7

“You totally can’t trust the internet. It’s much safer to meet people IRL...” Kokoro told me while we were having breakfast. Judging by how heartbroken she sounded, she still hadn’t slept off the shock of the LRD incident.

Before I knew it, we’d already reached two whole months of living together. I’d recently started trying my best to follow her advice and make myself more presentable.

It wasn’t actually worth the effort of playing LRD every day, since I’d never have met anyone immediately. I’d stopped bothering now anyway.

I’m going to do my best and find a real otaku girlfriend! I thought to myself with determination. I was doing my hair in front of the mirror, just as Kokoro had taught me.

“My hair’s all fixed up now! How does it look?” I asked her once I was done.

“It looks better than it used to, I guess...” she sighed. She probably was too depressed to even care right now.

I wish she’d take a proper look...

“Good morning!” Ai greeted me in the classroom, swaying toward my desk with that charming smile on his face.

This guy... If only he wasn’t so offensive all of the time, he’d look cuter than your average girl...

“Your hair’s different!” he commented, eyeballing my head.

He noticed?! So he’s cute on the inside too... I mean, he’s a boy, but...

“Oh, this? I put wax on it!”

“Don’t say it like you’re the first caveman to make the incredible discovery of putting wax in your hair. Pretty much every boy in the school does it, Kagetora.”

“R-Really...?”

“But hey, you’ve been fixing those eyebrows too, haven’t you?” he questioned, pulling up my bangs with his hand.

Kokoro hadn’t noticed it at all, but I’d also started plucking and trimming my eyebrows the way she’d instructed.

“S-So, how does it look?” I asked Ai, since he was the closest I got to a female perspective these days.

“Better than that jungle you were sporting before, but... they’re a bit off.”

All that effort just to be told my eyebrows are “a bit off.” Great.

I looked carefully at Ai, who was the very image of the cleanliness that Kokoro had described in such detail. His eyebrows were neat, his skin was clear, his hair was silky, his eyes were bright, and he smelled so good... Wait, no, where am I going with this?

“Say, Ai, why don’t you have a girlfriend?” I asked him out of the blue. I just wondered why he’d go through all that effort if he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend. He crossdressed and all, but, deep down, he was still a guy.

“Where’s this come from all of a sudden? I just don’t want one. I have my otaku hobbies, so what more could I need?”

Could he even fall in love with a girl if he’s like a girl himself? It wouldn’t surprise me if he said that he only dates girls that are cuter than him or something.

“You’re always stuck in those daydreams about getting a girlfriend, aren’t you?” he taunted.

“I’m not daydreaming! I’m serious about it! But while we’re on the subject... don’t you have any female cosplayer friends?”

I’d been too embarrassed to ask my friends for a long time, but beggars can’t be choosers.

“You think I’m going to introduce you to my friends?! They’d think it was some kind of joke and hate me for it!” he smirked.

“Whoa! That’s too rude even for you!”

“But, jokes aside, I do know some cosplayers, but I wouldn’t call them friends. We’ve just cosplayed together a couple of times, so they’re not going to be looking to little old moi to set them up,” he explained.

“I see...” I sighed with disappointment, realizing I couldn’t count on him.

“How do other otaku get girlfriends?! I’m clueless here!” I wailed in despair.

“If you’re gonna be that desperate, I guess there’s this one cosplayer girl I know who found a boyfriend at an offline meetup, or something similar,” Ai said.

“Offline meetup? Like, for people who know each other from a game?” My stomach twisted at the thought.

“No, not that kind. It was an old-fashioned thing, like you find on forums or old social networks.”

“Things like those still exist?! Oh, but, right... You probably can’t join if you’re underage anyway...”

“Actually,” he said, “this girl is still in high school.”

“Seriously?!”

A meetup that any otaku can join, no matter what age?! This is just what Nishina and I have been looking for!

“Thanks, Ai! This is great!”

“D-Don’t get so close to me!” he barked, pulling away from me the second I put my hands on his shoulders.

For the rest of the day, instead of listening to the teachers, I spent most of class sneakily looking for otaku meetups on my phone.

When I got back home, I noticed that the lights in the living room were on, so Kokoro was already back.

“Nishina! I’ve found it! I have the answer!” I shouted as I rushed inside.

“Shhh! What’s your deal? Don’t be so loud...”

“Just look at this!” I said, ignoring her protests and handing her my phone.

The page I showed her was a relic of ancient times, a social network that existed long before Twitter and Instagram. It turned out that the biggest offline meetups were scheduled through this almost extinct platform.

“Offline otaku meetup in Tokyo...?” She read the content aloud.

“It’s next Saturday!” I started elaborating, hurrying to get the words out of my mouth fast enough. “There’ll be about a hundred people, and it’ll be held in an event space not too far away from here! Everyone can join, as long as they like manga, anime, games, or anything else like that! And here’s the best part! There’ll be no alcohol at the event either, so we can join too!”

“Y-You’re a genius! I haven’t used this site in years! I’ll try to remember my password!” she said.

Having broken the good news to Kokoro, I joined that page’s community and signed up for their meetup.

Kokoro had some trouble logging in and had to reset her password, but she managed it eventually and signed up for the meetup too.

“Now that it’s decided, I have to buy some new clothes,” she said. “I think I’ll cosplay Yumeno☆Saki, you know? Like, the page said that everyone’s welcome to cosplay, and if there are going to be a ton of girls, I have to stand out from the crowd! But, er, you know... I also need you to help me shop for the sort of clothes that otaku guys are into. What if I meet someone super hot at the event and we decide to go on a date right after? I have to be prepared!”

“Oh, sure!”

Since Kokoro was pretty to begin with, just changing up her usual hairstyle, makeup, and clothes to something a little cuter would make her irresistible to any otaku.

“Perfect! Then, this Saturday, after school... Let’s. Go. Shoppiiing!”

＊　＊　＊

Later that week, on Saturday.

I woke up one hour before the time we were supposed to leave the house and headed down to the living room.

On my way, I saw Kokoro, already up and curling her hair with a curling iron.

“Morning,” she greeted me.

“Good morning. You’re up early, huh... Huh?!”

Who the hell is this cutesy, innocent-looking girl?! I asked myself, seeing the clothes she’d chosen. A white blouse with lace and frills and a pink skirt that actually reached her knees.

Her makeup, understated and natural, was different too. Even her eyelashes were of normal human length, and her cheeks and lips were a nice, soft shade of pink.

As much as I hated admitting it, she looked terribly cute. Terribly. But why? She wasn’t going on a date today...

“What are you staring at?” she asked. “If you’ve got some kind of problem with me, just spit it out already! Y-You were the one who told me I should try to look, like, ‘innocent’ and ‘natural,’ or whatever. You better not complain now!”

“Huh?! Why would I complain?! You look perfect! This is a thousand times better than your usual getup!” I said, not meaning to raise my voice.

Does she seriously think that this doesn’t look good?! Is she blind?!

“What? F-For real?” she asked. For a fraction of a second, her cheeks flushed brighter than usual.

“Yeah, but... why dress like that now?”

“I figured I’d better get used to this kind of thing as soon as possible, so I looked through my closet and matched my outfit to that picture you showed me. I bought these, like, yeeears ago, but I thought I’d grown out of this cutesy stuff so I don’t wear them any more... So, say that I showed up to a date dressed like this... would that be bad?”

“No! You don’t look bad at all!” I reassured her.

“‘You don’t look bad’...? You really don’t know how to compliment a girl, do you? Anyway, I think I get it. While we’re shopping, help me choose more of this kind of thing, okay? To be honest, I’m a bit scared of relying on your fashion sense, but I have no choice.”

“Don’t worry, I got you!”

Kokoro and I got on the train to Harajuku. It’s supposedly Tokyo’s main fashion district, but I’d only seen the place on TV.

“I can’t really spend much today, to be honest,” I told her. That month, other than my usual daily expenses and otaku necessities, I’d already bought the grooming tools Kokoro had told me to, I’d been to an expensive hair salon, and I’d bought several in-game presents for two... middle-aged men. I didn’t have a lot of cash left.

“Hm, let’s check WEGO first then,” Kokoro said.

Following her lead, I got off the train at Harajuku station, left through the Omotesando exit, and turned right into a huge street. We carried on until we reached a crossroads, then turned left again to find ourselves in front of WEGO, the shop that she was talking about.

I stuck to her heels as we went inside. All the customers in here, both men and women, looked fashionable. If I were by myself, there’s no way I’d have entered a store like this.

I grabbed the label of the first piece of clothing I could find: 2,149 yen.

“Hey, you were right! It’s not that expensive!” I told Kokoro, with a sigh of relief. “So this is where all the normies go to buy their clothes.”

She went off by herself to look down all the aisles, so I started wandering around too, with no particular aim in mind.

“Oh, this isn’t bad,” I said to myself, grabbing a red and black camo T-shirt. “It’s definitely eye-catching!”

Kokoro appeared at my side, her large, blank eyes staring at me. It was already clear that she didn’t approve.

“Maybe there’s someone out there that can wear that and look good—emphasis on maybe. But a fashion disaster like you wearing that is just cringey! Of all the clothes in this store, did you really have to choose that? I just don’t get it! That weird outfit at the otaku party, the even weirder one you wore to Akihabara, and now this...?” she said, despairing as she gestured toward the shirt in my hands.

Her expression drained every drop of confidence that I had left in my fashion sensibilities.

“Then, what about... this one?” I said, grabbing a green flannel shirt.

“Again,” she said, “maybe someone who actually knew what they were doing could pull that off, but if you put that on, it’d look totally geeky! Just imagine a dork with that shirt, a backpack, and glasses! He’d be the main attraction in the Otaku History Museum!”

I looked back at the shirt I was holding. Maybe she’s right....

“Ugh. B-But then, that just means that everything looks good on fashionable people—I’m just going to look like a cringey, geeky otaku no matter what I wear, according to you!”

“Not at all! Check this out,” she said, handing me a white T-shirt. It was much simpler than the ones I’d shown her.

“Just a simple shirt and a pair of nice jeans, and you’ll look like a totally different person!” she said.

“R-Really? Wouldn’t that be kind of bland?”

“Simple and clean, not ‘bland.’ It’s better than wearing loads of flashy stuff that doesn’t look good on you! I read this in a magazine once, but, like, people are basically attracted to people with fashion sense similar to their own. Like, if you really wanna date a gyaru, dress all bright and garish. If you wanna date someone who’s into gothic lolita stuff, you should go all dark and princely. So, if you wanna date a girl that dresses normally, you should dress normally too! Most normal otaku girls want to see a guy’s face first, not his loud-ass outfit.”

“I see...” I said, taking mental notes of her explanation. It was pretty convincing.

“You could try layering something like this... or this...” she said, pulling other things from the shelves.

She’d picked a T-shirt with blue stripes and a gray short-sleeved hoodie. It had a motivational quote slapped across the front in white letters: “NOTHING IS WORTH IT IF YOU AREN’T HAPPY.” Both were simple though.

“Okay! I’ll buy this one then!” I said, taking the hoodie, which I kind of liked anyway, from her hands and heading for the cashier.

“Wait! You haven’t even tried it on!”

“Do I really need to?” I groaned, not sure why she’d want me to go through so much hassle.

“Of course! That’s, like, the most basic thing! Even the best clothes look horrible if they’re too tight or too baggy! Size is vital! And, don’t forget, you need to see if it looks good on you or not,” she pointed out, handing me a pair of black jeans that looked way too small for me—“That’s how skinny jeans are supposed to look!”—to try on as well.

“Hm...” she mumbled, “I think a medium is too big for you, but I don’t think they have a small for this shirt...”

“Glad to know I look thin then! Haha!”

“Just so you know, looking thin isn’t a good thing,” she said.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“You don’t need to be buff or anything, but guys should have some muscle on them! My friends would totally agree. Boys who look like walking matchsticks aren’t hot at all!”

“Walking... matchsticks...?”

Is this a nerd vs stud kind of thing? I’ve never exercised. Not a day in my life. Of course I don’t have any muscles.

“The jeans fit fine though,” Kokoro said.

“They’re a bit loose around the waist.”

“If you have the money, get a belt too, then.”

“O-Okay.”

“Oh, and shoes! Take those horrible kiddie sneakers you’re wearing and throw them in the trash, before I do!”

“There’s no need to throw them away, is there? They’re still wearable!” I protested.

I eventually bought the jeans, shirt, and hoodie. I already had to try them for size, so I decided to test them out for the rest of the day. Walking outside with brand new, fashionable clothes made me a bit nervous.

Now it was my turn to help Kokoro find a new outfit, so we went to an underground department store on Takeshita Street. The shop that Kokoro had decided on, Amavel Classic, perfectly delivered my virgin-killer dreams. Every single item on display was cute and frilly.

“Seeing lolita stuff like this in person hits different,” Kokoro said. “They’re cute, very cute, but I’d never choose something like this myself.”

“Very cute indeed. Wow, look at this! This is awesome!” I said, pointing at the outfit that made my virgin senses tingle the most. It was a high-cut burgundy dress over a lacy blouse.

“This?! I guess it’s cute, sure but... my friends would die laughing if I showed up wearing something like that.”

“Who cares? You’re not going to wear it in front of your friends.”

“Well, I guess you have a point...” she said as she took the dress from me and made her way to the fitting room, still looking unconvinced.

Being left alone in such a girly shop made me extremely uncomfortable. I’d never been more relieved when Kokoro returned.

“A-Are you serious? This doesn’t look good on me at all,” she said, awkwardly fidgeting in the clothes I’d chosen for her.

I was at a loss for words. She looked murderously cute. Just the sight of her was enough to kill hundreds of virgins, and if I didn’t know her already, I’d have risked falling in love at first sight myself.

“Wh-What is it?! Say something! Don’t just stare at me silently like that! Does it look that bad?!” she cried.

“Bad?! Are you out of your mind?! It’s so cute that any... Ahem, I-I think that this makes you look better than anything you’ve worn in front of me so far!”

“Seriously...? J-Just know that if this doesn’t work, I’ll kill you.”

“It will work! And anyway, who doesn’t love a virgin-killer outfit!”

She still wasn’t entirely convinced, but, after a little persuasion, she finally caved in.

“Well, I’m already wearing it, so I guess I’ll keep it on too!” she said before leaving the store.

I’m spending the rest of the day with Nishina dressed like that? Now I’m even more nervous...

We went into a shoe shop on the same street, and Kokoro chose a new pair of sneakers for me. I’d never bought trendy shoes like these in my life.

“You kinda also need a new bag, but... do you have any money left?” she asked me.

“Barely enough to take the train home.”

“In that case, just go to the meetup without one.”

“But I always go out with a bag!” I told her.

“Just put your phone and wallet in your pocket. The girls in my class say that it’s much better having no bag than having an ugly one. Bags aren’t really in right now anyway.”

“But...just my phone and wallet?” I asked.

“I mean, what else do you need?”

I’d be more comfortable if I were able to carry more stuff with me, but the only bags I had were my backpack and a battered shoulder bag I’d been using since middle school, so I thought it’d be better to just follow her advice.

“Whew! That was tiring, but now we’re all set!” I said when we were finally done shopping.

“Say... do you have anywhere you need to be after this?” Kokoro asked.

“Not really. Why?”

“It’s just that, since we’ve bought all these clothes, isn’t it a bit of a waste just to go back home? Why don’t we, like, go get coffee?”

“S-Sure...”

Wait, would that make this a date? N-No, that can’t be right...

“There’s this place I really want to go to,” she started explaining, “and they have these ultra cute desserts! They look sooo good, really! I’d get the best pics!”

“W-Wait a second!” Kokoro was skipping so excitedly that she was almost running, so I had to stumble along to keep up with her.

And so, both of us dressed in our new date clothes, I hurried after her from store to store as Kokoro bought all kinds of photogenic sweets.