Vol. 6, Chapter XVII — The Weight of the Future

There was little noise to be heard aside from Mathilda’s pen scratching paper, the AC blowing warm air and the occasional sigh from my wife as she was nestled between my legs, both of us reading the book we had picked for our couple's reading time, me holding it and flipping the pages as we read along.

We had gathered for Mathilda. She practically begged us to do so, her studies having fallen behind due to her streaming. As such, we agreed, but she had to come to one of our places—Abby’s, to be clear—where there were fewer distractions for her, someone who was already easily distracted. It was probably out of sheer desperation, but she was doing quite well about staying focused.

“I can’t take this anymore!” she suddenly surged, flopping her upper body over the table. “I wanna talk with chat! I wanna be on a cute, romantic date with Stephen! I’m so bored, I could cry!”

“Oh Lord,” I sighed, closing the book and starting to look around. Abby, always the mind reader, stretched out her body to grab a newspaper her dad had left discarded on the table that morning, rolling it into a roll and handing it to me. I thanked her with a nod before I smacked Mathilda in the head with it, producing a loud thwack that felt incredibly satisfying. “Good grief! Wasn’t it you who asked for this? Why are you complaining and saying that stuff when those are the reasons why you fell behind?”

She dragged her body into sitting somewhat upright, rubbing the spot I smacked her with a pouting face that felt annoyingly adorable for once. “Sorry, Mumma Violet, but I’m at my limit here. I feel like my brain might start leaking out of my ears any second now.”

She’s lucky she’s actually smart, at least study-wise, if not, I’d be asking if there was much to leak out anyway.

Her sister spoke, her bare feet the only thing visible as they poke out of the sofa, Claire still splayed over it and using Sophie’s lap as a pillow. She asked us to give her sister a break, wiggling her toes crested with nails painted the same red as her PJs at the wall clock, telling me it had been a long while now. It was amazing how shameless she acted in someone else’s house, even if that someone else’s was her so-called “woman”. And for someone who pestered Sophie about letting her sleep over so they could cuddle and warm each other’s feet, she really was being contradictory right now.

I relented, having realised that Mathilda really had been diligent for quite longer than I expected.

“What even do you talk about with your chat?” I asked her. I had seen some of her streams and had others playing in the background, but I really couldn’t tell, as I had a hard time paying attention to the scrolling text, even those from her slow streams.

“This and that,” she told me, leaning over the desk on her elbows and holding her face. “Honestly, it sometimes is kinda like our talks. Did you watch the last stream? I was teased and made fun of so much when I told them that I wouldn’t stream today because I was falling behind in my studies. It’s like Mathew made all those accounts. Sometimes we joke, sometimes we bicker, but it’s always just for fun. Well, most of the time, anyway.”

I asked her what she meant by that. Like, some people genuinely being mean?

She said that yes, there were some, sometimes popping in during the stream, dropping the comment, and then leaving when they could just have said nothing, sounding completely unfazed. She was fine with stuff about the sound quality, her motion tracking sometimes acting wonky, but then, she asked me if I could believe that she had people say that her avatar looked like a little girl.

Her avatar looked young, yes, but a little girl? That got me tilting my head. The same wavy pink hair that Mathilda now used, a gentle face with, for me at first, strangely big green eyes, and a halter top in a pastel colour revealing a bit of cleavage.

“Even though your avatar has… breasts?”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t make them huge like a lot of the others do,” she huffed, leaning back on the chair. “I didn’t know which one to pick between you and my sister for the body of the model, so I picked a chest size somewhere in between you two. Actually, mine, now that I think about—”

“Huh!? Y-you used me as a model for the body!?”

“Of course I did!” she told me. “Your proportions are already like one of those characters brought into real life! My sister too, for that matter!”

Claire giggled and wiggled her toes, thanking the compliment. As for me, it was quite the shock that I had been a model for someone again. A bit flattering, but still, very embarrassing.

Mathilda concluded that topic by saying that she saw someone commenting that these models are simply putting a little girl’s face over an adult woman’s body.

“What, so, if they saw me, they’d say that?” I asked, thinking about how I apparently inspire her model.

“You actually look your age in terms of looks, and your build is kinda ageless, but yeah, probably. More accurately, they’d say that about Abby since she’s petite but curvy in all the right places and has that cute, mischievous, girly face.”

I frowned as I heard that, wrapping my arms around Abby and pulling her tight against me. Abby was all that Mathilda had spoken about her, but I had grown so used to my wife that I didn’t really register her looking a bit younger than she was, currently looking like she had started high school, not like she was in her last year of it. For me, Abby was simply cute and precious-looking.

“…What’s with the smirk?” I asked, Abby’s face turned into a very smug smile.

She hummed that it was nothing, fluffing herself further into my hold, making Mathilda sigh, most likely longing to do the same with Stephen.

“On the other hand, there are those who enjoy your avatar and persona way too much,” Claire hummed from her spot.

“Right,” Mathilda said. “I’m even considering closing my email to business-only due to some of that.”

She told us about some of her more unhinged fans. One that proposed to her, saying he’d take care of her since he had money and that he’d “fill her with his babies”, another one asking if she’d send him pics of herself or her model without clothes, another one that was from another girl who wanted some pictures of her chest and tried to guilt-trip her into providing them to her, claiming that she was just a lesbian-hater and that she’d just kill herself if she kept getting rejected like this. She even got a few images of men’s… unmentionables. The more egregious ones, she reports them, as she has clearly stated that she’s still a minor in her profile page, but she mostly just ignores anything like that that drops in her email.

“There are also some scams, saying they are sponsors, but really, what would a sponsor want with a girl who mostly talks about movies and barely has a thousand subs? Me announcing that I have a boyfriend had quite the impact on my number of subs. It’s not all bad, though. There are also nice ones in between, like people telling me that watching me talk about some fringe movies they like makes them feel less lonely, or that they like my avatar, my voice, my sense of humour, that they enjoy me talking so wholesomely about my boyfriend when he’s brought up during the streams, stuff like that. I just wish it were more often, though, and since I’m still growing, I’d prefer to keep an open way for those to reach out to me in a more private way than what the chat window allows, but…”

“…And even despite all that, you enjoy streaming?”

She blinked at me, as if incredulous that I even asked.

“Of course!” she told me, going back to leaning over the table to shorten up the distance between us as much as possible. “It’s super fun and feels very rewarding! The more I do it, the more convinced I am that I should focus on this after being out of my parents’ home and high school!”

I should be happy for her, but all I could think of was how my stomach did a flip. There she was, so determined about her path for the future while I was still figuring out mine besides what I wanted from my relationship with Abby. Then, it started settling in a deeper sense of… “imposter syndrome” might be a good way of putting it.

The girl I loved nestled between my thighs, and leaning on me, knew she wanted to be a PE teacher for three years now. Sophie found her place by being a part-time manager and musician at Mrs Fletcher’s. Stephen had his Dad’s shop and a desire to keep on working on cars. Mathew knew he wanted to work in video game development.

Even Claire—or rather, she was the most stinging of all, who seems to always have a lot of free time on her hands, helped her Mum manage her businesses and, if I understood correctly, already had some sources of passive income through rents of stores and houses her Mum got for her over the past three years that she managed. What made it so stinging? The fact that, from all I could gather, she simply wants to be a housewife to Paul and take care of their kids when they have them, and she could simply do it, as even if Paul doesn’t become a good earner, she can provide for her family all by herself.

What am I even doing with my life?

It was such a dreaded feeling of impotence, leaving me feeling hopeless.

“Babe?” I heard Abby calling out, her voice coming small and soft.

“Violet? Are you feeling well?” Mathilda asked.

Even Sophie, who had been super quiet all this time, turned to look at me. I realised then that I was barely holding back tears.

I pinched my nose and wiped my tears, excusing it with my hormones probably being acting up, probably not sounding at all convincing, but then again, I do act weird during that time of the month. I could be that, but I didn’t consider my calendar, though, so Abby, even if she couldn’t just see right through me the way she does, could tell it was a lie.

Sophie was behind me, hands on my shoulders, asking if I needed anything. I thanked her and said I was fine, just a bit emotional, my face feeling hot from embarrassment from the way I was acting in front of everyone.

I could tell by the way Abby was breathing and holding her body that she knew what was going on, or at least had a very good guess.

Maybe, once I calmed down and everyone had left, I’d tell her what got me like this.