Chapter 9

Mana and I stared at each other for a good few seconds, the awkwardness thickening the air like gelatin.

“Your sister… she’s pretty feisty, isn’t she?” Mana asked, plopping down on the floor cross-legged. That made her girly, flowy dress a complete misfit to her tomboy attitude.

“Yeah, she’s a pain in the ass. Well, all my family is, but she’s particularly annoying.”

“She just kept insulting you and everything! What’s her deal?! You’re a great artist; she needs to respect you!”

“Ah-ah. Thanks. But even if I were a great artist, that’s entirely different from paying the bills.”

Deep down, I knew Sunhi was right. My financial situation was already tenuous at the best of times, but having another person—and a glutton at that—living with me was definitely not sustainable. No matter how popular my account was now and how many commissions I took, things would still be strained for a while.

“That doesn’t matter! Siblings need to support each other, right? Why is she like that?” Mana said, pouting.

“Well, this is a bit of a boring story. It’ll probably drive you to tears.”

“No, I want to know more about my creator. About you,” she said, her voice strangely serious. “Please tell me.”

We had talked a bit about me before this, but I didn’t really find it relevant to dig through my past at the time. Now that Mana was here to stay, though, I felt I had to explain what was going on.

“It’s one of those stories you see everywhere in Luhou. My dad was an immigrant and arrived here with nothing but the clothes on his back. But he hustled his way up the corporate chain and eventually founded his own company. They are one of the biggest providers of… well, never mind, I don’t get it myself anyway. It’s all boring business lingo. Import/export duties. The point is, it’s a real-life rags-to-riches story.”

“Oh! So your family is loaded? I assumed they were as destitute as you!”

“I’ll ignore that insult for both of our sakes,” I said. “But yes, they are quite well-off. My dad got this far because of his entrepreneurial spirit, and so he demanded the same of his children, my sisters and I.”

“Ohh, right! You mentioned having multiple sisters! So is she older or younger?”

“Younger. And she’s also a pain in the ass, but in a different way,” I said. “Point is, Sunhi and I in particular grew up expecting to inherit the company after my dad retired. She took that challenge and doubled down on it, trying her best to be Dad's perfect little girl. And I guess that left a bad impression that I would go the same route. But I never cared much about the business, and then I discovered I had the talent to draw… well, the rest is history.”

“So you ran away from home?!”

“Pretty much. I dropped out of business university to live on my own. Fair to say my parents wanted nothing to do with me from then on, and I was on my own.”

“Awww, that’s so romantic!”

“How the hell is that romantic? It’s objectively a stupid thing to do!”

“Nah, it’s not,” Mana said, her voice leveled. “You left to pursue your dreams, right? It’s a really cool thing to do, no matter what you may say.”

“Sure, I’ll take that,” I said, sipping the rest of my tea; it was already cold. “But I certainly didn’t expect Sunhi to be sniffing around my Fwitter. That was unexpected. What a pain.”

That meant that I had to keep Mana on a tight leash. She had absolutely no concept of shame, so it was extremely likely that she’d start posting spicier and spicier pictures, and who knows what Sunhi would do to me then.

“I hope you two can get along better in the future,” Mana said with a rather forlorn tone.

“Well, I don’t. The less I see of her, the better.”

“No, you can’t be like that! You have to mend ties!” She said with surprising intensity.

“Huh? Why are you getting so worked up about this?”

“I mean…” Mana began, uncharacteristically hesitating. “She’s part of your family, right? And family must get along.”

“That’s not how it works, you know…”

“I’m not taking that. You must get along!”

But then it hit me. Why Mana was stuck on this point.

She had no family. In her lore, I never bothered to write anything about parents or siblings, so she had none of that at all.

Now I’m regretting not writing those things in, geez.

“Alright, alright, I’ll try. She seems hellbent on sticking around for a while, so I’d have to do it anyway.”

“Great! And I’ll try my best to support you both as much as I can!” Mana said with a smile. But then I could see her mouth curling up, and I just knew she had something terrible in mind. “By the way, Ju…” She said with a singsong tone. “Do you really think I could get pregnant?”

“Wha— What the hell kinda question is that?!”

“I mean, it was your fault for telling your sister a lie like that, right, boyfriend?”

“Grr…” I guess she does have a point. “Well, I… I guess you should? I mean, you are a woman. I assume all of that… works? You should know better than me, if anything.”

Right. Mana was a real flesh and blood woman. For some reason, I hadn’t really absorbed that fact just yet. To my surprise, it seems like Mana hadn’t either.

“Right. I am one,” she said with a forlorn tone.

“Hmm? Something on your mind?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s nothing,” she said, her tone still quite off. “More importantly, we must be careful from now on, right, boyfriend?”

“…Don’t even joke about that, you doofus.”

“Eh-eh-eh,” she said, seemingly amused. “More importantly, we were about to do a photoshoot before your sister showed up, right?”

“Oh yeah.” The art vs. artist thing. “Well, just go pose against the wall as usual,” I said as I grabbed my phone.”

“Please try to catch my good side, boyfriend,” Mana said with a sneer.

Damn it. Why did I ever decide that it was a good idea to say that?!

⬡⬢⬡⬢⬡

“Hmm… the art vs. artist is not getting much traction, is it?” Mana said as she watched the numbers on that latest post on my phone.

“It’s not. Maybe my sister was right…”

It had been a few days since Sunhi showed up at my apartment, and things had fortunately returned to a semblance of normalcy. I had drawn “myself”—or rather, Mana—in her summer dress and posted it on Fwitter. And yeah, it’s not like the post bombed or anything, but apparently people were starting to get a bit fed up with all the constant real life posts. There were even some comments saying that they were getting annoyed by it and were unfollowing me. And indeed, my number of followers had practically stalled.

“So now what do we do?” Mana said, exasperated.

“Maybe we should let up with all the posts…”

“But I mean, Aru-chan posts all the time, doesn’t she? We’re just doing it a bit more regularly.”

“Yeah, but she also posts a lot of art. She’s way faster than me.”

Aru-chan’s account was maybe around 50% art and 50% photos. Meanwhile, my account over the past couple of weeks had something like 80% photos and 20% art.

And it’s my fault, I know.

I was just too slow of an artist. Even this simple art vs. artist, just a simple color sketch, took me two days to complete, since I had to prioritize commissions.

“Well, the best thing to do is check out the competition!”

Just when did Aru-chan become your competition?!

Mana proceeded to go over to Aru-chan’s account and scrolled through all her media posts.

“What’s this? Cosplay?!”

I leaned over next to Mana and saw she was staring at one of Aru-chan’s cosplay posts.

“Oh, yeah, she does those too, doesn’t she?”

She was dressed as a recent anime’s main heroine, and she definitely pulled off the look.

She’s a damn good cosplayer…

“I don’t know the original character, but it does fit her super well!”

“Yeah, you’re right. She really pulls off the—Mana?”

I could just feel it in her eyes. It was like a light bulb had gone off in her mind.

“Ju, I just had a great idea.”

Uh-oh, I don’t like the sound of that.

“I want to cosplay!”