Chapter 14

“Juwon! Have you listened to anything I said?!” My sister said as she stomped into my apartment.

“Calm down, Sunhi! Is that really the first thing you say after coming here?!”

“Of course! After sharing such s-s-salacious photos, I couldn’t keep quiet!”

At least don’t stutter on the key word there!

Wait, that’s not the point!

“It’s just some cosplay,” Mana said. “Just a tiny bit of—”

“A tiny bit?! Your chest is basically fully exposed! Are you deaf as well?!”

“What’s the problem?” Mana asked, genuinely confused. “A woman must use all her assets, right? Or are you jealous, perhaps, hmm?”

Mana had that playful, curled up smile on her face, but I knew she had just stepped into a landmine. See, my family’s genes had doomed my sister to being of the… petite variety in that department. She made a real effort to hide her complex when we were growing up, but I could tell she really struggled with it. I swear she looked at women’s chests more than I did, even.

“Oh brother…”

My sister froze in place, making her best impression of a statue, as redness took over her face.

“I-I-I’m not jealous of having useless mounds of fat in my chest… Ugh!”

Sunhi collapsed on her knees, like she had lost all strength in her legs, and clutched her face.

Man, this is a bad episode.

“Sunhi? Is something wrong?” Mana asked, running to her side.

“Why, oh why, did God curse me so?!”

“There, there,” Mana said, hugging my sister from behind, trying her best to soothe her. “It’s alright.”

It had the opposite effect.

“Wait, Mana, that’s just going to be—”

“Ahh—” My sister let out that strange sound, freezing all over again.

“Everyone’s bodies are beautiful,” Mana said sagely.

“I don’t want to hear that from you of all people! Ugh!!”

“You might be flat, but you’re beautiful in so many other ways. Like… uhh…”

Stop! She’s already dead!

“…I get it,” my sister finally said. “This is why I never cared about getting into a relationship. I know I’m boring-looking, and my body isn’t appealing at all, and my personality sucks.”

“Wait, you’re trauma dumping now?!”

My sister shot me a glare. “What? Have a problem with it?”

“N-No, no. Carry along.”

All of this because of a pretty unremarkable cosplay photo…

The cosplay was of that bunny girl costume we bought the other day—and yeah, there was some cleavage, but it’s not like it was anything that crazy.

Well, nothing compared to Lara’s cosplay, that’s for sure. Sunhi would probably faint if she saw that.

“Oh, wait. You have a bandage on your finger,” my sister commented. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“Ah-ah, yeah. I tried cooking, and—”

“You did?!” Sunhi said, turning around to face Mana. “Aww, I’m so proud of you! Even if you got hurt.”

“Ah-ah. Thanks.”

“So I guess this is the best time to try out some more difficult recipes! Come on, grab your apron. Juwon, you go out and—Hey, are you even listening?”

“Ju? What’s wrong?” Mana asked.

“Uh… We… we might have a problem on our hands,” I said to the girls.

While they were having their moment, I decided to check how that cosplay photo was doing. And what I saw made me shudder.

“That’s some face you’re making there. That serious?” My sister asked.

“Yeah. We… we’re being targeted.

⬡⬢⬡⬢⬡

My social media had exploded once again.

But not in any sort of good way, like with the first time Mana posted a photo of herself.

We—or I guess Nitrochilla—were being dragged through the mud. There was a flood of comments, from merely raising suspicions to outright attacks. The DMs were going crazy, too.

“What’s this all about?” Sunhi asked. “Have those photos finally caught up to you?”

“In a way. It seems people are accusing Mana of being AI.”

“AI?” She asked. “What’s that?”

Oh, right, she was created before GenAI was a thing…

“Basically, people are saying your photos are just computer-generated. That you don’t actually exist.”

“What? Are they dumb? I’m right here!” She said, thumping her chest.

“Well, we know that, but they don’t,” I explained.

“I’ve heard of this,” Sunhi said. “AI cosplayers and stuff, right? But can AI really make up those kinds of photos?”

“Sure it can. It’s getting pretty realistic nowadays. It can be hard to tell who’s a real person and who’s not by a photo alone.”

But there was one reason why the accusations stuck so much.

“Oh, people are saying it’s because the girl in the photos looks like… Mana,” Sunhi said, staring at her own phone. “Wait, did you share her name online too? That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“No, I haven’t,” I said.

“Then how—”

“Here,” I said, bringing up an image from my phone’s gallery. “This is Mana. The original one, at least.”

My sister snatched my phone from me, staring at the image, then at the real Mana standing next to her, and then back again.

“It-it’s the same! You look just like this drawing! Juwon, what’s going on here?!”

Should I tell her the truth?

Seeing the two side by side, the similarities were uncanny. I couldn’t just chalk this up to a coincidence or something like that.

“Relax, Sunhi. I drew this character based on Mana here,” I explained, lying as easily as I breathed. “So technically, the original Mana is the real one, and this character is just based on her.”

“Oh… okay, that makes sense. Yeah.” I’m so glad my sister is this technologically inept! “Still, it was a bad move to use her real name for the character.”

“Yeah… maybe you’re right. No point in dwelling on that now.”

“But how could someone do this?” Mana began. “Who started it?!”

This sort of smear campaign could only start with a big creator. Someone with the audience to push their narrative onto others and rile up the masses. And the origin point—

“Aru-chan…?” Mana said, incredulous.

It didn’t take long to find the original fweet. A long-winded exposition on Nitrochilla and “Mana”, accusing me of using AI to stage the photos. The rest was history.

“How could she do this? I thought she was such a nice girl! She was my inspiration!”

“Well, looks can be deceiving,” I said. “Still, you have a point. This is quite unusual for her...”

Aru-chan wasn’t exactly known for getting into drama. Even when people accused her of using her body to promote her account, she always brushed it off with a smile.

Is she feeling threatened by the recent success of my account or something?

Even with the growth my account had received, Aru-chan had a much bigger audience than mine. Nitrochilla was basically copying her model verbatim, so it made some sense that she felt like I was trying to replace her or something.

Not that her reasons will really impact anything.

All three of us stood stock still, trying our best to think through this situation.

“What are you going to do, Juwon? I’ll be honest, if this convinces Mana to stop exposing herself online, the better.”

From her tone, I could tell there was something else unsaid. “…But?”

“I also can’t stand false accusations. And I can’t stand seeing Mana like that.”

The girl was deflated, sitting around on my bed like her spirit had left her.

Is this really because her idol backstabbed her? Or…?

I felt there was something else behind this—but it wasn’t the sort of thing I could talk about with my sister here.

“Well, I can see three options,” I began. “We can ignore Aru-chan and keep doing what we were doing. But ignoring a mob like this usually only makes it even louder and more vicious.”

“Then that’s out, I suppose.”

“Yep. Then, the second option is apologizing and stopping posting photos cold turkey.”

“Huh? But wouldn’t that be like admitting you were doing something wrong?”

“Exactly. So it’s a bad idea, too. So that leaves the third option—proving Mana is real.”

“But if photos can’t convince them, what could you do? A video of her?”

“That could work… But I feel people are still going to complain.”

“Huh? But why? Isn’t that enough?”

“Sadly, no. Because the ruse is much deeper than that. Remember, we’re not just trying to prove Mana’s real; we’re trying to prove she’s Nitrochilla.”

“Ah—right, your little account promotion. That one’s on you.”

“Yeah… never thought it would come to bite me in the ass like this.”

“So then, what can you do?

“I didn’t want to do this because I’m not very comfortable in public, but… I have a plan.”

“Oh? Really?”

Well, it’s something someone suggested in the comments, so… not entirely my idea.

Then, I turned to the white-haired girl. “Hey, Mana?”

“Hmm? What? You’re talking to me?” The girl said, still looking quite listless.

“Yeah,” I said. “Up for a livestream?”

⬡⬢⬡⬢⬡

“Phew. That’s a lot of money…” I said after I bought the mic I needed for the livestream.

Many of my artist friends also streamed their drawing process, but I had never really done so. I didn’t think I was able to entertain people while I work. Drawing is a very solitary endeavor, and so the idea of showing my atrocious process to everyone wasn’t particularly appealing, either.

However, for Mana’s sake, I was willing to try it out. And besides, I’d only be doing what I already knew what to do—drawing. That’s right, we’d be doing a sort of collab stream—Mana would be talking to the viewers, while I was going to stay busy drawing. This way, I could both prove Mana actually existed and that Nitrochilla was actually an artist.

Still, despite being on board, Mana was still down in the dumps, curled up in a corner reading manga or something, but I could tell her mind was elsewhere. My sister had already left, so I could speak with Mana openly about whatever.

“Hey, what’s on your mind?” I asked as I presented her with some tea I had just made.

“Oh, huh… thanks,” she said. “It’s just… the same thing we talked about the other day, you know? After the situation with Aru-chan, it was just brought back into my mind.”

“You mean the thing about not feeling real?”

“Yeah… Like, look at this.”

From out of her jacket’s pocket, Mana brought out a small hand mirror. “Your sister gave it to me the other day. She said, ‘A lady should always have a mirror in her bag to make sure she looks proper.’”

“That’s so like my sister.”

“Right… ah-ah,” she laughed weakly, as if all joy was gone from her voice.

She opened the mirror, revealing its shiny, reflective surface showing her face. “When Sunhi showed this to me, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s me. That’s how I look. I really am here.’ But it didn’t feel real, you know? Like, I have seen myself in photos and the like, but I don’t know why, but this hit me different. Then I realized I had been unconsciously avoiding looking at mirrors for too long.”

Maybe because she didn’t want to face these questions…?

“I’m here, but I’m not here here. It’s like I’m a ghost, not really bound to this world. Like a photo someone snuck into a photo album from another family. And when the AI accusations started, I…”

It’s like the world was validating her feelings.

“I can’t pretend to say I get it… but… I’m here for you, okay? No matter what, I know you’re real.”

“Thanks, Ju,” Mana said, as she drank a little bit of tea.

“And a real pain in the butt.”

Mana didn’t respond, just punching me weakly in the ribs. After that, we stayed quiet for a good while, just drinking our tea in silence. Then, just as I was about to get up to continue my work, I felt Mana’s head resting on my shoulder.

“Mana…?”

“Sorry, do you mind… if I stay like this for a bit?”

“I don’t, but…”

“Out of character, huh? I’m supposed to be a little bit more… forward?”

“That’s not what I meant…”

“Eh-eh. But yeah. Feeling you like this… it’s like it grounds my existence, just for a little bit.”

“Okay. Then I’ll stay here for as long as you need.”

Despite my calm words, my mind and heart were racing. It wasn’t like I hadn’t had Mana shoved up against me before. It wasn’t even the first time I had Mana’s head resting on my shoulder, even. And heck, I couldn’t even see or feel anything special.

But that moment, with just the two of us, was different from anything that came before. I couldn’t tell why, exactly, at the time—but it was the moment when I began seeing Mana as something more than a pain in the butt.