to look after my sister.

I picked up the sketchbook again and started trying to draw her. A sweep of black hair, usually pulled into a half-ponytail with some kind of accessory…a headband, a sparkly scrunchie, or a bow matching her uniform. Sharp, sparkling eyes and calluses on her fingers from playing about six instruments. Despite her annoying me sometimes—most of the times—I really liked her.

I went to go take a shower.

This was the first time I’d changed clothes as Ryoya without painstakingly looking away or at the ceiling or otherwise away. I just didn’t have the energy for all that—I didn’t care anymore. Of course, I looked down at that area. Sue me…

Along his inner thighs, just underneath his boxers, was a lattice of ridged scars. I ran my finger along them and suddenly felt ten times more exhausted.

Who was I kidding, trying to say he wasn’t real? Years of sketches weren’t included in Delinquent Love!. Self-harm scars weren’t included in Delinquent Love!. These were all-new aspects, shoving his messy personhood in my face.

Yuu had somehow made Ryoya get over everything in the game. This girl is the most important person in the world to me, Ryoya had said, when Kanai was threatening her-slash-“Rin”, my character. She taught me how to love again.

Could Yuu somehow fix me? I really doubted it. I mean, I really didn’t think of being gay as something to fix…that was my conscious brain’s opinion, but really, I just wanted to avoid all my troubles. If I was “ordinary”… and if, like Ryoya, falling in love with Yuu could somehow sort out all my mental health problems, all my fears…

I really wished that could happen.