6

The following day, Sunday.

I was lying down on the couch in the living room, melancholically sighing to myself as I considered the previous day’s events.

In the end, I’d had fun during my trip to Akihabara, but now it felt like I’d wasted a lot of effort just to be back at square one. To be honest with myself, my expectations had probably been too high. I’d thought K would be the one—my dream girl—and that I could end up dating her without a hitch.

So much for that.

I didn’t even feel like using Friendz anymore. The only girl I’d managed to chat with ended up being Kokoro, so I’d have to go through the whole process of looking at profiles and sending likes all over again.

But if I don’t use the app, will I be able to find a girl at all?

The door opened and Kokoro came in.

“Hi!”

“Welcome back,” I said, looking at her and the mountain of shopping bags she was holding.

“I went on a total spree! So, you know, can’t afford any more luxuries this month!” she said, looking entirely satisfied with the fact.

Her parents periodically wired her money to pay for food, tuition, and other necessities, plus an allowance which, based on how much she was carrying, must have been pretty hefty. Since I had to cut back on my living expenses to finance my hobbies, I couldn’t help but be envious when she’d said she was going out shopping with her friends.

“This is just so cute! It’s like it was made for me!” she yammered as she pressed this and that piece of clothing up against her body in front of the living room mirror.

“Can’t you do that somewhere else?” I asked.

“This is the only full-length mirror in the house!”

“I know, but...”

She hoisted more clothes out of the shopping bags and continued her one-woman fashion show.

“Your outfits aren’t very otaku-friendly, you know?” I commented. I’d actually felt that way for a while.

“Wh-What?!” she replied as, in her hands, she held a black sleeveless top and a red checkered miniskirt. They could have been fashionable choices from a girl’s perspective, but, for an otaku guy, wearing something flashy like that was like labeling yourself as an unapproachable, slutty gyaru.

Every single item of clothing she’d spread across the living room floor fit that exact stereotype, with all the stark blacks, reds and those tight, revealing cuts. Easy-girl clothing, you might say.

She’d spared no effort in insulting my own outfit on the previous day, but, if she really wanted to find an otaku boyfriend, I wasn’t the only one who had terrible taste.

“Says who?! You wanna take a good look in the mirror and see whose clothes are uglier?! Actually, with you, the problem goes much deeper than that outfit!” she scoffed, her voice rising with her temper.

It was just an innocuous comment... Why is she always so mad at me?

“Don’t stress yourself. Let me guess what you’re going to say,” I retorted. “My deeper problem is my face, isn’t it? No amount of effort could make th—”

“No! Why are you like this?! See? This is why you can’t have nice things! What you just said! The way you think! The way you write everything off as useless before even trying!”

“H-Huh? If it’s not my face, what is it then?”

“Cleanliness! Your problem is that you lack the most important thing: cleanliness!” she barked, angrily pointing a perfectly manicured nail at me.

C-Cleanliness?

“I mean, you live here, right? You know that I take baths every day—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about! Like, you can wash but still look gross, and the other way around! Now, listen, what I’m going to say is super duper important, so just try and remember it, okay? Do you even know what the most important things are when it comes to making a good impression? The first is cleanliness. The second is also cleanliness. Now the third, and this may surprise you, is, of course, cleanliness!”

“Cleanliness...” I parroted her as the word bounced around inside my skull.

“Your hair sticks up at every angle! Your eyebrows are fuzzy and weird! Your fingernails are too long! You look super gross! And the lack of sleep from your late-night porn marathons has made your skin all dry and crusty!”

“A-Are those things really that important?” I asked her.

“Are you kidding me?! They’re a thousand times more important than being handsome! And you can do something about looking clean! If you look that filthy and it puts off girls, you have no one to blame but yourself and your own laziness!”

“Okay, okay! I get your point, but... more important than being handsome? You can’t be serious?” I objected.

“It is! It really is! Ask any girl out there and she’ll totally say the same thing!”

But... this means that I could actually become more attractive if I cleaned up some more!

“Go on then, what should I do?” I asked her.

“Hm... I guess you’ll need to get this stuff down, otherwise when you actually meet a girl you won’t stand a chance with her. Fine. I’ll teach you. I did promise, after all. I’m going to tell you all the important things, one by one, so you better be grateful and take notes!”

“O-Okay!” I said, half annoyed by how patronizing she was and half desperate to hear the information. I pulled out my phone, ready to take notes as she’d commanded.

“First things first: I told you that you can look dirty even if you’re clean, but you can’t look clean at all if you are dirty. So you should probably take your baths in the morning so that you can leave the house all nice and fresh. People get all sweaty in their sleep, you know?”

Ugh, I have to wake up earlier? Well, maybe I’ll just do it when I have a date, I thought, despite not having the slightest idea when and if that was even going to happen.

“Next,” Kokoro said, “is that skin of yours. Even if you’re a man, having glowing skin makes you look clean and waaay more attractive. You have to moisturize after every single time you wash your face, and you should just fix up that lifestyle in general. Get some actual sleep and eat better! And if your skin still looks so bad after all that, go to a dermatologist! It’s covered by insurance and everything, so you can get really effective creams super cheap. I go to mine every time I get pimples!” she went on.

“You go to a... pimple doctor?”

“If I can have totally flawless skin, quickly and cheaply, why wouldn’t I?”

If I was going to concentrate on improving my oh-so-unhealthy lifestyle, I’d have to make room between my otaku responsibilities for Kokoro’s nightly skincare routine—that also meant going to the drugstore and buying some moisturizer.

“Now,” she said, “you should pluck your eyebrows and trim your nose hair on a regular basis! Have you even trimmed them, like, ever?”

“I...” have not.

“You haven’t?! Like, seriously?! You can even get special scissors for that kind of thing, so go and buy some! And you’re also gonna need tweezers to clean up the shape of your eyebrows. For a face-shape like yours...” she trailed off, looking up something on her phone before showing it to me. It was a close-up picture of a handsome actor.

“I’ll send it to you later, so try to pluck your brows like him. That should suit your face,” she explained.

“Wow, you really know your stuff...”

“These are just the basics, so even you should be able to do this much by yourself eventually! Next, your hair! You always go to a barber, right?”

“Yeah...”

“And you never style it?”

“Yeah...”

“That’s no good at all! Go to a proper salon! I’ll even give you the address of the one I usually go to. It’s a bit pricey, but it’s totally worth it! Just tell them that you want it shorter and cleaned up a bit, and they’ll fix you up for sure! And you need to actually make the effort to style it yourself every day!”

She continued bombarding me with information as I diligently typed it all out on my phone.

“If you want a super hot hairstyle, it’s all about how you dry your hair after washing it. When you get good at it, you can do fancy things like folding your bangs to one side or ruffling them up, but for now just make sure you actually use a blow dryer. But, like, be gentle and go with the grain, not against it. And when you’re done—hair wax! Now, come with me!” she said, standing up and walking toward the bathroom with me right on her heels.

“It’d actually be better to do this right after you’ve dried it, but I’ll just go ahead like this... What are you waiting for? Bend down! I can’t reach!” she whined.

“Okay?” I asked, confused.

“Like, first you need to use a hard wax to create some volume...”

Kokoro made me crouch a little in front of the mirror and stood behind me. I wasn’t expecting her to actually mess with my hair at all, so feeling her warm hands on my head took me by surprise.

I-Is she fine with touching me like this? I thought, desperately trying to hide my nervousness since she could see my face in the mirror.

“H-How do you know how to do men’s hair?” I asked her.

“I do my own hair every day, so it’s kinda the same—just shorter.”

“You sure about that?”

“Stop yapping and look at what I’m doing!”

“Y-Yes ma’am!”

I was so tense from having a girl’s fingers run through my hair that I’d forgotten the whole point of this operation. I had to snap out of it and try my best to concentrate on learning how to look “clean.”

“When you’re done, you need to, like, use a softer wax to fix the tips.”

“I see,” I said, watching her hands as I added to my notes.

“See, even that ugly haircut can look decent if you bother styling it right. Look!” she said, pointing at my reflection.

“I... Whoa! It’s like what popular guys have!” I said, genuinely in awe of my new look. I couldn’t believe that something as simple as changing my hair could change my whole appearance so much.

“Practice until you can do it by yourself, got it?”

“Yeah, I’ll do my best anyway,” I agreed.

“The next step, let’s see... Your breath!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The way your breath smells is super important! Foul breath can ruin the most handsome of men!”

“Then I’d better be more careful...” I mumbled, realizing that I’d never given much thought to it. Imagining a cute girl with smelly breath was enough to convince me of Kokoro’s point.

“So, should I be doing something differently?” I asked.

“You can’t forget to brush your teeth every single morning and evening. That includes your tongue, because that’s where the nastiest bacteria live! If you get cavities or anything like that, go see the dentist right away. Immediately. You don’t wanna smell like you have worse problems, like cavities or gum disease.”

“Last time I went to the dentist he didn’t find anything wrong with my teeth, and it’s not like they hurt, so I don’t think I have any cavities,” I said.

“Better be safe than sorry when it comes to your breath! There are just sooo many things that can make it smell bad: not keeping your mouth clean enough, having a dry mouth, being on an empty stomach, having problems with digestion... and make sure you always have mints on you when you leave the house!”

I was certain that I was now an expert on bad breath and its causes.

“So I should make sure my mouth doesn’t become dry and always have mints at the ready, right?”

“I guess that should do, yeah. But it’s not like your breath ever troubled me or anything,” she said to my utmost relief.

“In general, though,” she went on, “you have to take care of all kinds of bad smells, not just the ones coming out of your mouth! Like, keep yourself clean, always wear clean clothes, and use an antiperspirant all the time! Since I’m in charge of doing the laundry, stinky clothes shouldn’t be a problem. Mom taught me how to dry clothes so they never smell moldy, and I’m using a super fresh fabric softener...”

Has she really been putting that much care into our laundry?

“It’s summer soon, so you better hurry up and buy an antiperspirant—a men’s one, so you don’t smell all flowery like a girl. Oh, and don’t forget your feet! Guys’ feet can get really gross and sweaty, so keep them clean—your shoes too!”

“Sure, but can I ask you something? You never had a boyfriend, right? Where’d you get all this info on men’s feet?” I asked, surprised by her familiarity with the topic.

“I live with my dad, duh. In the summer, he always washes his feet as soon as he comes home,” she explained.

The most surprising part was that her dad, despite his age, still took care of himself really well. I had to admit that he looked pretty cool for a dad, even if he also looked like he might throw me out a window when Kokoro finally breaks up with me. It was hard to believe that he was almost the same age as mine.

Looking at his daughter, I wondered if, maybe, looking naturally good and putting in the effort to look even better ran in the Nishina family.

“By the way,” I asked her, “what about cologne? I always see tons of fancy bottles at Don Quixote.”

I often shopped at Don Quixote, which had a substantial perfume section.

“Uhm... It could work if you managed to choose a good one, but, like, forget about it for now. You don’t wanna buy something weird or cover yourself in it. It’s better not to smell like anything than gas your dream girl with your cologne! If you do eventually go and buy some anyway, please get it at a proper store, not a dollar store.”

At this point, I was entirely convinced by her argument.

“That should totally cover all you need to know for now,” Kokoro said.

I scrolled through all my notes in silence. There were so many.

Being attractive is so hard. I never even thought about most of these things.

I already had to remember a lot of things on a daily basis, and now there was even more stuff that I’d need to do before even trying to meet a girl. Maybe the fact that it was so difficult explained why there were so few truly popular guys. In order to be attractive, no matter how handsome you were to begin with, you still needed to put in a lot of effort.

“So I’ll have to go to a salon, then go to the drugstore and buy moisturizer, tweezers, and scissors, then buy soft and hard hair wax, men’s antiperspirant, and mints. That’s not going to be cheap. Will I even have any gacha money left?” I wondered to myself. My notes had become more of a shopping list.

“Just stick with free gacha pulls for a while!” Kokoro, overhearing me, said. “You want a real girlfriend, don’t you? This is only the first step if you want to even think about going down that road! You have to actually put in effort or you’ll just keep sucking at finding one!”

Her words reminded me that, in this harsh world, you often have to sacrifice one thing in order to gain another, and so I made up my mind and went to buy the things I needed as soon as I could.

“And um, by the way...” she said as we walked back into the living room, where the clothes she’d bought were still spread out across the room, “about my outfits not being otaku-friendly...”

“Yeah, they’re the opposite of that,” I said.

“But, like, why?! I don’t get it!”

Finally! It’s my turn to be the patronizing one.

“Look at these,” I said smugly. “This is what a gyaru would wear. They make you look slutty, or just outright scary!”

“There’s no way they could do that! They’re all so cute!” she objected, looking at the clothes she’d piled onto the couch.

“The colors are too strong! All black and red... Boys like lighter, more gentle colors. White, light pink, pastels...”

To be precise, by “boys” I meant “Kagetora Ichigaya,” but many others would surely share that opinion.

I pulled out my phone and typed “virgin-killer outfit” into the search bar, showing Kokoro a picture of a frilly white blouse tucked into a high-waisted skirt with a corseted front.

“This is what otaku boys like!”

“I-I see...”

I opened up a page with a whole gallery of virgin-killer outfits sorted by brand. Every single one was cute and feminine—full of frills and lace. This was pretty much any otaku’s definition of what the perfect girl should wear.

“Look, these are all nice,” I said, showing it to her.

“S-Seriously? Aren’t they a bit too... cutesy?”

“That’s the point! A cute girl with long black hair and an outfit like this would be cute enough to make any otaku fall in love at first sight!”

“You’re hyping this up way too much... but you do sound super convinced,” she said as she stared at my phone.

“The thing about long black hair... is that also true?” she asked.

“Two hundred percent,” I immediately replied.

“Uhm... But the girls at school would probably tease me to death if I did my hair like that all of a sudden, and I don’t really like black hair that much.”

“Even if you don’t want to dye your hair, you should at least do something about the way you dress,” I said.

“Ugh! This wouldn’t be so annoying if anyone with actual fashion sense gave me this advice,” she lamented, taking my phone in her hands and staring even harder at the screen.

“I can’t afford to go on another shopping spree, at least for a while, but when I get my next allowance I’ll go out and get a few things. I have to figure this out and still try to look cute before I meet any guys.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Oh, right, you should do something about your makeup too. It’s way too... gaudy.”

“Huh?! Gaudy?! I go easy on my makeup!” she protested.

“Compared to a clown, maybe! You’re trying to say those eyelashes are real?!” I questioned, pointing at the ridiculously long spider legs around her eyes. “I must have already mentioned this, but otaku like natural-looking makeup! If even I can tell you’re wearing any, that’s probably already too much!”

“That’s like saying that you need to be so perfect that you look cute without any makeup to begin with!” she said.

Doesn’t she realize that she actually looks cuter without makeup?! Does she have zero self-awareness?! I thought, but saying it out loud would be too embarrassing, so I kept my mouth shut.

“O-Okay, I get it,” she said. “I can’t go to school looking like that, but maybe I could make it work in other situations. I’ll watch some makeup tutorials and look into the... what did you call them? Virgin-killer outfits?”

“Yeah, those are the ones. Oh, by the way, are you still using Friendz?” I asked her.

“Nah, I deleted my account.”

“What? Why?”

“Y-You told me not to do anything too dangerous...” she said, avoiding my gaze.

She really took my words to heart?

“Honestly,” she continued, “I’m fine with, like, chatting, but actually meeting boys IRL is a bit scary.”

“Oh. That makes sense, sure.”

Meeting with strangers was dangerous for anyone, much more so for a young girl like Kokoro. Still, I was surprised yet again by how quickly she’d taken my advice.

＊　＊　＊

The next day, after school, I stopped by the drugstore under Kokoro’s orders.

When I got back, I found her in the living room, hunched over her laptop.

Why’d she move all of that down here from her bedroom?

“Hi,” I told her as I passed, but I got no reply.

Annoyed, I turned to look at her properly and noticed she had headphones on. Now, this is a rare sight.

I moved behind her and looked down at the screen. She was playing a game I’d never seen before.

“What are you doing there?” I asked her.

“Eek! Don’t scare me like that!” Kokoro cried, ripping off her headphones and spinning to face me.

“I said hi, but you didn’t reply. Why are you all set up in the living room?”

“The Wi-Fi is too laggy upstairs,” she explained.

“You’re playing online?” I asked, taking a second glance at the screen.

The router was in the living room, so it probably made sense to come downstairs to play. Personally, I didn’t know much about PC games. I’d played a few back in middle school but never really got into them. As for Kokoro, she definitely didn’t look like the type to play anything except for the occasional gacha game, so that had me surprised.

“So... you’re also a gamer girl, huh?”

“Not really. This is my first time. The controls are super hard. Are you good at this kind of thing?” she asked me.

Her character looked like she’d heavily decorated it with accessories and all kinds of shiny enhancements, but she was rolling around so awkwardly that even I, who knew nothing about this game, could tell that she was a beginner.

“Why’d you even start this game?”

“Now that I don’t use Friendz anymore, I figured I needed a new place to look for guys. I asked one of my Twitter friends where she’d met hers, and she told me they met while playing an MMO,” Kokoro explained.

“And of course, you lost no time...” I said. I imagined that from the perspective of someone who genuinely wanted to have fun playing the game, someone like this, who joined the game to use it as a dating website, would be a complete nuisance. Thou shalt not game with impure intentions.

“I mean, her story was sooo incredible! This guy was always helping her in the game, looking out for her, right? And then one day they met IRL and fell in love with each other, just like that! Isn’t that the most romantic thing ever?!” Kokoro swooned.

“I guess so...” I said, but that story was fundamentally different from what Kokoro was doing. Her friend had been playing for fun and just happened to find a boyfriend. I wondered how it would work out for a girl whose only goal in the game was to find a gamer boyfriend...

“I joined a beginner-friendly guild, and... Oh! They just said we’re going to do a quest!”

Curious, I continued watching over her shoulder as she played. There were seven players from the guild, including Kokoro, going on the quest. After following the map for a while, they reached a big dragon and started poking at it with their weapons.

“I’m the only beginner in the party, actually...”

“I see—Wait, where are you going?!” I exclaimed, confused by how Kokoro had started running in the direction opposite to everyone else, including away from the dragon boss.

“Ahhh! I just tapped the wrong key! Keyboard controls are so hard...”

Is it really okay to let her join the quest when she can’t even run in the right direction?!

“Finally! I got closer to the bo— Hey!” she shouted at the screen. She’d managed to run toward the dragon, or, more accurately, into the dragon.

“Did you not even expect to take any damage from that?” I asked in disbelief.

“I can’t help it! I’m just a newbie okay?!”

“Maybe... But you certainly aren’t naturally talented when it comes to gaming.”

“Then join my guild and help me out! If you start playing too then, maybe—who knows? You could even meet a girl!” she said.

“I-If you need my help that much... I guess I might as well.”

I went up to my room and grabbed my laptop, bringing it down and putting it next to Kokoro’s. As I turned it on, I couldn’t help but consider her suggestion. She was so bad at this game that meeting guys should have been the last of her concerns, but, if I turned out to be a better player than her (which was pretty likely), then finding a girlfriend wouldn’t be out of the question for me.

Also, I’d heard plenty of stories myself about people finding their soul mates in MMOs. In my case, though, I’d only read about it online.

I downloaded and installed LRD—short for Legend Red Dragon—the game that Kokoro was playing. Meanwhile, she continued dying over and over without being of any help whatsoever to her more experienced party members.

“Oh, I’m done with the installation. I guess I’ll start creating my character...” I said, choosing a female avatar and moving some sliders to customize her appearance.

“Hm... Wait, what?” Kokoro said, looking over at my screen. “Why are you trying to play as a girl?”

“Huh? Why wouldn’t I? If I’m going to stare at a character the whole time, it might as well be a cute girl.”

“You’re missing the point! Like, how are you going to make real cute girls fall in love with you if you’re too busy pretending to be one?” she asked.

“Y-You’re right! I hadn’t thought of that!”

“Are you dumb?”

Thanks to Kokoro, I realized that if my character looked like a girl, other players would probably assume that I was one. Since finding my own gamer boyfriend probably wasn’t the best course of action, I changed my avatar to a male one. I chose some cooler-looking stuff from the free-to-play options and loaded up the tutorial.

The controls were easy enough for anyone who’d played this kind of game before, so I quickly got used to them. Then, I joined the same guild as Kokoro and joined another quest with some of the members.

I quickly found out that the other guild members were a bunch of nice, helpful players. Had they not been, after all, there’s no way they would have let noobs like Kokoro join.

Including me, the guild member register only listed two guys. The other seven members, including Kokoro, were all girls. They were all really helpful right from the start, but two in particular were extra nice to me: “Yumemiya Sumire,” a cute, childish-looking character with twintails and a frilly dress, and “Ice Queen,” a tall sword-bearing grown-up lady with blue hair.

Most communication in LRD happened over the text chat, as there was no voice option. The people playing as the two aforementioned characters had a very cute, girlish way of typing, making them sound as if they were roleplaying the characters themselves.

Yumemiya Sumire: Kageyan, you’re really a beginner? You’re so good! *^_^*

Ice Queen: Let’s do our best together, okay?

“I might have been missing out by always playing as a girl...” I mumbled to myself. Since the only other male member wasn’t playing today, it was just me—as the newbie hero “Kageyan”—surrounded by girls. It was a bit awkward at first, but, to be honest, it felt pretty good—like having my own personal online harem.

“Yumemiya and Ice Queen are really kind. I didn’t know that girls like that even existed,” I commented, this time to Kokoro.

“Wow, already falling for girls on your first day?! At this rate, they’ll kick you out because you’re just trying to get with all of them!” she replied.

“I-I didn’t mean it like that... It’s not like you’re one to talk anyway!”

We played LRD together until six or so, when I had to quit to prepare dinner. Kokoro was still too busy playing.

“Nishina! Dinner’s ready! Stop playing and come eat!” I called out to her, feeling instantly ashamed of how much I sounded like my mom.

“I can’t believe it...” she giggled quietly to herself as she headed toward the table.

“What can’t you believe? You died again?”

“He’s so cool...” she said as her eyes took the shape of two big hearts.

“Huh? Who is?”

“You know that there’s another guy in the guild, right? You know, Black Rain? He just logged in earlier... and he’s super cool!” she squealed, barely containing her excitement.

We continued our conversation as we started eating.

“Cool as in...” I said, “his character looks cool?”

“No! I mean yes! He does look cool, but that’s not the point! The way he writes, the way he fights—everything he does is the coolest! And he’s so strong! He helped me out so much! I could cry just thinking about it!” she said, now making no effort to contain herself.

I know where this is going...

“So... You fell in love with this Black Rain guy, didn’t ya?” I asked almost rhetorically.

“What? N-No! I just... I couldn’t fall in love with someone without even knowing their face, could I?! It’s for sure not like that!” she denied with a suspicious amount of intensity.

That’s true. How crazy would it be to fall in love with someone you’ve never met?

After dinner, we both logged back into LRD.

This game’s smooth mechanics and awesome combat system... didn’t really matter at all to me. The real reason I was having any fun was because of the other guild members. They were all so kind and welcoming that just being around them was enough to make my day. I was sure Kokoro must have felt the same.

Black Rain, the guy she’d been talking about, did indeed look cool, and he was as kind as the rest of the members, particularly toward women.

This guy must be so popular... I guess he is popular already, at least in-game.

From then on, Kokoro and I logged in every single day.

Ice Queen: Hi, Kageyan! You’re early today!

Kageyan: Hi! It’s because school was over early today!

Yumemiya Sumire: High school is tough, isn’t it? So many classes!

We’d gradually grown close enough to know more about each other. Yumemiya and Ice Queen were always happy to chat with me, and they even taught me a lot of stuff about the game. As a result, I opened up to them myself.

It turned out that Yumemiya Sumire was in university, while Ice Queen was working as a freelancer, so both had a lot more time to spend playing than Kokoro and I did.

To thank them for helping me with quests, I occasionally gifted them some premium items and accessories. It wasn’t anything expensive, but they always looked so happy to receive something small and sparkly that it made me feel warm inside.

Doing something for someone you like... This feels really good. Maybe if I spent less money on food and gacha games, I could buy them better presents.

Kokoro, too, was always following Black Rain around. She hadn’t for a second stopped running her mouth about how “super cool” he was.

LRD had become my happiest place to be, and I suspected that the same was true for Kokoro.

“Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had a guild meetup?” I asked Kokoro one day, right after we’d finished our dinner.

“Oooh, yeah! It’d be so cool!” she immediately agreed.

Lately, I’d started thinking of how much I wanted to actually meet Yumemiya and Ice Queen. I couldn’t help but imagine—though I knew this assumption wasn’t based on anything logical—that they were just as cute in real life as they were in-game.

“But we’re newbies... and also the youngest ones there. We can’t just suggest that they should meet up with a couple of high schoolers,” I said sadly.

“Yeah,” Kokoro replied, “but I really wanna meet Black Rain. Awaah! Can you imagine?! There must be a way to do it!”

Would you look at Miss “I can’t fall in love with someone whose face I don’t know”!

“Oh, right!” she remembered. “Yesterday, actually, I asked him for his real name! Maybe I can be super sneaky and find his Twitter or Instagram!”

“That sounds like something a stalker would say.”

Kokoro completely ignored my comment and promptly started googling her virtual crush.

“Yes! His Facebook profile is public!” she exclaimed, delighted.

“Are you sure that’s really him and not just someone with the same name?”

“Hm, I can’t really tell since there’s no profile picture. Wait, I’ll look at his posts.”

She started scrolling down with wide-eyed concentration.

“Ah-ha!” she blurted out after a while. “There’s a post about LRD! It’s really him!”

“You’re sure?!”

“And there’s a pi...”

Hm? Was she going to say “picture”? Why did she stop? What picture?

“What’s wrong, Nishina?” I said, as, moments later, her head fell down, smashing onto the table.

“Hey?! Are you all right?!” I asked, truly concerned.

“There’s also a picture...” she started to say again.

“That’s cool and all but...”

“And it’s a picture from before we joined the guild... when they met up IRL...” she explained with her face still smushed against the table.

“Really?! Then maybe Yumemiya and Ice Queen are also on there! What’s wrong with you anyway?” I questioned. She handed me her phone without saying a word.

“Ah.”

Staring back at me were three seriously unattractive men in their late thirties or early forties: a fat one, a bald one and one with glasses. Far from being “cool,” all three of them were oily, unkempt, aggressively uncool middle-aged men.

“If you read the description,” Kokoro said, “it says who they are. From the left: Yumemiya Sumire, Ice Queen and... Black Rain...”

“Eeeeegh?!” I was so shocked that all I managed to offer was a squeal I didn’t even know my throat was capable of making.

The people in the picture were also tagged: Toshio “Yumemiya” Yamada, and Takashi “Ice Queen” Tokuda. They’d even used their in-game names as nicknames.

Neither Kokoro nor I logged back into Legend Red Dragon ever again.