The Lies They Forced You To Tell

The next morning came way too fast. I hadn’t had enough time to process what had happened. But I knew… I had to do something. I had to talk to her.

I didn’t sleep much. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that split-screen clip again. My POV on the left, her POV on the right, and that loud noise echoing through both at the same time.

I sat on the edge of my bed, elbows on my knees, staring at the wall we shared.

“Alright…” I muttered.

I slipped on a hoodie, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and stepped into the hallway.

The building was quiet.

I forced myself to move and stopped infront of Yuna’s door.

I raised my hand and pressed the doorbell.

Ding Dong.

No answer.

I waited, counted to 15, and pressed again.

Still nothing.

“...Yuna? It’s me, Ren.”

Silence.

No footsteps or annoyed “I’m coming give me a second.”

Just… nothing.

I tried the door handle out of habit. Locked, obviously.

I stepped back and pulled out my phone.

Her number stared up at me from my contacts.

I hit Call.

It rang once, twice… five times.

Then cut off. No answer.

“...Seriously?” I muttered.

If she wasn’t answering the door and wasn’t picking up her phone… was she just ignoring me?

By now, she probably knows I’ve already seen that clip. Was she panicking because of the #LunaRen trend? Had her ‘boss’ forbidden her from talking to me?

My chest tightened.

“She’s probably a mess right now…” I whispered to myself.

And I’m standing here doing nothing… but what else could I do?

The doctor said stress would be the worst thing for her right now…

Why…

Just why did those metal pipes, or whatever they were, have to make that sound yesterday?

—-------------------------

The day dragged by.

I tried to distract myself with editing, thumbnails, replying to emails… everything I’d been putting off. My brain refused to cooperate. Every notification felt like it might be from her. It never was.

My sister texted me at around 13:00h:

Sis: Good morning! Did you sleep well?

Sis: Because I didn’t.

Sis: I was awake until 8:00h in the morning and read through pretty much every Yeet on the LunaRen hashtag.

I ignored it.

Sis: I KNOW this is the scene where the protagonist is reading his messages but refuses to open them, so ANSWER ME!

Still ignored it.

By the time night fell, my eyes hurt from staring at screens the whole day.

She didn’t message me for the entire day. At one point, I even considered calling an ambulance… What if she collapsed again?

But I forced myself to think rationally. She was probably just too afraid to face me now.

At least I knew she was alive by the afternoon.

The care package with the food my mother had made for her was no longer sitting infront of her door.

Still, I couldn’t fool myself into thinking that meant she was fine.

She wasn’t. If she were, she would’ve reached out.

She must be feeling miserable.

Had she known who I really was for a long time and simply never told me?

Or had she only found out yesterday?

I wish I knew...

--------------------

Sometime around 23:00h, I finally went to bed.

But sleep didn’t come easily. I couldn’t really close my eyes.

It was quiet.

Too quiet.

Until it wasn’t.

Around midnight, a familiar, muffled sound came through the wall.

Her muffled voice.

Not her normal voice…

The other one.

The slightly higher, cheerful VTuber voice I’d heard countless times.

Now that I know what she’s actually doing, it’s easier to recognize it.

She was live…

… streaming.

“Of course she is…” I exhaled.

This wasn’t just her gaming at night. This was work.

This was the job her boss had threatened her over.

A sudden realization hit me…

That guy… He camped outside her door, he mentioned her contract like a weapon.

Someone like him…

Could he?

Would he?

My jaw clenched.

He knew we lived next to each other. He knew we’d gotten close.

And he’d chosen the exact moment during a big event… when we were both live at the same time… to slam some metallic crap on the hallway floor like some psycho marketing strategist.

An insanely loud metallic sound like this… and minutes later, no sign that anything had happened in the hallway… it was just… too weird.

I was sure of it.

He’d engineered the whole thing.

For hype… for profit.

The worst part… It was working.

You didn’t need a crystal ball to guess that tonight’s viewer count would be insane.

I stared at the ceiling for a few seconds… then got up and turned on my PC.

“...Fine. If you won’t open the door… I’ll atleast see how bad they’re making you dance.”

—------------------------

I opened my browser and typed it almost automatically:

LunaZERO - LIVE

The stream title immediately caught my eye.

“LIVE — Just chatting — About yesterday… #LunaRen”

Of course.

Of course…

I clicked.

Her model popped up on screen, sitting in that familiar pastel room background her fans knew by heart.

Top right corner:

Viewer count.

Higher than I’d ever seen it. Significantly higher.

“...Yeah. Figures.” I muttered.

Chat was a waterfall:

“LUNA WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY?”

“ARE YOU ACTUALLY HIS WIFE OR SOMETHING?”

“THE SOUND WAS THE SAME!!!”

“#LUNAREN”

She laughed.

It wasn’t her natural laugh.

Atleast, not the one I’d come to recognize. It wasn’t the same kind of giggle she made when my sister said something dumb.

This laugh was practiced.

“Fufufu~! You guys are way too observant.” she said.

I listened carefully.

Her voice was steady, her timing perfect… If I didn’t know her, I’d think she was completely fine.

But I’d seen her cry in my doorway. I’d heard her apologize dozens of times, just for existing. I knew what her voice sounded like when she was straining.

And right now, it sounded… tight.

She dodged a few questions with jokes. The mods deleted anything too insane.

She’d only been live maybe 10 minutes.

It didn’t take much longer…

“Okay, okay~” she said, pressing her avatar’s hands together. “I guess we can’t avoid it anymore, huh? You guys are scary detectives.”

Chat exploded:

“HERE WE GO.”

“LUNAREN CANON!!!”

My hand tightened on the mouse.

On screen, her avatar closed its eyes for a beat.

“...Yeah.” she said softly. “I mean… what should I say…”

A beat of silence.

My chest felt weirdly hollow.

“Yes.” she said. “Me and Renno… we are together.”

Every function in my body seemed to shut down.

The room, the monitor… all of it just… froze.

My brain ran the words back several times, like I'd misheard.

Me and Renno… we are together.

What?

No.

No, we’re not.

We’re not… together.

As in… dating.

As in… couple.

My 1st instinct was anger.

Not at her.

At him.

I could almost hear her boss’s… the CEO’s… voice behind hers, smirking from the shadows.

“You’re going to say this. You’re going to smile. You’re going to make it sound cute. Viewer numbers will be through the roof. Don’t waste it!”

On screen, she continued.

“That sound really was… quite the oopsie-daisy, huh?” she said, forcing a laugh. “I never wanted it to come out this way. And I definitely didn’t want you to find out because of something so silly…”

Her model looked away, the expression shifting into a smile.

Definitely a forced one, though… because her next words… cut deep into me:

“But… I also… don’t want to lie to you guys.”

Chat went nuclear:

“KYAAAAAA.”

“SHE ADMITTED IT.”

“CANON!!! THIS IS ACTUALLY CANON.”

“WE DON’T NEED FANFICS ANYMORE!!!”

We’re not together… we’re not anything…

We’re… neighbors who ended up tangled in each other’s lives. I carried her in my arms, I gave her food…and her usually guarded, closed off self cried in my presence.

I…

…She means something to me.

That much I couldn’t deny anymore.

But this? Her declaring us a couple to hundreds of thousands of people?

She wouldn’t do that on a whim. She wouldn’t risk what we’d built over the past few weeks just for a… what? Internet prank?

She’d only do it if someone was forcing her.

I could hear it.

In between the deliberately timed pauses and the fake laugh…

There was a tiny wobble on certain words. A slight hitch when she said “we are together”, like the sentence itself didn’t quite fit inside her mouth.

“She’s not doing this because she wants to…” I whispered to myself.

On screen, she smiled again.

“I’ll talk about it… someday.” she said, voice bright. “For now, please just support both of us, okay? We’re doing our best!”

I wanted to punch something.

The desk, the wall… preferably the face of that CEO who thought he could treat her life like a marketing campaign.

He’d seen the opportunity.

He realized that the internet would eat this kind of “evidence” alive.

So he gave them a signal.

A big, loud, unmissable signal.

Let the fans pick it apart and connect the dots.

Then shove her onto stream and make her play along before the narrative could slip out of his control.

It was disgusting.

And effective.

Because the view count on the top right just kept climbing.

“Of course… more drama, more money for the agency…” I muttered bitterly.

But it’s weird… a famous VTuber telling her fans she has a boyfriend… wouldn’t that normally be the death of a VTuber? I mean… her fanbase is mostly guys, probably most of em single… then again, there’s my sister, so maybe I don’t really know.

I stared at the screen as she moved on to other topics, trying to lighten the mood, pretending nothing heavy had just happened.

Jokes, sub-gift reactions…

Her smile on the avatar never slipped…

…but I couldn’t unsee the girl behind it, clutching her stomach, exhausted from overworking and ignoring her body’s limits.

I exhaled shakily.

“I want to be mad at you… but I can’t.” I said quietly.

Because I knew… these weren’t her words…

They were lies someone forced her to tell.

—-----------------------------------

I didn’t remember when I fell asleep. But I did so in my gaming chair, while watching her stream.

When I woke up, my neck was killing me.

What woke me up… was my doorbell.

DING DONG.

“Ugh…” I groaned, standing up.

Her streaming page was still open.

Her avatar frozen mid-sentence.

It rang again.

“I’m coming, I’m coming…”

I stumbled to the door, rubbed my eyes, and opened it.

My sister stood there, wearing an oversized T-shirt, hair tied messily, phone in one hand, a very serious look on her face.

“Morning…” I muttered. “What’s the–”

She cut me off.

“Ren.” she said, eyes sharp.

“We need to talk.”