[Ding! "Street-Corner Illustrator" has joined the Dinsional Chat Group!]
RawrSoFierce: Welco, new mber! Throwing confetti~~
WolfKingOfQingQingGrasslands: Welco, new mber! Throwing confetti~~
Edward Newgate: New mber's an artist, is she? Gurararara, interesting. Admin tells she's a girl too — how about becoming this old man's daughter!
Edward Newgate: Bear the na of Whitebeard, and beco my 72nd daughter!
Eternally Seventeen: No — since the new mber is a girl, she's obviously joining my Gensokyo Beautiful Girls Ensemble!
RawrSoFierce: …Yukari, Tatsumaki, Kaguya, and Sakura are beautiful girls, sure. But you and the word "beautiful" — is there actually any connection there?
Eternally Seventeen: Of course there is. I am, after all, only seventeen this year.
Street-Corner Illustrator: emmm… um, is this the Dinsional Chat Group that appeared in my head just now? I'm… I'm Sawamura Spencer Eriri, please… please take care of , everyone!
Kaguya-sama: [Image] This is a photo of and the new mber! Isn't she adorable? Little fangs and twin tails and the school uniform, co on.
Street-Corner Illustrator: Oh… hello, Kaguya-senpai.
Kaguya-sama: Yep! ヾ(•ω•`)ﾉ~
"…"
Ryū studied the photo Kaguya had sent for a mont.
Kaguya he knew well enough by now — they'd been acquainted for close to half a year.
Eriri was the new mber who'd just stepped through the door.
Still, seeing an ani character rendered in full three dinsions and placed right in front of you — even after all this ti, even with how many he'd encountered by now, there was still that small spark of surprise.
He had to admit: two-dinsional characters, even after crossing over into the real world, still had looks that left countless real-world beauties completely in the dust.
If you dropped Eriri into his previous life on Earth, every celebrity on the planet would have nothing on her.
And speaking of which — blonde hair, twin tails, blue eyes, that slightly haughty-but-nervous expression…
Why did he suddenly have a very strong sense of déjà vu?
It's you. Akizuki— ahem. He had to admit, at first glance, the resemblance was really sothing.
Back when he'd first watched Saekano, the mont Eriri appeared on screen had been exactly this feeling.
She really did look that similar.
He found himself with an inexplicable urge to adopt her.
Spit. Spit. Spit.
He hurled the thought out of his head. As the Chat Group Admin, how could he entertain ideas like that about one of his own mbers? Besides, Eriri was sixteen — seventeen at most. Still a minor.
Having thoughts like that about a minor made you an animal. Full stop.
Street-Corner Illustrator: Um… Kaguya-senpai has already filled in on what happened, and explained a lot about the Chat Group. Thank you all so much for your attention — if it hadn't been for everyone, today I might have…
Eternally Seventeen: Ahh, don't ntion it, new mber~
Eternally Seventeen: Now that you're part of the Dinsional Chat Group, if you ever run into trouble, we veterans will absolutely step in. Whoever dares lay a hand on soone belonging to this youkai sage — I'll tear them apart!
RawrSoFierce: …When did Eriri beco "yours," exactly.
Eternally Seventeen: I'm the Chat Group's one and only female moderator, so all female mbers are mine by default! Your big sister of the Dinsional Chat Group stands before you!
Eternally Seventeen: Is the Admin worried I'll be a bad influence on the new mber?
RawrSoFierce: …The new mber, when she puts her foot on the gas, runs laps around you.
Eternally Seventeen: Huh??!
RawrSoFierce: Did you look at her handle? Street-Corner Illustrator. Read just the key characters out loud and see what you get.
Eternally Seventeen: Street… Corner… Illustrator!
Eternally Seventeen: A specin of this rarity has wandered into our midst — I'm suddenly very excited!
Yukari's reading of the handle wasn't wrong, technically.
Because Eriri was, in fact, a manga artist.
Who drew a very specific kind of manga. The 18 variety.
It was genuinely hard to picture a girl who looked this wholeso producing that kind of work — and yet Eriri was already making a quiet na for herself in the field, a rising star by anyone's asure.
Her main occupation was, of course, being a second-year high schooler. The illustration work was a side gig. One that also happened to feed the deeply hidden otaku soul within her.
She was, through and through, a two-dinsional hobody.
The veteran kind.
Veteran enough to pick up a pen and do it herself.
Co to think of it, the Chat Group had quite a few shut-ins — Ryū himself, Yukari, Kaguya, Eriri — the kind of people who, whenever they had a free mont and no obligations, would happily lock themselves indoors and refuse to move.
The Chat Group's at… thirteen mbers now, right? Should be thirteen. Five are female — excluding the Wandering Earth whose gender is undetermined, that leaves seven male mbers. Not a bad ratio.
The group's long-running gender imbalance had finally started to correct itself.
Ryū pulled his attention out of the Chat Group. Outside, Konoha had gone dark. He could faintly hear the sound of rain — sothing light, by the sound of it.
He lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, with absolutely nothing to do.
It occurred to him that his only remaining entertainnt was chatting in the group.
All the popular manga, gas, and shows from the Hero Association world — he'd burned through every last one of them in late-night sessions ages ago.
"I genuinely have no idea what to do with myself," he muttered to the ceiling. "If only there was an ani I hadn't finished. I could ask Kaguya to send sothing—"
A soft ding interrupted him.
Sothing had popped up in the Chat Group. Either a notification or soone had tagged him.
He turned his attention back in — and when he saw the chat history, he blinked. A look of faint disbelief crossed his face.
"Are you kidding ? Today's just mber Joining Day, is it? Eriri just joined, and now there's already another new mber? That frequency feels a little high?!"
Sure enough — another new mber had just appeared in the Dinsional Chat Group.
[Ding! "My True Form Is Cola" has joined the Dinsional Chat Group!]
A very strange handle.
Sothing like "Little Sakura of the Tohsaka" or "Wolf King of QingQing Grasslands" — those Ryū could place imdiately. But "My True Form Is Cola"?
What kind of handle was that? Cola… My True Form Is Cola?
Could this possibly be Franky from One Piece?
No way. That would an three One Piece characters in the Chat Group.
Two was already a pretty wild coincidence. Three moved well past coincidence into sothing else entirely. If this really was Franky, then having three mbers from the sa world wasn't a fluke — there was sothing deliberate going on. So kind of bigger sche at work.
Ryū wasn't normally the type to spiral into conspiracy theories.
But he couldn't stop himself from going there right now.
Was it actually Franky?
Hmm. Probably not, actually.
Because Franky's world didn't have video gas.
Loves cola. Stays up late. Plays gas.
A flicker of sothing crossed Ryū's mind — a half-ford mory — but it slipped away before he could catch it.
He was almost rembering sothing. He just couldn't pin it down.
That feeling sat in his chest like a pebble.
RawrSoFierce: @My True Form Is Cola — new mber, there's a group announcent in the upper right corner. Tap it and it'll explain everything. Once you've read it, you'll know whether this is a hallucination, a dream, a delusion, or sothing actually happening.
My True Form Is Cola: …Upper right corner? Okay, so — this isn't a hallucination?
RawrSoFierce: What hallucination feels this real?
My True Form Is Cola: Fair point… I'll go read it.
Kaguya-sama: I'm willing to bet this new mber is also soone the Admin knows.
RawrSoFierce: Whether I know them or not depends on their na.
"…"
My True Form Is Cola: Whoa whoa whoa! This is — wait, is this real? Did I have a hallucination because I stayed up playing gas until 4am last night?
My True Form Is Cola: That shouldn't be possible, staying up late never did this to before!
Eternally Seventeen: Incredible — another new mber already?
Kaguya-sama: New mber, post a photo and your three asurents!!
Crazy Diamond: New mber, post a photo and your three asurents!!
RawrSoFierce: Breaking up the echo chamber.
Terrible Tornado: Huh… I just got out of the Arena and apparently two new mbers joined while I was in there. Did I miss sothing?
Street-Corner Illustrator: …
My True Form Is Cola: …It genuinely doesn't feel like a dream.
My True Form Is Cola: I pinched my thigh and it hurt!!
☆☆☆
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